Brian Alegant Honored as a Professor of the Year -- Excellence in Teaching and Service

Brian Alegant is named U.S. Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and he is the first music professor to have earned this award.  As a professor at the Oberlin College Conservatory, Mr. Alegant has explored the notion of "scuba diving" in his teaching, focusing on covering less material in greater depth. And he says he never teaches the same class in quite the same way. Instead of lectures, quizzes, and examinations, Mr. Alegant’s curriculum for budding musicians uses self-designed projects and self-assessment, drawing from every genre to help "students to engage with the music they love as deeply and rigorously as possible," he says. "I am motivated by a desire to share the transformative power of music — my awe of it."  More

Jim and Susan Neumann’s Bee Hive Records

Mosaic Records has recently released The Complete Bee Hive Sessions (#261) as a twelve-disc, limited edition box set, making this material available on CD for the first time ever.

Bee Hive Records was founded by Jim and Susan Neumann, donors of the James R. and Susan Neumann Jazz Collection in the Conservatory Library’s special collections.

The label was active from 1977 to 1985, releasing seventeen LPs that featured an impressive roster of established jazz talent.  All seventeen LPs have been individually cataloged and digitized by Oberlin and are available to stream for Oberlin students and staff.

The Mosaic box set features the majority of the material from the original LPs along with a variety of previously-unreleased content.  Oberlin’s copy is number 0149 of an edition limited to 5,000 albums.