June 18, 1998 Contact Scott Barkhurst (541) 346-1163 or John R. Crosiar 346-3135 EUGENE--Jon H. Appleton, a nationally recognized figure in electronic music, is the University of Oregon School of Music's Distinguished Alumnus for 1998. The award was presented to Appleton on June 13 during Commencement exercises at the School of Music. A composer and author, Appleton is currently the Arthur R. Virgin Professor of Music at Dartmouth College. He was born in Los Angeles, Calif., in 1939 and received both his bachelor's degree (1961) and his master's degree (1965) from the University of Oregon. He received his doctorate from Columbia University. A composer of both instrumental and electroacoustic music, Appleton is best known for the latter, much of it composed for the Synclavier, a digital performance instrument he helped develop. He is a founding member of both the International Confederation for Electroacoustic Music (ICME) and the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS). At Dartmouth College, Appleton directs the graduate program in electroacoustic music, which combines study in music, computer science, music cognition and engineering. Appleton's music is recorded on the Smithsonian/Folkways and Centaur labels. It covers a wide spectrum of styles--chamber music, vocal music, piano music, theater music and film scores, as well as a great deal of music using electroacoustic and digital technology. He is the author of four books and dozens of articles concerning the relationship of music and technology, including "21st Century Musical Instruments: Hardware and Software" (Institute for Studies in American Music, Brooklyn, N.Y., 1989) and "Science in the Service of Music; Music in the Service of Science," Computer Music Journal , 1992. Appleton has been awarded Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Rockefeller Foundation and American-Scandinavian Foundation fellowships. He has been a fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a visiting professor at the Moscow Conservatory of Music and at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan. -30- #G-2253/Local