CAMP RIPLEY, MINN. (07/09/2012)(readMedia)-- Soldiers with the Illinois National Guard began arriving at Camp Ripley, Minn., July 6 to support and train the 33rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) through the Army National Guard's premier training program for brigade combat teams.

Units from all major commands in the Illinois National Guard are involved in the training event that includes the 33rd IBCT in Urbana, the 108th Sustainment Brigade in Chicago, the 65th Troop Command Brigade in Springfield, the 404th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade in Chicago, and the Joint Forces Headquarters in Springfield. At the peak of operations there will be more than 3,200 Soldiers from Illinois at Camp Ripley.

Brig. Gen. Johnny Miller, Assistant Adjutant General for the Illinois Army National Guard, and the Task Force Illini commander for the exercise, said this is an opportunity to highlight the quality of the Illinois Army National Guard and its Soldiers.

"This exercise will demonstrate the high caliber of our organization to key decision makers at the national level and the community leaders where our armories are located," said Miller.

The 33rd IBCT is the primary training audience during the 21-day exercise, which will certify the brigade's companies and platoons on the ability to perform mission specific tasks. Completing the three-week training exercise ensures the 33rd IBCT will be ready for potential future deployments in 2014 when the brigade will be in the available force pool.

Col. Paul C. Hastings, the 33rd IBCT commander said the exercise will be intense and challenging for all units in the 33rd IBCT.

"Over the next three weeks we will train to be the most lethal and survivable IBCT in the National Guard. Our execution of this exercise will be the most aggressive and complicated ever contemplated by an IBCT in this program," said Hastings.

The 33rd IBCT last completed the same Army National Guard program in 2008 before the unit deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

The Army National Guard program, the eXportable Combat Training Capability (XCTC), was created in 2005 to reduce training overhead for National Guard brigades without sacrificing quality, standards, or outcomes. It is designed to build upon fundamental doctrine while integrating tough, realistic training. The XCTC program provides a cost-effective and readily available alternative to the Army's Combat Training Centers.

Speaker registration now open for hearings in Philadelphia and Sacramento, Calif.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will hold two public hearings on the proposed updates to the national air quality standards for fine particle pollution (PM2.5). A federal court ruling required EPA to update the standards based on best available science. The proposed updates, which meet that requirement, build on steps already taken by EPA to reduce pollution in communities across the country.

WHAT: Public hearings on proposed updates to national air quality standards for fine particle pollution.

WHEN: July 17, 2012 (Philadelphia) 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. EDT   
July 19, 2012 (Sacramento) 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. PDT

WHERE: July 17, Philadelphia

William J. Green Federal Building
600 Arch Street
Philadelphia, Pa. 19106

July 19, Sacramento, Calif.

California Air Resources Board
1001 "I" Street
Sacramento, Calif. 95814

To register to speak at the hearings, contact Alan Rush at rush.alan@epa.gov or 202-564-1658. Members of the public also may register in person at the hearing and will be accommodated as time allows. EPA also will accept written comments on the proposed standards until Aug. 31, 2012. EPA will issue the final standards by December 14, 2012.

Note: Please bring picture identification and allow additional time to enter the buildings and go through security.

More information on the hearings and instructions for submitting written comments: http://www.epa.gov/pm/actions.html

DES MOINES -- On Tuesday, July 10, President Obama will travel to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he will visit the home of Jason and Ali McLaughlin to discuss the need for Congress to extend middle-class tax cuts that would prevent a tax hike on all families earning less than $250,000. The President believes our economy grows from the middle out and that's why his plan would prevent a $2,200 tax burden on families like the McLaughlins. Currently, as a result of the tax cuts President Obama has already signed into law, the McLaughlins will receive a total of about $4,900 in tax relief over the President's first term.

In addition to the President's call to extend middle-class tax cuts, his plan would also ask millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share and let the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest expire, which would help families like the McLaughlins send kids to college, buy new homes, pay for health care and child care, and help the economy recover from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. This is part of the President's plan to cut the deficit by more than $4 trillion and make investments that strengthen the middle class while cutting spending and ensuring that everyone pays their fair share.

Following his roundtable with the McLaughlins, the President will deliver remarks at a grassroots event at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, where he will continue to outline his plan to build an economy that is grown from the middle out, not from the top down, where everyone has a fair shot to succeed and plays by the same set of rules.

The 2012 Blackhawk Chamber Music Festival presents three unique performances, including a benefit for the festival entitled FLUTE FIESTA on July 21 with flutist Jeffrey Cohan, BEETHOVEN TO MODERN BIX on August 4 with soprano Anne Harley, harpsichordist Gregory Hand, violist Christine Rutledge, lutenist and viola da gambist Oleg Timofeyev and flutist Jeffrey Cohan.

All concerts will take place at 7:30 PM at Trinity Cathedral at 121 West 12th Street in Davenport.

On Saturday, July 21, 2012 at 7:30 PM, flutist and artistic director Jeffrey Cohan will present FLUTE FIESTA, a flute extravaganza featuring 13 flutes from the renaissance, the time of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and the present day which Jeffrey Cohan performed all over China last month. The program will include a Chinese piece modeled after a well known ancient Chinese melody and an American work with no notes but plenty of music. Proceeds from this unique program showcasing six centuries of flute music will benefit the remaining concerts.

On Sunday, July 22, 2012 at 7:30 PM in BEETHOVEN to MODERN, flutist Jeffrey Cohan and guitarist Oleg Timofeyev will perform works from Beethoven's time, the golden age of the guitar-flute duo, on an 8-keyed flute and guitar made in the early 19th century, and the jazz-inspired works of modern times on modern instruments.

On Saturday, August 4, 2012 at 7:30 PM in BACH for BIX, soprano Ann Harley, flutist Jeffrey Cohan, violist Christine Rutledge, harpsichordist Gregory Hand and guitarist and viola da gambist Oleg Timofeyev will perform an innovative program of transcriptions for new instrumental combinations including the exquisite cantata entitled Ich habe genug by the incomparable Johann Sebastian Bach, who like Bix Beiderbeck was an improvisational master.

The suggested donation (a free will offering) will be $10 or $15, and those 18 and under are free. For further information the public may call Trinity Cathedral at (563) 323-9989 and see www.bhcmf.org. Tickets are available at the door and through www.brownpapertickets.com.

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Canadian soprano ANNE HARLEY is a specialist in both baroque and contemporary music and has premiered works by many composers. She performs in North America, Europe and Asia as a recitalist and has appeared as a soloist with Opera Boston, The American Repertory Theatre, The Handel & Haydn Society, Boston Camerata, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the North Carolina Symphony and at the Tanglewood Festival. She débuted in Europe at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw as the lead in Handel's Acis and Galatea and created leading roles in the modern-day première of Royer's Le pouvoir de l'Amour in conjunction with the Centre de
Musique Baroque de Versailles. The Boston Globe acclaimed her performance as "vocally and dramatically outstanding." The Village Voice described her performance with the Finnish Tero Saarinen Dance Company and the Boston Camerata as transmitting a "heart-wrenching purity."

In 2009-10, she performed the lead role of Margaret Mead in the world and US premières of Evan Ziporyn's A House in Bali with Bang-On-A-Can in Bali, Boston and New York (BAM). Her latest project, VoicesOfThePearl, commissions artists and composers to create song cycles and multimedia pieces to texts by and about female mystical experience from traditions around the world.

She obtained the doctorate in Historical Performance at Boston University, and is codirector of Russian early music ensemble,TALISMAN, which won the Noah Greenberg Award in 2001 and released its first CD on Dorian to acclaim in Gramophone and EMA. They have since released several more recordings of early Russian and Russian Roma (Gypsy) music with major labels. Her solo performances are available on Hänssler Profil, Naxos, Sony Classics, Dorian, Canteloupe, Musica Omnia and BMOP/sound. Please see www.anneharley.com.

Artistic director JEFFREY COHAN can "play many superstar flutists one might name under the table" according to the New York Times, and is "The Flute Master" according to the Boston Globe. He has received international acclaim both as a modern flutist, and as one of the foremost early flute specialists. The only person to win both the Erwin Bodky Award (Boston), and the top prize in the Flanders Festival International Concours Musica Antiqua (Brugge, Belgium), he won First Prize in the Olga Koussevitzky Young Artist Competition, and has performed in 26 countries, having earned the highest rating from the National Endowment for the Arts. Many works have been written for and premiered by him, including five new flute concerti by American and Slovene composers in the new millennium.

Born in Davenport, Jeffrey Cohan graduated from Rock Island High School and performed solo concerti with the Tri-City Youth Symphony under the direction of James Dixon, with the Clinton Symphony under William Henigbaum, and with the Rock Island High School Band under Donald Kruzan. He was Artist-in-Residence at Augustana College from 1983 to 1988, during which time he also taught flute at Indiana University in Bloomington and gave many performances in Ascension Chapel and yearly Candlelight Christmas Concerts. He has also taught at the University of Northern Iowa and at Grinnell College. His mentor while in the Quad Cities was and continues to be flutist Walter Haedrich of Moline. Jeffrey performs each year in Europe, most recently in Germany, Ukraine and Slovenia, and he performed and gave masterclasses throught China last month (June, 2012). He lives with his wife and three children in Washington State's Skagit Valley, where he also directs the Cascade Early Music Festival and the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival in Washington, DC.

OLEG TIMOFEYEV plays the renaissance, 10-course, and baroque lutes, 19th-century guitar, viola da gamba and recorder, and is one of the world's foremost authorities on the Russian seven-string guitar. He was an Artist in Residence for the School of Music at the University of Iowa, where has been Visiting Assistant Professor for the Department of Russian since 1999. He also has taught at Grinnell College and Cornell College. Mr. Timofeyev has a Ph. D. in Performance Practice from Duke University and has received many fellowships, grants and awards, including two separate Fulbright grants for recent research into the Russian guitar in Moscow and for teaching early plucked instruments in Ukraine. His editions have been published by A-R Editions, and his articles have appeared in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and in the Lute Society Quarterly among other periodicals. In Moscow he founded and directed the still active early music group Pratum Musicum for the Moscow Palace of Culture. He is guest lecturer/ performer with the annual Vanamuusika Päevad, an Estonian early music festival, and directs the annual International Russian Guitar Festival and the International Academy for Russian Music, Arts, and Culture, both in Iowa City, Iowa. He has made many solo recordings for Dorian Recordings.

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The Black Hawk Chamber Music Festival, founded in 2000, aspires to provide new perspective through chamber music by famous as well as little-known composers, illuminating many unusual aspects of musical performance from the Renaissance through the present, sometimes performing these early works on exact replicas of the instruments with which the composers were familiar and occasionally premiering new works. Festival repertoire ranges from classical favorites and new works written for the performers to unpublished musical gems from libraries around the world. The festival brings together artists from the region and other world-class musicians from around the country.

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