Department of Music Faculty
Webster University's Department of Music faculty are artists, teachers, and performers who bring real-world experience to classes, ensembles, lessons, and rehearsals.
https://templates2020.webster.edu/_resources/images/favicons/apple-icon-57x57.png
Webster University
Bob Chamberlin

Emeritus Professor of Music Theory and Composition

A member of the Webster University faculty since 1973, he has also served as the director of academic advising, director of the London campus, and as acting dean of students. In 1974 he coordinated a festival of microtonal music, held at Webster University. Chamberlin earned degrees in theory and composition from St. Olaf College and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and completed additional studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His principal composition instructors include Arthur Campbell, W. Alan Oldfield, Ben Johnston and Salvatore Martirano.

Chamberlin taught undergraduate and graduate courses in composition and music theory. He was the senior faculty member in the department. Chamberlin retired in May 2016.

His compositions include works for orchestra, wind ensemble, chamber ensembles, organ, chorus, dance, and incidental music for theatrical productions. He has received commissions from the Webster University Symphony Orchestra, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Mid America Dance Company, Tapsichore, Metro Theatre Company and the Band of Mid-America at Scott Air Force Base. In 1991, he was awarded a Creative Artists Project Grant from the Missouri Arts Council. Chamberlin has collaborated with artists including the University of Illinois Contemporary Chamber Players, Jerry Young, John McClellan, Jaroslav Vajda, Peter Mayer and Charles Glenn. His compositions have been performed throughout the United States and Canada, as well as in the Netherlands and Poland.

An active member of the American Guild of Organists, he is organist for Gethsemane Lutheran Church.

Paul DeMarinis

Emeritus Professor of Jazz Studies

Paul DeMarinis is a native of St. Louis. His early musical training included private study as a clarinetist with St. Louis Symphony members Carlos Camancho, Robert Coleman and Leland Munger. He then attended Indiana University and studied jazz improvisation extensively with the well-known jazz education pioneer David Baker while playing lead alto saxophone in the IU big band. During this time he also studied improvisation with famed saxophonist/educator Jamey Aebersold. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in Jazz Studies from Webster University in 1982 and 1987.

He began teaching as an adjunct faculty member at Webster in 1980. By 1988, he was the full-time director of the Jazz Studies program. At Webster, he taught saxophone, jazz improvisation and jazz history, oversaw the ensemble and academic jazz program, coordinated the faculty jazz ensemble, and directed the Webster Jazz Series and the Webster Summer Jazz Camp.

He is a well-known performer, educator and clinician and has been active in the St. Louis jazz scene for over 35 years. He was co-founder of the original music cooperative Brilliant Corners which recorded for the MAX JAZZ label in 1997, and has written extensively for his own trio, quartet and sextet. A CD of his original jazz compositions, The Sun ... The Stars featuring his sextet and vocalist Debby Lennon, was released in 2009. He enjoys long-term musical relationships with the Kim Portnoy Jazz Orchestra and the St. Louis Jazz Orchestra and was a faculty member of Jamey Aebersold's Summer Jazz Workshops for 10 years. He has also been a faculty member of the International Summer Jazz Academy in Poland.

DeMarinis has a long association as a saxophonist with the St. Louis Symphony. In addition to many performances at Powell Hall, he has performed with the SLSO overseas and at New York's Carnegie Hall. He has performed with many jazz notables, including Count Basie Orchestra, Dave Liebman, Louie Bellson, Gary Foster and Bobby Shew. In a supportive role he has been a member of ensembles accompanying a wide range of popular artists including Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Nancy Wilson, Doc Severinsen, Johnny Mathis, Sammy Davis Jr., Gladys Knight, The Temptations and The Four Tops.

Listen to "Hope" from the 2009 CD release The Sun … The Stars (words and music by Paul DeMarinis).

Carole Gaspar

Emerita Professor of Voice

Professor Carole Gaspar is a graduate of Baylor University and Washington University. Her principal teachers were Leslie Chabay and Jennie Tourel.

Throughout her career, she has won many awards including the G.B. Dealy competition, the Irene Jordan scholarship, the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra competition, the Southwest and Midwest Regional Metropolitan Opera auditions, the St. Louis Artist Presentation award, the St. Louis Philharmonic competition, and the National Society of Arts and Letters award in Chicago. Following six months of study at the International Opera Studio in Zurich, Switzerland, she performed with the Essen (Germany) Opera Company, making her professional debut as Marcellina in Fidelio. Since joining the Webster faculty in 1975, Gaspar has earned seven diplomas from conservatories in Salzburg, Nice and Geneva for studies in the poetry and music of the German lied and the French melodie. Her teachers have included Erik Werba, Kim Borg, Dalton Baldwin and Gerard Souzay.

Gaspar has given numerous, highly acclaimed concerts in the St. Louis area and frequently collaborates with composers in premiering new works for solo voice. With a broad repertoire of 19th and 20th century songs, she has made an intensive study of the works of Brahms, Schoenberg, and other Viennese composers. She collaborated with Allen Carl Larson in many performances of works for voice and orchestra, and enjoyed an extensive career as a recitalist with pianist Daniel Schene.

In 1990, she founded the Institute for Advanced Vocal Studies in Paris, a summer program for professional level singers and pianists dedicated to studies of French vocal chamber music. In the fall of 2002, she organized a week-long workshop devoted to French vocal literature and the writings of Victor Hugo, bringing an international faculty of specialists to St. Louis.

Allen Carl Larson

Emeritus Conductor of the Webster University Symphony Orchestra and Professor Emeritus of Music

Larson received his undergraduate degree at Park University in Kansas City, with his masters and doctoral degrees from Indiana University. His doctoral mentor was the renowned Bach scholar and score studies expert, Julius Herford.

Larson has held posts with the St. Joseph Symphony, the St. Joseph Youth Symphony and Nova Choralis, the Indiana University Choral Union and Chamber Singers, the Northland Symphony, and the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus. Larson for nine years was director of the choir at the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis. As a guest conductor, he has led performances with the St. Louis Symphony, the Webster Chamber Winds, the St. Louis Symphony chamber Ensemble, the Washington University Wind Ensemble and the Kansas City (KS) Civic Symphony. He has conducted performances with the Webster Opera Studio and Sargent Conservatory of Theatre Arts of The Magic Flute, Dido and Aeneas, The Marriage of Figaro, Fiddler on the Roof, Brigadoon, Carousel and others.

In 1996 he conducted the world premiere of Andrew York's concerto for two classical guitars and chamber orchestra, Word, at the Sheldon Concert Hall. Larson has conducted instrumental and vocal ensemble performances for the KFUO "Live from the Garden" series. he has presented clinics and workshops for high schools, colleges, and churches, and has served as the pre-concert lecturer for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Twice during his tenure at Webster, he has served as chair of the Department of Music. Larson recently founded a new chorus in Saint Louis, the Sheldon Chorale. His final concerts with the Webster Symphony Orchestra were during the 2008–2009 school year.

Daniel Schene

Emeritus Professor of Keyboard Studies

Pianist Daniel Schene has long been known as a consummate artist and a superlative teacher. Having performed throughout the U.S., Canada, South America and Asia, concert-goers have come to admire his comprehensive musicianship and formidable technique.

After his debut at age fifteen with the Charlotte Symphony, Schene studied at the North Carolina School of the Arts with Rebecca Penneys, and subsequently at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music with Gyorgy Sebok and Enrica Cavallo-Gulli. While at the University, he received the prestigious Joseph Battista Memorial Scholarship. Thereafter, he continued his studies at the Eastman School of Music with Ms. Penneys.

As a recitalist and concerto soloist, Schene has performed at numerous venues, including the Salle Cortot and the Teatro da Paz. Since 1983, he has given annual solo recitals at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Webster University, where he is currently director of Piano Studies. He also performs regularly at Indiana University's Summer Music Festival and many other music schools throughout the U.S. Recent appearances include Louisiana State University and the University of Missouri–Kansas City.

Known for his innovative programming, Schene is currently offering a recital of the Preludes of both Bach and Chopin and has performed the Chopin op. 25 Etudes with the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Book II. With his extensive concerto repertoire, Schene has recently performed the Chopin F minor and Liszt E-Flat Concerti, in honor of their centenaries.

A passionate enthusiast of chamber music, Schene has collaborated with many fine artists, such as renowned cellist Zara Nelsova, violinist Denes Kovacs (Director of the Liszt Academy in Budapest), and St. Louis Symphony concertmasters Jacques Israelievitch and David Halen. He has been the duo partner of violinist Eva Szekely of the Esterhazy Quartet for 39 years. From 1988 to 2004, the duo appeared at the Festival Internacional da Musica da Camera do Para in Belem, Brazil and in many other venues throughout the country, most recently in 2008 and 2015. Additionally they have toured under the auspices of the United States Information Service. The Szekely-Schene Duo has also performed in Santiago, Concepcion, Vina del Mar and La Serena, Chile and throughout the U.S. Schene has also appeared with the Arianna String Quartet and was for many years the pianist of the Trio Americas and the Webster Trio.

Devoted to the music of our time, Schene has played works of Joan Tower, Libby Larsen, James Willey, Andrew List, Roberto Escobar and David Werfelmann, and has premiered and recorded numerous compositions. In demand as a teacher, Schene is professor of Music and director of Piano Studies at Webster University in St. Louis, where he teaches piano, piano literature and piano pedagogy. He is a founding faculty member of the Indiana University Summer academy and the Institute of Advanced Vocal Studies in Paris. Additionally, he has given guest master classes in France, Brazil and Taiwan, as well Louisiana State University, the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of Denver's Lamont School of Music, among others.

Mr. Schene records for CRI and New World Records.

“A demonstration of exquisite pianism and musicianship.”

~St. Louis Post Dispatch

“More than anything else, it was the integrity of the interpretation that made the performance so outstanding. Rarely has [Schubert] sounded so consistently meaningful”

~St. Louis Post Dispatch

“I consider Daniel Schene to be a splendid pianist, excellent ensemble player, fine teacher and one of the finest all around musicians of [his] generation.”

~Joseph Gingold

Here are three studio performances from January 2012:

Franz Liszt: "Sonetto 104 del Petrarca," from Years of Pilgrimage: Italy

Serge Rachmaninoff: Prelude in B-Flat Major, Op. 23 No. 2

Claude Debussy: "Reflets dans l'eau (Reflections in the Water)" from Images, Book I

Steve Schenkel

Emeritus Professor of Jazz Studies

A native of St. Louis, Steve Schenkel has been the "first call" guitarist in St. Louis for over 20 years. He performs regularly with the St. Louis Symphony, The Fox Theater Orchestra, The Muny Orchestra and The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

Steve is a graduate of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. He received the PhD from Washington University, 1980 and the MA in Religion from Webster University. Schenkel founded the Jazz Studies program and the Jazz Concert Series at Webster University, where he has taught music, media and religion since 1980.

His music is heard nationally on the PBS program "Breaking Bread," as well as by millions of visitors each year in the multimedia show under the Gateway Arch. Schenkel has scored many PBS programs, including "KATY: Stories From the Trail," "Homefront," and "American Tower." Schenkel also wrote the theme music for the programs "In the Loop" and "StL Biz," as well as the logo music for KETC. Schenkel orchestrated the Ken Hensley CD Running Wild, and the children's musical A Modern Day Prodigal Son. He appears on the CD 1-2-3 with pianist Dave Venn, as well as collaborations with Dan Rubright, The Lone Wild Bird, What Wondrous Love and Whole New Light.

Visit Steve's personal website

Kendall Stallings

Emeritus Professor of Music Theory and Composition

Kendall Stallings holds a doctorate in musical composition and theory from Washington University in St. Louis and has been a member of the music faculty at Webster University since 1967, where he holds the rank of professor emeritus and where he has taught a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses and has held important administrative posts. Employing vocal, instrumental, and electroacoustic media, he has composed concert, film and theatre music ranging from brief pieces for a single performer to much longer works for relatively large forces. His music has been heard in the concert hall, the theatre, on radio and television, and at music-friendly eating and drinking establishments.

Christine Brewer

Visiting Professor of Voice

Grammy® Award winning American soprano Christine Brewer's appearances in opera, concert and recital are marked with her own unique timbre, at once warm and brilliant, combined with a vibrant personality and emotional honesty reminiscent of the great sopranos of the past. Her range, golden tone, boundless power and control make her a favorite of the stage as well as a sought-after recording artist. At Webster University, Ms. Brewer teaches master classes each term and speaks annually in a popular lecture series.

On the opera stage, Brewer is highly regarded for her striking portrayal of the title role in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, which she has performed with the Metropolitan Opera, Opéra de Lyon, Théâtre du Châtelet, the Santa Fe Opera, the English National Opera and the Opera Theater of St. Louis. Garnering critical acclaim with each role, Ms. Brewer has performed Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the San Francisco Opera, Gluck's Alceste with the Santa Fe Opera, the Dyer's Wife in Strauss's Die Frau Ohne Schatten at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Paris Opera, and Lady Billows in Britten's Albert Herring at the Santa Fe Opera and in San Francisco. She is also celebrated for her work on lesser known operas such as the title roles in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride with the Edinburgh Festival, the Rio de Janeiro Opera, and Madrid Opera and Strauss's Die ägyptische Helena with the Santa Fe Opera.

A stunning recitalist, in addition to her many appearances at Carnegie and Wigmore Halls, Brewer has graced Lincoln Center's “Art of the Song” series at Alice Tully Hall. Other appearances include the Kennedy Center in Washington. D.C., Spivey Hall in Georgia, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Mondavi Center in California. Her unique voice has been featured at the Gilmore, Ravinia and Cleveland Art Song festivals.