Laurence Kaptain to become Dean of the College of Music and DramaticArts
Laurence Kaptain will depart the deanship of Shenandoah Conservatory of Shenandoah University to become Dean of the College of Music and Dramatic Arts at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, beginning his new appointment on July 1, 2009.
Laurence Kaptain assumed his position as the 7th dean in the 138-year history of Shenandoah Conservatory—Virginia's largest performing arts institution—in 2006. Prior to his appointment at Shenandoah, he was Director of the heralded Schwob School of Music in Georgia and Vice-Provost at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
In the three years of Kaptain's leadership, Shenandoah Conservatory's programs in music, musical theatre, theatre, and dance have risen to a place of international prominence. Its performing ensembles have appeared at venues, including Carnegie Hall and the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, while faculty artists frequently perform with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Pittsburgh Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra, at Lincoln Center and the Spoleto Festival, and at Styriarte 2009 in Graz, Austria.
Supported by the dean's strong emphasis upon artistic collaboration, cross-cultural exchange, grantsmanship, and community networking, both faculty and students received increased private support to travel to East Asia, Europe, Africa, India, South America, and Mexico during his tenure. Kaptain opened a gateway to student recruiting in China by twice visiting Shanghai and Beijing, arranging for auditions that brought Chinese students to Shenandoah in the Fall of 2008. He also initiated significant local off-campus opportunities for student performances in the Washington, DC area—most notably at Washington Conservatory and at Lorton Arts Foundation Workhouse, a former penitentiary converted into an arts center.
Under Kaptain’s guidance, Shenandoah Conservatory has substantially increased student enrollments, attracted more minority faculty, appointed female faculty members to positions of leadership, increased performance attendance, and made several notable faculty hires in the theatre, musical theatre, and dance areas. His first initiatives as dean included appointing the Audubon Quartet as string quartet in residence and naming noted Irish pianist, John O’Conor, and Canadian trumpet virtuoso, Jens Lindemann, as the Conservatory’s first Distinguished Visiting Artists. He also recruited faculty from the Giodorno Jazz Dance Company in Chicago, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the chamber ensemble Antares, and Duke University. Through his acquisition of private-donor funding, an elite graduate string quartet program was launched and independent funding was also directed toward sending students to master classes, conferences, and classes in New York City and Chicago.
The Conservatory has enjoyed significant media attention garnered by Kaptain's conferral of honorary doctorates to New York Times/CNBC columnist/correspondent David Pogue, to Mikhail Baryshnikov, and to modern dance choreographer Murray Louis. Most recently, alumnus Ronn McFarlane and group of recent alumni and current students, captured a 2009 Grammy Award nomination in the category of classical crossover for the recording Indigo Road.
In the area of performing arts education, Dean Kaptain is recognized as a pioneer in the introduction of state-of-the-art technologies that enhance learning, teaching and creativity. At the Schwob School, he generated and used foundation funding to create a digital media lab; his contributions to Shenandoah Conservatory include implementing an Apple Lab and two digital recording labs for creativity and learning, securing donor funding for major technical enhancements to the audio recording and music production center, and acquiring a new 32-microphone UHF wireless system for the musical theatre.
As one of America's premier symphonic/chamber cimbalom artists, Laurence Kaptain appears regularly with entities, including the New York Philharmonic, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh Symphony. His performances may also be heard on recordings with the Chicago Symphony (Solti, Jarvi, Boulez), St. Louis Symphony (Slatkin), Orpheus, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (Wolff), and the Czech National Symphony (Freeman). He has been interviewed and featured on programs such as NPR’s Morning Edition, on All Things Considered, and most recently on a retrospective broadcast of historic recordings made by Georg Solti on the Chicago Symphony’s BP Network broadcasts. He has also performed with renowned artists, including Yo-Yo Ma, Issac Stern, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Elliot Carter, Gil Shaham, Suzanne Farrell, Kurt Masur, Elvis Costello, Henry Mancini, Donna McKechnie, Carol Channing, and Robert Altman.
A former Fulbright Scholar to Mexico, Laurence Kaptain is the first percussionist to receive the DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts degree) from the University of Michigan, where he served as a visiting faculty member, and he also holds degrees from the University of Miami and Ball State University. He has held visiting teaching appointments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Oberlin Conservatory, and has also taught at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory, Stephen F. Austin State University, and Drake University.
