Cornish adds early-music program to school of music

Cornish College of the Arts' school of music is expanding its program to "encompass a new emphasis on early music and period instrument performance practices of European Renaissance and Baroque music."

Or as Cornish Music Department Chair Kent Devereaux more informally puts it: "I came to town and I said, 'Gee, you have all these international-reputation people in Seattle in early music, and there's no academic home for them. And that's absolutely ridiculous.'"

The 11 added adjunct faculty members include lutenist Stephen Stubbs (director of Pacific Operaworks and the Seattle Academy of Opera), pianist-harpsichordist Byron Schenkman, harpsichordist Jillon Stoppels Dupree, violinists Ingrid Matthews and Tekla Cunningham, flutist Janet See, harpist Maxine Eilander, viola da gambist Margriet Tindemans and singers Cyndia Sieden, Nancy Zylstra and Ross Hauck. The Seattle Academy of Opera, now at Seattle Pacific University, will move to Cornish in the summer of 2010.

It wasn't something that Devereaux came here planning to do, but Cornish's emphasis is on practicing artists and these performers seemed a perfect fit. "They're not academicians, they're not theoreticians. These are people who are actually out there on the world stage, some of the premier musicians in early music. This makes all the sense in the world."

Cornish has long put its emphasis on 20th-century music, especially chamber works rather than orchestral pieces. Early music also tends more to chamber-scale compositions, including chamber opera.

"What Cornish ends up with," Devereaux jokes, "is a focus on early music and late music."

Set your watches.

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com