Photo Courtesy of Hamilton College
Monk Rowe, the Joe Williams Director of the Fillius Jazz Archive and Lecturer in Music, has been named the Syracuse Area Music Educator of the Year for 2018. This prestigious award is given by the Syracuse Area Music Awards, also known as the SAMMY Awards. The awards show will take place on the Mar. 1 and 2, with Rowe receiving his decoration on the latter day at the Palace Theatre in Syracuse.
The SAMMYs are organized by the Syracuse Area Music Awards Executive Committee, a not-for-profit organization designed to support the music community in the Syracuse area. While committee members meet regularly, the SAMMYs are considered their most important annual event.
This year’s ceremony marks the 25th anniversary of the SAMMY awards. Along with the Music Educator Award that Rowe is receiving, awards for Best Singer, Best Pop, Best Jazz, and other categories are also given. Rowe’s Music Educator Award falls under the category “Hall of Fame,” marking him as one of only six total inductees.
Rowe has been performing music since joining the Monroe County Jazz Ensemble under Chuck Mangione in 1968. He has served as a music instructor since 1974 and joined the Hamilton College faculty in 1992 as an Adjunct Instructor, specializing in Saxophone. After three years, Rowe was appointed Director of the Fillius Jazz Archive, a position he retains.
The Archive holds around 330 videotaped interviews with jazz arrangers, musicians, writers, and critics, with the majority of interviews conducted by Rowe himself. Through Hamilton’s Couper Press, Rowe has published a compilation of the stories from the Archive entitled “Jazz Tales From Jazz Legends,” serving as co-author alongside Romy Britell.In addition, Rowe continues to teach classes, specifically in the subfields of applied music and jazz. He also served as the creator and instructor of six-week-long Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), also known as an eDx online course, for Hamilton College entitled “Jazz: The Music, the Stories, the Players.” Rowe established this course in collaboration with members of the Library and Informationalw Technology Services in 2015. The course had 9,200 individuals enrolled from 134 countries on its inaugural presentation.
Despite his distinction in his field, Rowe told Hamilton’s news website that the award came as “a welcome surprise,” adding that “integrating the arts into education is a challenge I continue to develop and enjoy.”
