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The Department of Music is pleased to announce the appointment of Elizabeth Ogonek as Assistant Professor of Composition, starting in July 2021. Ogonek has been Assistant Professor of Composition at Oberlin Conservatory since 2015, and her music has been commissioned and performed by some of the world’s top orchestras, including the Chicago...
Earlier this month, the ASCAP Foundation announced the 20 winning composers in its 2020 Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. Among the recipients is Cornell graduate composer Piyawat Louilarpprasert, who was recognized for his 2019 saxophone concerto, Pixels. In announcing the awards, ASCAP Foundation President Paul Williams remarked, “Every year...
On January 9, 2020, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra gave the world premiere of Salseando, Professor Roberto Sierra’s new concerto for trumpet and orchestra, to great acclaim. That scintillating performance, featuring conductor Domingo Hindoyan and soloist Pacho Flores, is now available to stream here.
The Cornell University Music Department is celebrating two recent graduates who have accepted teaching positions at the University of Michigan, and the University of California, Berkeley.Mackenzie Pierce (Ph.D. Musicology '19) has accepted a tenure track position as Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Michigan School of Music....
The music department is offering three exciting new courses in the Fall 2020 semester, including undergraduate composition, a Mozart seminar, and a class dedicated to the album. More details are below, and the entire list of courses is available online starting April 15.Composers Toolbox I (Music 3141)Instructor: Roberto SierraCourse Time: TR...
Have you ever wondered what Beethoven's Tenth Symphony would have sounded like? Active Learning Initiative Postdoctoral Associate in Computational Music Theory Pedagogy Mark Gotham is part of a team that has been working to create an artificial intelligence-driven realization of the unfinished work.On Friday, April 3, Gotham will be a presenter...
Please visit our Giving Day landing page on March 12 to contribute! Cornell’s composers, performers, and music scholars shape the character of musical life in every corner of our campus, with an impact that continues far into the wider world. We provide opportunities for study and performance under the guidance of distinguished faculty, as part of...
The Whale Listening Project will take place in-person at Cornell University from September 23-26, 2021. Both the Keynote and Panel will offer virtual access for remote participants. The Workshop will be limited to 35 participants on a first-come first-served basis.Keynote:Thursday, September 23, 20217-8pm, followed by 8-8:30pm Q&A“The Ever...
Musicians around the world are celebrating Beethoven’s 250th birthday this year, and Cornell’s music department is no exception. The “I Heart Beethoven” Festival, taking place on the Cornell campus February 13-16, features explorations of his piano works corresponding to the musical ideas of fugues, variations, and improvisation.At the Midday...
Associate Professor Benjamin Piekut’s Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem was among Duke University Press’s five bestselling titles in 2019. The book details the flood of experimental music discourse and practice into popular culture in the late 1960s by way of the British rock band and several of its associates, including Slapp Happy, Faust, Robert...
Mark Gotham (Active Learning Initiative Postdoctoral Associate in Computational Music Theory Pedagogy) is part of a team recruited by Deutsche Telekom to create an artificial intelligence-driven realization of Ludwig van Beethoven's unfinished 10th symphony. The project focuses on one of the core questions of relevance to artificial intelligence,...
DMA composer Daniel Reza Sabzghabaei and his librettist colleagues have been awarded the highly competitive IDEA Opera Grant by Opera America for their monodrama The Veil. IDEA Opera Grants are the most recent addition to OPERA America’s grant programs designed to increase the depth and breadth of the contemporary American opera repertoire and are...
CALL for PAPERSBeyond Beethoven, 2020–1770Conference and Concert FestivalSeptember 17–20, 2020 Celebrating the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, this conference and concert festival explores keyboard culture around the edges of, in the shadows below, on the distant horizon from the monument that is “Beethoven.” To what extent is...
IS20202Ithaca Sounding 2020January 30 – February 2, 2020Cornell University: Johnson Museum, Barnes Hall, Lincoln HallIthaca College: Hockett HallBuffalo Street Books Ithaca Sounding 2020 is a multi-day, multi-venue festival and symposium celebrating, exploring, and questioning the traditions of modernist and experimental concert music by...
Professor Judith Peraino's discovery of unreleased Lou Reed songs continues to generate press. In an article for Rolling Stone, Will Hermes writes"The story of the “Philosophy Songs” tape came to light this fall when Cornell professor Judith Peraino published an essay called “I’ll Be Your Mixtape: Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, and the Queer Intimacies...
Richard Valitutto, a Sage Fellow in Cornell University’s Keyboard Studies DMA program, has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance in his capacity as pianist for the LA-based ensemble Wild Up. Richard plays on all 18 tracks of the album Cerrone: The Pieces that Fall to Earth on New Amsterdam Records. ...
Two concertos composed by Professor Roberto Sierra will receive prominent performances in 2020. Sierra's new trumpet concerto, titled Salseando, will receive its world premiere with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, one of its co-commissioners, on January 9, 2020. The São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, the other co-commissioner, will then perform the...
Michael Plagerman's lecture-recital at 8pm on 11/25 in Sage Chapel will explore ideologies of performance practice and attitudes toward music of the past. Plagerman writes:The process of adaptation to non-period instruments is central to the art of organ playing. Because organs vary from instrument to instrument it is necessary to alter...
Professor Alejandro Madrid has been elected to the Society for Ethnomusicology’s board of directors as First Vice President. The main duties of the office are to oversee all publications of the Society, coordinate liaisons to other professional societies, and chair board meetings in the absence of the President. The announcement was made during...
On November 22 at 8pm in Barnes Hall, Richard Valitutto presents the music of Helmut Lachenmann, Clara Schumann, Ramón Lazkano, Rebecca Saunders, Linda Catlin Smith, and Francis Poulenc in a program entitled "thought and desire." Of his program Richard writes,When considering what are perceived to be two (or more) disparate elements or states,...
Over the next two weekends the Cornell music department and the Center for Historical Keyboards present a rare sonorous feast of minimalist music on original instruments.In celebration of its 50th birthday this year, the pioneering synthesizer trio Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Ensemble will go analogue, presenting David Borden’s...
To celebrate the bicentennial of Clara Schumann (née Wieck)’s birth, the conference “Performing Clara Schumann: Keyboard Legacies and Feminine Identities in the Long Romantic Tradition,” November 16–17, will present myriad interpretive opportunities for understanding the historical, cultural, and aesthetic milieu surrounding the virtuosa’s life...
The Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards is welcoming pianists from Eastman and Ithaca College to experience "what a piano can be" at the Piano Parloar at 726 University Ave. On October 19, five young pianists from the studio of Alvin Chow at Eastman joined professor emeritus Malcolm Bilson for a hands-on introduction to the instruments. Prof...
Assistant Professor Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri's new performative installation was premiered live by ensemble dissonArt, in a concert at the Port of Thessaloniki, as part of the 54th Dimitria Festival on October 16. Titled Square, the work is written for a specific urban location in Thessaloniki. Square was commissioned by Onassis Center -...