Van Penick
MA Candidate
Why Dal?
I have a BA in Music from Princeton University and after a short detour through a career in law (I taught oil and gas law at Dalhousie Law School for 25 years), I've enrolled at Dal for the Masters in Musicology program.
What inspires me
At Princeton I studied with Lewis Lockwood, J.K. Randall and Kenneth Levy, and gained an enormous appreciation of the tonal system. I satisfied the performance requirement by playing the triangle to mild acclaim in Louis Spohr’s Notturno for Winds and Turkish Band.
Awards, honours and experience
- Director of the Symphony Nova Scotia Foundation.
- President of Symphony Nova Scotia (1993-95)
- Past President of the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra.
- Was a Canadian Orchestra peer review panel member for the Canada Council
- Member of the steering committee to establish the Nova Scotia Arts Council
- Honourary life member of the Board of Governors of NSCAD University and chaired its board in 2005-2006.
- Took sight-singing and piano at the Manhattan School of Music in the summer of 1966.
- Studied Indian music and the sitar with Nikhil Banerjee near the University of California at Berkeley in the summer of 1967.