Two Notre Dame music professors nominated for Sunday's Grammy awards
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Professor of the practice piano Daniel Schlosberg is up for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album and associate professor of the practice for voice Stephen Lancaster is part of an ensemble nominated for Best Choral Performance.
According to the university, Schlosberg, who is originally from Los Angeles, is being recognized for his work as a pianist on 40@40, a collaboration with Laura Strickling.
“The idea was to have a lot of different voices to foster this sense of community that Laura and I both feel is essential to the genre,” Schlosberg told Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters writer Pat Milhizer. “[Music is] a way of commenting on the way we’re feeling, what’s going on in society, and many, many things. It expresses ideas and emotions that are hard to express, complicated, or abstract.”
Lancaster will be waiting to hear if his name is called as the winner of the Best Choral Performance award.
According to the university, conductor Craig Hella Johnson is nominated for the album "House of Belonging," performed by the large vocal ensemble that Lancaster joined in 2020.
That vocal group won a Grammy in 2015 and has been nominated a total of 11 times.
The group rehearsed multiple times and performed the album live before making an official recording.
“The more we rehearsed it, the more we loved the repertoire. And then the recording process went really well,” Lancaster told Milhizer. “So, I think we all felt a sense of excitement that this was a satisfying project with music we felt strongly about. The music and poetry convey powerful messages about belonging that are meaningful to people today.”
Lancaster also performs as a soloist.
According to the university, other notable Notre Dame connections to the Grammy Awards include music faculty member Alexander Blachly, whose vocal group Pomerium was nominated for Best Small Ensemble Performance in 1999; Folk Choir director J.J. Wright (MSM ’14, DMA ’17), whose album The Caribbean Jazz Project, Afro-Bop Alliance won a Latin Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album in 2008; and Sacred Music at Notre Dame technology and production coordinator Daniel Stein, who was a principal player in the album Canto América, which was nominated for Best Latin Jazz Album in 2017.
“It’s a major distinction for the department to receive this recognition,” said Berthold Hoeckner, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and department chair. “As a department, we are committed to supporting and fostering creative work. These honors speak to the manner in which our faculty are leading the way in innovative and groundbreaking programming.”