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Columns::August 25, 2003
External funding marks third year of double-digit growth
‘Blaster’ gets the hook: Security experts close network traffic ports to slow progression of computer worm
New neighbors
‘Inner geek’: Element K brings online computer training to UGA students
New director named for university’s news service operation
Good taste: Food scientists upgrade soldiers’ ready-to-eat scrambled eggs
Veterinary medicine professor gets to treat an ‘exotic’ clientele
Update: Private Giving
Kudos
Integrated learning space
Big Dawg Welcome
Campus News
Music school names Richard Zimdars as its first Karlas Professor of Piano
By Phil Williams
phil@franklin.uga.edu
Richard Zimdars, a faculty member at UGA since 1984, has been named the first recipient of the new Despy Karlas
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Richard Zimdars
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Professorship in Piano. The professorship was established by friends and admirers of Karlas, who joined the UGA faculty in 1946 and spent more than four decades at UGA. She retired as a full professor and has continued to be active in music.
As professor of piano in the School of Music, Zimdars combines the roles of teacher, performer and scholar. His students have won prizes in national competitions, have been awarded the Fulbright Grant for piano study in Germany and hold college teaching positions in the United States, Brazil and South Korea.
He has performed and broadcast in England, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland and the United States. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist Grant in 1984, first prize in the Music Teachers National Association Collegiate Artist Competition in Chicago in 1971 and a Fulbright Grant for piano study in Germany in 1969.
After his debut in Germany, the Cologne Stadt-Anzeiger commented, “Zimdars is the prototype of a sensitive pianist who not only has a dazzling technique at his disposal, but also proved himself a brilliant architect of the musical construction of the individual works.”
Indiana University Press has published his translations from German of The Piano Master Classes of Hans von Bülow (1993) and The Piano Master Classes of Franz Liszt (1996). Among the most significant sources on piano teaching of the late 19th century, these translations have received positive reviews in Britain, Sweden and America. He has lectured on the teaching of Franz Liszt in Hungary, Ireland, Canada and throughout the United States.
Despy Karlas is legendary figure in music circles in Athens and on the UGA campus. She earned a diploma in piano performance at Juilliard and degrees at Douglas College in New Jersey and the University of Illinois at Urbana. After completing her studies, she joined Russian pianist Sergei Barsukoff in forming a duo-piano team based in Miami. On returning to Juilliard, Karlas was playing one day when she was overheard by Hugh Hodgson, head of the newly established music department at UGA. Hodgson hired her, and Karlas arrived in Athens in 1946 to begin her career. Even with a demanding teaching schedule and guest performances worldwide, Karlas found time to provide leadership to the Georgia Music Teachers Association. |
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