David Willoughby
Nineteen eighty-eight will be a very good year—especially for The College Music Society.
Because of our system for electing new officers, we have overlap of leadership, providing a healthy balance of freshness and continuity. I welcome the new Officers and Board Members: Elliott Schwartz, President-Elect; Douglass Seaton, Secretary; Edwin London, Board Member for Composition; and Barbara Reeder Lundquist, Board Member for Music in General Studies. I also welcome James Standifer as Chair of the Committee on the Status of Minorities, and his Committee members: Robert Garfias, Charlotte Heth, Bernard J. Dobroski, and Willis Patterson. David Woods, 1988 Program Chair, is ready to put the program together for Santa Fe, and Pat Shehan, 1989 Program Chair, is in the beginning stages of preparing for the St. Louis meeting in the fall of 1989.
Between now and May, ten Annual Meetings of Regional Chapters will take place. This represents the gathering of several hundred CMS members, both young instructors and more experienced colleagues, who find the Regional Chapter a useful outlet for sharing of themselves in formal presentations and informal interaction with other professionals. Many find the Chapter a useful tool for professional growth and perhaps for service as they develop their leadership skills that help not only the local chapter but ultimately the whole Society.
In the summer, CMS will sponsor not one but two Institutes in Boulder, Colorado. MGS-VII, again, will provide an opportunity for teachers of introductory music courses to shape their attitudes and sharpen their skills. Its faculty are Horace Boyer, Richard Crawford, William Kearns, and Dale Olsen, with Don Funes serving as the Institute Director. And the first Institute for Music Theory Pedagogy Studies is designed to assist both new and experienced teachers of undergraduate theory courses. Its faculty are Allen Winold, Ann Blombach, Gary Wittlich, and Dorothy Payne, with Roger Foltz serving as the Institute Director.
In the fall of 1988, the Thirty-First Annual Meeting will take place in Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 13-16. Santa Fe will be more than a meeting of professional colleagues; it will provide opportunities to experience a unique environment: Spanish/Indian architecture and adobe houses; Indian arts and crafts and museums and art galleries galore; possible side trips to Taos, Los Alamos, Albuquerque, Pecos, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains; Red River or Angel Fire; and perhaps the Taos or San Ildefonso pueblos.
Music during the Annual Meeting will be performed in St. Francis Auditorium, an historic facility of Spanish design. The auditorium, part of the Museum of Fine Arts, also serves as the primary performance facility of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.
Finally, in the fall, the Conference on College Music and the Community will initiate a new multi-year program designed to explore the many facets of college/community interaction-of outreach by music units that enriches the curriculum, serves the community, and strengthens the music unit and its relationship to its community constituency. The invitational Conference will take place in Rochester, New York, with Robert Freeman and The Eastman School of Music as hosts. Robert A. Steinbauer of Kansas State University will serve as Conference Director.
In addition to all these activities, CMS will publish in 1988 the Symposium, a critically annotated bibliography of recent publications on women in musical life (CMS Reports No. 5), and Reports of the two Study Groups that met in 1987: "The Content of the Undergraduate Music Curriculum" and "The Preparation of College Music Teachers and the Quality of Music Teaching in Higher Education."
My impression is that this sequence of activities that I have presented bodes well for the Society and that 1988, indeed, will be a very good year. It will be a year filled with stimulating interaction, vitality, and, undoubtedly, professional growth both of the Society and of the participating individuals. I believe that these many projects and events are outgrowths of a dynamic organization that serves all teachers of music in
higher education and an organization that is worth your membership. So, if you have not sent in your dues, I urge you to do so now. Also, why not persuade at least one other colleague to join over 6,000 other professionals in becoming a member of The College Music Society?