Michael Carney
On June 14, 2012, Bob Cole Conservatory faculty member Dr. Michael Carney passed away. We lost a colleague and a friend–a member of our family. A memorial concert is tentatively scheduled for Sunday, September 23rd. We will celebrate Michael’s legacy with current and former students playing the music he loved and brought into their lives.
Dr. Carney was Director of Percussion Studies at the Bob Cole Conservatory for thirty-one years. He taught generations of percussionists and directed the World Percussion Group, Steel Drum Orchestra, and the Drums and Drummers Project. He taught classes in World Music required for all music majors and also open to the entire university.
Michael traveled the world performing, teaching, and studying. His performance expertise ranged from classical to jazz, and included musical instruments and styles from West Africa, the Caribbean, and Brazil. In the summer of 2005, Michael completed his first jazz concert tour of Brazil, performing vibraphone and steel pan in concerts. His concert in Rio de Janeiro was honored by the Jazz Society of Rio de Janeiro as the #2 International Jazz Concert of the Year (Wayne Shorter was #1) and Carney was named as the #3 International Jazz Musician of the Year (tied with Wynton Marsalis and Roy Hargrove).
He was founder and director of the World Percussion Project, a program that took American professionals, students, and teachers abroad for intensive study of music and culture. The project has taken participants to Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, Bahia, Brazil and Ghana, West Africa. His musical journeys also took him to Spain, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Trinidad, the Philippines, and Thailand.
As a classical percussionist he performed with the North Carolina Symphony, Pacific Symphony, and Long Beach Symphony Orchestra. Carney was been featured as a steel pan soloist with several symphony orchestras including the Virginia Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Tulsa Philharmonic, Modesto Symphony, New Mexico Symphony, Wichita Symphony, and Long Beach Symphony Orchestra performing his own compositions.
Dr. Carney was born in 1952 in Newark, New York. He earned degrees in Percussion Performance from East Carolina University, the Eastman School of Music, and North Texas State University. He also studied at the International Center for African Music and Dance Ghana, and the Oficina de Investigaçaõ Musical and Rio Gruppo Percussaõ in Brazil. He is survived by his wife Grace, their daughter Jasmine, and two children from a previous marriage, Niko and Noelle, and his brother Brian.
from CSULB
Replies
He played with Phase II in 1989 "Fire Down Below" and 1993 for Panorama. Dr. Michael Carney and Dr. Eugene Novotney introduced steel pan into the California State University system in the late 1980s. He was my professor and friend for 15 years, traveling to Brazil with him many times. He took steel pan all over the world, performing and teaching in so many music venues. An amazing musician in all facets, especially in his passions of the jazz genre and instruments of world culture. He introduced steel pan to so many, including myself, for which it became my passion. The confidence he instilled in me to pursue my passions led me to move to Trinidad, where I met my husband. Dr. Michael Carney's instrumental hands were in so many lives. Because of him, I give others the gift of steel pan by teaching it to secondary school students and exuding my passion for the instrument every time I perform. Dr. Michael Carney: Your spirit is alive throughout the world! We will miss you greatly!
~Jennifer Latiff
You can see him on the video:
I was not familiar with the name Dr. Michael Carney. However, we the members of WST are all one family. Condolences to the family and friends of Dr. Michael Carney.