Clinton, NY – Well-known local musician and Hamilton College’s director of the Fillius Jazz Archive, Monk Rowe, will be honored with the 2018 Syracuse Area Music Awards(SAMMYs) Music Educator of the Year award on Thursday, March 1, at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Syracuse. Other awards presented that night include The Lifetime Achievement Award and four Hall of Fame inductions.
Rowe, who has taught music since 1974, was an instructor in Utica for many years before becoming director of Hamilton’s Fillius Jazz Archive in 1995. The archive holds a collection of some 330 videotaped interviews with jazz musicians, arrangers, writers, and critics. Rowe conducted most of the interviews of artists in the archive and has presented programs about the resource at conferences for the Jazz Education Network, the Music Library Association, and the International Society of Music Educators.
Rowe called the SAMMY award “a welcome surprise.” He said, “Teaching and performing music is an ongoing education in itself, as students regularly prompt us to think differently about the subject at hand and cause us to devise new ways to approach it. Integrating the arts into education is a challenge I continue to develop and enjoy.”
Rowe, who also teaches saxophone at the college, created the edX online course, “Jazz: The Music, The Stories, The Players” in collaboration with members of the Library and Instructional Technology Services at Hamilton and said that was “yet another welcomed teaching experience.”
Rowe co-authored the book Jazz Tales From Jazz Legends with Romy Britell on Hamilton’s Couper Press. He is an active performer on saxophone and piano and has composed numerous works for both jazz and classical ensembles.
