Arts & Culture

UK Faculty Win Big at Lexington Music Awards

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LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 5, 2016) — Two University of Kentucky School of Music faculty and a former faculty member took home awards at the second annual Lexington Music Awards held Jan. 31, at the Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center.

Raleigh Dailey, associate professor of UK Jazz Studies, took home the award for Best Keyboardist. Dailey, who earned his doctoral degree from UK, is an internationally recognized jazz pianist, composer, scholar and educator. Under his direction, UK's Lab Band and Jazz Combos have performed nationally at various jazz festivals, including the International Jazz Education Network Conference. Dailey regularly performs worldwide, and his recordings were the subject of a recent feature article in DownBeat magazine.

Kevin Holm-Hudson, an associate professor of music theory, took home the Jay Flippin Music Education Award. Holm-Hudson has taught at UK since 2000. He holds a doctoral degree in composition (with an ethnomusicology emphasis) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of "Genesis and the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" (Ashgate, 2008) and the editor of "Progressive Rock Reconsidered" (Routledge, 2002). He is currently preparing a music theory textbook for Oxford University Press.

This is Holm-Hudson’s second Lexington Music Award. In addition to being one of the evening's winners, Holm-Hudson and his group, The Twiggenburys, served as the house band for the awards ceremony.

Vince DiMartino, a former UK faculty member, received the Lexington Music Award’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his dedication to Kentucky music. Described as one of the most sought after trumpet performers and educators, DiMartino has also received the CASE Professor of the Year award in Kentucky in 2004 and the Governor’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. DiMartino retired in 2012 from Centre College.

The idea for the Lexington Music Awards came about from Lexington musician and music teacher, David McLean. McLean intended for the event to be a small gathering, but soon realized that there was much more interest in the event than he originally predicted. In order to determine the winners of each category, McLean has the public make nominations online. He then narrows down the votes to the top four candidates per category and had individual nominees vote on each category to determine the winners.

 

The UK School of Music at UK College of Fine Arts has garnered a national reputation for high-caliber education in opera, choral and instrumental music performance, as well as music education, composition, and theory and music history.

MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Hale, 859-257-8716; whitney.hale@uky.edu