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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...
The Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Thomas Wilkins, will perform Roberto Sierra's Concerto for Saxophones and Orchestra on their upcoming March 23 concert. The jazz-inflected program also includes works by Adolphus Hailstork, Duke Ellington, and Florence Price.Roberto Sierra, Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, was...
Assistant Professor Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri's performative sound installation-composition Contact was premiered March 17, 2018 at the Grekisk konstmusikfestival (Greek Art Music Festival). Contact is a trio, written for prepared amplified DC motors, silicone, black foam board, 22 glass head hatpin holders, and 74 nickel-plated steel pins...
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,...
The 2018 GRAMMY Award for Best Choral Performance was awarded yesterday to Donald Nally and The Crossing, for their recording of Gavin Bryar's The Fifth Century. Stephen Spinelli, director of the Cornell Chorale and Chamber Singers, was one of The Crossing's 24 singers on the album. Commissioned by The Crossing and premiered with the PRISM...
Assistant Professor Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri will have a new performative sound kinetic installation premiered at the ECLAT Festival in Stuttgart, Germany on February 3. Titled Distanz, the work invites the audience to a refined and focused exploration of objects and sounds, carefully shaped and placed at different distances. The...
Anaar Desai-Stephens (Ph.D., Ethnomusicology '17), has recently accepted the position of Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Eastman School of Music, beginning in the 2018–19 academic year. This position was previously held by Ellen Koskoff, former president of the Society for Ethnomusicology. Anaar has been serving as a Visiting...
Mila, a chamber opera with music by Eli Marshall, postdoctoral associate and visiting faculty, recently received its world premiere in Hong Kong. A contemporary work in one act (and three languages), the opera features vocalists from Hong Kong, the Philippines, and America, and was commissioned by the Asia Society Hong Kong Center. From the Asia...
Stephen Spinelli, assistant director of choral programs, was recently profiled by Cornell Research's Jackie Swift for his work with the Chorale and Chamber Singers, and discussed how their rehearsals serve as an ideal laboratory for the liberal arts:Cornell is known as a leading center of research and knowledge. Breakthrough discoveries, cutting-...
2017 was a banner year for Cornell's Music Department, as four faculty members were recognized with awards for their accomplishments. In May, Assistant Professor Andrew Hicks was awarded a prestigious Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin. Hicks is one of 21 scholars, writers and artists awarded Berlin Prizes for 2017-18. Academy...
Two new works by Professor Roberto Sierra will receive their premieres in November. On November 17, the Sigma Project will perform Graffiti for saxophone quartet at the 27th Festival of Contemporary Music in Chile. The work was commissioned by the Ernst von Siemens Foundation for the Sigma Project. More information can be found here. On...
Cambridge University Press recently published Francesca Brittan's (PhD Musicology '07) latest book "Music and Fantasy in the Age of Berlioz." From the publisher:The centrality of fantasy to French literary culture has long been accepted by critics, but the sonorous dimensions of the mode and its wider implications for musical production have...
Cornellians Amanda Lalonde (PhD Musicology '14) and current graduate student Mackenzie Pierce both have articles appearing in the current edition of the journal 19th-Century Music. In "Flowers over the Abyss: A Musical Uncanny in Nineteenth-Century Criticism," Lalonde examines the emergence and purpose of the uncanny in instrumental music and...
Associate Professor Benjamin Piekut has convened a panel on music and sound as part of the Specters of Communism Festival at the Haus der Kunst (Munich) in late November. Titled “Form, Mastery, and Aural Disintegration,” the panel features contributions from Piekut, Hon Lun Yang (Hong Kong Baptist University), Tamara Levitz (UCLA), Fumi Okiji (...
The music of Professor Roberto Sierra will be featured on Chicago's WFMT radio program Fiesta, on Saturday, November 4 from 7–8pm. Fiesta is a weekly classical music program devoted to Latin American and Iberian music from the 16th to 21st century, and brings artistically and historically significant compositions and artists to its listeners. ...
The Music Department is hosting a master class with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Oboist Elizabeth Koch Tiscione at 7:00pm on October 23 in Barnes Hall.Master classes are a unique opportunity for musicians and music appreciators to experience high level musicianship from incredibly respected performers. Such classes are usually...
"Novitiate," a 2017 film featuring a score by Christopher Stark (D.M.A. Composition, '13), will be released in theatres on October 27 by Sony Pictures Classics. Stark composed the score while at Avaloch Farm, an artist colony in New Hampshire. With his work space confined to the small desk in his bedroom, Stark described the incredibly intensive...
Assistant Professor Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, along with her partner Pe Lang, is exhibiting a show of new works as a part of the Donaueschingen Music Festival, at the Museum Art.Plus in Donaueschingen, Germany. The show runs from October 19 through November 5, 2017.The works oscillate between sound art, musical composition, and...