Resumé
Education
Bachelor of Music Education
The University of Montana
Master of Science of Teaching
Portland State University
Doctor of Musical Arts
Arizona State University.
Teaching Experience
Choral/Orchestral Music Instructor
Gresham Union High School
Gresham, Oregon
Instructor of Music
Northern Montana College
Havre, Montana
Director of Choral Activities
Mount Union University
Alliance, Ohio
Director of Choral Activities
The University of Montana
Missoula, Montana
Adjunct Music Instructor
Montana Technological University
Butte, Montana
Music Philosophy
Raised by parents who were both college-trained musicians, Funk became involved with music a avery early age. Primarily deeply educated in classical music, he grew to love the richness of Art music passionately. It is from the study of great masterworks – rehearsing and performing them – that he developed a deep reverence for the musical Art. It was through these explorations that his compositional voice emerged. His harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic language and devotion to traditional formal structures hearken back to those musical ideas that have moved him and humanity profoundly. He believes that there is something in human beings that longs for well-composed music – music that deeply and clearly parallels the human condition, thus framing the meanings of our experiences for perception.
His goal, as a composer, is to create honest, authentic music – music that moves him when he composes it and that may open the emotional receptors of listeners and make them vulnerable to and better aware of their own realities.
Music thoughtfully composed has the potential to compose listeners' experiences in moments of focused listening. Excellent music ought to change people as they hear it and/or as they perform it. People should be different in some ways after becoming engaged with a piece of music. There may be a sense of being enthralled and moved powerfully. When that occurs, listeners may be having an aesthetic experience. If music consistently causes aesthetic experiences in many people over time, history may dare, someday, put a capital letter "A" on the word "art" as a descriptor of that music. Art, however, presents such a high pinnacle that achieving Art is nearly unobtainable. That is what makes Art such a privileged category.
It is through long and deep exposure to the very best music that the people, particularly the youth of our nation and world may be invited to consider the role of Art in our lives. Wonderfully composed and well-performed music acquaints us all with the elements of art and invites to live Artfully. That means living with a purpose, in harmony with one another, with exciting and compelling movement – lives full of contrast and balance – lives with structure and form.
Creative Output
Compositions
• Oscar, the Flying Boy – a three-act musical on autism
• No Greater Love – a two-act musical (co-creators: Sylvia Funk and
Edward Morgan) based on the 1917 Granite Mountain Mine fire, Butte Montana
• Ruth – a two-act opera, the saga of a woman and her family and their harrowing experiences of escape and renewal at the end of WWII
• Requiem for Native America (based on the words of Chief Black Elk), a collision of cultures
• Eight Italian and German Art Songs (newly harmonized)
• 30 Vocal Jazz Originals/Arrangements
• Eleven Poems of Brian William Taylor
• Nine Songs – music of the lighter fare
Publications (available for purchase at amazon.com)
• A Manual for Teachers of the Voice: Dialogues on Singing Technique
• Oscar, the Flying Boy (songbook)
• Eleven Poems of Brian William Taylor
• Nine Songs
• Secrets for Great Singing: John L. Lester – Life and Pedagogy (co-author: Robert Hoyem)
• No Greater Love (co-authors: Edward Morgan and Sylvia Funk)
Volume I – Script
Volume II – Music
• U.S. Crisis: Education, the Arts and Society (co-author: Eric Funk)
Other
New Big Sky Singers:
CD: The New Big Sky Singers
CD: Fifty Years Ago Today – CD available at bandcamp.com
Current Status
Dr. Funk lives with his wife, Sylvia, at the base of the Bitterroot Mountains near Florence, Montana. Their three daughters, Sonja, Natalie and Angela, live their lives in artful ways and rather remarkably involve their respective families with music and theater.