Dr. Kamran Ince, professor of composition, has been awarded the U of M Alumni Association Distinguished Achievement in the Creative Arts Award. The award recognizes faculty who have brought honor and recognition to the University.

Ethel Maxwell, former voice faculty member, loyal supporter of the School, friend and colleague has died, just 5 days before her 98th birthday. She taught 35 years as Professor of Voice at Memphis State University and 10 years as instructor of music at Lausanne School for Girls. She was finalist runner-up in the Metropolitan Opera auditions and was in Oscar Hammerstein's first Broadway show. Her performing career continued in Memphis as star of the Memphis Air Theatre from 1938-1950. She was soloist with the NBC orchestra, and sold war bonds with Abbot and Costello.

Kamran Ince is among four composers who received a $7500 Arts and Letters Award in Music for 2013.  The award honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice.  He will receive an additional $7500 toward the recording of one work. Ince is Professor of Composition at the U of M and at MIAM, Istanbul Technical University. His prizes include the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Lili Boulanger Price.  Five recent Naxos CDs are devoted to his music.

Copeland Woodruff, co-director of opera studies, directed the premiere of Rudolf Rojahn's Bovinus Rex for Guerilla Opera at Boston Conservatory. He then directed a revisionist staging of Sondheim's A Little Night Music at the Harrower Summer Opera Workshop at Georgia State University.  This was his 14th season with the Workshop as a stage director and the primary acting instructor.In July and August, Woodruff taught and directed at an American Musical Theatre Workshop at Beijing University, China. This engagement led to him being invited to direct the department's first full production, Raise the Red Lantern. It will be the premiere of this Chinese musical theatre work and will be a collaborative directing project with the composer.

Victor Asuncion, associate professor of piano, has returned from a concert tour with the Transpacific Trio, performing in Seattle, Vancouver, Sydney and Perth, Australia. They were also the resident Piano Trio and Faculty for the Australian Youth Orchestra Chamber Music Camp.