January 17, 2026

15^th Annual Southern Graduate Music Research Symposium, University of Florida

Keynote Address by Willis Bodine, UF Professor of Music, emeritus

Watch the presentation:

Read the transcript:

Interlocking sexy primes in the completion of Contrapunctus XIV, Kunst der Fuge presented by Willis Bodine, Professor of Music, emeritus, on March 28, 2025, as part of the Creative Professional Lecture Series at the University of Florida School of Music.

Watch the presentation

Read the transcript

View Willis Bodine’s January 24, 2025 talk, presented as part of the UF Pipe Organ Centennial celebration at the University of Florida.

Watch the presentation

https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Channel/uf-school-of-music-events/headless/watch/f8ab5a3311f545f798e6520babe6ac7c1d

Read a transcript

On Wednesday, March 26, 2025, Willis Bodine and Dana Hill, host of the daily classical music program Magnum Opus, had a lively discussion about Bach, prime numbers, and completing Contrapunctus XIV of the Art of Fugue.

Listen

Read a transcript

Visit WUFT Classic to hear more great programming.

If you’re in Gainesville, FL, on Friday, March 28, 2025, plan to attend the Creative Professional Lecture Series presented by Willis Bodine at 12:50 pm in the music building MUB 101.

On January 23-26 faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community members will celebrate the pipe organ’s centennial birthday.

Read more here: https://www.mainstreetdailynews.com/education/uf-memorial-pipe-organ-centennial

View and download the schedule

Willis will be involved in many of the activities including two presentations.

Friday January 24 3:00 PM MUB 101: Primal Bach: A Number Secret Revealed

Saturday January 25 11:00 PM University Auditorium: What Is, What Might Have Been

Join the festive Christmas Eve Holy Eucharist at St. James Episcopal church online via Facebook or YouTube, or if you are near Hendersonville, NC, join in person. The 8 p.m. EST service will be a traditional festal Eucharist with choir, trumpet, handbells, sung liturgy, incense, and candlelight.

This service will include a Willis Bodine original composition: a new arrangement of “Lo, How A Rose E’re Blooming” for six handbells and solo flute. The Handbell Choir is directed by Linda Hill, the flautist is Paul Doebler (Juilliard graduate and church choir member) and the presentation will be conducted by Brad Gee, director of music ministries.

View the performance:

My 2011 Preces and Responses for the Anglican service of Evening Prayer was sung on November 22, 2022, as part of Evensong for St. Andrew’s Day at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Florida. The excellent choir is conducted by John Lowe. They had premiered the work in 2016, so 2022 is the second “season” of their using the setting for Evensong at the UF Chapel of the Incarnation and Holy Trinity’s St Andrew’s Day and Feast of the Epiphany services.

View the complete service on Youtube (and enjoy all the Scottish dancing, and the bagpipes . . .).

View the Preces (1 minute 15 seconds)

View the Responses (7 minutes 15 seconds)

World premieres happen very seldom around the University of Florida, and even less often in my own life. But I am really excited about a new work to be heard for the first time this Saturday, February 15th, beginning at 6:00 pm at the UF Century Tower, as part of the inaugural season of the 2020 Florida Carillon Festival. The theme for February is love (organized around St. Valentine’s Day), so all of the music follows this idea. 💏

My new work is a carillon transcription for cast-bell carillon of the Prelude to Act One of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which contains the “Tristan chord” – the most famous chord in Western musical history. Wagner’s opera is one of the most complete musical representations of love’s human facets. It has amazed music theorists and listeners alike since 1858 when the work was completed. The performer on Saturday evening will be the eminent Dutch carillonneur Roy Kroezen*, recently appointed as Carillonneur of the Centralia Carillon in Centralia, Illinois. You are invited — and will find generous seating areas, including chairs, on the north side of the tower.

*Roy Kroezenis originally from The Netherlands, where he spent 22 years as a musician and organist. He studied carillon at the Netherlands Carillon School in Amersfoort,as well in Belgium and holds a masters degree in carillon, organ and choir conducting. Kroezen was appointed carillonneur of the Centralia Carillon(Illinois) in 2016. He is also organist at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Mount Vernon, Illinois, and the Fox Theater in St. Louis, Missouri.

 

On September 22, 2019, current and former carillon students along with Laura Ellis performed a concert commemorating the 40th anniversary of the installation of the Century Tower carillon.

From the event program:

Willis Bodine, UF Professor of Music (1959-2003) & University of Florida University Organist and Carillonneur, emeritus, composed “Twice Twain Ten for Two: A celebratory toccata-duet for the 40th anniversary of the Century Tower Carillon 1979-2019”. The composer’s prefatory notes to the work outline multiple references to the number 40, including:“twain ten” (the early Anglo-Saxonversion of “twenty”) is doubled by “twice” to make 40; several musical themes are drawn from the 1570 motet Spem in allum for 40 voices written by Thomas Tallis (c1505-1585); the work employs a 5/8 time signature; and, the total number of fingers and toes used by the two performers number 40.

Watch the piece performed by Laura Ellis and two students: Kiko Labayen and John Kemmerer, broadcast on Facebook Live.

[Read story about the event in The Gainesville Sun]

The University of Florida Oral History Collection is part of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and is an affiliated program of the University of Florida’s Department of History. Its collections include approximately 4,000 interviews and more than 85,000 pages of transcribed material, making it the largest oral history archive in the South and one of the major collections in the country.

There are two interviews with Willis Bodine:

1987 interview by Janet Graham
1992 interview by H.G. Young