Emeriti Music Faculty News
June 4, 2014
Morris Lang. Morris "Arnie" Lang (Percussion), who retired in 2006, continues to teach percussion at Lehman College and the CUNY Graduate Center.
K. Lamar Alsop (1928–2014). Longtime concert master of the New York City Ballet Orchestra and a member of many prominent chamber ensembles, K. Lamar Alsop, 85, died on February 3, 2014, in Baltimore. A graduate of the Mannes College of Music and Teachers College at Columbia University, Alsop was a member of the Beaux Arts String Quartet, the American String Quartet, the Carnegie String Quartet, and the Alsop-Bernstein Trio, whose other two members were his wife and pianist Seymour Bernstein. Ms. Alsop had died on Jan. 23, 2014. Their daughter, Marin Alsop, was encouraged to pursue her dream of becoming a conductor and became the first woman to run a major American orchestra. Lamar Alsop taught violin and chamber music at SUNY-Purchase as well as at Brooklyn College in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Fred Ho (1957–2014). Composer, saxophonist, writer and radical activist Fred Ho, 56, who performed at Brooklyn College and with its jazz ensembles on several occasions in recent years, died after a long illness at his home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on April 12, 2014. M.Mus.-Composition alumni Whitney George and Marie Incontrera had worked closely with Ho on several of his performance and composition projects. Read Ho's obituary in the New York Times.
Ernest G. McClain (1918–2014). We received the sad news that Brooklyn College's Professor of Music Emeritus Ernest G. McClain, 95, died on April 25, 2014, in Washington, D.C., where he resided. McClain ("Mac" as colleagues used to call him) taught in our (then) Music Department for over three decades, from 1951 until his retirement in 1982. Back in the 1970s "Mac" was one of three full-time faculty teaching music-education courses here (along with Emile Serposs, Lucille F. Goodman and others). He was an avid clarinetist and used to conduct the department's Symphonic Band before former chair Dorothy Klotzman conducted it. He was a brilliant man who loved theory, acoustics and ancient mythology, and he published on arcane musico-numerical/gematrial topics. He was a close, lifelong friend of the department's distinguished musicologist Siegmund Levarie, who died in 2010.
Those who knew him and wish to send condolences to his daughter, Pamela McClain, may e-mail her.
If you have additional news about Brooklyn College music alumni, please e-mail Conservatory Director Bruce MacIntyre. Thank you!
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