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Zimmerman
has taught saxophone at Illinois Wesleyan University for many
years and also taught music theory and saxophone at the Illinois
Wesleyan summer music camps for 25 years. Until late May of this
year, he directed the wind ensemble and the jazz band at Lincoln’s
District 27 schools for 33 years, in addition to the college work.
He now also teaches saxophone at Bradley University in Peoria.
Zimmerman
holds a bachelor’s degree in music education and a master’s
degree in saxophone performance from Wesleyan. Additionally he did
graduate study with American concert saxophone pioneer Cecil
Leeson at Ball State University; studied with Canadian saxophonist
Paul Brodie; and, on a scholarship from the French Ministry of
Culture, studied in France with saxophonist Daniel Deffayet, who
then was professor of saxophone at the Paris National
Conservatory.
Zimmerman
has performed in England, Canada, Germany, France and many parts
of the United States. He also is a saxophone artist/clinician for
The Selmer Company, whose saxophones he plays. As a founding
member of the World Saxophone Congress and the North American
Saxophone Alliance, he has frequently appeared at regional,
national and international meetings of those bodies. He has been
first alto saxophonist with the Pekin municipal band since 1994
and before that often played lead alto saxophone with the Ringling
Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus.
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For
the Illinois Wesleyan recital, Zimmerman will be performing a
transcription of Antonio Vivaldi’s "Sonata No. 6" and
the premier performance of former IWU composition teacher Abram M.
Plum’s "Nocturne," both for soprano saxophone. On alto
saxophone he will present Burnet Tuthill’s "Sonata, op.
20;" Frenchwoman Paule Maurice’s "Tableaux de Provence;"
Daniel Lazaurus’ unaccompanied "Sonata;" Pierre
Lantier’s "Euskaldunak (the Basque) Sonata;" and two
pieces by 1920s sax phenomenon Rudy Wiedoeft: "Saxema"
and "Sax-o-phun."
William
R. West frequently appears as an accompanist in addition to
teaching flute, saxophone and course work at Illinois Wesleyan. He
is also principal flutist with Opera Illinois.
[News
release from Keith Zimmerman]
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Burkhardt’s
speech at Lincoln College on Nov. 2 was the third in the Ralph G.
Newman annual lecture series. In it, she described the development
and organization of her soon-to-be-published "William
Maxwell: A Critical Biography." Burkhardt, whose doctoral
dissertation analyzed Maxwell’s fiction, is adjunct professor of
English at University of Illinois in Springfield and
Urbana-Champaign.
William
Maxwell died July 31, 2000, at the age of 91, just eight days
after the death of his wife Emily. Maxwell was born in 1908 in
Lincoln, where he lived until the age of 14. The elm-shaded town
of those years forms the Edenic setting for much of his work, what
he termed his "imagination’s home."
Burkhardt
used incidents from the editing of "The Folded Leaf,"
published in 1945, and "So Long, See You Tomorrow,"
1980, to show Maxwell’s development in confidence over time. In
the earlier book, he added a more optimistic ending at the
recommendation of his psychoanalyst. This "single item
included at someone else’s instigation," said Burkhardt,
was the most widely criticized aspect of the novel. In a later
reprint, he returned to his original ending.
Many
editorial recommendations were made for "So Long, See You
Tomorrow," originally published in the New Yorker, at which
Maxwell was a fiction editor from 1936 to 1976. In several
instances, Maxwell defended the authenticity of his character’s
Midwest usage over the more "correct" editorial
suggestions. He also disregarded the comment that including the
point of view of the dog diminished the credibility of the work.
"These assured responses revealed Maxwell’s confidence in
his own literary judgment," Burkhardt said, showing that he
"had grown to trust himself."
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Burkhardt
recounted the origin of her admiration for Maxwell from her first
reading of "So Long, See You Tomorrow" as an assignment
for a graduate class. Her own mother had died not long before, and
she was struck by the narrator’s voice and how Maxwell had the
emotions "just right." She immediately sought out
Maxwell’s sources in the historical archives in Springfield and
was able to present him with some divorce documents he could not
locate when he wrote the book.
She
enthusiastically described interviews at which Maxwell answered
questions by typewriter, first a manual and eventually an
electric. At his summer home the interview was conducted outside,
and the long cord snaked through the window.
Maxwell’s
style was "very bare and very simple" and increasingly
so as he aged, Burkhardt said. In response to one of many
questions, she said he termed himself an atheist but had a
spiritual sense that included "a fragile balance of tragedy
and joy."
In
1997 Burkhardt was instrumental in securing John Updike as speaker
for the dedication of the Maxwell papers at the University of
Illinois library in Urbana-Champaign. Updike, Mary McCarthy, J. D.
Salinger, Eudora Welty, John Cheever and Vladimir Nabokov were
among the writers Maxwell edited for the New Yorker.
[Lynn
Spellman]
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