Music Department Faculty
Terry Rhodes
Professor
Office: 222 Hill Hall
Email: rhodes@email.unc.edu
Phone: 919-962-2270
Originally from Raleigh, N.C., Dr. Rhodes has performed in more than twenty countries throughout Europe, Central and South America, and across the U.S. At ease both in recital and on the opera/musical theater stage, the soprano has earned a fine reputation as a performer of new works, having presented a number of premieres at home and abroad in the last two decades. Next spring 2008, she will premiere a new dramatic work by Tania Leon (written for her), to be presented on the "Festival on the Hill: Latin American Music" in Memorial Hall. The soprano also premieres Allen Anderson's "Instrument of the Tongue" this autumn. She is a frequent guest artist on the "Encounters: With the Music of our Time" concert series at Duke University, having most recently sung the N.C. premiere of Unsuk Chin's "Acrostic Wordplay" and Stephen Jaffe's "Homage to the Breath."
As
the soprano of "Duo Nuovo," Ms. Rhodes and mezzo Ellen Williams recorded
the warmly received 1995 disc "To Sun, To Feast, and To Converse" (Albany
Records, Troy 172) of newly recorded duets from the 20th century American song
and operatic repertoire. Their latest CD of vocal music by Libby Larsen, with pianist
Benton Hess was released on the Albany label in 2004. Rhodes and Williams have
a number of duet sets which have been written especially for them (Stephen Jaffe's
"Fort Juniper Songs," Timothy Hoekman's "Margarets" and Benton
Hess' "Atrocities") and have toured as a duo team throughout Europe
and the U.S. with performances in Italy, Germany, and the mid-West.
Receiving a Fulbright award in 1993 as Artist-in-Residence/Lecturer at the Conservatory of Music in Skopje, Macedonia, Ms. Rhodes taught and presented concerts throughout the Balkan and Eastern European region, including Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland, with a number of those presentations under the auspices of the U.S. Information Agency. For the 1993 Budapest, Hungary premiere of Samuel Barber's "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" she appeared as soloist with the Duna Symphony Orchestra, in the summer of 1994 as guest artist at the Ohrid International Summer Music Festival in Macedonia, and in 1995 as a recitalist at the "Music Now Prague" festival in the Czech Republic. Dr. Rhodes presented a series of concerts and master classes in London, as well as in Warsaw and Lodz, Poland in 1996, with a culminating solo recital at the Chopin Academy in Warsaw in an official commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Fulbright program for international exchange. At the 1996 Oregon Bach Festival, Ms. Rhodes appeared as featured soloist in the premiere of Stephen Jaffe's cantata "Songs of Turning." A featured performer at the international conference "The Art of Elizabeth Bishop" held in Ouro Preto, Brazil in 1999, she presented works of Hoiby and Rorem with pianist Thomas Warburton, and in 2000 she appeared at New York City's Lincoln Center, performing the music of James Legg.
In 2001, as
a Chapman Fellow at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Dr. Rhodes created
the one-woman musical/dramatic show entitled "Women's Voices of the Old American
West" which she has presented nationally. She has received grants from the
Lilly Foundation and the John T. Lupton Fund for undergraduate teaching and has
served as faculty liaison/enrichment lecturer for a number of UNC Alumni Association-sponsored
tours to Europe, including the "Grand European Cruise." and "Islands of Antiquity" in the Mediterranean. Selected for
the UNC Speakers' Bureau, she presented concerts around the state with colleague/tenor
Stafford Wing during the University Bicentennial celebrations, as well as for
several years following. Rhodes has evaluated opera training programs throughout
the U.S. for the National Endowment for the Arts, and in the summer of 2000 she
taught voice to members of the Janiec Opera Company at the Brevard Music Center. Dr.
Rhodes performs and teaches every summer in Spoleto, Italy as a faculty member
of the Spoleto Study Abroad program and at the Corso Internazionale di Musica da Camera in Tuscania, Italy.
As
director of the UNC Opera Theatre, Dr. Rhodes has championed new works by American
composers, in addition to producing standard works, often with orchestra. In the
spring of 2002 the group presented the N.C. premiere of Robert Moran's "From
the Towers of the Moon" with the composer and librettist Michael John LaChiusa
in residence the week of production. Past performances also include: the world premiere of James Legg's
"The Power of Xingu," and the N.C. premieres of Milton Granger's "talk
opera" and "The Proposal," Richard Wargo's "The Music Shop,"
and James Harp's "The Tale of Johnnie S. Kickey" (an adaptation of Puccini's
"Gianni Schicchi"). Last year, UNC Opera performed "Cosi fan tutte" with the UNC Symphony Orchestra in Memorial Hall, and this year the group will collaborate with the UNC Dept. of Communication Studies in presenting Jason Robert Brown's "Parade" in November (Memorial Hall). With a focus on Latin-American music in the spring of 2008, the ensemble will perform zarzuelas.
Dr. Rhodes has
published in the National Opera Association Journal (1992) with an article on
Verdi's "Attila," and in the National Association of Teachers of Singing
Journal (1994) with an article on the "Fort Juniper Songs," which she
premiered at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1990. She is currently serving as District Governer, and has previously served as President,
Vice-President, and Secretary, of N.C. NATS. She is currently Vice-Chair of the Fine Arts Division of the College of Arts and Sciences, and sits on the Faculty Executive Committee of the University.