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Roberto Sierra

For the past three decades Roberto Sierra’s works have been performed by orchestras, ensembles and festivals in the Americas and Europe. Sierra came to prominence in 1987, when hisfirst major orchestral composition, Júbilo, was performed at Carnegie Hall bythe Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Major commissions and performances include: the Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Atlanta Symphony,Houston Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, San AntonioSymphony, and Phoenix Symphony, as well as by the American ComposersOrchestra, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BuffaloPhilharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchestra (Zurich),National Orchestra of Barcelona, Symphony Orchestra of Galicia, the KronosQuartet, Continuum, Germany’s Radio Orchestras from Saarland andFrankfurt, England’s BBC Symphony, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, andat Wolf Trap, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Schleswig-HolsteinFestival, Festival Casals, France’s Festival de Lille, and others.

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Lee Kimura Tyson

Lee Kimura Tyson holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from Cornell University, with a minor focus in LGBT Studies, and an M.M. in Musicology from the University of Texas at Austin, with a Portfolio in Women's and Gender Studies. Their research on popular music in U.S. and online contexts focuses on the roles of music, voice, and digital media in formations of gender, race, and authenticity, particularly concerning trans and non-binary vocal expression. Tyson has presented their work at annual meetings for the American Musicological Society, American Anthropological Association, Society for Ethnomusicology, International Association for the Study of Popular Music--U.S. Chapter, and the Northeast Modern Language Association. Their research on experimental pop artist SOPHIE received the David Sanjek Award from IASPM-U.S.

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Elizabeth Lyon

Elizabeth Lyon is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology and is currently completing a dissertation entitled, Theorizing Music as Spiritual Practice: Perspectives from Augustine to Tinctoris.Her research centers on the history of musical thought, theory, and practice within medieval theological and philosophical contexts, particularly ways in which music theory intersects with medieval psychological frameworks for volition and affect. As a cellist and music director, she performs and teaches a wide range of Western art and sacred music, from new music to medieval office chants, in both university and community settings. She maintains an active career as both a baroque and modern cellist and has lectured and conducted workshops on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century performance practice. Her research has been published inGreek and Roman Musical Studiesand theInternational Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, and her music criticism can be found inThe Hudson Review.

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Michele Cheng

Michele Cheng, a 1.5 generation Taiwanese American, is an interdisciplinary composer who intertwines diverse media such as music, experimental theatre, and puppetry to engage with social issues and cultural identities. Through a journalistic approach to interview and research, she develops creative work that shines light on underrepresented individuals and their narratives.

Her works have been performed at CCRMA (Stanford, US), ICMC (Santiago, CL), ISSTA (IE), SICMF (Seoul, KR), Sonorities (…

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Maria Alejandra Bulla Clavijo

María Bulla is a music maker interested in the creation of flexible performance situations that allow individuals to experience art in a personal way. From the construction of miniature objects to oversized scores, instrumental pieces and field recordings, she attempts to create experiences in which music becomes part of everyday situations. María holds a bachelor’s degree in piano performance from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá D.C., Colombia), and a MFA in Composition and…

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Nathan Mondry

A professional organist, harpsichordist and fortepianist with international recognition as an improviser and composer, Nathan Mondry is a first-year D.M.A. student in the Keyboard Studies program at Cornell University. After completing a Bachelor’s Degree in Piano Performance at the University of Michigan, Nathan earned a Master’s Degree in Harpsichord Performance and an Artist Diploma in Organ Performance at McGill University, followed by a Master’s Degree in Historical Improvisation at the…

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Annette Richards

Annette Richards is Professor of Music and University Organist at Cornell, and the Executive Director of the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies. She is a performer and scholar with a specialty in 18th-century music and aesthetics, and interdisciplinary research into music, literature and visual culture. She is founding editor ofKeyboard Perspectives, a yearbook dedicated to historical performance and keyboard culture, but her scholarly work extends far beyond the organ and its music. She is particularly interested in the music and music aesthetics of mid- to late-18th century Germany, and especially C. P. E. Bach. Her bookThe Free Fantasia and the Musical Picturesque(Cambridge, 2001) explores the intersections between musical fantasy and the landscape garden in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century music across German-speaking Europe and England.

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Mark Mahoney

Mark Mahoney is a Ph.D. student in Musicology. His scholarly interests revolve around experimental music, broadly conceived, and its intersection with critical theory, sound studies, and a range of interdisciplinary approaches. His research has explored the contested legacies of high modernism, the relationship between political and aesthetic transgression in various 20th-century avant-gardes, and the institutional history of ethno/musicology and music studies more generally. Mark is an avid…

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Laura Cetilia

Providence-based cellist and electronic musician Laura Cetilia is a performer, composer, educator, and presenter. As a daughter of mixed heritage (second generation Mexican-American), she is at home with in-betweeness, moving with ease through genres and practices as she did with cultures and languages growing up on the Eastside of Los Angeles. As a composer, her music has been described as “unorthodox loveliness” by the Boston Globe and and her solo album, “Used, Broken, and Unwanted” was…

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Cheryl Tan

Cheryl Tan graduated from the University of Oxford in 2018 with a First Class Honours in Music, where she also won academic scholarships for her performance in the University examinations, the University-wide Joan Conway Scholarship for Advanced Performance Studies, and was appointed as the Organ Scholar of St. Hugh’s College. Supported by an Entrance Scholarship, Cheryl completed her Master’s degree in Piano Performance with Distinction at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama under the…

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Thomas Feng

Thomas Feng is a pianist, composer, and musicologist.

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Nic Vigilante

Nic is a current PhD student in Music & Sound Studies, where their ethnographic research revolves around questions of music, sound, performance, and unreality. Trained primarily as an ethnomusicologist, Nic draws from anthropology, sound studies, media studies, Asian American studies, and queer of color performance studies to investigate the performative and affective aspects of spaces outside of “real life.” Their three main areas of focus are queer Asian American nightlife in Los Angeles; music in virtual worlds; and the role of sound and music in e-sports.

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Clara Valenzuela

Clara Valenzuela is a first-year PhD student in the Musicology program. Her primary reason for studying musicology is to explore the social and political dimensions of music. Prior to her arrival at Cornell, Clara received a B.A. in Choral Music from the University of Southern California with a minor in Political Thought.
Broadly speaking, Clara is interested in the relationship between musical creation and its socio-political context. Recently, she has been drawn to the ways neoliberal…

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John Eagle

John Eagle is a composer and performer interested in harmonic perception and its role in acoustic ecology. His music has been performed by Isaura String Quartet, Southland Ensemble, Dog Star Orchestra, Inverted Space, Guthrie & Streb, What’s Next? Ensemble, New Century Players, Sage City Symphony, and others. Eagle has performed and presented work at Göteborg Art Sounds in Sweden, Co-Incidence Festival in Boston, and the Dog Star Orchestra and LAX Festivals in Los Angeles. He has created…

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Alex Pasqualini

Alex Pasqualini is a current Ph.D. student in Music & Sound Studies. Their research is focused on the intersections of popular music, activism, and queer community building, with a recent focus on the 1990s queer-feminist-punk music of riot grrrl and queercore. Coming from Southwestern Ontario, Alex completed their bachelor’s degree in music at the University of Western Ontario and a Master of Arts in Musicology with the collaborative Sexual Diversity Studies program from the University of…

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Rachel Horner

Rachel Horner is a current PhD student in musicology. A New Jersey native, Rachel holds both an MA in musicology and a BM in vocal music education and Spanish from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. In her research, Rachel explores the intersections between music, sound, language, and identity. Her master’s thesis, the result of an ongoing ethnographic project, argues for a focus on music and sound as central components of the creation and maintenance of regional identity within the…

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Joshua Biggs

Josh Biggs (b. 22 September 1993) is a composer from Cape Town, South Africa, with recent electroacoustic and chamber work focusing on the relationship between gesture and affect.
Biggs has studied with Lewis Nielson, Aaron Helgeson, Tom Lopez, and Jesse Jones, and holds a BMus in Composition from Oberlin Conservatory, (2017). In August 2019, Biggs will begin their DMA in Composition at Cornell University, under the guidance of Kevin Ernste, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, and Roberto Sierra…

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Han Xu

Han Xu 许瀚 (b 1989, Beijing China) is a composer, sound artist, and improviser who has gained a great deal of inspiration from Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist Philosophy.
Han Xu is currently a doctoral student at Cornell University, where he studied with Marianthi Papaleandri-Alexandri, Kevin Ernste, and Trevor J. Pinch. In 2008, he began studying music at the Communication University of China in Beijing and, in 2017, he finished a music masters degree in composition (graduating with distinction…

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Cibele Moura

Originally from São Paulo, Brazil, Cibele Moura is a third-year doctoral student in musicology at Cornell University. She works at the intersection of musicology and ethnomusicology to explore questions of cultural production and consumption in the Americas throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She is broadly interested in the transnational circulation of Afro-diasporic sounds and the position of Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban music within each culture’s neocolonial complexities.…

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Richard Valitutto

Richard Valitutto is a Grammy-nominated piano soloist, chamber musician, vocal accompanist, and composing/improvising creative with an active performance schedule that spans both coasts of the U.S., across the country, and abroad. Described as a “vivid soloist,” “vigorously virtuosic,” “quietly dazzling,” and “all around go-to new music specialist” (LA Times), his soloistic charisma and flexible collaborative artistry have distinguished him for his tenacity in bringing dynamic life to scores in…

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Rafael Torralvo

Rafael Torralvo is a violinist and scholar currently pursuing a PhD degree in musicology at Cornell University. Born in Brazil and educated in the United States, Rafael holds a BM and a MM degree in violin performance from James Madison University and West Chester University of Pennsylvania, respectively. He is also an alumnus from the Frost School of Music, at the University of Miami, where he received a MM degree in musicology.
Rafael employs an interdisciplinary approach to his scholarly…

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Thomas Cressy

Thomas is currently exploring the academic intersection between anthropology, social theory, and musicology – with a focus on indexicality, affordance theory, atmosphere, and ethnographic approaches to music. His field site for his work has been Japan for the past five years, where he has been researching the Japanese reception and social conceptions of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music in particular. He has also conducted historical and archival work on the music of the foreign trading settlements…

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Miles Friday

Born in Seattle, WA., Miles Jefferson Friday is currently pursuing a DMA in music composition at Cornell University. Miles holds a MA in composition from the Eastman School of Music where he studied primarily with Oliver Schneller, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon and David Liptak and a BM from the Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music. While at Eastman Miles served as the instructor for ‘Notation & Calligraphy’ and ‘the Basics of Orchestration’, was a staff member and lab instructor at the…

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Steven Pond

Steve Pond’s scholarly interests center on jazz and musics of the African Diaspora generally. His articles and reviews have appeared inEthnomusicologyand the Music Library Association’s journal,Notes. His book,Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters: The Making of Jazz’s First Platinum Album, was published by University of Michigan Press in 2005 and republished as a paperback in 2010. The book was awarded the Woody Guthrie Prize for best monograph in popular music studies by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (United States chapter). His work generally focuses on historiography, especially as it relates to issues of authenticity and authority, race, ethnicity, class, gender, and other identity frameworks, particularly as these issues. A central consideration is the politics of genre classification.

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