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Rebecca Harris-Warrick, Music, is a detective of sorts. As a musicologist, she works with primary sources from the past, often piecing together the cryptic story of a musical composition that has fallen by the wayside. “I love the puzzle-solving element of my research, the mystery of trying to figure out what happened in the past,” she says. “Much...
Professor Roberto Sierra has received a Latin GRAMMY nomination for his work Montuno en forma de chacona, in the Best Contemporary Composition category. The work was recorded by Silvia Marquez, and released on the IBS label.This is Sierra's third Latin GRAMMY nomination, having been previously nominated for Variations on a Souvenir (Albany) in...
The Cornell Symphony Orchestra, Chris Younghoon Kim, music director, has achieved Second Place in The American Prize in Orchestral Performance competition, 2017-18, in the university division. The American Prize is a series of new, non-profit, national competitions unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing...
Senior Lecturer Annie Lewandowski’s ensemble Powerdove will be performing live on BBC Radio 3’s flagship experimental music program, Late Junction, at the End of the Road Festival in Dorset, England. Powerdove is Lewandowski’s international ‘electic folk’ band, which includes French multi-instrumentalist Thomas Bonvalet and Hamburg-based...
The University of Pittsburgh Humanities Center recently conducted an interview with Professor Judith Peraino. In the interview Peraino spoke about her life and career, particularly her work with music and sexuality. Listen to the interview here.This fall, Professor Peraino will teach her class, Punk Culture: The Aesthetics and Politics of Refusal...
Are you thinking about a career in music? The music department at Cornell offers unique opportunities for the interaction of scholarship, performance, and composition through collaborations with fellow students and faculty members alike. Creativity and breadth are encouraged, and graduates from the department point to these traits as influential...
The Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies, with support from Cornell University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, presents a concert festival and conference, “The Organ in the Global Baroque,” September 6-8, 2018 at Cornell.Honoring the late organist and pedagogue Jacques van Oortmerssen, the conference will feature numerous...
The Cornell University Department of Music is pleased to announce the successful funding of the endowment for the Steven Stucky Memorial Residency for New Music. Through the generosity of more than 50 donors, the original goal was far surpassed, bringing the total endowment to more than $335,000 with another $45,000 pledged. Leadership gifts to...
Associate Professor Andrew Hicks has been appointed co-editor of a leading journal, the Journal of Musicology, published by University of California Press, effective July 1, 2018. As co-editor, Hicks will work to strengthen the Journal's international role as a leading disciplinary forum that both reflects the breadth of music studies today and...
The 2017-2018 academic year featured numerous highlights from programs and individuals. Click here to read our newsletter!
The Department of Music welcomes two Postdoctoral Associates, each beginning a two-year appointment starting July 1, 2018.Leila Tayeb, who is receiving her doctorate at Northwestern University this spring, will serve as the Stanford H. Taylor Postdoctoral Associate in Music and Islam in the Contemporary World. Her dissertation, Sonic Upheavals:...
Dear Friends of Music,In my office in Lincoln Hall, in the heart of Cornell’s central campus, I hear a student practicing a Beethoven sonata movement; two hours ago it was a piece by my colleague Roberto Sierra. Visitors to my office might spy framed photographs of Lili Krause and Artur Rubinstein, a Senegambian kora harp, an album by Hank...
Cornell University held its third annual Giving Day on March 20, with the Department of Music once again participating. For the second year, we 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...
The Spring Atkinson Forum in American Studies, “After Experimental Music,” brought over thirty scholars and artists to Cornell to debate and discuss the recent history and practice of adventurous music making. Organized by SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow Jeremy Strachan and Associate Professor of Music Benjamin Piekut, the event included two concerts,...
Three Musicology PhD candidates have been awarded pre-doctoral fellowships for 2018–19. Carlos Ramirez has received the Diversity Scholars Fellowship at Ithaca College. Ramirez writes, “I will design two new courses for the School of Music. In the fall I plan to teach an undergraduate course on Global Reggaeton; the spring course is still being...
The remarkable accomplishments of students in the Department of Music are recognized through annual awards, and we congratulate our students for the well-deserved honors listed below.The Ellen Gussman Adelson Prize, which rewards and encourages outstanding Cornell students excelling in instrumental music performance, went to David Cabuenas,...
Ariana Kim and the Aizuri Quartet have won the grand prize at the University of Michigan's M-Prize Chamber Music Competition.The group, comprising violinists Ariana Kim and Miho Saegusa, violist Ayane Kozasa, and cellist Karen Ouzounian, will receive $100,000 – the most substantial prize for chamber music in the world, according to the...
Zoe Weiss (ABD, Musicology) has produced and released a CD with her ensemble LeStrange Viols for the New Focus label. The disc, Æternum: Music of the Elizabethan Avant Garde from Add. MS 31390 is an outgrowth of her dissertation research into British Library Additional Manuscript 31390, “A booke of In nomines and other solfainge songes.” Having...
Composer Tonia Ko (DMA, 2017) has been awarded a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship. During her fellowship year, she will begin work on two large-scale projects: "Mapmakers", an opera for five soloists with libretto by Tyran Grillo, and one of her long-standing dreams, a bubble wrap concerto with chamber orchestra featuring the composer as soloist.
Nicole Reisnour has been appointed Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Reed College for the 2018—19 academic year. At Reed, she will teach general courses in ethnomusicology as well as seminars related to her research on Southeast Asian music, religion, and ethics. She is currently in the final stages of completing her dissertation...
Samuel Dwinell (Ph.D. '17) has been appointed Postdoctoral Resident Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor of Music in the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University Bloomington, beginning Fall 2018. Sam's Ph.D. dissertation, "Blackness in British Opera," received the 2016–17 Donald J. Grout Memorial Prize. Since defending his dissertation in...
Erica Levenson (Ph.D. '17) has been appointed Assistant Professor of Music History at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, after serving as a visiting lecturer at Syracuse University this year. She is currently completing an article that explores the transnational circulation of early eighteenth-century popular music, and beginning a book...
Piyawat Louilarpprasert and Charles Peck have both received a 2018 Morton Gould Young Composer Award from The ASCAP Foundation. This prize, which carries a financial award, is offered to talented young composers of concert music ranging in age from 12 to 30.Charles Peck currently serves as a Senior Lecturer at The University of the Arts in...
The Department of Music is pleased to announce the appointment of James Spinazzola as Assistant Professor and Director of Winds, effective July 1.“The Director of Winds is a key position in the department and often is called to represent the University in concerts, tours, and events,” says Department Chair Steven Pond. “We’re so delighted that...
Professional Indonesian Gamelan Ensemble Ngudi Raras to perform in conjunction with Indonesian music conference and annual Indonesian culture nightOn Thursday, March 29 at 7:00pm, visitors to the Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room will be transported from Ithaca to Indonesia when the Department of Music presents professional gamelan ensemble...