School of Music

Associate Professor of Music History

B.S., University of Southern California; B.M., Illinois State University; M.A., Illinois State University; Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Professor Yaness has taught music history courses at Illinois Wesleyan since fall term 1999.  He has also held teaching appointments at Illinois State University and Arizona State University.  At IWU he teaches the two-semester Survey of Western Music History, the sequence of period style courses, Beethoven, and general education courses such as Gateway and "Gourmet Listener."  He is a pre-concert lecturer at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and an occasional bassist.

Publications:

Book:
Prokofiev's Ballets for Diaghilev, Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2006

Articles:
"Keeping the Russes in the Ballets Russes:  Prokofiev's Ballets for Diaghilev," in The Ballets           
            Russes One Hundred Years Later, ed., Patrizia Veroli and Gianfranco Vinay, Accademia di
            Ceclia Press, Rome, 2013.
"'I Came too Soon,' Opera and Prokofiev's Early Career in America," in Prokofiev and His World,
            ed. Simon Morrison, Princeton University Press, 2008
"By Way of Le Pas d'acier, Prokofiev's and Yakulov's Ursin'ol' Comes to the Stage", in Three Oranges,
           no.10, November 2005
"Prokofiev's vexing entry into the United States," in Three Oranges, no.6, November 2003
"Trapeze re-interpreted," in Three Oranges, no.5, June 2003
"On the Dnieper: Reappraisal of an 'unfairly rejected opus,'" in Three Oranges, no.2, November 2002
"Diaghilev and the Two Versions of Prokofiev's Chout," in Music and Letters, February 2001

Reviews:
Vaganova, a Dance Journey from Petersburg to Leningrad by Vera Krasovskaya, in Slavic Review,
          Fall 2006
Musorgsky, His Life and Work by David Brown, in the New York Times Book Review, February 16,
          2003
Shostakovich in Context, Rosamund Bartlett, ed., in Russian Review, July 2001
The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 8 "Europe," in Slavic and East European Journal,
          Spring 2001
Selected Letters of Sergei Prokofiev edited and translated by Harlow Robinson, in Music and Letters,
          May 1999
Diaghilev, A Life  by Sjeng Scheijen, in  Slavic Review  fall 2012.
The Peole's Artist, Prokofiev's Soviet Years  by Simon Morrison in  Slavic and East European Journal,  2012

Interviews:
[about] Prokofiev's Ballets for Diaghilev, BBC Radio 3, aired February 5, 2006
[for] "Le Pas d'acier 1925, A Ballet by Sergey Prokofiev," April 2005, a DVD produced by The Arts and
          Humanities Research Council of the U.K., Lesley-Anne Sayers, artistic coordinator
"Prokofiev in America," BBC Radio 3, aired August 3, 2003
"Prokofiev 1891-1953-2003," BBC Radio 3, aired March 4, 2003

In Progress:
Russian Orchestral Music in America, a reception study
A performing edition of Prokofiev's 1915 version of the ballet Chout (Skazka pro shuta/The Buffoon)
Monographs on Sibelius and the Dance and on Prokofiev's  Cinderella