The Fox Valley Arts Hall of Fame (FVAHF) last week announced its five newest inductees. The FVAHF has inducted and celebrated the lives of numerous inductees for over the past 20 years. This year is the 10th class.
The Class of 2020 includes: Patrick F. Beckman, performing arts-music; Vincent S. Chiaramonte, visual arts-painting; Kevin Braheny Fortune, performing arts-music; Jeffery Hunt, performing arts-music; Joel Sheesley, visual arts-painting.
The Fox Valley Arts Hall of Fame was founded in 2001 to give public recognition to artists associated with the Fox Valley by birth, education, residence, or service who have achieved national or international acclaim. The Class of 2020 banquet and inductee celebration will take place Friday, April 24 at the Villa Olivia Country Club in Bartlett. For tickets and more information contact Susan Starrett at 630-605-4000 or Murna Hanesmann at 847-727-7165.
The Hall of Fame was a dream of Lucille Halfvarson and other arts leaders that took tangible form during the millennium (2000) celebrations in Aurora. A series of two-minute history sketches for public television briefly put the spotlight on violinist Maud Powell, an Aurora girl who, a century earlier, had the musical world at her feet. The committee that worked on this project evolved into the Fox Valley Arts Hall of Fame, a not-for-profit organization that gives public recognition to artists associated with the Fox Valley. The artists are honored with induction every other year. Each must have served at least 20 years in his or her profession. A second objective of the FVAHF is to ensure a strong cultural legacy for future generations. Inductees are honored with engraved plaques that are displayed at the Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin. The founders of FVAHF are Joyce Dlugopolski, Jay Harriman, Mary Clark Ormond, Susan S. Starrett, and deceased members Lucille and Sten Halfvarson, G. Edward Nelson, Roger Parolini, and Charlotte and George Peichl.
• Patrick F. Beckman grew up in Elgin and lives in Freeport.
After the University of Illinois with degrees in music, he became artist-in-residence of Highland College in Freeport. He stayed at Highland College and became the chairman of the department of music. More recently he taught at Aquin High School in Freeport, and has been invited to play with the University of Wisconsin Orchestra or play solo recitals there.
He has composed piano and vocal music since college and has created numerous works in both areas, which have been performed in the Midwest and Europe, either by himself as a soloist, or with various choral groups.
In 2000, Mr. Beckman was selected as the composer to represent Illinois and write a work for massed choirs from the Freeport area as part of “Continental Harmony- Music for the Millennium” by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Beckman’s musical setting of the poetry reflects the rich diversity of American music. He took the Highland Chorale to Europe and presented his work, “Song of the Earth,” as well as three smaller choral works.
He has written extensively for piano. His works for the piano consist of a synthesis of our American musical vocabularies combined with a fusion of older European structural models with an emphasis on both rhythmic and melodic development that the listener can follow. He utilized the language of the blues, jazz, gospel, folk, rhythm and blues, and rock in larger forms geared to the modern listener.
He has received critical acclaim for a number of his CDs some of which include: “Street Dance (MMC Recordings), and “Big Muddy Suite”, (a suite for clarinet and piano with Grammy award winner Richard Stoltzman).
• Joel C. Sheesley was graduated form Syracuse University with a BFA and was graduated with an MFA in painting and printmaking from the University of Denver. He retired in 2016 with the rank of professor after 42 years of teaching art at Wheaton College and for 45 years of professional work as an exhibiting artist and professor of art. He is a 45-year resident of DuPage County.
He has a 45-year record of exhibitions, lectures, in local, regional, and national high caliber art venues. He has spearheaded unique exhibitions for the following organizations: Northern Illinois Food Bank, All Souls Anglican Church, the Wheaton Park District, and The Conservation Foundation.
Joel achieved excellence in his field at an early age and has been recognized/honored both nationally and internationally in the field of visual arts with an extensive list of solo or invitational group painting exhibitions at various art institutions in New York City, Chicago, Laguna Beach, Calif., Kalamazoo, Mich., and Syracuse, N.Y.. Over the course of his career, his art has been displayed and he has lectured, written, or taught in more than 13 states and in Canada and Nicaragua.
His paintings have brought attention to suburban, urban, and rural landscape, first in DuPage County, then Kane, Kendall and LaSalle Counties.
In 2018, The Conservation Foundation (TCF), published A Fox River Testimony a 155-page catalog of Sheesley’s paintings of the Fox River Valley. All of this work calls attention to and celebrates the varied life and landscape of the Fox Valley area.
• Vincent Chiaramonte was born in Rockford, and resides in Campton Hills. He first attended Worsham College of Mortuary Science, Skokie, and later attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago where he learned his craft of portrait painting. He has dedicated his artistic career to the portrait and artistry involved in capturing the depth of life and emotion of his subjects.
He is gifted in oil, pastel and charcoal. Vincent has been commissioned by private individuals and by organizations from the world of business, academia, sports, clergy and politics. He has been commissioned to paint two official Congressional Portraits, both of which hang in the United States Capital.
He earned signature memberships in prestigious pastel and portrait societies, including The Pastel Society of America and the Chicago Pastel Painters. In addition, his work has been featured in highly respective publications such as the International Pastel and International Artist magazines, as well as being featured in The Best of Pastel Book 2, a hardcover book commemorating the Pastel Society of Americans 25th anniversary.
The American Artist magazine featured his technique in the “The Head Study”. The October 2018 issue of The Pastel Journal shows his artwork and his career. Vincent’s painting “Paul” was chosen by the publication for “Pastel 100”- an annual competition showcasing the top 100 paintings of the year.
• Jeffrey Hunt was born and raised in St. Charles where he lives. He received a bachelor of music at Taylor University in Indiana and a masters of music in Choral Conducting at Northwestern University.
He is the founder and director of the St. Charles Singers. The Singers perform regularly in and around Chicago and tour internationally. He has been an adjunct professor of music, Elgin Community College, since 2016. Most recently, he was the recipient of the Charlemangne Award, St. Charles Chamber of Commerce, 2019.
He has affiliations and memberships with the Illinois ACDA (American Choral Directors Association); where he is on the Board of Directors as its Music and Worship Chair as well as being affiliated with the Chorus of America.
In 2019 St. Charles Singers presented a Mozart Festival, during which they presented the 15th of the 17th steps of their Mozart Journey, a 17 concert undertaking to perform and record the complete volume of Wolfgang Mozart’s choral compositions. With a few notable exceptions, i.e. the Coronation Mass and Requiem, Mozart’s sacred works are seldom performed. To the choir’s knowledge, no American recordings, or even recent European collections exist of this genre of Mozart’s work.
In June 2017, he led the choir in the performance of a collection of 20th and 21st Century American Compositions. The program’s centerpiece was “Walden Pond”, a compelling composition by American composer Dominick Argento that incorporates the text of David Thoreau’s “Walden” and was performed to commemorate Thoreau’s 200th birthday. These concerts were not only preformed in St. Charles and River Forest, but throughout England.
• Kevin Braheny Fortune grew up in Elgin, and lives in Los Angeles, Calif.. He attended Vandercooke Scholl of Music in Chicago, and was taught to learn and play every string, wind and brass instrument available. Despite the broad tonal palette of those common instruments, however, his mind was filled with musical sounds beyond those tones, and he was driven to find a way to produce them.
He discovered the new frontier of electronic music. His first synthesizer was the Electro Comp 101. Complementing his interest in the emerging field of electronic and inspired by the otherworldly “Switched on Bach” recordings, Kevin began to experiment with modulating frequencies into complex musical tones with his Electro-Comp synthesizer. After having such great success in the field on the West Coast he decided to live in Los Angeles, Calif., but before doing so he immersed himself in classes in basic electrical theory (Ohm’s law, circuits and capacitors), knowledge that would soon be put to good use.
In Los Angeles he worked with top talent at the time and had the opportunity to learn engineering during recording sessions with top artists such as the Isley Brothers. He began to write sound tracks for Disney short educational films. But it was the opportunity of working with Malcolm Cecil, an electronic genius and pioneer Moog synthesist where he met Serge Tcherepnin the creator of the of the Serge Modular Music System while teaching at the California Institute of Arts. Serge hired Kevin to prototype circuits for a more stable synthesizer as those back then were not very stable and did not stay on tune. Hence the customized “Mighty Serge” was created.
Not long after he built the Mighty Serge, he experimented and developed that intuitive relationship with sound by playing music for Emilie Conrad’s Continuum Movement classes.
Kevin Braheny Fortune is a true Renaissance Man. He is a multi-instrumentalist; he has been a session musician and recording engineer for over 40 years, and a composer of electronic ambient “Space” music for over 45 years.