Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 414/832-6590
For Immediate Release				December 12, 1996
 
Lawrence University Jazz Director Awarded Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship
 
 
APPLETON, WIS. -- Ken Schaphorst, composer/arranger, performer and director of
the jazz studies program at Lawrence University, has been named one of 12
recipients of a 1997 Artist Fellowship Award by the Wisconsin Arts Board. 

The statewide program recognizes outstanding professional artists for
significant contributions to their field.  Schaphorst was selected for the
$8,000 fellowship from more than 230 literary artists, choreographers, music
composers and performance artists throughout the state.  Recipients are chosen
solely on the artistic quality of previously produced work.  

"Although I like to think that my artistic decisions are, to some degree,
impervious to the approval or disapproval of others, ultimately my goal is to
communicate with others through music," said Schaphorst.  "It's always 
rewarding to be recognized because of the implication that my efforts to 
communicate have been effective."

Schaphorst, who joined the Lawrence faculty in 1991, is a founding member of
the Jazz Composers Alliance, a non-profit corporation dedicated to the
promotion of new music in the jazz idiom.  In 1988, he created the 18-piece
jazz orchestra,  Ken Schaphorst Big Band, releasing "Making Lunch" in 1989,
which was nominated for a Boston Music Award in the "Outstanding Jazz Album"
category, and "After Blue" in 1991.  In 1994, the 10-piece Ken Schaphorst
Ensemble released "When the Moon Jumps," which earned four stars from Down Beat
magazine and was hailed as "one of the most excitingly provocative large
ensemble ventures in years" by Jazz Times.

His newest recording, "Over the Rainbow: The Music of Harold Arlen," is a
collection of 13 of his arrangements performed by the cream of the Boston jazz
scene.  It is scheduled for release by Accurate Recordings in January, 1997.

A graduate of Swarthmore College, Schaphorst earned his master's degree at the
New England Conservatory and his Doctor of Musical Arts from Boston University
in 1990.  He was awarded Composition Fellowships from the National Endowment
for the Arts in 1988 and 1991 and Meet the Composer grants in 1987 and 1996.    	

Schaphorst's selection marks the second year in a row a Lawrence faculty member
has been recognized by the Wisconsin Arts Board.  Last year sculptor Todd
McGrain was awarded an Artist Fellowship.