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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...
Ph.D. candidate Dietmar Friesenegger reports on recent performances drawing on his archival research in the Ukraine:During my archival research in Chernivtsi (Ukraine) in the Fall of 2016 I unearthed six manuscript scores by the composer, musicologist, and lifelong friend of Brahms, Eusebius Mandyczewski (1857–1929), including cantatas, a mass,...
The Cornell University Department of Music will be hosting an Open House on Thursday, October 19 from 12:30pm to 2:00pm in Lincoln Hall B20. Faculty and current students will be there to answer questions for anyone considering becoming involved in the music department!“The Department of Music offers a wonderful variety of perspectives on sound...
The Cornell Wind Symphony performed this past Sunday in Bailey Hall at 3pm; the concert centered around Charles Ives’ “Variations on America.” I sat down with conductor James Spinazzola to talk about the repertoire for this performance.“The Wind Symphony is performing at Yale in March as part of the Eastern Division Conference of the College Band...
Seven Ph.D. students in Musicology will present their research at the upcoming annual meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and the American Musicological Society (AMS). Taking place in Denver at the end of October, the SEM meeting will include include papers by three Cornell graduate students. In “Speaking Through Noise: Punks in the...
Roberto Sierra, Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, was recently highlighted by the Yamaha Corporation of America for his work, Concierto Virtual. Premiered in January 2017 at the Focus! festival at Lincoln Center, the concerto features a synthesized piano solo, performed on Yamaha's Disklavier ENSPIRE, a reproducing piano.Said...
Twenty students from across the United States and Canada gathered in the Reading Room of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University for four and a half days this past August. The program aimed to give students the tools they need to analyze and perform medieval music using various notational systems. Students covered a wide...
