Graduate Student News 2018

Can Bilir (Composition) spent the year as a Harvard University Exchange Scholar. He wrote commissions for Ensemble Adapter and  Distract-fold Ensemble,  both of which premiered at Harvard University's Paine Hall, and a commission, with Kinan Azmeh, for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Ensemble-in-Residence Aizuri Quartet (featuring Professor Ariana Kim), which premiered at The MET in New York City, and was performed at the World Café Live at Philadelphia. He presented a paper on Zaide/Adama by Mozart and Czernowin at the 2018 ACLA Conference. He has had his work performed at the ICM2 (Intercultural Music Conference & Concerts) in Ondokuz Mayis University Turkey, and by Ensemble Stem in New York City. 

This season, David Friend performed a major new work by Steve Reich in concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Library of Congress with Ensemble Signal. His new piano/percussion project, Bent Duo, continued to establish itself, with performances on both coasts, residencies at Hartford Art School/Hartt School of Music and SUNY Orange, and recording projects of music by Casey Anderson and Sarah Hennies. The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner project continued to be in demand, with performances in Berlin, Milan, and North Carolina. He was the soloist in the performance of Galina Ustvolskaya's Symphony No. 2 that opened the 2018 Bang on a Can Marathon in NYC, and he also premiered a new evening-length set of music for solo piano and live electronics by Jerome Begin as part of a Brian Brooks Dance company production at the Harris Theater in Chicago and the Joyce Theater in NYC. Other highlights include touring Alaska with Wild Shore, appearances at the Prague Spring with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the premiere of a new work by Missy Mazzoli for Grand Band piano sextet commissioned by Chamber Music America, and a residency performance for Princeton Sound Kitchen. 

Dietmar Freisenegger (Musicology) has been awarded a Mario Einaudi Dissertation Fellowship for 2018-19 to continue his research in Central and Eastern Europe (Romania, Ukraine, Austria, the Czech Republic) as well as in Israel and the US. His discovery of manuscripts of unpublished scores led to the foundation of the Mandyczewski Festival in Chernivtsi, Ukraine in 2017, which will see its second installment – titled “Forgotten Voices from Czernowitz” – this fall. 

Corey Keating (Composition) spent the past year traveling through Vietnam on a Fulbright grant, meeting and collaborating with various musicians, studying trends in contemporary and traditional musical communities, and looking at how music is changing in this modernizing nation.  He also enjoyed copious amounts of jackfruit, fish sauce, and motorbike trips, though not always in that order, and plenty of bia hơi and other general debauchery of the sort.  

Elizabeth Lyon (Musicology) was awarded a Don M. Randel Teaching Fellowship to design and teach her course “Music in World Religions” in the Fall 2018 Semester.  This past year, she was named Music Critic for  The Hudson Review, a post held in the past by Joseph Kerman.  Elizabeth's article, "Affection, Attention, and the Will: Medieval Models of Devout Chant" is forthcoming in  The International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music , and she is currently preparing a presentation for The Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference 2018 in Maynooth, Ireland, entitled, "Jesus Christ Superstar: Medieval Tales of a Singing Saviour."  Earlier this year, she delivered the talk "Instruments of the Affections in Jean Gerson's Tractatus de Canticis" at the conference "Instruments of Music Theory" held at the Eastman School of Music.  Elizabeth has enjoyed performing in a variety of concerts this year, including debuts on rebec and baroque dance alongside baroque and modern cello. 

Ryan MacEvoy McCullough (Performance Practice) will release two recordings this summer, the first featuring music of Australian composer Nicholas Vines: "Hipster Zombies from Mars" for Navona Records; and John Liberatore's Line Drawings, a retrospective album for Albany Records of the composer's chamber music featuring the eponymous work for solo piano.  With soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, he has recorded an album of music by James Primosch and John Harbison for Albany Records, in addition to the duo giving performances at the the Cincinnati Art Song Initiative, SUNY Stony Brook, Merkin Hall, Albany Symphony Orchestra's American Music Festival, and the Cleveland Art Song Festival. Ryan was featured as soloist for Jonathan Harvey's Bird Concerto with Pianosong, with Ensemble X and Timothy Weiss, will be returning to the Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival in July, and with HereNowHear will be performing Stockhausen's “Mantra” at Syracuse University next season. 

David H. Miller (Musicology) received grants from the Cornell University American Studies Program and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies to conduct archival research at several sites throughout the state of Washington and in Basel, Switzerland. He presented his research at the biennial International Conference on Music Since 1900 at the University of Surrey (UK) and was awarded the Graduate Student Paper Prize at the annual meeting of the New York State-St. Lawrence chapter of the American Musicological Society for "The First International Webern Festival; or, It Happened at the World’s Fair." In June 2018 David will be speaking on the music of Anton Webern at Trinity Wall Street in New York, NY as part of their Time's Arrow festival.  

This year, Jordan Musser (Musicology) designed and taught the course “Popular Music and Politics from a Global Perspective” as part of a Don M. Randel Teaching Fellowship. In the summer of 2017, he spent time conducting dissertation research in London, England with the support of a travel grant awarded by the Cornell University Society for the Humanities. Conference appearances include  After Experimental Music  (Cornell) and  Precarious Sounds/Sounding Sanctuary  (New York University), where Jordan presented on free improvisation and dub poetry, respectively. He is slated to present more of his research at the conferences of the North American British Music Studies Association and the American Musicological Society in the summer and fall. Additional highlights span several guest teaching engagements and performing and recording with the Latin American band Palonegro.

Sergio Ospina-Romero (Musicology) presented in various conferences last year, including the Association of Colombianistas (San Diego, CA), Society for Ethnomusicology (Denver, CO), American Musicological Society (Rochester, NY), American Historical Association (Washington D.C.), Association of Recorded Sound Collections (Baltimore, MD), and the Latin American branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (Puerto Rico). Sergio also completed two chapters of his dissertation, published a review for the Journal of Folklore Research and an entry for Musicology Now (AMS's blog), and had an article accepted for the Journal of the American Musicological Society. Palonegro, the Latin band Sergio leads, began the recording of its first CD that will include mostly Sergio's compositions. Sergio was awarded with the Randel Fellowship for 2018–19 and will teach a course in the spring titled "Jazz Around the World."

This year, Charles Peck’s (Composition) work has been named a winner of the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble’s Composition Contest, the Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award, the NFMC Emil and Ruth Beyer Composition Award, and the Civic Orchestra’s New Music Workshop. His work has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, the Boston New Music Initiative, the Axiom Quartet, the Vanderbilt Percussion Group, the Sound Ensemble, and the Locrian Chamber Players, among others. This summer, Peck’s orchestral work, Vinyl, will be featured at the Cabrillo Festival and the Beijing Modern Music Festival and his recent collaboration with Alarm Will Sound and King Britt, The Moment of the Fall, will be premiered in St. Louis. Website: www.CharlesPeckMusic.com 

Sean Peters (Musicology) presented his paper “Speaking Through Noise: Punks in the Studio and the Importance of the Experiential” at the global Society for Ethnomusicology annual meeting in October 2017. 

This year, Minnesota’s VocalEssence premiered two new a cappella chorus commissions by Daniel Sabzghabaei (Composition): one entitled  Golī az dast beraft at Minnesota ACDA, the other called  Zemestūn  at ICEhouse, Minneapolis. December saw the premiere of his New York Festival of Song commission  At The Door  at the CUNY Graduate Center in the Elebash Recital Hall. In October, Seattle-based vocal ensemble  The Esoterics  premiered and gave two subsequent performances of his POLYPHONOS prize-winning commission The Blue Booby. In March, Daniel was selected for Beth Morrison Project’s Next Generation initiative, culminating in a week-long workshop and performance of his work Two Reflections on The Belovèd  at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust. This Fall will see a performance of his solo violin work  Hāl–Chahārgāh  at the Moab Festival with violinist Ayano Ninomiya. 

Annalise Smith (Musicology) is currently preparing to defend her dissertation  Genre, Identity, and Institutional Authority at the Paris Opéra in the "Age of Gluck" (1770–1781). She was awarded the Don M. Randel teaching fellowship for her course "Opera: Social Power, Social Myth, Social Change, which she taught in Fall 2017. She also taught opera history at Ithaca College in the spring. In her paper "Teaching Opera in the Age of Harvey Weinstein," presented at the Teaching Music History Conference in June 2018, she shared her experiences in teaching operatic violence and rape in the context of the #MeToo movement. In addition to her scholarly work, Annalise served as producer for Savoyards Ithaca's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's  The Gondoliers. In September, Annalise will be joining the faculty at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland.

Incoming pianist Richard Valitutto is finalizing two album projects: first, with saxophonist Dave Wilson, he was awarded a Copland Fund Recording Grant for their album SLANT, collaboratively composed/improvised by the duo, which will be released on pfMENTUM Records; second, he recorded his debut solo album of contemporary Nocturnes and Lullabies, featuring first recordings of piano solos by Rebecca Saunders, Nicholas Deyoe, and others. He toured the States in early spring with the ensemble wild Up, as well as performing with them at Disney Hall with the Los Angeles Master Chorale. With Monday Evening Concerts, held at Zipper Hall at the Colburn School, Richard was the featured piano soloist and harpsichordist on a program of Sciarrino and Dufay/Mundry, and in a separate program he co-directed and led the MEC ensemble in the West Coast premiere of Julius Eastman's Femenine. His quartet gnarwhallaby presented a concert of premieres on Tuesdays @ Monk Space in central LA, and Richard and his partner, soprano Justine Aronson, enjoyed a weeklong residency at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute in New Hampshire. Reviews in the Los Angeles Times of recent performances can be read here and also here. 

Zoe Weiss (Musicology) released a CD of music from the Elizabethan manuscript about which she's writing her dissertation. Her ensemble LeStrange Viols recorded the album on the antique instruments of the Caldwell Collection including two actual Elizabethan viols! Aeternum: Music of the Elizabethan Avant Garde from Add. MS 31390 is widely available on the New Focus label. Pictured: Zoe tuning a festooned viol by John Rose c1600 during the recording session.  

Andrew Zhou (Performance Practice) performed a memorial concert for Paul Zukofsky in New York, and was a part of a series of performances at Roulette, Brooklyn, surrounding the music of Frank Zappa with alumni of the Lucerne Festival Academy under conductor Matthias Pintscher. With HereNowHear, he performed Stockhausen's "Mantra" as part of Northwestern's NUNC3! Festival, and the duo will be the recipient of a two-piano work thanks to a Fromm commission to composer John Liberatore. Other performances included entries of the "Catalogue d'oiseaux" in at the American Museum of Natural History and a series of concerts dedicated to the Polish composer Roman Palester. In September, Andrew was invited by Unsuk Chin to perform a solo and chamber recital in the Tongyeong Concert Hall, South Korea, as part of Isang Yun's centenary celebrations in his hometown, and later in the fall, will record works by Benjamin Boretz and others for the new label Open Space.