ENGAGE: Butler Community Arts School
ENGAGE: Butler Community Arts School
PUBLISHED ON Apr 16 2018
Associate Professor of Music Dan Bolin '70 MM '75 looks back on his career in education—23 years at Butler, 48 overall—and says, "I can't think of anything I could have done that would have been more satisfying. To get to work with the kids, to get to know the people I've gotten to know …"
He lets the thought hang in the air, but he might have finished with "to achieve all I've achieved."
Since joining the Music Department faculty, Bolin has made his mark, particularly with regard to equipment, the physical plant, and faculty.
Bolin arrived in 1995 as Department Chair to find that no one had been keeping track of the instruments the department owned. Forty were missing. He had a hand in finding almost all of them and creating a new inventory system.
When the Schrott Center for the Arts was being built, Bolin took a tour of the construction and noticed that the orchestra pit was so low that people on the stage wouldn't be able to see the conductor. His keen eye helped Butler avoid a potentially costly repair.
It's a point of pride for him that the University's music ensembles have improved over the years and that Butler has retained so many talented faculty members.
"Most of the faculty in the music school were people I was involved with hiring and setting up," he said.
"(Professor of Music and Director of Bands) Michael Colburn is the last person I hired, and he's a superstar. We're fortunate to have him."
The feeling is mutual, Colburn said.
"My wife and I fell in love with Butler as soon as we visited, but I must admit that a big part of the attraction was the knowledge that Dan was serving as the Chair of the School of Music at the time," he said. "I figured that any school of music that had Dan Bolin in a leadership position would be a great place to work, and my instincts were right on the mark! Although he is no longer Chair, Dan has continued to be a valued colleague and a tremendous friend, and he will be sorely missed when he retires at the end of this semester."
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Bolin spent his entire career close to home. He grew up in Indianapolis, took up the tuba in junior high school, and was the tubist in the Indiana All-State Orchestra all four years at Harry E. Wood High School, five blocks south of Monument Circle. That distinction earned him "a healthy scholarship" to Butler.
As an undergraduate at Butler, he tutored at his old high school. After graduation, his first teaching job was replacing his high school band director, who retired.
Bolin earned his principal's license at Butler and his doctorate in school administration at Indiana University. (His minor there was in music education.) He was a high school band director for 13 years, including time at Manual, Lebanon, and Southport high schools, and in administration for 12 years.
At Southport, he rose through the ranks to become an assistant principal. He left Southport for Perry Township Schools, where he moved from Director of Secondary Education to Personnel Director, Assistant Superintendent, and, finally, Interim Superintendent.
When the job opened at Butler, then-Director of Bands Robert Grechesky asked him to apply. Over the years, Bolin said, he was contacted by other institutions about opening on their faculty, but "I was doing what I wanted to do here."
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Bolin said the greatest joy of his career has been working with students.
Matt Harrod '83 MM '88 is one of those. Harrod, Band Director and teacher at Riverside Junior High and Intermediate School in the Hamilton-Southeastern school district outside Indianapolis, was a student of Bolin's at Lebanon High School from 1975–1977. Harrod said even after Bolin left Lebanon for Southport, he stayed in touch and interested in his progress.
Harrod remembers a time when he was a freshman at Butler and decided to skip a pep band practice. That earned him a reprimand not only from Butler Band Director Grechesky but from Bolin.
"He told Dan and Dan got all over me about that," Harrod said. "He kept me on the straight and narrow."
After Harrod graduated from Butler, Bolin helped him get his first teaching job, attended his concerts, and worked with his band. Eventually, Harrod taught Bolin's sons at Keystone Middle School.
"He's been a close friend my whole life," Harrod said. "He's been a mentor to me. We laugh together, we tease each other a lot. He has guest-directed my band several times. He's introduced me to important people in the field. He hasn't only done this for me; he's done this for a lot of people."
In addition, Harrod said, Bolin has been instrumental in bringing military bands such as the U.S. Army Field Band to Indianapolis to perform free concerts for the public.
In retirement, Bolin said he and his wife, Jane, will continue to have a home in Indianapolis, but they'll also be living in Melbourne, Florida, where they bought a house 10 years ago.
Bolin said what he'll miss most are the students.
"They keep me young," he said. "Watching them grow and graduate and seeing some of them become educators—I tended to teach music education classes—and become band and orchestra directors and do good work has been incredibly gratifying. That's essentially what we’re all about—trying to create the next generation of teachers who are going to do what we did and hopefully do it even better."
(After this story was written, Dan Bolin conducted his final concert as Music Director of the Indianapolis Municipal Band and was awarded the Sagamore of the Wabash. The honor is given to those who have rendered a distinguished service to the state or to the governor.)
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822
Going Out on A High Note
Dan Bolin retires after 48 years in education.
Dan Bolin retires after 48 years in education.
The Show Must, And Will, go on Thanks to Butler Venue Management Students
PUBLISHED ON Sep 19 2019
Despite graduating in just three months, Drew Soukup’s final bow at Butler University won’t take place until fall 2020.
The Arts Administration major and his six classmates in Assistant Professor of Arts Administration Brenda Lee Johnston’s Venue Management course are already working on their final group project — select a show that will be presented as part of next season’s Jordan College of the Arts Signature Series in Schrott Center for the Arts.
Patrons will purchase tickets just like any show at the Butler Arts Center. The only difference is the show will be discovered, booked, and marketed by Johnston’s class of juniors and seniors.
“It’s going to be wild to come back and see it,” Soukup says. “I’ll be able to say ‘This is something I was able to start from the ground-up.’”
Students in the fall 2020 edition of the Venue Management class will market the event that this year’s class selects, and then work front- and back-of-house duties at the show. The experience will roll on each following fall.
To fund the endeavor, JCA Dean Lisa Brooks gave the class a $10,000 budget to bring the act to the 476-seat theater. But the students must also make sure the money covers marketing and hospitality expenses.
On a recent Wednesday morning class, students pitched their initial ideas for what artists to present. Most already contacted talent agencies to gather initial specs: cost, routing, travel, visa issues, hotel rooms, technological requirements, average attendance, and typical ticket costs.
The students’ ideas ranged from 2015 Butler alumnus Josh Turner’s folk music group to accordion and clarinet entertainers Double Double Duo, hip-hop flamenco dancers Titanium to a cappella singers Voctave. Eventually, the students will have to unite to bring in the act that’s the best fit. The show selection will be presented to JCA Department Heads in late October.
Johnston says a crucial part of booking the right show is thinking beyond your personal tastes. Arts administrators must take a step outside of themselves to consider what their audiences want to see most. Broad appeal is factored into the formula of show booking. The students must consider if the show is a good fit for the series, the venue, and Butler.
“You have to know how to sell it and build an audience around it,” Johnston says. “You put your tastes aside and you think about who would enjoy this.”
Johnston, who directed the South Milwaukee Performing Arts Center and other Milwaukee arts venues for years before joining Butler, explains to the class that having a passion for live performance is crucial, but effective venue management is all about the details. So many different factors can cause bravos or boos.
“You get to know your audience so well,” Johnston says. “My vision as a presenter is to represent the artistic conscience of my community, while also expanding their artistic vision. That means presenting things they’re interested in, but also expanding their horizons. You have to build that trust so that they will come to new things and try it out.
“The greatest compliments I ever get are when you have your regulars who tell you ‘That really wasn’t my cup of tea, but I really appreciated and enjoyed it.’ They come to everything because of that, even if they think they may not like it.”
After just a few class meetings, Johnston and her students mingled with professional booking agents and artists at the 2019 Arts Midwest Conference in Minneapolis. Kelsey Dunn, Programming Coordinator for the Butler Arts Center, introduced the students to talent agencies, which present bands, comedians, dance ensembles, and even eSports stars and YouTube influencers. The students waded through the more than 300 presenters for acts that would be a good fit for their booking.
“The agents were really great about answering their questions,” Johnston says. “They were able to ask questions to presenters. And, now we are ready to go. We are at the stage of trying to figure out a show.”
Aaron Hurt, Executive Director for the Butler Arts Center, is a 2008 graduate of Butler’s Arts Administration program. Most of his career experience has come within the walls of Clowes Memorial Hall.
“We have these venues on this campus,” says Hurt, who co-taught the class with Johnston in 2016. “Why aren’t we pumping out people in theater management all the time because we have this access?”
When Hurt was officially named Executive Director in January, one of his goals was to hire more students as interns, ushers, box office personnel, and backstage crew. Most of the students in the Venue Management classes have been Butler Arts Center employees.
Soukup is one of those employees. Starting as a first-year usher, he has worked in the Schrott Center throughout his time at Butler. He will soon be able to add show presenter to his resume.
“I think having Clowes, Schrott, and the whole Butler Arts Center here on campus has been one of the most rewarding parts about coming to Butler,” Soukup says. “It’s been constant involvement. I’m graduating a semester early, but part of me would like to stay a little longer.”
The Show Must, And Will, go on Thanks to Butler Venue Management Students
For the class’ final project, undergrads will book a real concert for Fall 2020 at the Schrott Center for the Arts.
For the class’ final project, undergrads will book a real concert for Fall 2020 at the Schrott Center for the Arts.
Famed Clarinetist Performs World Premieres of Butler Student Compositions
PUBLISHED ON Mar 07 2019
Alex Shanafelt ’19 acknowledges being "a little nervous" when he and his classmates were asked to compose music for famed New York clarinetist Thomas Piercy.
"Dr. Schelle said this huge clarinet guy is going to play your pieces, and I thought, 'I don't have anything for clarinet right now,'" says Shanafelt, an Indianapolis native who's a music composition major. "But he kept pushing and pushing and I figured I might as well submit something because an opportunity like this doesn't come around very often."
Shanafelt's contemporary classical piece Overhearing will be one of four compositions by Butler University students that Piercy will perform—alongside the composers—on Tuesday, March 19, at 7:30 PM in the Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.
The idea to play students' pieces came together when Professor of Music and Composer in Residence Michael Schelle and his wife, pianist/composer Miho Sasaki, invited Piercy to perform at Butler. Schelle and Sasaki have written pieces that Piercy has performed as part of his Tokyo to New York concert series, which features new works composed for Western and Japanese classical instruments, and celebrates the connection between the two cities.
Schelle asked Piercy, "What if my kids wrote pieces for clarinet or clarinet and piano and you picked a few to do in the program?"
Piercy liked the idea. Schelle presented the opportunity to his students and four—Shanafelt and graduate students Matt Mason, Seth David, and Justin Hung—submitted compositions. Piercy decided he'd play all four pieces at the concert.
"That's what I hoped he'd say," Schelle says. "So four world premieres by four of our students. Then he'll take them back to New York, he'll play them in New York, he'll play them in Japan. So it gives my kids an opportunity to get outside of Butler. That's huge."
The Japan connection turned out to be serendipitous for graduate student Mason. He was reading a book called Japanese Death Poems, the last poetry of early Japanese haiku poets, when Schelle requested compositions. Mason wrote a piece called Reflections on Ichimu's Death Dream that will be played at the concert.
Piercy, he says, "seems like the kind of person who's really collaborative, and he's championing new music, which is great. As a composer of new music, we're battling not only other new composers, but we're also battling the classical masters. So to have someone come along who's really gung-ho for just the new music, it gives us the opportunity to get our work out there and show that we can do this, too."
Mason, a Lincoln, Illinois, native who did his undergraduate at Illinois Wesleyan, says he appreciates the opportunity "to write for Piercy, have him say it's good enough to play, and get to play it with him."
The March 19 concert also will feature Piercy performing a few pieces on a Japanese wind instrument called the hichiriki—including a new composition by Schelle called Jukai (named for the suicide forest at the base of Mt. Fuji), a new work by Sasaki written for bass clarinet and bayan accordion, and a John Cage composition that will feature Piercy with Schelle, Sasaki, and the four student composers.
"This is definitely a cool opportunity," Shanafelt agrees. "It's sort of like dipping your toe into the freelancing world, where you get a commission, you write a piece, it's performed, and you get more commissions from that. That'll be cool to have, because most of my performances are from student players and this will be the first time a professional musician will be performing a piece. So it's a really good experience."
Famed Clarinetist Performs World Premieres of Butler Student Compositions
Four Butler student composers will have their pieced played on campus, in New York City, and abroad.
Four Butler student composers will have their pieced played on campus, in New York City, and abroad.