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Heavy metal

Brink, 29, brings a youthful edge to an instrument with medieval origins. Since his arrival at the University in 2015, the campus soundscape has included Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and Prince’s “Purple Rain,” alongside more traditional selections. Brink, a past winner of the prestigious International Queen Fabiola Carillon Competition, also offers private lessons to 20 graduate and undergraduate students at the University each year and composes and commissions new works for carillon.

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Rockefeller Chapel announces Carillon New Music Festival!

The University of Chicago's Rockefeller Chapel presents sixteen world premières of music for carillon in a festival of new music for carillon, the first such festival in Chicago''s history, Friday May 25 and Saturday May 26, 2018. Under the direction of University Carillonneur Joey Brink, himself a noted new composer for his instrument, six works commissioned by Rockefeller Chapel will receive their world première performances, along with four works written by members of the University of Chicago Music Department. Brink has added a new work of his own to the festival, as has one of his undergraduate carillon students, and four pieces have been commissioned by his fellow lead performers at the event.

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Composing for Carillon

The carillon is one of the most public of instruments. Situated in bell towers in the heart of public spaces, carillonneurs perform for entire communities. Though all who wander near the tower will hear the music, most will never know who it is playing the instrument. As performers hidden from view, carillonneurs strive to convince audiences that we are not machines playing the same tunes each day; we are real humans capable of expression and dynamic variation with lots of diverse repertoire.

Composers and arrangers for the carillon like to “think upside down”; rather than give the singing melody line to the soprano, placing the melody in the bass bells, with the higher bells playing harmonic and rhythmic accompaniments, can be very effective.

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Tegan and Sara Consecrate "The Con" at Rockefeller Chapel

Rockefeller Chapel has been anointed, and not in the typical sense: There were no denominational ceremonies, no baptisms. No priest was present. Instead, what descended over the chapel was of a different profundity. On Saturday night, the music of two ethereal voices filled the depths of the space, echoes reverberating through its cavernous hall. The source of it all: the Canadian identical twin duo known as Tegan and Sara.

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Take a look at the E.M. Skinner organ!

Video by WGN-TV and S.E.E. Chicago

Airing on Sunday, August 27, 2017, University Organist Thomas Weisflog showcased the grand E.M. Skinner organ to host of S.E.E. Chicago's Dawn Jackson Blatner, presented by WGN.

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Tunes from the Tower

When Simone Browne told her friends and family she had decided to give the carillon a try, they were puzzled. The second-year had stumbled across a Facebook post offering carillon lessons taught by members of the University of Chicago Guild of Carillonneurs at Rockefeller Chapel, and opted to give it a shot, intrigued by the fact that few knew what a carillon was, let alone how to play the instrument.

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