Two faculty members, Myra Merritt-Grant and Elaine Lilies, in the College of Musical Arts were honored recently during the 2019 Faculty Excellence Awards.
Merritt-Grant honored for teaching excellence
Professor Myra Merritt-Grant’s dual focus on vocal technique and conveying the character and message of text has successfully helped her mentor hundreds of vocal students since 1995. Her passionate approach to building confidence in performers and extra, late hours of vocal coaching for recitals and performances have earned her the title of Professor of Teaching Excellence. Bowling Green State University bestowed the title upon her at the 2019 Faculty Excellence Awards on April 16.
The honor is designated for BGSU faculty members who hold the rank of full professor and whose extraordinary achievements as effective teachers in their discipline or in interdisciplinary fields deserve special recognition. Merritt-Grant will hold the title for three years and receive an annual stipend of $5,000, which includes $2,000 per year for professional development.
Merritt-Grant received her bachelor’s degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Music and her master’s from the Catholic University of America before making her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1982. As a full professor on the voice faculty in the Music Performance Studies Department at the College of Musical Arts, she has used her deep knowledge of healthy singing techniques, repertoire and musical styles, languages and performance tradition to give her students a transformative learning experience. Her dedication to bringing out the artistry and musicianship in her students caught the eye of her nominator, Dr. Laura Melton, Department of Music Performance Studies chair.
“A large part of teaching excellence in music performance is building confidence in performers, and Ms. Merritt’s expertise in developing the careers of young singers does exactly that,” Melton wrote in her nomination letter. “In her 23 years in the College of Musical Arts, her students have won many competitions and awards including the National Opera Association Convention Vocal Competition and the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Competition,”
Merritt-Grant’s former student Tammie Bradley made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2017 following her three-year residency in the Lindemann Young Artist Program. In 2018, Bradley was featured in the title role of “Aida” for the Opéra Nationale de Lorraine in Nancy, France. According to Melton, “These are monumental accomplishments in the field of teaching vocal performance, feats that a Juilliard professor would be proud of.”
Bradley learned how to be the soprano she is now and how to be a true lady under Merritt’s teachings at BGSU for two years.
“When I speak of a ‘true lady,’ I understand it to be a woman of class and grace, a woman who carries herself with respect and whose smile transforms you,” Bradley wrote. “Ms. Merritt, as I know her, is this woman.”
Bradley and Merritt-Grant worked together on a weekly basis during vocal lessons. Bradley said Merritt’s teaching style was personable, comical and used lots of imagery to help her understand the basics of vocal technique.
“One fond memory I have is when she was teaching me about vocal line, she would hand me a cloth and have me run the cloth along the top of the piano as I sang. This taught me that every phrase, sentence I sing should be smooth and uninterrupted,” Bradley said. “I have never forgotten that and I still use it to this day.”
On a local level, Merritt-Grant’s students regularly sing lead roles in BGSU opera productions and at the Toledo Opera, win prizes in the annual Conrad Art Song Competition and have performed in the northwest Ohio region in annual celebrations of Black History Month.
Another former student of Merritt-Grant’s attributes her journey to achieving tenure to Merritt’s support.
“Her dedication to her students and her craft changed my life. She is and has always been a consummate performer, and matching her example was my goal on a daily basis,” Dr. Minnita Daniel-Cox, assistant professor of voice at the University of Dayton, said. “My best friend and Merritt studio-mate, Lori Hicks, described Ms. Merritt as a ‘beacon’ and that is what she was for all of us.”
Merritt-Grant has judged National Competitions for NATS in Chicago and the Opera Guild of Dayton and has served her profession through the Hines-Lee Opera Program, an organization that discovers, encourages and promotes young classical singers in the Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., areas. Her studio has hosted graduate students from high-ranking music schools such as Indiana University, Peabody Conservatory, the University of Michigan and the Eastman School of Music.
“She has served as an extraordinary role model to senior professionals, as well as an inspiration to developing singers at the start of their careers and emerging artists making their way in the world,” former BGSU graduate student Kisma Jordan Hunter wrote. “Indeed, I know of individuals, including myself, who selected to attend BGSU because of the example set by Myra Merritt.”
DESCRIPTION: BGSU named Dr. Elainie Lillios a professor of creative arts excellence, a title conferred upon members of the faculty who hold the rank of professor and who have established outstanding national and international recognition through creative or artistic achievement in their disciplines. The title is conferred for three years.
Lillios named professor of creative excellence
In her 19 years on the faculty of the College of Musical Arts at Bowling Green State University, Dr. Elainie Lillios has regularly been in the news for her accomplishments and the awards and honors they have brought her. A professor of composition, she is a leading figure in the world of electro-acoustic music, continually exploring new technologies for creativity and performance.
On April 16, BGSU named her a professor of creative arts excellence, a title conferred upon members of the faculty who hold the rank of professor and who have established outstanding national and international recognition through creative or artistic achievement in their disciplines. The title is conferred for a period of three years and includes an annual stipend of $5,000 — a $3,000 salary stipend and $2,000 for professional development. It was presented at the annual Faculty Excellence Awards.
Lillios is active not only in writing immersive sonic pieces, she is also a frequent performer and regular participant in national and international concerts and festivals and is sought after as a guest artist and lecturer and in residencies and master classes, carrying the BGSU name and reputation as a center of new music far and wide.
“Dr. Lillios is a valued member of the College of Musical Arts, a gifted composer, teacher, mentor and ambassador for BGSU,” said Dr. William Mathis, dean of the College of Musical Arts. “She has dedicated herself to the highest standards of musicianship, creativity and music education.”
As a composer, Lillios has been awarded several of the most selective and highly regarded national awards in her field: the Barlow Endowment Commission from Brigham Young University and the Fromm Foundation Commission from Harvard University. In 2017, she was a finalist for the Rome Prize, one of the most competitive international awards, and in 2018 was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Composer for her flute trio “Summer Sketches.”
At last year’s Faculty Excellence ceremony, she was presented the Olscamp Research Award.
Lillios maintains a fast pace of work. In addition to her Fromm Commission, her current projects include a new work for percussionist Scott Deal dedicated to BGSU’s late percussion professor Roger Schupp, a work for alto flute commissioned by renowned flutist Eva Ansler of Florida State University, and the recent premiere of her viola and electronics piece “Liquid | Crystal | Vapor,” which premiered last month in San Francisco and then was also performed in Berkeley and Davis, California.
As an educator, she enhances her students’ learning by bringing to campus innovative performers with whom she collaborates, such as the SPLICE Ensemble, a trumpet, piano and percussion trio for whom she has been commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation to compose a piece. Lillios was one of 14 composers nationally to receive the highly competitive award in 2018.
“She was the first-prize winner of the 36th annual Concours Internationale de Bourges for her composition ‘Veiled Resonance,’” Mathis said, “and her music is heard on 21 separate commercial CD recordings since 2000 on some of the industry’s most notable labels.”
“These are remarkable achievements and constitute a stellar record of peer review in her field.”
In 2012, she became only the second American composer in the history of the prestigious Groupe de Recherches Musicales musical research group in Paris to be awarded a commission. Her work was premiered as a featured piece on the group’s “Multiphonies” concert series, and she performed it at La maison de Radio France in the Salle Olivier Messiaen, on the organization’s famous “Acousmonium,” an orchestra of 80-plus loudspeakers arranged throughout the concert space.
As a member of the SPLICE Institute, she was part of bringing to campus last fall the SPLICE Festival 2, a gathering of more than 50 nationally recognized and emerging composers, performers and composer-performers featuring virtuosic, engaging live performances combined with new technologies. BGSU students were able to attend a weekend of concerts, presentations and workshops designed to inspire, educate and share information about composing and performing using technology.
Through her national and international connections, Lillios has helped bring other contemporary performers to BGSU to learn from and with faculty and students here. These include the Bent Frequency Duo, for whom she composed “Hazy Moonlight” for her Barlow Commission, and accordionist Panagiotis Andreoglou, whom she met during her 2014 Fulbright stay at the Municipal Conservatory in Thessaloniki, Greece, and who then came to BGSU as a 2017 Fulbright Fellow.
She describes herself as “passionate about helping students realize their creative, technical and professional potential.” She believes “every sound can be musical and serve as a compositional element.” Likewise, she expands her students’ concept of what the term “music” means and encourages them to be more broadly creative in applying techniques and ideas.
She recruits and mentors composition students at BGSU as well as teaching in the Summer Institute for the Performance, Listening, Interpretation and Composition of Electroacoustic Music in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her students have gone on to top doctoral programs and many are now active professionals.
