At the 49th Annual Pacific-Southwest Emmy Awards Alex Stopa’s original composition, Spiral, received 3 Emmy nominations, winning 2 of these in the categories of ‘Arts and Entertainment’ and ‘Director – Short Form Content.’ UW-Eau Claire music professor, Dr. Jeffery Crowell, is a member of that group.
Crowell says, “I’m thrilled and honored to be part of a group that received these awards. The experience of recording this piece was so much fun.”
Spiral is an original composition for percussion quartet that fuses classical, pop, and jazz styles. Stopa writes of the piece. The piece is built around a repeated rhythmic motif: a pattern of five that can be heard on the vibraphone near the beginning of the piece. “I imagined this spiraling pattern as the rhythmic DNA of the work; a musical double helix. This imagery formed the inspiration for the title,” Stopa says.
The video was shot at the Art Square Theatre in Las Vegas by a local film crew including multiple Emmy award winning editor and director Michael Tushaus (Digisphere Productions) with cinematographer Tim Harbour and camera operator Gray Gubler. The recording engineer was Josh Connolly (Studio A) and mix engineer was Robby Wingfield. This project was supported in part by the Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Pana Percussion Quartet members are Alex Stopa, Ryun Louie, Jeffery Crowell, and Eliseo Rael.
Dr. Jeffery Crowell is a professor of music, teaching percussion and jazz, at UW-Eau Claire.
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