Musicians


Barbara Allen

Born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Spent most of growing up years in Elmhurst, Illinois, West of Chicago. Moved to New York City in 1970 after a year in Europe. Married Arnold Perey, anthropologist and Aesthetic Realism consultant in May of 1977, which continues happily today.

As a flutist with her colleague Edward Green, pianist, has presented discussion and performances of important works from the flute literature. For example:

  • What We Can Learn about Love from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonata in E-Flat
  • Severity and Good Nature in Telemann’s Suite in A Minor
  • Dignity and Abandon in Handel’s Flute Sonata in G Major
  • Mozart’s Flute Concerto in G Shows the Victory of Self-Questioning

Education: BA from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana 1967. Taught English and Social Studies in the Chicago Public Schools 67-69. Began study of Aesthetic Realism with its founder Eli Siegel in 1970. Teacher of English at Roosevelt Junior High School, West Orange, New Jersey 1971-1973. Aesthetic Realism Consultant 1972 to the present.

Teacher of: Aesthetic Realism and Marriage Class from 1973 to the present; Aesthetic Realism and Education Workshop for Teachers from 1974 to the present; Learning to Like the World Class for Children (ages 5-12) from 1975 to the present; The Opposites in Music Class 1980 to the present.

Ms. Allen also teaches private flute classes. She says:

This principle by Eli Siegel enables students to learn the art of flute playing and understand what it means to play beautifully: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves."

In my classes, flutists at every level learn how opposites--like tenderness and severity, accuracy and wildness, toughness and gentleness, cheerfulness and sadness--are made one in successful flute playing. Amazingly, a person's playing improves technically as one understands better how one sees the same opposites in one's own life.

We study questions like these: Does the way we see the world affect how we play--our position, articulation, breath control, phrasing? Is there anything in ourselves that interferes with our attaining the greatest beauty we are capable of?

And there is this: Musicians can learn--and need to learn--from the beautiful way opposites are made one in music to do a good job with these very opposites in our lives. Through the critical method of Aesthetic Realism, we can.

For more information about studying the flute with Barbara Allen

Website of Barbara Allen


Edward Green
Composer-in-Residence

Edward Green has been on the faculty of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation since 1980. A prize-winning composer, his music has been performed by orchestras across the United States as well as in several countries overseas—including Russia, the Czech Republic, Argentina and England. He received first place in the International Kodaly Composers Competition for his Brass Quintet and a Delius award for his Genesis Variations. In 2004 he was awarded a Music Alive! grant jointly sponsored by the American Symphony Orchestra League and Meet the Composer. He has composed overtures, songs, and incidental music for several productions of the Aesthetic Realism Theater Company, and has also accompanied productions as pianist and harpsichordist.

Since 1984, Edward Green has been a professor at Manhattan School of Music, teaching courses in Ethnomusicology, Jazz History, Composition, and the Humanities. He is included in Who’s Who among America’s Teachers and in the International Who’s Who in Music—both in their Classical and Popular volumes.

Prior to Manhattan School of Music, he taught at St. John’s University, Pace University, Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, and the School of Visual Arts. He was awarded a Ph.D. from NYU in 2008, and his thesis was entitled "Chromatic Completion in the Late Vocal Music of Haydn and Mozart—A Technical, Philosophic, and Historical Study."

Dr. Green has been a guest composer and lecturer at Tanglewood, the University of Southern California (Los Angeles), the University of Montreal, Baltimore's Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute, Ithaca College, Dartmouth University and other important educational institutions. In 2003, he gave a Convocation Address at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music, and in 2004 participated in the First International Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology, held at the University of Graz, Austria. His presentation, co-authored with anthropologist Arnold Perey, was entitled “Aesthetic Realism: A New Foundation for Interdisciplinary Musicology.” The conference was sponsored by the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music.

In 1991 under the sponsorship of the Smithsonian Institution Dr. Green addressed the International Association of Jazz Educators' convention in Washington D.C. on the subject "The Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel Explains the Beauty of Jazz and of Duke Ellington." He was a panelist discussing “Innovative Teaching Methods” for the November, 2004 Annual Conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology, held in Tucson, where he spoke about the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method.

Dr. Green has also addressed conventions of the American Society of University Composers, the American Musicology Society (Greater New York Chapter), the New York School Music Teachers Association, and in 2004 gave a talk on the music of Richard Rodgers at the 28th annual Comparative Drama Conference, sponsored by Ohio State. He gave a talk on the relation of Burney, Hawkins and Rousseau at the “First Conference of the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale” held in March, 2005 at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, titled Music’s Intellectual History, and has given papers at scholarly conferences in Dublin, Nottingham and Stratford-upon-Avon.

Edward Green has participated in seminars at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation since the mid-1980’s, and among his talks have been papers on the lives and music of Johannes Brahms, Franz Joseph Haydn, Glenn Gould, Irving Berlin, John Lennon, Hector Berlioz, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Herbert von Karajan and Felix Mendelssohn.

Articles on music by Edward Green from the Aesthetic Realism point-of-view have appeared in Composer (England), Chinese Music Journal, The Journal of Music and Meaning (Denmark/Internet), and School Music News, among other academic journals.

Articles by him dealing with ethics of current social matters, including the fight to end racism, have appeared in newpapers and journals here and abroad, including Black College Magazine, The African Observer, and Christian Social Action. For several years he was a featured columnist for the Nigerian journal U.S. African Eye. He is also a contributor to the book Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism (Orange Angle Press: 2004)

Edward Green’s music is published by Frederick Harris Ltd. (Canada) and Frank Warren Music Service (MA). Recordings of his music have appeared on Tintangel Records, and VP Media of Italy, and in 2005 further recordings will appear on Centaur Records, Arizona University Recordings, and Albany Records.

Dr. Green, as pianist, frequently performs with flutist Barbara Allen in concert at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. Among his current musical positions are those of Organist-Choir Director at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Jersey City, Composer-in-Residence of the InterSchools Orchestras of New York., and Staff Composer at Imagery Films where he has collaborated with the Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Ken Kimmelman on several films, including What Does a Person Deserve? and the soon-to-be-released Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana—a film based on Eli Siegel’s Nation prize-winning poem.

Edward Green studied with Eli Siegel from 1974 to 1978, and continues his study of Aesthetic Realism in classes taught by Ellen Reiss. He is married to Carrie Wilson, singer, actress, and Aesthetic Realism Consultant, and they make their home in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

To contact Edward Green

Website of Edward Green, composer and musician, and Aesthetic Realism & World Music blog

 


Alan Shapiro

Born in Bethesda, MD, Alan Shapiro grew up outside of Philadelphia, PA. A pianist, singer, arranger and composer, he has played jazz piano professionally for 25 years. For the past 18 years he has taught chorus and general music in public schools in New York City and on Long Island. In addition to being one of the singers, Mr. Shapiro plays synthesizer and percussion for the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company's musical production Ethics is a Force!--Songs about Labor.

Mr. Shapiro began his study of Aesthetic Realism in consultations in 1985 and has studied with Ellen Reiss in professional classes for consultants and associates since 2003. He has presented papers in public seminars at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation on music of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi and Franz Joseph Haydn.

Along with his colleague Edward Green, he has presented workshops on the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method at the annual winter and summer conferences of the New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA). Articles and letters by him about music, ethics and economics have appeared in various newspapers around the country.

Alan Shapiro lives in New York City with his wife, Leila Rosen, who is a high school English teacher and Aesthetic Realism Associate.

See his website at www.AlanShapiroMusic.net.