Nancy Van de Vate

Nancy Van de Vate arrived in Oxford, Mississippi, fifty years ago, in September 1955, as a young mother and wife of a University professor. Shortly thereafter she began work on a Master of Music degree in Composition, the first student to earn this degree at the University of Mississippi. In October, Dr. Van de Vate will return to Ole Miss as an internationally renowned composer who has written musical compositions for large orchestra as well as many operas, concertos, instrumental ensembles, choruses, and works for voice and solo instruments. Seven of her compositions have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. During her active career, she founded the International League of Women Composers and co-founded a recording company, Vienna Modern Masters, for which she remains president and artistic director.

Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, she was educated at the Eastman School of Music and Wellesley College before earning the M.M. at Ole Miss and the D.M. in Music Composition at Florida State University. She taught at several colleges and universities in Memphis and Knoxville, Tennessee, before moving to Hawaii in 1975. Since then, she has lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, and moved permanently to Vienna, Austria, in 1985, where she was awarded Austrian citizenship for her contribution to the cultural life of that country in 1994.

Dr. Van de Vate will be on campus from Thursday, October 6 to Monday, October 10. During that time, she will hold two master classes on Friday, October 7 that are open to all faculty, students, and members of the community. The first is a master class devoted to issues of composition and contemporary women composers at 11:00 a.m. in 153 Scruggs and the second at 4:00 p.m. in Meek Auditorium; its topic is her opera, Where the Cross Is Made, winner of the National Opera Association's biennial competition (2005). The faculty and students of the Department of Music will perform a concert of works by Nancy Van de Vate on Sunday, October 9 at 3:00 p.m. in the Gertrude Castellow Ford Center for the Performing Arts, "Music From and For Ole Miss." This concert is free and open to the public. Works being performed include music for chamber orchestra, women's and men's chorus, two scenes from operas, percussion ensemble, piano trio, solo voice, and solo piano. The highlight of this concert will be the world premiere by the Mississippi Brass of a work commissioned especially for this concert, The Streets of Laredo. A reception, where the public will have a chance to meet Dr. Van de Vate, will follow the concert. At noon on Monday, October 10, she will give a lecture on "A Global Look at Women in Contemporary Music" as part of the Sarah Isom Brown Bag Lecture Series, to be held at the Sarah Isom Center for Women. The public is invited to attend.