Spotlight

January 30, 2001

Cultures Connect through Music and Science at Brooklyn College

Alice Newcomb-Doyle (718) 951-5882
adoyle@brooklyn.cuny.edu

Brooklyn, N.Y. -- Brooklyn College and its Conservatory of Music recently welcomed Stephen Cheng who visited the College as the representative of Hebei Jinyin Company of Zhouwoxiang, China. A manufacturer of woodwind and string instruments, Hebei Jinyin will be an industry partner with Brooklyn College in the development of the Interdisciplinary Musical Instrument Research Laboratory.

The only university based program of its kind in the United States, the Brooklyn College laboratory will be a research and teaching facility for the study of various musical and scientific aspects of woodwind and percussion instruments. Musicians, physicists, psychologists, and computer scientists will establish an interdisciplinary setting in which such parameters as the means for measuring the difference between a warm and a strident tone on the clarinet may be investigated.

The venture is an outgrowth of a visit to Beijing last year by Professor Paul Shelden of the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College. Mr. Cheng invited Dr. Shelden to visit Hebei Jinyin. "Initially I accepted the invitation out of intellectual curiosity," said Dr. Shelden. "Afterwards Mr. Cheng and I discussed a potential collaboration and I asked him to come to Brooklyn College to learn more about our Conservatory of music and the musical instrument manufacturing industry in the U.S."

The Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College is one of New York City's leading institutions in the training of musicians in a university setting. Distinguished faculty and musical technicians include Tania León, an internationally recognized composer, and George Brunner, acoustic and electro-acoustic musician in the college's state-of-the-art facility for the production of multichannel recorded and live computer music. In addition to bachelor's and master's degree programs, the Conservatory offers special topics seminars, master classes, symposia, internships, guest artist appearances, and a calendar of more than 100 performances by students and faculty in the performing arts center of the College.

Brooklyn College, founded in 1930, is one of the eleven senior colleges of the City University of New York. Located on a 26-acre tree-lined campus in Flatbush, it enrolls 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students who are representative of the diverse population of Brooklyn and New York City. The college, nationally known for its core curriculum, has been hailed as one of the "bright spots" in American higher education. For more information about Brooklyn College, visit the college Web site at www:brooklyn.cuny.edu




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