Centenary College Names Dr. Gale Johnson Odom
Dean of the Hurley School of Music
SHREVEPORT -- Dr. Gale Johnson Odom, a member of the Centenary College music faculty since 1978, is the new Dean of the college's Hurley School of Music. Dr. Odom is a full professor at Centenary, where she received the Outstanding Teaching Award in 1994.
At Centenary, she has taught voice, language diction, and vocal pedagogy in the School of Music. She also formerly directed the Camerata choral group, which offered major concerts each semester.
A coloratura soprano, Dr. Odom is well known in both Louisiana and Texas as an opera and oratorio singer, having performed with such organizations as the Dallas Public Opera, New Orleans Opera and the Longview Symphony. Recent performances with the Shreveport Opera have included roles as Hanna in The Merry Widow and Gretel in Hansel and Gretel. She will sing the role of Micaela in Carmen for the Shreveport Opera in September 1998.
She has performed numerous times with the Shreveport Symphony, including appearances in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Handel's Messiah and Mahler's Second Symphony: "Resurrection." She was soprano soloist in the Mahler Fourth Symphony with the Longview Symphony and appeared with the Marshall, Texas Symphony in Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss. This summer she will sing Norina in the Longview production of Don Pasquale.
Her music theater appearances include the roles of Johanna in Sweeney Todd and Cinderella in Into the Woods for the Marjorie Lyons Playhouse. She also performed the role of the Church Singer in the movie Steel Magnolias.
Other theatrical performances have been with the Marjorie Lyons Playhouse, the Marc Blitzstein Opera Company, the Indiana University Opera Theater, the North Texas State University Opera Theater and the Public Opera of Dallas.
A former national finalist in the National Association of Teachers of Singing Artist Awards and a regional winner of the Federation of Music Clubs Young Artist Award, Dr. Odom received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in 1991 from the University of North Texas, where she was a student of Virginia Botkin. She earned the Master of Music degree in vocal performance from Indiana University in 1978 and the Bachelor of Music degree from North Texas State University in 1975.
Her appointment is effective June 1, 1998. She assumes the position being vacated by Dr. Leta Carson, who holds the Ed and Gladys Hurley Chair of Music and who will teach full-time at Centenary next fall.
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