Music Department Faculty

Music Department Faculty

Current Grad Students

Music Current Grad Students

Music Emeritus Faculty

Music Emeritus Faculty

Music Graduate Field Faculty

Music Graduate Field Faculty

Music Visiting Faculty

Music Visiting Faculty
Klarman Hall

Bamba Ndiaye

Bamba Ndiaye is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society for the Humanities and the Music Department. He received his PhD in Comparative Humanities with a concentration in Culture Criticism and Contemporary Thought at the University of Louisville where he also taught classes including Social Movements in the Black Atlantic, Creativity & the Arts, Intro to Pan-African Studies and French, among others. His research interests focus on protest movements in the Black Atlantic, Pan-Africanism, soundscapes of social protests, Black popular cultures, and postcolonial theory. He is the author of several published and forthcoming peer-reviewed articles and book chapters including “African American Evangelic Missions and Social Reforms in the Congo,” “Hip-Hop, Civic Awareness and Anti-Establishment Politics in Senegal,” and “Social Movements and the Challenges of Resources Mobilization in the Digital Era.” As a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell, Bamba will be working on his book project entitled Black Social Movement and Digital Technology. Using the Y en a marre movement in Senegal as a case study, this project examines how social movement in Francophone West Africa are spearheading a renaissance of Pan-Africanism which he calls “Neo Pan-Africanism”. His project also delves into the use of digital technology, music, and social media as means for contemporary African social activists to foster transatlantic connections and racial solidarity, and to coordinate mass actions against power establishments in the Black Atlantic. His secondary project investigates the use of digital technology and music streaming platforms in the production and commercialization of Francophone West African hip hop. Bamba is the recipient of the 2018 Barbara Harlow Prize for Excellence in Graduate Research at the Annual Africa Conference at the University of Texas. He is also is also recipient of the Roberson Fund for Research in African Studies as well as winner of the Anne Braden Social Justice Paper Award at the University of Louisville. He is the creator and host of The Africanist, an academic podcast that investigates historical and contemporary issues in the Black Atlantic.

/bamba-ndiaye
Klarman Hall

Mike Cheng-Yu Lee

Mike Cheng-Yu Lee is one of a new generation of pianists who is at home performing on pianos that span the early 18th to the late 20th centuries. Awarded Second Prize and Audience Prize at the 2011Westfield International Fortepiano Competitionby a jury that included Robert Levin and the late Christopher Hogwood, his performances have garnered attention for the fresh perspectives they bring to familiar repertoire. For his debut recital in Australia he received a rare five-star review inLimelight Magazine: “Try as one might, it was hard to avoid cliché responses like ‘stunning’, even ‘electrifying’. I don’t think I have heard a Mozart recital quite like this. I heard things in Mozart’s music I had never thought possible and certainly had never encountered before.”

/mike-cheng-yu-lee
Klarman Hall

Moustapha Fall

Hip hop artist Moustapha Fall performs under the moniker ResKp (from the French rescapé, meaning survivor). A prominent rapper in Dakar, Senegal, he launched his national career in 2003, when he was named Best New Artist in the Senegalese Hip Hop Awards, followed by a spate of recognition in televised competitions and awards ceremonies. He has appeared in major festivals including the 2010 World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar and the Saint Louis Jazz Festival.

/moustapha-fall
Klarman Hall

Christopher J. Miller

Christopher J. Miller is a scholar and musician whose interests and activities revolve around two points of focus: experimental music, and the music of Indonesia, especially Central Javanese gamelan.

/christopher-j-miller
Roberto Sierra

Acclaimed Composer and Latin Grammy Winner Roberto Sierra Retires

Roberto Sierra, the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, will retire at the end of the fall 2021 semester after twenty-nine and a half years at Cornell University. Hailing from Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, Roberto joined the faculty in 1992 as a pioneering composer whose music frequently synthesized Caribbean and European musical...

Bluthner piano interior strings

Sustaining Historical Pianos Gala-Symposium

The Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards presents an end-of-year gala celebration: SUSTAINING PIANOS – A Gala-Symposium in honor of Ken Walkup’s Retirement. On Friday, December 10 at 8:00 pm, Xak Bjerken, Miri Yampolsky, Roger Moseley, Malcolm Bilson, and Mike Lee will share the Barnes Hall stage alongside guest artist Martha Guth and students...

Appert receives 2021 Marcia Herndon Prize

Professor Catherine Appert has received the 2021 Marcia Herndon Prize from the Gender and Sexualities Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology for her article (co-written with Sidra Lawrence) "Ethnomusicology beyond #MeToo: Listening for the Violences of the Field." The article was published in Ethnomusicology, the flagship journal in the field...

Holst-Warhaft publishes book on music of the Aegean Islands

Gail Holst-Warhaft, Adjunct Professor of Comparative Literature and a member of the Graduate Field at Cornell's Department of Music, has recently published her book Nisiotika: Music, Dances, and Bittersweet Songs of the Aegean Islands. The book focuses on the Greek tradition of nisiotika, the music and songs that are played and sung at festivals...

Album cover featuring an angel and airplane

Spinelli performs on Grammy-nominated recording

Rising w/ The Crossing, the most recent album by The Crossing, a chamber choir that counts Senior Lecturer Stephen Spinelli as one of its members, just received a Grammy nomination for Best Choral Performance. The album is a compilation of live performances from years past that was released during the COVID-19 quarantine. Conductor Donald Nally...

Klarman Hall

Paul Merrill

Paul Merrill was introduced to jazz by performing with upstate New York mentors Steve Brown, Joe Salzano, and Spiegle Wilcox. He performed at the Goombay Jazz Festival (Bahamas) and later won a DownBeat award under the tutelage of Rufus Reid in 1995. These early experiences helped shape his career as a trumpeter by instilling the importance of the jazz tradition and exploring the endless possibilities of improvised music. He toured with Hank Roberts, Half Pint, John Brown’s Body, and the Grammy…

/paul-merrill
Three women singing

Popular Music Course Makes its Winter Session Debut

Cornell’s Winter Session has always been a great way for students to earn credits, but many may not realize that some popular courses, often closed out during the spring and fall semesters, are also available during the winter.

Klarman Hall

Zoe Weiss

I embrace a busy and diverse life as a player of music, a scholar of music, and a teacher of music. Not only do these different modes of interacting with the gooey substance of music enrich each other, but for me, a full engagement with each emerges only through their triptych entanglement.

/zoe-weiss
Klarman Hall

Andrew Zhou

Pianist Andrew Zhou has been noted for his “great sensitivity” and luminous technique” (Anaclase), as well as performances of “extraordinary energy” (ResMusica). Second-prize laureate of the Concours International de Piano d’Orléans, Mr. Zhou has toured throughout France and has appeared in major venues such as the KKL (Lucerne Festival), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Tongyeong Concert Hall, and the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord (Paris). He has worked closely with leading composers of our time, including Unsuk Chin, Jacques Lenot, Tristan Murail, Matthias Pintscher, Christian Wolff, and Walter Zimmermann, and has, in addition, been the dedicatee and first performer of works of countless composers of a younger generation. Mr. Zhou is the recent recipient of a commissioning grant from the Arts Council of Ireland for a half-concert length work from composer Peter Fahey. As half of HereNowHear, a piano(+electronics) duo with Ryan McCullough, he has created commissioning projects centered on Stockhausen’s Mantra, receiving works from Christopher Stark, Loren Loiacono, and John Liberatore, with support from the Fromm Foundation. He has been the pianist of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble and ULYSSES Ensemble. Currently, he is on the Diversity Steering Committee for the Lucerne Festival Academy, of which he is an alumnus.

/andrew-zhou

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