The contemporary music program
WEwere trying to give our students a working knowledge of the concepts and techniques that are relevant to musicmaking today,” Peter Gordon said about the College of Santa Fe’s contemporary music program. “Most other music programs exist in the shadow of either European or American art music . ... At the CMP, there was no genre-defined hierarchy — students were exposed to a wide range of techniques and genres and were encouraged to develop their own paths. There was a Balkan music group, a Javanese gamelan, a funk/R&B ensemble, an electro-acoustic music ensemble, as well as all sorts of student-led groups.”
The CMP was founded in 1991 at the College of Santa Fe by Kevin Zoernig in collaboration with John Weckesser; it was a spinoff from the performing arts department that Weckesser chaired for 30 years. The process actually began back in 1988, said Zoernig, who started at the college as a dance-class accompanist in 1983 and taught music until 1998. About the CMP’s first students, he said, “I had to drum up candidates who were willing to enter a program that had never graduated anyone yet. We had this scruffy operation in borrowed space. It never would have happened without the risk-taking of a bunch of adjunct faculty, people like Mark Clark and Polly Tapia Ferber and Joe Weber.” Another force in the development of the CMP was Steven M. Miller. In the spring of 2015, the program staged a musical memorial to the faculty member who worked at the College of Santa Fe from 1995 to 2008 and died of ALS in 2014.
The contemporary music program was first housed in the Garson Theatre, then the old barracks, and finally landed at Benildus Hall. The college closed in 2009, but the music program was revived at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design by Steven Paxton. “The first idea was patterned a little bit on Berklee and Cal Arts for a department that was not just classical music,” said Paxton, who chaired the contemporary music program for most of the years between 2003 and 2014. “So it was about technology, world music, popular music, jazz, and classical. The idea was that you don’t have to leave all your teenage music behind and just do the grownup music.”
Students could participate in a variety of ensembles. They also watched and sometimes participated in World Music Day, Zouk Fest, and the long-running percussion series The Drum Is the Voice of the Trees. Char Rothschild often performed in campus events with his brother, Robby, both of whom are alumni of the college. Char has worked as an adjunct faculty member at SFUAD, teaching the trumpet, since 2013. “One of the great things was that it was conceived by Kevin as a program that was not taught by educators but rather by people active in music. And as it grew, it became amazingly connected to a practical, careerbased model, so someone graduating went out in the world with an electronic press kit and a professional-sounding demo and able to build a career.”
Polly Tapia Ferber, who started teaching at CSF in 1992, was still on campus in late April, teaching the lecture class World Music Survey and winding down to graduation and her last day on Tuesday, May 8. When she was asked what the department was trying to impart to students, the longtime director of the MidEast/Balkan Ensemble and faculty/student coordinator for the contemporary music program only thought for a moment, then answered, “Love and passion for what we do.”
None of these five faculty members has chosen relaxation and unemployment with the demises of CSF and now SFUAD. Peter Gordon, who taught at the College of Santa Fe from 1995 to 2001, lives in New York City, where he records and performs music, and is a professor at Bloomfield College in New Jersey. Kevin Zoernig teaches music at the United World College of the American West. “I’m playing intermittently with about eight different bands, including a jazz quartet and a Spanish band based here in Las Vegas,” he said. “I’m also restoring vintage Mercedes Benzes. And I have a steady diet of producing music in various studios.”
Steve Paxton said he’s “juggling five or six part-time jobs to try to make ends meet.” He plays piano for National Dance Institute classes in Santa Fe and Española, coordinates concerts at San Miguel Chapel, directs a choir for the Los Alamos Choral Society, and does freelance conducting. Char Rothschild has taught music at Turquoise Trail Elementary School since 2000. He performs with his brother in Round Mountain and with Tapia Ferber’s band Evet. Tapia Ferber works in the music department at the United World College, teaches at Balkan music camps, and plays in Evet and in Souren Baronian’s Taksim & Transition Trio (New York), Orkestra Keyif (Canada, New York), and Rubi Ate the Fig (Santa Fe, Los Angeles, New York). — Paul Weideman