Contact

Area: 

Composition, Wilderness and Civilization Program, Osher Lifelong Learning

Email: 

lee.heuermann@umontana.edu

 Lee Heuermann, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music, College of Visual and Performing Arts, Wilderness and Civilization Program, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute UM (MOLLI), UM Piano Camp

 Dr. Heuermann is a composer and singer/actor whose music reflects her interest in ritual, myth, and cultural commentary. She has taught such classes as “Composition”, “Women in Music”, “The Psychology of Music” (School of Music), and “Creativity and the Natural World” (MOLLI program).  In the winter of 2012, she will additionally join the faculty of the UM Wilderness and Civilization Program, an interdisciplinary study of wildland conservation and the human-nature relationship, for which she developed the composition class “Sound in the Natural World”.

 Among her works are, Ridge of Blue Longing, for two pianos, based on her connection to the Montana landscape (for which Lee was the commissioned Montana State Composer by Montana Music Teacher’s Association) (MMTA), and was the 2011 winner of the Judith Lang Zaimont prize in composition awarded by the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM); the Montana Suite Project – One Hundred Miles From Forsyth, a collaboration with the Headwaters Dance Company and New York choreographer, Donna Uchizono; Wearing Water/Eating Cement (Icons To Kiss), a collaborative composition-installation/performance piece; and Come Slowly Eden, a dramatic song cycle for three sopranos and chamber ensemble based on the poetry of Emily Dickenson.

 As a singer, Lee specializes in the performance of contemporary music and performs both standard classical repertoire and experimental jazz.  She performed and created Lust Into Small Change, which was a one-woman cabaret show based on her interpretations of Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill, and Edith Piaf’s music of the 1920’s and 30’s.  She recently performed with Anne Basinski in the concert, The Songs of Kurt Weill, for the University of Montana Vienna Program at the Palais Corbeli in Vienna, Austria.  Lee was a soloist and lecturer for the Hildegard Festival,in conjunction with The Celebrating Women Series of St. Patrick Hospital and Health Sciences Center in Missoula.  In 2010, she was a vocal performer and improviser with musicians from around the world for the United Nations Concert for Peace,at The Banff Center for the Arts and the UN in New York City.  Additionally, she has a special interest in ethnomusicology, and has studied both the vocal music of North India, and the vocal polyphonic tradition of two African forest communities.  Also an improvisational pianist, Lee loves the collaboration process.  Her interests explore sound and music composition in relation to nature, while learning from cultures whose music-making process stems from their natural environment. Lee’s teaching is based on the concept that the creative process encompasses an acceptance of wilderness, both in the outside world and within oneself. 

 Dr. Heuermann has received a National Endowment for the Arts Interarts/Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and was Artist in Residence in composition at the Banff Center for the Arts in Banff, Alberta, Canada.  She has a Ph.D. in Composition from Stony Brook University, and was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).  At the Yale School of Music, where she received a Master of Music degree, she was the recipient of the Bradley-Keeler Memorial Award to Outstanding Major in Composition, and has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.

She is a member of the American Society of Composers and Performers (ASCAP), the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM), the Society of Composers, Inc. (SCI), the College Music Society (CMS), and the Montana Music Teachers Association (MMTA).  She currently lives in Missoula with her husband Charles Nichols, their 14-year-old son Solomon, and puppy Sami.