Allemeier, Parkison receive N.C. Arts Council fellowships

John Allemeier, associate professor of composition in the Department of Music, and associate professor of English Aimee Parkison are among 15 artists across the state who received a 2013-14 North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award in the categories of songwriting, composing and writing.

Fellowships are awarded to artists to support creative development and the creation of new work. Recipients were selected by panels comprised of artists and arts professionals with expertise in each discipline.

Allemeier’s most recent recording project is a set of three chamber music compositions inspired by North Carolina murder ballads. A subgenre of traditional ballads, they are folksongs whose lyrics recount the narratives of notorious murders.

“My compositional process in these most recent works has been to use the narratives of the ballads as a structural outline for the entire composition,” Allemeier said. “The folk melodies are used as the musical ‘DNA’ of each work.” In the end, a completely new 20-minute composition is generated from a simple 15-20 measure melody.

Parkison, a 2013 William Randolph Hearst Creative Fellow for historical fiction, noted, “To be an artist — a creative writer — one has to be open and to remain open so that the pleasure and pain of others influences the work. That’s what it means to ‘create’ a character, a mood, a voice or a story that sings lyrically and universally with pleasure, pain, joy, depression, sensuality or fear — any real and deeply felt emotion that moves from the page to the reader’s heart and mind.”

According to its website, the North Carolina Arts Council “works to make North Carolina ‘The Creative State’ where a robust arts industry produces a creative economy, vibrant communities, children prepared for the 21st century and lives filled with discovery and learning.”

The council is a division of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.