February 28, 2024
Shawnee State University Assistant Professor and Artistic Director of the Vern Riffe Center for the Arts, Dr. Stanley Workman, was a featured instructor and performer at the 45th International Summer Course, an annual two-week music event held at the University of Brasilia in Brazil.
“The festival itself is sponsored by the government of Brazil,” Dr. Workman said. “As the capital of Brazil, Brasilia is a big governmental city. So, the festival is kind of like a gift to the people from the government. Many students and artists apply for it, and they bring in artists from all over Brazil, Europe, the United States, the whole world really. And they all come to be professors and teach at the festival, and then perform concerts in the evenings.”
Built around classical, jazz, and both traditional and popular Brazilian styles of music, the two-week International Summer Course serves as a workshop for music students and interested members of the public.
“In a lot of ways, it was more like a drop-in clinic or a masterclass than a festival,” Dr. Workman said. “It wasn’t as formal as a classroom setting or a personal lesson. I would teach classical singing, but then I would also play recordings and lecture about things like language, diction, and other topics related to singing.”
Despite being held in actual classrooms at the Professional Education Center on the university’s campus, the informality of the sessions helped make the course feel more like a community event rather than a school session. The festival featured numerous recitals for the students, as well as dozens of collaborative concerts between professional musicians and artists who would have normally never had the chance to perform together.
“I had a wide range of students,” said Dr. Workman. “Some were beginners, but others you could classify as graduate students. And the less experienced students would sit and listen to the more experienced students. Overall, it was a very positive environment.”
Dr. Workman's experience at the International Summer Course is thanks in large part to his long-time friend and collaborator, Marshall University Professor of Guitar and Music Theory, Dr. Julio Alves. A native of Brazil and alumnus of University of Brasilia, Alves has performed at many of the school’s music festivals and has even brought University of Brasilia faculty to perform at SSU. At this year’s festival, the two collaborated again for a complete performance of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, a piece they have performed numerous times in the tri-state area.
With experience performing on an international stage in the past, Dr. Workman was thrilled to make his first trip to Brazil for this opportunity. His many travels, he insists, are the result of willingness, an open-mind, and above all else, a love for music.
“We all think oh, I'd love to be on Broadway, or, I’d like to sing at the Metropolitan Opera,” he said. “Well, things don't always work out like that, but you find different ways of expressing your love of music. We had an opera company here in Portsmouth for a little while, and then I started teaching. I’ve been performing at my church here for 32 years. I’ve been to China to perform three different times. I’ve performed with the Ohio State Marching Band at halftime of one of their games, and I even went to the Alamo Bowl with them. I’ve had a lot of great opportunities to perform. You never know which way it is going to take you. You just have to be open to it.”
As the Artistic Director of the VRCFA, Dr. Workman provides professional insights and guidance to each season’s lineup of shows that perform in the Eloise Covert Smith Theater. To learn more about upcoming performances at the Vern Riffe Center for the Arts, visit vrcfa.com.