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Professor Judith Peraino has been awarded a prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship for her book project Popism in Stereo: A Musical Guide to the Warhol Seventies. This fellowship will provide Professor Peraino with a year’s support to focus exclusively on the project.Professor Peraino's fellowship is part of $32.8...
A.D. White Professor-at-Large Wynton Marsalis talks with James Spinazzola (Barbara & Richard T. Silver ’50, MD ’53 Assistant Professor of Music) about developing an individual musical style; practice habits; playing, interpreting, and composing the blues; studying African rhythms while composing Congo Square (2006); and composing his first...
As part of their work this semester, the Improvisation Ensemble, led by Annie Lewandowski, has released a recording of Cornelius Cardew’s The Tiger’s Mind, a piece with a text score in which the musicians play the different characters, interacting with each other musically. The recording was available through Jan. 6 and has expired. The...
On December 17, the Murcia Orchestra conducted by Manuel Hernández-Silva with Pacho Flores, trumpet, gave the Spanish premiere of “Salseando” Roberto Sierra's concerto for trumpet and orchestra. The performance received a rave review from the prestigious Spanish publication Scherzo, with critic Jose Antonio Canton remarking that "the enthusiastic...
Stephen Spinelli and Tamara Acosta, founders of the ONEcomposer initiative, were quoted in a Philadelphia Inquirer article. ONEcomposer will collaborate with the Philadelphia Orchestra next semester for a presentation of Florence Price's piano concerto, plus there are two remaining events to view this December: an interview with soprano Karen...
Professor Judith Peraino has been awarded a double accolade at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society: her article “I’ll Be Your Mixtape: Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, and the Queer Intimacies of Cassettes” received both the H. Colin Slim Award (“for a musicological article of exceptional merit published in any language and in any...
The Oxford University Press Blog has published Professor Judith Peraino's essay “The Politics of Punk in the Era of Trump.” "Punk has been claimed by the left and the right on the political spectrum to describe different visions of populism."The essay is available to read online.
The Music Department is pleased to announce that Dawn Upshaw has been chosen as a 2020-2026 A. D. White Professor-at-Large. Not just the first vocalist awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, a five-time GRAMMY award winner, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Founding Artistic Director of Bard College-Conservatory’s Graduate...
Congratulations to Dr. Dietmar Friesenegger for receiving the Ph.D. in musicology with an outstanding dissertation, Voices among Cultures in the Eastern European Borderlands: Music in Czernowitz (1862–1914). Dr. Friesenegger’s study investigates one the most diverse cities in the contested lands of Eastern Europe, exploring the role of music in...
Roberto Sierra's Clarinet Sonata is featured on NPR Classical's weekly playlist, which this week spotlights recent, vibrant music with roots in Peru, Mexico, Chile, Spain, and Puerto Rico. The playlist updates each Thursday, and is available for streaming online.
A new recording of Roberto Sierra's Fantasía Cromática for organ, performed by Randall Harlow, has been released on Innova Records. The work was written to inaugurate Cornell's meantone Italian organ by Augustinus Vicedomini (1746) and it was premiered by Annette Richards. The new recording is available on Spotify.
Last fall, Lucy Fitz Gibbon and Ryan McCullough were invited to participate in the filming of an episode of a PBS show about Schubert. Great Performances' "Now Hear This," hosted by violinist and conductor Scott Yoo and now in its second season, takes audiences on a tour of Western classical music history, introducing composers in unique ways....
Pianist Alfredo Ovalles will perform the Polish premiere of Roberto Sierra's Piezas Intimas for piano at the famed Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music on September 20.A new commerical recording by Bokyung Byun of Sierra's Sonata for Guitar has been released and is available on Spotify.
Professor Annette Richards has been elected a Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea after her nomination earlier this year and a rigorous peer review of her work that recognized her "outstanding achievements as a scholar." The Academia Europaea is the only continent-wide Academy with individual membership from Council of Europe states and from...
Dr. Maxwell Lewis Williams successfully defended and submitted his doctoral dissertation in Spring 2020 under the supervision of Professors Catherine M. Appert, Benjamin Piekut, Steven Pond, and Fumi Okiji (UC Berkeley). Titled “Hipness, Hybridity, and ‘Neo-Bohemian’ Hip-Hop: Rethinking Existence in the African Diaspora,” his dissertation reads...
In July 2020, Dr. Jordan Musser completed and submitted his doctoral dissertation, which he had successfully defended earlier in the spring. Titled “Managing the Crisis: Music, Neo-liberalism, and the Popular Avant-Garde in Britain, 1975–84,” the project offers a critical and historical study of the ways in which popular music, avant-garde...
Interim Director of the Vocal Program Lucy Fitz Gibbon normally has a summer packed full of concerts, but this year has been anything but typical, as many arts organizations cancelled or postponed musical activities. However, Fitz Gibbon worked creatively to keep performances happening in new and imaginative ways, and she plans to do the same for...
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...