The Toledo Blade reports on Community Spiritfest ’03,, which features several Christian musical performers including Denver and the Mile High Orchestra.
Denver Bierman, the Mile High Orchestra
Denver and the Mile High Orchestra
First Belmont Students Begin Studying at Historic RCA Studio B
NASHVILLE, August 22, 2003 – It’s the place where Elvis Presley recorded Are You Lonesome Tonight? and It’s Now or Never, and 200 other songs. It’s where Dolly Parton recorded the country classic Jolene, and Roy Orbison put Only the Lonely and many of his other pop smashes down on tape.
What can you learn from a place like that? Students enrolled in Belmont University’s Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business will find out starting this fall semester as the historic RCA Studio B on Nashville’s famed Music Row becomes a Belmont University classroom. There, where students enrolled in the university’s recording program will study recording techniques in a legendary setting that is laden with pop music history and oozes cool.
Save the Dates! New Complex Opening Events Slated
Belmont University will soon celebrate the completion of the Curb Event Center, the Maddox Grand Atrium, and the Beaman Student Life Center, the grand new complex on the campus’s southwestern corner. Several events are planned. Here is a tentative list – dates and times may change.
Belmont Called “Top Tier” University
U.S. News & World Report has once again ranked Belmont University in the top tier of quality among “America’s Best Colleges.” The 2004 edition of its annual college guide is scheduled to hit newsstands Monday. Belmont was ranked 21st overall among the 131 schools in the 11-state South region of the “Best Universities-Master’s” category, again placing it in the top tier of quality.
In this category, Belmont is the highest-ranked university in Tennessee. On some of the most important indicators used to determine the ranking, Belmont has improved over the previous year. Both freshman to sophomore retention and graduation rates are up, and, early indications for this Fall are that they will continue to trend upward. Belmont’s student-faculty ratio remains one of the best in the South at 12 to 1, and the university has increased the percentage of faculty who are full-time.
State of the University Address Scheduled
All Belmont University staff and faculty are invited to attend university President Dr. Robert Fisher’s State of the University address at 8 a.m. Monday, August 25, in the Massey Performing Arts Center. “I want to bring everyone up-to-date on the exciting things taking place on our campus and share some important details as we begin the fall semester,” says Dr. Fisher. Light refreshments will be available in the courtyard outside of MPAC starting at 7:30 that morning.
Russian Impressionism Art Exhibition Website Launched
There is now a website featuring a dozen images of works of art to be displayed at Belmont’s Leu Art Gallery in September. You can view the images at http://forum.belmont.edu/artshow.
Van Hook’s Appointment As Curb Dean Gets Big Coverage
The appointment of Nashville music industry executive Jim Van Hook as the first Dean of the new Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business at Belmont University gets major coverage from The Tennessean and Nashville City Paper.
The City Paper calls Van Hook, the former chairman of Provident Music Group, “a mover and shaker in the Nashville music scene for more than 20 years,” and says his appointment as the Curb College’s first Dean “signals the school’s new era of growth as a college now separate from the Belmont College of Business Administration.”
The Tennessean recaps Van Hook’s two decades of success as a music industry entrepreneur, notes that he also has experience as a university professor, and mentions Van Hook is a cancer survivor. Looking forward, the story reports on Van Hook’s expansive, global vision for the Curb College.
You can read the Belmont press release here.
Belmont Professor a Tolkien Expert
Dr. Amy H. Sturgis, adjunct instructor in the Liberal Studies Department in the University College at Belmont University, has been invited to be a Guest of Honor at the Gathering of the Fellowship in Toronto, Canada from December 15-17, 2003.
The Gathering of the Fellowship is an international event commemorating the works of author J.R.R. Tolkien and the worldwide premiere of the film The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and is expected to involve several thousand participants from over twenty different nations.
Other confirmed Guests of Honor for the three-day event include actors from The Lord of the Rings films and leading Tolkien artists, musicians, and academics.
Dr. Sturgis will present a talk entitled Harry Potter Is A Hobbit: How J.R.R. Tolkien Put the Adult in Children’s Literature,” and participate in scholarly panels on Teaching Tolkien at the University Level, The Lord of the Rings: The Books vs. The Films, and Women in Middle-Earth. Her appearance is sponsored by the New York Tolkien Society Heren Istarion.
In July 2003, Sturgis presented original research on Tolkien at the annual meeting of the Mythopoeic Society and also participated in the conference’s “Teaching Tolkien” panel presentation.
Sturgis is the co-founder and coordinator of Lómelindi, the Nashville Smial of the Tolkien Society. She teaches, among other things, J.R.R. Tolkien in History, Political Thought, and Literature and Harry Potter and His Predecessors at Belmont University.
Van Hook First Dean of Curb College of Entertainment & Music Biz
NASHVILLE, August 21, 2003 – One of Nashville’s most successful music industry executives will become the first dean of Belmont University’s new Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business – the nations’ first college dedicated to offering comprehensive education for careers in the entertainment industry.
Jim Van Hook, former chairman and CEO of Provident Music Group, brings both an academic and an entrepreneurial background to the Dean’s chair. Holding a Master of Music Education, with enough hours for a doctorate, Van Hook was a music professor at Trevecca Nazarene University for six years in the 1960s, before embarking on a career in the music business where his management style of “mentoring, teaching and coaching,” helped him build Brentwood Music into a music industry powerhouse.
Van Hook started the company in 1981 with a $500 investment. Today the company, now owned by Bertelsmann Music Group, is one of the top three companies in the Christian music industry and includes such labels as Benson Records, Verity Records, Reunion Records, Essential Label Group, Brentwood Records and Diadem Music, plus the largest publishing catalog of Christian songs in the world with Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing, Inc. Van Hook sold Brentwood Music to Zomba Music Group, the world’s largest independent music company, in 1994. Zomba renamed the company Provident Music Group in 1997, and sold it to BMG within the last year.
Belmont University’s new Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business is building on the strength of Belmont’s already well-regarded BBA program in music business. The new Dean will lead the college in developing new and innovative programs to serve other facets of the entertainment industry. Currently, the college of music business enrolls approximately 700 undergraduate students and employs 11 full-time faculty and 13 full-time staff. The program features state-of-the-art facilities, including on-campus studios as well as Ocean Way Nashville and the historic RCA Studio B on Music Row; an established study and internship program, Belmont West, in Los Angeles, and another, Belmont East, in the final planning stages in New York City; international study opportunities in Great Britain, Germany, and Australia; and an internal record label, Acklen Records.
Belmont University President Dr. Robert Fisher said Van Hook’s music business experience and entrepreneurial spirit make him the right choice to lead the growth of the new college. “I couldn’t be more pleased to appoint someone with the stature and experience of Jim Van Hook as the inaugural dean of the Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business. He is known throughout the industry for his innovation and entrepreneurial spirit and we’re excited to bring this same perspective to Belmont University.”
Van Hook built his company before the emergence of Belmont’s music business program, but says today that Belmont’s program is very much needed.
“Belmont’s school of music business is the most significant school of music business in America. Bob Fisher has a great vision for expanding it into other areas of entertainment. There’s a lot more work to be done in the development of that dream. It has tremendous momentum already. I’m just blown away by what’s been accomplished so far,” said Van Hook, explaining why he decided to end a brief retirement and become the college’s first dean.
“I think the industry, and the world for that matter, has so dramatically changed ? everything from technology, business models and attitudes. A more sophisticated response in terms of education and preparation is much more important than it ever was,” Van Hook said. “Today’s challenges require a very different approach. We didn?t have downloading back then. We didn’t have Soundscan back then. We didn’t have the same pricing pressures back then. Today, we need better training for tomorrow’s leaders and I think Belmont is rising to that occasion.”
Van Hook Biographical Information
Van Hook earned a master’s degree in music education at Peabody College in Nashville.
He began his career in 1963 as a music professor at Trevecca, where he served in the music department for six years and was later promoted to assistant director of public relations. In 1971, he accepted an offer to become the minister of music for the Bethany First Church of the Nazarene in Bethany, Oklahoma. Van Hook coordinated an extensive music program with 19 ensembles and choirs and also directed a weekly studio-produced television show.
Van Hook returned to Nashville in 1979 as senior vice president of The Benson Company, where he was responsible for the company’s creative product development and music publishing, then founded Provident – as Brentwood Music – in 1981, specializing in unique inspirational music and church choral product.
In 1991, Van Hook’s company was the recipient of the Nashville Business Journal’s prestigious Small Business of the Year Award.
Van Hook has served as president of the Exhibitors Association for the Christian Booksellers Association, chairman of the Crossroads Business Park Association, a member of the CEO Roundtable of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, president of the Church Music Publishers Association, Executive Board member of the Christian Booksellers Association, and has been a board member of the Gospel Music Association and the Christian Music Trade Association.
Van Hook resides in Brentwood, Tenn., with his wife Susie. They have two children: Brent, who is married and pastoring a church in Oklahoma and Susan, who along with husband Rod Riley, own and operate Spirit-Led and Fervent Records in Franklin, Tenn.
Harrington Comments on Country Slump, “Mash-Ups”
Belmont University music business professor Dr. E. Michael Harrington comments on slumping country music sales in this Associated Press story that’s run in several newspapers nationally. Harrington is also quoted extensively in a Salon.com article about the music copyright/business implications of “mash-ups” – the mixing of sounds from multiple records to create unique recordings.
