Emeriti Music Faculty
Davis Brooks comes from a diverse musical background as soloist, pedagogue, orchestral musician, studio musician, concertmaster on Broadway, conductor, and chamber musician. His teaching experience has included faculty appointments at Baylor University, Wayne State University, the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, Bucknell University, DePauw University, University of Indianapolis, and Butler University, where he is Professor of Violin Emeritus. Dr. Brooks also held the 2015-2016 University of Alabama School of Music Endowed Chair in Music Composition.
Dr. Brooks has recorded five solo CDs. Two include music for violin plus electronics, and feature music by composers Filipe Leitão, Patrick Long, Otto Leuning, James Aikman, James Mobberley, and Frank Felice, as well as a CD of the violin music of composer C.P. First. Lines from Poetry, released in March 2023, includes music by Ronald Caltabiano, Richard Einhorn, and Balee Pongklad. Early Musings features solo music written for him by ten Alabama composers. Other recordings include Reflection on a Hymn of Thanksgiving by Frank Felice, With Every Leaf a Miracle by Mark Schultz, Manunya by Frank Glover, and the Kodaly String Trio with violist Csaba Erdelyi and violinist Vasile Beluska. Dr. Brooks has concertized in China, Japan, Europe, and South America.
Having served as Associate Concertmaster of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra for fifteen years, Dr. Brooks was also a member of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra at Lincoln Center for ten years. For nineteen years, he played in the New York Chamber Symphony, which produced over twenty critically acclaimed recordings during his tenure. Dr. Brooks has been concertmaster of the Chamber Orchestra of New England, the Harrisburg Symphony, and the Waco Symphony. He performs frequently with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and is active in the many commercial recording studios in the Indianapolis area.
At Yale University, where he received a master’s degree in violin performance, Dr. Brooks studied with Broadus Erle and Syoko Aki. His doctorate, also in violin performance, is from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Other important teachers with whom he has studied include Joyce Robbins, George Neikrug, Russell Hatz, and Raymond Page; he has studied chamber music with Julius Levine, Josef Gingold, Aldo Parisot, and members of the Tokyo, Alard, and Guarneri Quartets.
Chamber music is his first love. He has been a member of the Indianapolis Chamber Players, the Commonwealth and Landolfi Quartets, as well as the Meridian and Essex Piano Trios. In addition, Dr. Brooks’ special interests include both the performance of music by contemporary composers and performance on original instruments, particularly the music of the Baroque period. He is a founding member of both the Chicago 21st-Century Music Ensemble and the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. Recording four CDs with the progressive rock band The Psychedelic Ensemble has been a most pleasurable diversion, as has performing with the Indianapolis band Progressive Lenses. Oddly his favorite color has changed from blue to green in the last decade, and he enjoys a good cup of coffee.
Dr. Gillespie holds a Ph.D. in music theory from Indiana University, a M.A. in music theory from the Eastman School of Music, and a B.M. in piano performance from Birmingham-Southern College. He was promoted to the rank of Professor of Music Theory in 2013. Prior to coming to Butler in 1996, he was Assistant Professor at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa. He has also taught at Indiana University as Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Theory. Dr. Gillespie’s research interests include the pedagogy of music theory and aural skills, disability studies in music, and contemporary music analysis. He has published articles in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy,Music Theory Online, Intégral, Indiana Theory Review, and Indiana Musicator. One of his articles was selected to be reprinted in Spotlight on General Music: Teaching Toward the Standards, a national publication of MENC, in 2007. His fourth article to be published in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, entitled “Serving Musicians With Visual Impairment in the College Classroom: Building Bridges Toward Understanding,” appears in Volume 27 (2013) and is the culmination of a five-year project. His chapter entitled “Engaging First-Year Music Theory Students through UDL (Universal Design for Learning)” is published in the Norton Guide to Teaching Music Theory (2018), a landmark resource in theory pedagogy. Dr. Gillespie has presented numerous times at national and regional conferences of the Society for Music Theory and the College Music Society. He also served for several years as Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Disability Issues for the Society for Music Theory, and during his tenure as chair played a key role in developing policy for accessibility at the Society’s national conferences. At Butler, Dr. Gillespie serves as Coordinator of the music theory area and designs the curriculum for the aural skills program. He serves as Faculty Liaison with Butler’s Office of Disability Services because of his special interest in serving the needs of students with disabilities. Dr. Gillespie has been an active church musician for more than 35 years, with extensive experience as organist, pianist, choral and handbell director, and contemporary worship leader. He currently serves as Director of Music at John Knox Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, where he oversees music for the traditional and contemporary services. Dr. Gillespie is active with his family and children, particularly with Special Olympics. He enjoys gardening, cooking, and traveling with his family. His favorite place to vacation is the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.
Dr. Gail Lewis is the instructor of the Horn Studio at Butler University’s School of Music. She also teaches Music Theory, primarily Aural Skills (ear training), emphasizing its use and importance to the performer. Dr. Lewis is a member of the Owensboro Symphony and performs regularly with several regional orchestras in the Midwest. She also enjoys performing with various chamber groups in the Indianapolis area and teaches private students and adults from Indianapolis and surrounding areas. Dr. Lewis is a member of the Athena Brass Band (playing Alto Horn) and has also performed with the Monarch brass ensemble. Dr. Lewis has performed and presented clinics at numerous International Women’s Brass Conferences, InternationalHorn Society Symposiums and Horn Workshops in the Midwest, Mid-North and Southeast regions. Her main area of research focuses on Horn pedagogy. Dr. Lewis earned her DMA in Performance and Music Theory from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she attended the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester earning a MM in Performance, and her undergraduate studies were at Capitol University in Columbus, OH, where she majored in both Performance and Music Theory. Dr. Lewis studied with Douglas Hill, Verne Reynolds, Nicholas J. Perrini, Frøydis Ree Wekre and Ethel Merker. Dr. Lewis enjoys reading historical fiction and nonfiction, and she loves to travel, including excursions in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota wilderness canoeing and dog sledding.
James Mulholland, one of the most published, performed, and commissioned composer/arrangers of his generation,creates for three passions – music, text and life. Children’s choirs, high school ensembles,choral associations, and universities throughout the world regularly perform and commission his choral music. From1995, he has received and completed 200 commissions. Over his career he has written over six hundred compositions. Besides his personal writing, he accepts approximately twelve commissions a year, in addition to his schedule of clinics, workshops and conventions, while maintaining his primary duties as Professor of Music at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. James continues to inspire countless singers around the globe with his mastery of the compositional craft.
In1996, he received the Raymond W. Brock Commission, awarded by the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA). In1994 he was named Louisiana State University School of Music’s Alumni of the year. A Dissertation by James David Spillane: “All-State Choral Music; A Comprehensive Study of the Music Selected of the High School Honor Choirs of the Fifty States,” appendix A lists the top five most programmed composers as Handel, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Mulholland, and Mozart. He has been awarded the State of Indiana’s highest honor, “Sagamore of the Wabash” and the State of Indiana’s“Outstanding Hoosier.” He has also received Butler University’s Medal of Honor. In addition, he has had three doctoral dissertations written about his music: Florida State University,University of Kentucky and the University of Arizona.
“I started singing at a very early age as a boy soprano, and studying voice and piano. Singing and tinkering around on the piano was my greatest joy – particularly, making up my own little pieces. I began studying composition at age twelve, with an outstanding composer. I always wanted to make my own music. I found my greatest love was creating, not interpreting.”
“My Father was a brilliant man – a philosopher – and he had one of the most incredible photographic minds I have ever known. He had literally, hundreds of poems from the British Isles committed to memory. I grew up at his feet mesmerized as he eloquently quoted these great minds and poems. He had a poem and a quotation for every occasion. My Mother was a schoolteacher, who played the piano, and she was always humming or singing, regardless of the occasion. As a result, I grew up with two loves,literature and music. From my earliest memories, music and prose were a part of my daily life and I was in awe of it. As I grew older, I realized in vocal music you could combine these two great art forms. They are equal – poetry and music.”
True to Mulholland’s Irish heritage, his music is influenced by the British Isles’ school of lyricism, which emphasizes the beauty of melody and text. Although he studied twelve-tone row, minimalism, and all the avant-garde techniques, these genres did not satisfy him, they were not his “voice.” His aesthetic is very Romantic. Through his music, he desires to share the beauty of the great poets and give them the recognition and appreciation they deserve. Heinrich Heine, the great German poet said, “When words can express no more, music begins.”
A native of Warsaw, Illinois, Mary Anne Scott began her professional career in Chicago after graduating from the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music. Her debut operatic role was Monica in The Medium, which toured the Chicago area. With a scholarship fromthe Chicago Musicians Club of Women, she was able to study with such vocal coaches as Giulio Favario of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Julius Berger of the Metropolitan Opera. During this time, she was a regional finalist in the Metropolitan Opera Auditions and a national winner in the Merola Opera Auditions.
Ms. Scott was an apprentice artist for two summers at the Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts. Afterwards she began a three-year engagement with the Stadttheater in Berne, Switzerland, performing twelve leading roles, including Mimi in La Boh
MICHAEL SELLS
Tenor Michael Sells enjoyed a 30-year performance career specializing in the music of J.S. Bach (over 100 performances as the Evangelist in Bach’s Passions), Handel, and 20thCentury composers, especially the vocal works of British composer Benjamin Britten. Conductors with whom he has been privileged to work include: Zubin Mehta, Sir Andrew Davis, James Levine, Carlo Maria Giulini, Robert Shaw, Michael Tilson Thomas and Helmut Rilling. Sells has recorded Britten’s War Requiem, Cantata Academica, Curlew River (PBS taping), Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Canticle I, and Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente. He is also featured as Dr. Caius on Maestro Giulini’s historic recording of Verdi’s Falstaff.
As an academic, Dr. Michael Sells has taught voice andrelated literatures (song, opera, cantata and oratorio), arts appreciation, and musical theatre history. His voice students have appeared on the stages of the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, English National Opera, Royal Opera (Covent Garden), and with many European opera companies. Current research interests include the operas of Benjamin Britten and the musicals of Stephen Sondheim. Articles and reviews have appeared in the NATS Journal, Opera Quarterly, The International Dictionary of Opera, and The Sondheim Review.
After 40 years of university-level teaching andadministration, Dr. Sells retired from Butler University in 2009, where he is now Dean and Professor of Music Emeritus. He continues to teach there on an adjunct basis.
Larry Shapiro came to the Jordan College of Fine Arts as a visiting professor in 1986 and joined the faculty as professor of violin and artist-in-residence the following year, in the midst of a long and distinguished career. After completing advanced violin study with Broadus Erle, Robert Semon, Noumi Fischer, Rafael Bronstein and Dorothy Delay, and chamber music studies with Lillian Fuchs, Aldo Parisot, David Wells, and William Kroll, Mr. Shapiro embarked upon a career that has included a great range of activities-from soloist to quartet player, from concertmaster to pedagogue.
As a quartet player Mr. Shapiro has performed as first violinist, second violinist, and occasionally violist with five quartets: The Fine Arts, Audubon, Berkshire, Evansville, and Delos (which he founded in 1965). He has served as concertmaster for many orchestras, including the El Paso Symphony, Evansville Philharmonic, New York Philharmonia, Green Bay Philharmonic, Grand Teton Festival, Akron Symphony, Orchestra of Illinois, and Orchestra Sinfonica de Mineria in Mexico City. He was concertmaster of the Columbus Symphony for four years.
Mr. Shapiro’s teaching background includes positions at Indiana University, the University of Delaware, the University of Evansville, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Virginia Tech and Akron University. He has appeared as soloist with orchestras throughout the country, conducted both university and youth orchestras, and has been violinist for both the Gabrielli and New Art Trios.
For several years, Mr. Shapiro toured as soloist with American Ballet Theatre, soloing more than 100 times in most of the major cities of the United States, as well as in Paris, Tokyo and London. For three years, Mr. Shapiro was first violinist with the White Oak Chamber Players, touring with Mikhail Baryshnikov. He performs on a violin made in 1772 by Nicholas Gagliano. For fifteen years, he was concertmaster of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, and for 18 summers served as concertmaster for the Bear Valley Music Festival in California.
View Professor Shapiro’s Website
Karen Thickstun teaches piano pedagogy at Butler University and co-advises the Butler MTNA Collegiate Chapter. Thickstun holds degrees in piano performance/economics from Duke University, business administration from University of Virginia, and piano pedagogy from Butler University.
In 2019, Thickstun was recognized by Butler University with the “Woman of Distinction” award, annually given to one staff and one faculty recipient. In 2018, as part of its 100th anniversary, United Way of Central Indiana recognized Thickstun as one of its “100 Heroes” to recognize the positive impact she has made in the community. For 2017-19, Thickstun received a Creative Arts Renewal Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis, funded by Lilly Endowment, Inc.
Thickstun recently retired as founding director of the Butler Community Arts School. Serving 2,000 children through private lessons, group classes, and camps, instruction is provided by over a hundred Butler University students that she mentored in professional teaching practices. Working with after school programs, community centers, and United Way agencies, Thickstun developed a network of community partners to provide access to the arts for inner-city youth. To fund outreach classes and provide need-based scholarships, she wrote and received grants for more than $100,000 annually for the past eight years.
Thickstun authors a tri-annual column, “It’s All Your Business,” for American Music Teacher. Her articles have also appeared in Keyboard Companionand Clavier Companion. She has presented numerous pedagogy and business sessions at MTNA National Conferences and other local, state and national conferences.
Thickstun is active in the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA), serving as president for 2021-2023. She previously served as MTNA Secretary-Treasurer from 2013-2015, MTNA Vice President from 2015-2017, and MTNA President-Elect from 2019-2021. Recent national appointments include grants and awards task force chair, MTNA Teacher of the Year committee chair, and strategic planning committee. She served as director of East Central Division director on the MTNA Board of Directors from 2008-2010 and chaired the Local Associations Forum. Thickstun is a nationally-certified teacher of music (NCTM) through MTNA.
Thickstun has been active in the Indiana Music Teachers Association (IMTA) as president, trustee chair, newsletter editor, syllabus chair, conference chair, commissioning chair, arts advocacy chair, and bylaws revision chair. She received the Distinguished Service Award in 2002 and the Teacher of the Year award in 2008.