EOU Home > Music Program > Faculty & Staff

Faculty & Staff

Dr. Teun B. Fetz

Teun Fetz, DMA, is currently Associate Professor of Music and Director of Percussion Studies at Eastern Oregon University, in La Grande, Oregon. He has taught at EOU since 2004. Courses taught at EOU include: applied percussion and drumset lessons, African hand drumming, Director of the EOU Drumline, Director of the EOU Percussion Ensemble, Conductor of the EOU Community Symphonic Band, Music Literature, Music Education courses, Musicianship, Elements of Music and Conducting.

Teun Fetz earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts in percussion performance from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, his Masters of Music Degree in Percussion Performance from the University of Michigan, and his Bachelor of Music in Percussion Performance and Music Education from the University of Oregon. He has been a private percussion instructor in Oregon, Michigan, and Illinois. Dr. Fetz served as a teaching assistant in percussion methods and youth ensembles at the University of Michigan, and marching percussion/steel band Doctoral Teaching Assistant at the University of Illinois. He was the recipient of the Edgard Varese Percussion Award in 2001 at the University of Illinois, and was also the winner of the Concerto Competition at U of I, and was a featured marimba soloist with the orchestra. Dr. Fetz has been an active performer in Oregon, Michigan, and Illinois, and has performed recently with the Illinois Symphony Orchestra (Springfield, IL), the United States Air Force Band of Mid-America, Scott AFB (O’Fallon, IL), and Sinfonia Da Camera (Urbana, IL).

Before coming to Eastern Oregon University, Dr. Fetz was an Adjunct Professor of Percussion at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, and was also the percussion instructor for several summers at the Illinois Summer Youth Music Program in Urbana, Illinois, and the Yamaha Bands of America Summer Symposium in Normal, IL.

He has studied with many instructors, including Ricardo Flores, Salvatore Rabbio, Gerald Cleaver, Jeffrey Peyton, Charles Dowd, Julie Spencer, Alan Keown, Matt Savage, William Moersch, Thomas Siwe, and Dr. Michael Udow. He has also performed for several master classes, including those for members of the Chicago, Cleveland, and Boston Symphony Orchestras, and one for international marimba virtuoso, Keiko Abe. He has played drumset for many small groups and combos in all styles of music. He is the current first call drummer for: the Matt Cooper X-tet, Porter and the Pale Ale’s, The Depot Street Syncopaters, and Red Hot and Blue combo.

In addition to his teaching duties, Dr. Fetz is the Percussion Coordinator for the Grande Ronde Symphony Orchestra and Principal Timpanist with the Oregon East Symphony Orchestra in Pendleton. Teun recently performed as timpanist with the Rose City Chamber Orchestra in Portland, OR. And the Mid-Columbia Symphony Orchestra in Tri-Cities, WA. And drumset performances with Brady Goss. Teun is also a certified Oregon Band Directors Association Adjudicator.

LH 142 (Percussion, Music Education, Wind Ensemble) #541-962-3105, tfetz@eou.edu

 

 John McKinnon

(Advanced Theory, Composition and Arranging, Brass Pedagogy, World Music and Ethnomusicology, Electronic Music):

Since coming to Eastern Oregon University, McKinnon has had several of his compositions for chamber ensembles, wind ensemble and orchestra performed throughout the Pacific Northwest. A composition, entitled The Seven Sisters of Sleep, was performed by Third Angle Ensemble in Portland, Oregon during the spring of 2010, and at the 2004 Oregon Bach Festival.  McKinnon was selected as the Oregon Music Teachers Association’s composer of the Year in 2005, which included a commission for a set of songs for voice and piano with texts by Oregon poets that was performed at the OMTA State Conference. He has written works for Sound Moves, Matt Cooper, the DeRosa Ensemble, and the Grande Ronde Symphony performed his multi-media collaboration dealing with contemporary interpretations of the Twelve Labors of Herakles. McKinnon has written electronic music compositions for the theater, and is director of the Electronic Music Lab at EOU. His research interests include Community Music, and the introduction of “world and popular music” in traditional first and second-year theory courses. He was an Instructor in the Waseda (Japan)/Oregon Exchange Program and has studied music in Thailand.

Recently, McKinnon spent the fall of 2010 at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where he was a visiting scholar in the MSc Music in the Community Program.  His short article “The Silk Road to Scotland”, about the program was published in the SAME Journal in Scotland in October 2011.

LH 136 (Brass, Composition) # 541-962-3592, jmckinno@eou.edu

Dr. Leandro Espinosa

Composer, conductor, and cellist Leandro Espinosa was born in Monterrey, Nuevo León (Mexico) in 1955, and studied composition at the Escuela Formativa por las Artes with Nicandro Tamez from 1974-77. He continued his studies in Mexico City with Manuel Enríquez at the CENIDIM (National Center for Musical Research, Documentation and Information).

In 1980 continued his studies in England, where his teachers included Alfred Nieman at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, as well as Melanie Daiken and Pawlu Grech at the Morley College. From 1983 to 1986 became a scholarship student of the Fonds Alex De Vries of Belgium located in Antwerp.  Further studies in the USA included a Masters in Orchestral Conducting at the Peabody Conservatory with Professors Gustav Meier and Markand Thakar and a Doctorate in Musical Composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City with Professors James Mobberley, Chen Yi and Paul Rudy.

Dr. Espinosa is a member of the Oxford Round Table, participating during the sessions of 2006 with his work Approaching a Possible Redefinition of the Arts and Sciences presented at the Oxford Union during the summer of 2006 and published by the Forum on Public Policy Online (Winter 2007 edition).  His work Music Serialism, An Alternative Approach is published by VDM Verlag Dr. Müller (2010).

Mr. Espinosa is the Music Director of the Grande Ronde Symphony Orchestra at Eastern Oregon University, where he currently serves as Associate Professor of Music. He is former Music Director of the Musica Nova Ensemble at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and also former Assistant Conductor of the Peabody Camerata and the Independence Symphony.  He has been Associate Professor of Cello at the Superior School of Music and Dance of Monterrey (Mexico) and a former member of the Philharmonic Orchestra of the City of Mexico.

LH 145 (Orchestra, Low strings), #541-962-3234 , lespinos@eou.edu, http://espinosacomposer.com/

 

Dr. Matt Cooper

Dr. Cooper, earned his DMA in Piano Performance and Literature, with a Cognate Area in Jazz Studies, from the College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati in 1994.  Active as a jazz as well as classical pianist, he won third place prizes in the 1988 Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition and the 1988 Great American Jazz Piano Competition. As a jazz pianist, he has toured with Woody Herman’s Young Thundering Herd and performed with Eddie Harris, Nancy King, Clark Terry, Howard Levy, Jamey Aebersold, Les Elgart, the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, among others. He has visited Russia three times to perform jazz and classical concerts (sometimes combined) in major concert halls of several of the largest cities of the Far East region. He recorded an album of jazz sextet originals titled Clovis, featuring bassist Glen Moore of the renowned jazz group “Oregon.” One track from this album won a JPF Music Award for being one of the top three in the category of “Best Jazz Instrumental Song” in 2009. His book Duke Ellington as Pianist: A Study in Styles, featuring some 60 pages of original transcriptions of Ellington piano solos, is due for publication by the College Music Society in autumn of 2012, and in May of 2012 he traveled to England where he presented his Ellington research and gave several jazz concerts with British musicians at the international conference of the Duke Ellington Society of the UK.

As a classical pianist, Dr. Cooper has performed concerto appearances with several orchestras of the Inland Northwest (Oregon East Symphony, Grande Ronde Symphony, and Inland Northwest Musicians) and with the Russian chamber orchestra Gloria. He has appeared throughout Oregon, Washington and Idaho both as a solo and collaborative artist, including many festivals and recital series (International Festival of Creative Pianists, Elsinore Theater Recital Series, Piano Duet Festival by the Sea), appearances at Oregon and Washington State Music Teachers conferences, and concerts with his own Columbia Trio. His piano duet performances with Beth Tomassetti have been heard on Northwest Public Radio, on two concert tours throughout Oregon, and on compact   disc. He earned a diploma at the Intensive Tango Seminar at the Conservatory Argentino Galvan in Buenos Aires, Argentina and has also studied the Taubman approach to piano technique for the past nine years. He has performed in master classes for Menahem Pressler, Leon Fleisher, Béla Siki, and many others. His most recent solo recitals have explored the theme of improvisation, in genres ranging from Baroque to modern, and jazz to tango, in recitals in Oregon, Minnesota, and Iowa. A frequent adjudicator for MTNA-affiliated events throughout the Northwest, he has taught at Eastern Oregon University since 1991.

LH 138 (Piano, Jazz), #541-962-3559, mcooper@eou.edu , mattcooperpiano.com

 

 

Adjunct Faculty