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Her dissertation, The
Piano Works of Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999): An Evaluation of Social
Influences and Compositional Style, in conjunction with a program featuring
some of his solo piano pieces, contributed to the centennial celebration of
this great composer's birth. She was
an invited guest lecturer and performer at the International Rodrigo
Festival, hosted at Winona
State University,
Winona, Minnesota
from November 11-17, 2001. During this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Ms. Jones joined other
Rodrigo scholars and performers who presented their research and work, and
she also met Rodrigo's daughter and owner/director of the publishing house Editorial Joaquin Rodrigo. As a result
of this research, Dr. Jones has presented a lecture-recital about Rodrigo
specifically at the Forty-Seventh National College Music Society Meeting in San Francisco, California
and again at the 2006 National College Music Society Convention’s Community
Engagement inaugural season in San
Antonio, Texas.
She was awarded a grant from the Spanish Embassy in conjunction with U.S.
universities for a Spanish music CD recording project. Picked up by the classical recording label Centaur Records, her debut album
entitled Luces y Sombras (Lights and Shadows):
Piano Works by Joaquín Rodrigo
was released in October 2007.
In 2009, her research and grant writing skills awarded an exceptional
experience. El Paso joined the cities of Madrid, Alicante, Valencia and Barcelona
(Spain), as well as Vienna, London and Prague in paying homage
to Joaquín Rodrigo, marking the tenth anniversary
of his death. The leading member of
the Rodrigo family as well as the only child of the composer, Cecilia Rodrigo
traveled from Madrid to El Paso with friend and colleague Katherine Zegarra in order to participate in the International Joaquín Rodrigo Festival: 2009. The four day event was hosted by the
University of Texas El Paso (UTEP), where concerts, lectures, recitals,
video-viewings and round-table discussions ensued energetically and
emotionally throughout the entire institution, from February 22nd
through the 25th. For more
information, please visit: utminers.utep.edu/dkjones/Rodrigo.htm.
A native of the Central Illinois area, Ms. Jones received both the
Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in piano performance from the University of Illinois. Her principal teachers in Illinois were Susan Hawbecker, Donna Lawson, Wilma Zonn,
Lydia Artymiw, William Heiles
and Andrew DeGrado. Ms. Jones was also a rehearsal
accompanist for the Villa Grove Community Theater as well as for the
Champaign-Urbana Theater Company. From 1995-1997 Ms. Jones was on the faculty
of the David Adler Cultural
Center in Libertyville, Illinois,
where she was a piano instructor and staff accompanist.
In August of 2001, Dena Kay Jones completed the Doctor of Musical
Arts program at the University
of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona,
where she studied with Steinway artist Nohema Fernández. Among the honors awarded to Ms. Jones include
the Second Place
winner of the former Green Valley Piano Competition and the winner of the
President's Concerto Competition. She was the first-ever Music Advisory Board
Scholar, an invited student of the Aspen Summer Music Festival and Academy
and a Medici Scholar. In addition to her professional performing and academic
credits, Ms. Jones was also noted for her development as a teacher. She was
nominated the University of Arizona Music Department's representative as the
Best Teaching Assistant in the Fine Arts, and she also won the Music Teachers
National Association Recognition of Achievement Award. She joined the music faculty of the University of Texas
at El Paso in
2002, where she is the Piano Area Coordinator and professor of applied piano
and chamber music studies.
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Biography
Dena Kay
Jones has performed as soloist and chamber musician
throughout the United States
and in Spain, Italy, Mexico
and Canada.
Solo performances include recitals at El
Centro Municipal de Las Artes in Juarez, Mexico; the
Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Concert Series (Canada); I Due Archi Music and Art Club in Vasto,
Italy and the For the Love of Music Series in Bisbee (Arizona); an appearance
as soloist with the University of Arizona Symphony and University of Texas at
El Paso Symphony and Choirs; and performances for world-renowned pianists
Emanuel Ax and Peter Serkin at the Tanglewood
Auditions in New York, Leon Fleisher at the Aspen Summer Music Festival and
Russell Shermann at the Summer Courses in
Santander, Spain. She offered her New York Debut at Merkin Hall in March
2003, participated in the Festival Internacional de Música de Tecla Española (FIMTE) of Almería, Spain in 2007 and presented at the Fifth
International Conference on Design Principals and Practices, held in Rome, Italy
(2011). She is a frequent performer of
solo and chamber music at various venues within the El Paso, Texas
vicinity.
In addition to maintaining a widely varied repertoire from the
standard piano literature, Ms. Jones has focused her energies in performance
and research of the Spanish piano repertoire. In particular, her interest in
this music has led her to focus on lesser-known Spanish piano works written
from 1900-1950. Her recitals feature the colorful works of composers like
Manuel de Falla, Ernesto Halffter, Isaac Albéniz,
Federico Mompou and Xavier Montsalvage. Beginning In 1997, Ms. Jones has presented
papers such as Contemporary Spanish Music: The Historical and Political
Effects on Research and Musical Language and
Politics in Spain:
1900-1950 at numerous institutions and conventions throughout the United States. She is sought out for her work, opinions
and interpretations of this particular canon of piano music.
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