Dr. Rodney Garnett

Rodney Garnett, professor emeritus in the Department of Music at the University of Wyoming, studied flute with Karen Yonovitz, Larry Jordan, Geoffrey Gilbert, and Thomas Nyfenger. He has worked extensively as a free-lance musician in orchestras, jazz and chamber music ensembles, folk music ensembles, and recording studios. Garnett continues to be an active performer and teacher, utilizing many styles and forms of flutes that include early nineteenth century European instruments and Moldovan nai. He has performed extensively at the University and around the state of Wyoming, regionally with classical guitarist Alex Komodore, nationally with the Irish Folk Ensemble Colcannon, and as a soloist at the Boxwood Festival in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. His Laramie-based quartet “Lights Along the Shore” with clarinetist Blake McGee, pianist Lisa Rickard, and percussionist Steve Barnhart, performs original compositions and arrangements of folk and classical melodies from around the world, and released its second CD in 2015.

Garnett is a recipient of the 2003 Wyoming Governor's Arts Award, the 2008 University of Wyoming Internationalization Award, and was the 2007 University of Wyoming Presidential Speaker. He completed the PhD in Anthropology in 2014 and is continuing to collaborate with colleagues around the world to learn more about human cultural creativity and the embodiment of aesthetic responses in daily life. His dissertation work focused on the highly relational aspects of aural musical learning in the Republic of Moldova. Garnett’s ethnographic study in Moldova was supported by the Seibold Professorship grant from the University of Wyoming, College of Arts and Sciences, and a research grant from the United States Fulbright Program.