Topics: College of Fine Arts, Faculty, Awards

June 30, 2020

Sursa Hall

Portugal is a hotbed of talent for clarinet playing, and Dr. Elizabeth Crawford, a Ball State professor of music performance and clarinetist, will travel there in Spring 2021 on a prestigious Fulbright Core Award for study and research.

“This award is the opportunity of a lifetime for me, and I am honored to have been selected to represent my country in this way,” Crawford said. “Not only is it a major achievement for me, but it highlights the great things that are going on in Ball State’s College of Fine Arts and the School of Music.”

Crawford teaches applied clarinet, pedagogy, and literature and has been at Ball State for 14 years.

She will travel to Lisbon, Portugal’s capital city, in March 2021 and return in June that year.

While overseas, Crawford’s primary goal is to teach at the Escola Superior de Musica de Lisboa, sharing her expertise in solo and chamber music for piccolo clarinets. She also hopes to play plenty of music, learn more about Portuguese culture and its unique style of clarinet playing, establish bonds with international colleagues, compose, and maybe even record her second album.

When she returns, Crawford will share the knowledge she gained from her experience with Ball State students. She also plans on using classroom technology so that her future students can interact with Portuguese instructors and musicians.

The Portuguese school of clarinet playing is strong and highly respected throughout the world, Crawford wrote in her project statement.

“Over the past 10 years, Portuguese students have won the International Clarinet Association’s High School Solo Competition five times and the Young Artist competition three times,” she wrote.

A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Crawford holds degrees from Furman University and the University of Michigan School of Music. She earned her doctorate at the Florida State University College of Music.

Crawford’s resume includes extensive international experience.

While living in London from 2002-2005, she performed extensively with virtually all of the major orchestras in the United Kingdom and recorded at the BBC, Abbey Road, Angel, and Olympic studios. Furthermore, she has performed and taught at festivals and universities throughout the world including Poland, New Zealand, Italy, Spain, and South Africa.

Fulbright Programs are an initiative within the U.S. Department of State to foster international goodwill and the exchange of ideas in education, culture, and science between the United States and more than 160 other countries.