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The Cornell University Chamber Singers, under the direction of Dr. Stephen Spinelli, completed a week-long residency on the island of Nantucket in August. Among four performances, the singers worked with the Nantucket chapter of the Museum of African American History to learn about the island's historical significance. Director Steve Spinelli...
The Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards offers a new hub for historical keyboard studies at Cornell. With professor emeritus Malcolm Bilson’s fortepianos at its core, the collection encompasses a wide range of 18th- through early 20th-century pianos, as well as Cornell’s outstanding organs, harpsichords, clavichords, and other keyed...
Professor Alejandro Madrid’s article "Secreto a Voces: Excess, Performance, and Jotería in Juan Gabriel’s Vocality” has won the American Musicological Society's LGBTQ Study Group's 2018 Philip Brett Award, which recognizes “exceptional musicological work in the field of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender/transsexual studies completed during the...
Assistant Professor Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri will have a new performative sound kinetic installation/composition titled Resonators premiered by the Quiet Music Ensemble on August 18th at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, one of the biggest festivals in Ireland.Papalexandri’s commission was supported by a grant from the Irish Arts Council...
Associate Professor Benjamin Piekut has co-curated the Time:Spans 2019 Festival of contemporary music, to be held August 10–21 in New York City. Produced by The Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust (EBMF), Time:Spans is dedicated primarily to the presentation of twenty-first century music; its artistic director is Thomas Fichter. Piekut...
CNN's Karla Cripps profiled composition graduate student Piyawat Louilarpprasert and his Thailand New Music and Art symposium. Read the full article online.
The 2018-2019 academic year featured numerous highlights from programs and individuals. Click here to read our newsletter!
A new recording of music by Professor Roberto Sierra has been released on the IBS Classical label. Titled 33 Suenõs, the CD features two works composed by Sierra: 33 Sueños, using poems of Juan Carlos Garvayo, performed by Javier Povedano, baritone, and Garvayo, piano, as well as Julia, using poems of Julia de Burgos, performed by Quiteria Muñoz,...
Dear Friends of Music,Like most of us, I have a favorite recording. It’s a sentimental postcard of a track, and shouldn’t be particularly memorable. But in the song’s introduction there’s one particular note in the bass that always brings out a physical, tearful reaction in me. It’s an “impossible” pitch, played well below the bass’s normal range...
The Department of Music’s ensembles perform music from many cultures and historical periods, offering students a chance to find new outlets for artistic expression during each rehearsal or concert. Students frequently remark that their time in their respective ensemble was a central aspect of their Cornell career, providing them with fulfilling...
Cornell University held its fourth annual Giving Day on March 14, and the Department of Music directed all undesignated gifts to the Friends of Music Fund to support scholarships for music lessons. The Friends of Music is an initiative begun in 1977 under the leadership of Otto Doering ‘62 that serves as a fund dedicated to supporting student...
Sergio Ospina-Romero (Ph.D. Musicology '19) has accepted a tenure-track position at Indiana University as well as a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Department of Music of Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. He will spend two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Universidad de los Andes, where he will work on transforming his dissertation...
College of Arts & Sciences graduate students were recognized earlier this month at a reception honoring their skills as teaching assistants and mentors to undergraduate students.“The graduate students being honored received stellar teaching evaluations and strong recommendations from their undergraduates and from faculty,” said Michael...
Rafael Torralvo da Silva, Ph.D. student in musicology, has been selected as a Latin American Studies Program (LASP) graduate fellow for the 2019-2020 academic year. The fellows program is intended to provide graduate students with opportunities to shape the content and direction of Latin American Studies at Cornell University. As a LASP graduate...
On Saturday, April 27 at 7:30 pm at Bailey Hall, Cornell’s Chorus and Glee Club will collaborate with the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra and soloists Tamara Acosta, soprano, and Sidney Outlaw, baritone, to present Brahms’ A German Requiem. Conducted by Cornelia Laemmli Orth, the work is celebrating its 150th anniversary, just as the Cornell Glee Club,...
Assistant Professor Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri will have a new composition titled Solo for Generators, Motors and Wind Resonators premiered by Susanne Fröhlich at the Archipel Festival in Geneva, Switzerland on March 31, 2019. Solo for Generators, Motors and Wind Resonators was commissioned by the Archipel Festival, with support from Pro...
Professor Judith Peraino will present a session titled "The Politics of Punk in the Era of Trump" during the 2019 South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas. Peraino outlines the presentation as follows: Right-wing media outlets have dubbed Donald Trump “The Punk Rock President” to validate his rule-breaking crudeness and appeal to white...
Senior Lecturer and pianist Annie Lewandowski is featured on the newly released recording “All is Always Now: Fred Frith Live at The Stone,” available on Intakt Records from March 15. This three-CD box set is a curated selection of live concerts Fred Frith performed with collaborators at The Stone in New York City from 2006–16. Lewandowski is...
Assistant Professor Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri recently had a new composition titled Generator /Operator premiered by Klangforum Wien at the ECLAT Festival in Stuttgart, Germany on February 8. Papalexandri was asked to collaborate with Swiss animation artist Andrea Schneider to create a multidisciplinary work and addresses topics such as...
Cambridge University Press has announced the appointment of Professor Alejandro L. Madrid as co-editor of Twentieth-Century Music, joining co-editor Pauline Fairclough from January 2019:Alejandro is a cultural theorist whose historical, ethnographic, and critical work focuses on music and expressive culture from Latin America and Latinos in the...
This year will see the launch of the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards where the University’s historical keyboard instruments will be kept in concert-ready condition for historically-informed study, performance, and recording of classic and romantic repertoire. As part of the celebration of these instruments, the music department presents a...
The Department of Music is pleased to announce the Israeli Chamber Project has been selected as the inaugural ensemble for the Steven Stucky Memorial Residency for New Music. The ensemble will visit campus each semester during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic years for multi-day visits to work and perform with music students, both undergraduate...
Contact Points, by Assistant Professor Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri and Pe Lang, is a sound kinetic installation that seduces and puts physical forces in action with a captivating elegance. The sounds are produced when certain motor-driven flexible “tentacles” come in contact with fixed metallic pins, striking different tones in an emergent,...
David G. Yearsley, Music, first encountered the music of Johann Sebastian Bach as millions of people do—as a young piano student, learning from Bach’s Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach. Yearsley progressed to more complex music in Bach’s keyboard repertoire, and as a teenager, he began playing the organ, discovering the composer’s large body of...
The Department of Music's new video showcases the numerous ways students can become involved in music at Cornell. Savanna Lim, class of '21, served as cinematographer and editor of the film.To learn more about the Cornell Music experience, visit our Prospective Students page.