Dr.
J. Michael Allsen
Photo by Katrin Talbot 2024
J. Michael Allsen has written program
notes for the Madison Symphony Orchestra—one of America's
leading regional orchestras—since 1984. He has also written
commissioned notes for dozens of orchestras, ensembles and
festivals, as well as CD liner notes: in total, notes on over
2000 individual works by more than 600 composers. His program
and liner notes have been published by orchestras, choruses,
wind bands, chamber ensembles, soloists, and festivals across
the United States, and in Canada, England, Scotland, Japan, Hong
Kong, New Zealand, Israel, and Zimbabwe. During the 2000-2001
season he was commissioned by the MSO to write a series of short
historical articles celebrating the orchestra's 75th
anniversary: extended
versions of these articles and other historical documents
appear on this site. He has also written feature articles
on local music history for the Wisconsin State Journal.
His much more comprehensive book on the history of the
orchestra, A Century of the Madison Symphony Orchestra,
is slated to appear in the summer of 2025, just ahead of the
MSO's centennial season in 2025-26
Allsen is
Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of
Wisconsin-Whitewater. Previous professional appointments
include teaching positions at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and
an administrative job with the Madison Symphony Orchestra. While
he was a faculty member at Whitewater from 1996-2018, Allsen
taught Music History courses, World Music, classes in African
American and Latin American music, and World of the
Arts, an interdisciplinary arts course. He also
directed the UWW Trombone Choir for several years, and still
serves on the faculty of Whitewater's annual Trombone Day.
At various points in his tenure, Allsen earned College of Arts
and Communication and university-wide Excellence Awards in
Teaching, Research, Academic Advising, and Service. In
2015 Allsen's advising work was honored with a Certificate of
Merit from the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA).
He also served in various administrative capacities: as Chair of
Whitewater's Music Department from 2006-2012, and subsequently
as the department's Advising Coordinator, as Coordinator of the
interdepartmental World of the Arts faculty, and as the
College of Arts and Communication's Graduation Examiner.
Allsen's
research interests have been primarily in the field of late
medieval music. Beginning with his dissertation research, he has
worked intensively with the motet, among the most important
polyphonic genres of the 14th and early 15th centuries. In
studying the motet repertoire, he has focused in particular upon
the issues of musical style, intertextuality, genre, and
compositional process. Allsen has also worked on biographical
problems, particularly in connection with the preeminent
composer of the early 15th century, Guillaume Du Fay, and and
his contemporaries Gilles Binchois, Arnold and Hugo de Lantins,
and Johannes Brassart. Allsen's scholarly work has been
published in the Journal of Musicology, Plainsong
& Medieval Music, the Journal of the American
Musicological Society, and others. He has also contributed
reference articles to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart,
Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, American National
Biography, and others. Allsen has strong secondary
interests in the fields of 17th-century instrumental music, the
music of the Moravian Church, and in local (Madison, WI) music
history, particularly in the history of the Madison Symphony
Orchestra. Allsen was on the faculty of the the Madison Early
Music Festival from 2002-2019, performing on sackbut, and
serving as guest historian and program annotator.
Allsen is
a semiretired professional trombonist, and performed with the
Madison Symphony Orchestra for 35 years (1983-2018), playing
bass trombone from 1990 onward. He also performed with the
Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, and many other ensembles, including
Sinfonia Sacra, the Madison Jazz Orchestra, the Jazz Players Big
Band, the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, and the Frank Sinatra, Jr.
Orchestra. Allsen was the co-founder of the Glenwood Moravian
Trombone Choir, an amateur/community group in Madison that that
he directed for nearly a quarter century (1983-2007) leading the
group in some 500 performances. (Allsen in still a member of the
group, and beginning in 2021 is co-director.) In July
2006, he served as Trombone Choir Director at the Moravian Music
Festival in Columbus, OH.
Allsen
has written nearly 200 arrangements and compositions, mostly for
the Glenwood Moravian Trombone Choir. Most of these of
these have been archived by the Moravian Music Foundation.
Beginning in 2022, Aaron
Hettinga Music will publish about 40 of his musical works.
He
resides in Madison, WI.
______
Education
includes:
PhD in Musicology - University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1992
dissertation: Style
and Intertextuality in the Isorhythmic Motet 1400 -1440
(advisor, Prof. Lawrence M. Earp)
minor area: Applied Music
(trombone)
MM in Musicology - University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1984
BS in Music Education - University of Wisconsin-La Crosse,
1982
list
of publications and papers
revised 6/25/2024
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Madison
Symphony Orchestra low brass on on stage in Overture Hall,
October 2014: Left to right: Joyce Messer,
Benjamin Skroch, Maestro John DeMain, Michael Allsen, and
Josh Biere
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Bass Samuel Ramey and Madison Symphony
Orchestra low brass, backstage at the Oscar Mayer
Theatre. This was during a May 2001 concert,
where we brought in additional players for Boito's
“Prologue in Heaven” from Mefistofele.
Left to right: Katie Kretschman (MSO
second trombone), Rick Seybold, Joyce Messer (MSO
principal trombone), Brian Whitty, Samuel Ramey,
Michael Allsen (MSO bass trombone), Bill Irving,
Terry Sliester, Paul Haugan (MSO tuba, with
cimbasso).
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