Jon Appleton, the chair of Dartmouth's music department, has been on his own world tour, jet-setting from continent to continent.
He has been to Moscow and to Bogota, Columbia and later this month he will head off to France.
Appleton is a 26-year veteran at the College. He started an electronic music studio for undergraduates here and last year the Hopkins Center held a 25-year retrospective concert of his work, which includes chamber music, electro-acoustic music, film scores, theatre music, dance music and music for voice, chorus, piano, synclavier and other digital performance instruments.
During his recent five-day stay in Bogota, a concert of some of his works was performed. This was the latest in a string of creative projects Appleton has done over the past several years.
He has five recordings under the Folkways/Smithsonian label and a couple of compact discs under the Centaur label.
He is also the director of the College's graduate program in electro-acoustic music and he teaches music courses ranging from beginning music theory to the graduate level. About a third of his teaching involves undergraduates, and two-thirds involves graduates. He said he enjoys both and "wouldn't give up either."
Appleton has performed all over the world, including Australia and most of Europe. He is fluent in French and Swedish and knows some German, Spanish and Tongin, a Polynesian language. He plans to learn Russian this summer, and he said he loves languages and thinks that one of Dartmouth's best aspects is its language program.
Appleton was in Russia in January to watch the Dmitri Pokrovsky Russian Folk Ensemble perform Our Voyage to America, an acapella piece he wrote about his stepfather's immigration to the United States from Russia. The concert took place on Jan. 7, which is the Russian Christmas.
While in Russia, Appleton selected a graduate student who will come to Dartmouth next year. Sergei Kossenko was chosen from 15 students atthe Moscow Conservatory of Music based on recommendations and on his ability to express his ideas in English. Appleton said he hopes to continue to bring a Russian student over every two years.
The concert in Bogota was part of a 19-day annual new music festival, the "Festival Internacional de Musica Contemporanea." Appleton's portion of the festival took place on April 15 and 16 and consisted of six pieces he wrote between 1972 and 1992.
Appleton's list of accomplishments continues to grow. He will head for France on May 17 to watch 3,000 children perform a full evening work he wrote for them. Appleton went to France in January and gave his piece to five choral conducters, who are distributing and teaching it in several area schools.
Appleton's piece, Hopi: La Naissance du desert, describes the Hopi view of desert formation, and it is intended for a large children's choir with brass and wind instruments. In mid-May children will be bussed in from across southern France to rehearse for three days before giving four performances from May 21 to May 23. Appleton will assist with the rehearsals and will watch the performances.
Appleton said he will probably spend next winter, which is his term off, teaching electro-acoustic music at the Moscow Conservatory of Music. He said that, since Russian music is no longer confined to "approved music," there are a lot more possibilities now for people in Russia who love music.
"Right now, just like Russia needs input of money, it needs input of ideas on how to sustain a diverse musical culture," Appleton said. He added that, although we tend to take musical diversity for granted, there are a lot of new styles that Russians have not been exposed to and want to know about.
