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The Score
Fall 2015
Department News
Renowned soprano Tony Arnold is the recipient of the 2015 Brandeis Creative Arts Award. The award was established in 1956 as the first of its kind from an institution of higher learning. Recipients of awards and citations include Leonard Bernstein, Ernest Bloch, Aaron Copland, Gunther Schuller, Rudolph Serkin, Yehudi Wyner, Mark Rothko, Georgia O'Keeffe, Sam Shepard, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp and Lincoln Kirstein. The award was given until 1995. For more about the Creative Arts Award click here.
As Creative Arts recipient and Artist-in-Residence at Brandeis, Tony Arnold will focus on three topics: identity, politics, and embodiment of voice. She will work closely with students to create an original multidisciplinary work for performance, and will also offer other performances throughout the year, including a concert on November 18 at the Rose Museum, where she will present a series of musical works selected in response to the artwork on display by Roy Lichtenstein and Lisa Yuskavage. Read more here.
Brandeis has established the Robert Koff Scholarship dedicated to supporting undergraduate instrumentalists, with particular emphasis on string players. This scholarship is named after legendary founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet and longtime member of the music department Robert "Bobby" Koff. Particular recognition is due to Barbra Rabson '80 who studied with Bobby and spearheaded the initiative to raise funds for the scholarship. Special thanks go to Rosalind Koff and the Koff Family and to Alfred and Claude Mann for their generous support. The awarding of the first scholarship is planned for the 2016/17 academic year.
The scholarship was formally inaugurated at a concert on October 17 with the Lydian String Quartet and guest artist Tony Arnold.
Dinner in honor of Rosalind Koff
Seated r to l: Daniel Koff, A & S Dean Susan Birren, Judy Eissenberg, Rosalind Koff
This past summer the department purchased a new Steinway B Concert Grand for the recital hall. Artists Donald Berman, Evan Hirsch, and Randall Hodgkinson, accompanied by piano technicians Debbie Cyr and John Von Rohr traveled to the Steinway factory in New York to select the instrument from among 15 pianos on the floor. The department has also purchased two new Yamaha grand pianos for classrooms.
Faculty News
The department is pleased to welcome Professor Robert Duff to the faculty. Robert is our new Associate Professor of the Practice and director of the Brandeis University Chorus and Chamber Choir.
Robert has devoted his career to developing excellence in the choral arts, and has served on the faculties of Dartmouth College, Pomona College, Claremont Graduate University, and Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles. He continues to serve as the conductor and artistic director of the Handel Society of Dartmouth College, the country's eldest town-grown oratorio society. An active commissioner of new music, he has given several world premieres of works for both orchestral and choral forces and regularly programs music by living composers.
As guest conductor and clinician, Robert has served in national leadership roles and currently serves as the Vice President of the Eastern Division of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), and has been appointed by Governor John Lynch as Councilor to the New Hampshire Council on the Arts. Robert holds degrees in conducting, piano and voice from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Temple University, and the University of Southern California, where he earned a doctorate of musical arts in 2000. In addition to directing the two Brandeis ensembles, Robert will offer conducting courses in the department.
On October 2, Robert took the Brandeis Chamber Choir on a weekend retreat to the Berkshires. The ensemble, comprised of 29 undergraduates, boarded a bus at Slosberg and spent the weekend engaged in rehearsals and group bonding.
Retreat in the Berkshires
Robert has recently received funding from Brandeis for a Brandeis Commission Project related to the upcoming Louis D. Brandeis Centennial Celebration that will be happening on campus this winter and spring. The project encompasses commissioning a graduate student composer to write a work for the Chamber Choir. Composers will be invited to submit scores for consideration, and the selected work will be performed on the spring 2016 choral concert.
Saturday, October 24 marked the department's celebration of Eric Chasalow's 60th Birthday with a concert in the recital hall by Dinosaur Annex Ensemble. The program featured two works by Eric: Due (Cinta) Mani (2002) and the Boston premiere of On That Swirl of Ending Dust (2011); premieres of two works composed for the occasion: A Long Overdue Sequel by Yu-Hui Chang and All That Chas by Davy Rakowski; and Quartetto No. 4 by Mario Davidovsky.
The Chasalow family: Simon, Barbara, Eric
Scott Wheeler and Eric
The two Erics: Chasalow and Chafe
Composer Davy Rakowski was one of a select group of composers commissioned to compose works for Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim from the Piano. The initiative of pianist Anthony de Mare, the project is an 80th birthday gift to Stephen Sondheim whereby composers write original works for solo piano based on Sondheim songs. Davy's brilliant work is The Ladies Who Lunch. A cd of the completed project has just been released by ECM Records.
Sarah Mead and Jason McStoots celebrate the release of a CD from Cornetto-Verlag with a performance and champagne reception at the Goethe Institute in Boston. As music Director for the project, Sarah gave a lecture on Samuel Capricornus and the backdrop of the Thirty Years War, and joined the ensemble as a guest performer.
For more information about the recording, and to see videos from the project, visit http://www.longandaway.com/recordings.html
Percussionist and director of African Drum and Dance Ensemble "Fafali" Ben Paulding spent two months in Kumasi, Ghana, conducting research on Kete, a genre of dance-drumming from the Ashanti King's royal palace. His research consisted of interviews and recording sessions with the region's reputed four original Kete groups -- Ankaase, Nkwantakese, Tafo, and Kokofu. Ben's article "Kete for the International Percussion Community" was recently published as a chapter in Discourses in African Musicology: J. H. Kwabena Nketia Festschrift. Published jointly by the U. of Michigan and U. of Ghana, the book is a collection of works celebrating the life and work of renowned Ghanaian ethnomusicologist J. H. Kwabena Nketia. The article presents Kete, a royal dance-drumming genre from the Ashanti Region of Ghana, in Western notation and offers adaptations of Kete rhythms onto the drumset.
Here is the article as it appears in the online newsletter Rhythm! Scene, published by the Percussion Arts Society, a video of Ben playing Kete with the Nkwantakese Kete Group: https://vimeo.com/140786822; and video of Kete for drumset and Kwadum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4_yz18jwO0
In November Ben is presenting a paper at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in San Antonio, Texas titled "Kete: Ashanti Royal Court Drumming from Ghana."
This year Ben is also collaborating with Ken Field, director of the Brandeis Spirit Band to arrange music for the band and Fafali for joint performances at athletic events.
Paula Musegades, PhD '14 (musicology) begins her two-year tenure as Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Music and American Studies. This year she is offering courses on American Music: From Psalms to Hip-Hop, and Protest Through Song, and continuing her research on music in film.
Alumni News
Composer Seunghee Lee, PhD '14 has been appointed Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Ave Maria University, Florida. She will be teaching theory and applied piano courses.
Musicologist Joel Schwindt, PhD '14 has been appointed to the music history faculty at The Boston Conservatory. In April Joel present a paper at a meeting of the Renaissance Society of America.
Composer Jeff Roberts, PhD '08 was recently awarded an Asian Cultural Council Individual Artist Grant to live for the summer of 2015 in Seoul, Korea and, as a guqin performer, co-found a new East Asian Improvisation Ensemble with Korean piri and saenghwang master Gamin http://eaensemble.wix.com/workshop. As part of the grant project, Jeff also studied the Korean traditions of sinawi and sanjo and traveled around Korea to attend different Shaman rituals. His current work in Korea was rooted in a fellowship he received from the Korean National Gugak Center in 2014 to attend their two week workshop on Korean traditional music. Jeff's paper "Implications of Electro-acoustic Composition in an Intercultural Context: Negotiating Cultural Meanings and Uses of Timbre" was recently published in the journal eContact!, associated with the Canadian Electroacoustic Community and the Toronto Electroacoustic Music Symposium. The article appeared in late August online at: http://econtact.ca/17_3/roberts_identity.html. Jeff also was recently awarded artist residencies at the Banff Center in Canada and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts to work on new compositions for this ensemble as well as on two commissions from the groups Cellophone (Toronto, Canada) and the Williams Chamber Players (Williamstown, MA).
Composer Michele Zaccagnini, PhD '15 will have an article, which is based on his doctoral dissertation Aldo Clementi's System, published in an upcoming volume of New Music Perspectives. Ircam will publish a description of the (algorithmic) procedures that he used to write the dissertation piece on the next volume of The OM Composer's Book vol. 3. And Michele will be presenting his musical interface for brainwaves coming from a meditator at the Ircam Forum Workshop in Sao Paulo, Brazil in early November.
Composers Yiguo Yan, MFA '14 and Travis Alford PhD '14 are 2015 winners of the American Prize in Composition. Yiguo has won the prize in opera, theater, film for her opera Colors of Obsession, and Travis has won in the choral division for his piece O Fragile Human, Speak…
The American Prize is a series of new, non-profit, competitions unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings. The American Prize was founded in 2009 and is awarded annually in many areas of the performing arts.
Composer Yohanan Chendler PhD '13 is the first winner of the Cluster Prize for a new work for flute, clarinet, and electronics. Cluster is an organization located in Lucca, Italy dedicated to the promotion of new music composition. Yohanan's new work will be published by Edizioni Sconfinarte.
Graduate Student News
Composer and PhD candidate David Dominique is currently on a Mellon Dissertation Year Fellowship. He spent September as an Artist in Residence at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts in Northern Georgia, and in October he was awarded a fellowship by the MacDowell Colony, where he will be an Artist in Residence in the Spring semester. Dave's upcoming projects include a new album with his LA-based jazz ensemble, solo performances as "Furniture Daniel," and a new evening-length theater project to be staged in Los Angeles in 2016.
Composer, pianist and PhD candidate Jared Redmond is currently in Berlin with help from a Hertz Traveling Fellowship from UC Berkeley, where he is focusing full time on his compositions and piano work. I am composing two duo pieces: a work for two gayageums and a half-hour work for gayageum, violin, and projection. The pieces will be premiered by living gayageum legend and Seoul National University Professor Yi Jiyoung, her student Kim Doyeon, and Lydian String Quartet violinist Judy Eissenberg, on March 17th at Wellesley College. The premiere will be underwritten by the Korean Cultural Society of Boston. He is also preparing piano repertoire a CD to be recorded in 2016, featuring almost exclusively pieces written in the last 10 years.
Musicologist and PhD candidate Derek Strykowski presented the paper "Symphonies for Sale: How Composers and Publishers Negotiated the Style of Concert Music in the Long Nineteenth Century" at the October 3 AMS New England chapter meeting at Amherst College. His article "The Diegetic Music of Berg's Lulu: When Opera and Serialism Collide" is forthcoming from the Journal of Musicological Research in February 2016.
Composer and MFA candidate Daniel Allas is having his piece Suite Before Dawn in memory of Henri Dutilleux performed by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra on November 4. The concert is presented as part of the 2015 Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Composer Institute, a program for emerging composers, that is partnered with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the American Composers Forum. https://www.mso.org/tickets/detail/composer-institute?perfid=27905
Composer and PhD candidate Joseph Sowa's orchestral composition Summer Has Ten Thousand Stars has been named semi-finalist in the student division of The American Prize. The piece was previously a finalist in the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.
Having received a stipend from EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO des SWR and grants from the Max Kade Foundation and the Center for German and European Studies at Brandeis, composer and PhD candidate Mu-Xuan Lin was able to attend the EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO des SWR's Matrix15, a conference for composition, aesthetics, and electroacoustic music in September and October in Freiburg, Germany. Her new miniature piece about G (2015) for flute, oboe d'amore, harp, clavichord, and violoncello, written specifically for Ensemble Proton Bern, will be premiered along 29 other miniatures composed by a roster of international composers on Ensemble Proton Bern's 5th Anniversary Concert, December 7th, 2015 in Bern, Switzerland. Her newest work Pale Fire for solo piano and electronics, commissioned by the Piano Spheres Concert Series and pianist Vicki Ray, will be premiered by Vicki Ray, February 23rd, 2016 at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArt Theatre) in Los Angeles. The work will be performed again at the Bang on the Can Festival in the summer of 2016. And her piece Peinture Nº1 (2014, rev. 2015) for bass clarinet and marimba will receive its west coast premieres in San Francisco and Oakland by Transient Canvas, in January 2016.
Spring 2015
Commencement News
Congratulations to our class of 2015 degree recipients!
Click here for a video of the 2015 School of Creative Arts Diploma Ceremony.
President Fred Lawrence welcomes the SCA class of 2015
Honorary degree recipient and legendary dancer Suzanne Farrell addressing the class
Christiane Zoe Fong
Bachelor of Arts Cum Laude
Major in Music with honors: Composition Track
Minors in: English, Film, Television and Interactive Media
Jonah Wesley Hirst
Bachelor of Arts Cum Laude
Major in: Music with high honors: Composition Track
Minor in: Sexuality and Queer Studies
Recipient of the Florence and Charles H. Milender Prize in Music
Charles Madison
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude
Majors in: Musical Theater Writing with highest honors
Recipient of the Sandy Shea Fisher '56 Prize for Creative Arts
Adina Rae Shapiro
Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude
Majors in: Music with high honors: Performance Track
American Studies
Recipient of the Rosalie L. Warren Award in Music
Mariah Mae Smith-Jones
Bachelor of Arts Cum Laude
Majors in: Music: Composition Track
Politics, Russian Studies
Graduate Students:
Aubrey Brown
Master of Arts in Musicology
Dana Lee Dalton
Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology
Dissertation: Internal Conflict as Action: Aria Structure in Il trovatore
Jacques Pierre Dupuis
Master of Fine Arts in Musicology
Jessica Fulkerson
Master of Fine Arts in Musicology
Todd David Kitchen
Master of Fine Arts in Music Composition and Theory
Saman Nayeri
Master of Arts in Musicology
Elizabeth Emily Perten
Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology
Dissertation: Liszt as Critic: Virtuosity, Aesthetics, and the Artist in Liszt's Weimar Prose (1848-1861)
Recipient of the Sandy Shea Fisher '56 Prize for Creative Arts
Hannah L. Spencer
Master of Fine Arts in Musicology
Jackson Van Amburg
Master of Fine Arts in Musicology
Michele Zaccagnini
Doctor of Philosophy in Music Composition and Theory
Dissertation: Aldo Clementi's System; and an original composition, Variazioni su AlDo ClemEnti for chamber orchestra
Recipient of the Sandy Shea Fisher '56 Prize for Creative Arts
Department News
The Music Department hosted the first Brandeis Improv Festival March 27 – 29. Created and organized by Improv Collective instructor and saxophonist Tom Hall the three-day festival was a "celebration of spontaneous creativity and its increasingly vital role in modern life." Performances, workshops and seminars took place at Slosberg Music Center. Legendary improviser and drummer Milford Graves was the keynote speaker. The festival was funded by a grant from the Brandeis Arts Council and the Music Department plans a second festival two years from now.
On Saturday, March 21 members of the Brandeis Jazz Ensemble led by director Bob Nieske took the opportunity to 'gig' at the Hyatt Regency, Cambridge. The occasion was the Brandeis Junior/Senior Formal. The band enjoyed the experience, as did the dancers!
This spring saw the premiere of the Brandeis Spirit Band. The band is dedicated to playing a unique 'Brandeis style' of music at various athletic events on and off campus. World-renowned saxophonist, flautist and composer Ken Field has been hired by the music department with support from V.P. of Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel to direct the band and create arrangements specifically for it. The Spirit Band is currently composed of 12 students including musicology Ph.D. student Gabrielle Reardon (trumpeter) who helps over see the band's logistics. The band plans to grow in numbers in the future.
On May 1 – 2 graduate students in musicology presented the first Graduate Student Society Conference Loci in Musicology: Epicenters, Parallels and Unity in Slosberg Recital Hall. Keynote speakers were Margot Fassler, U. of Notre Dame, Joseph Auner, Tufts University, and Robert Gjerdingen, Northwestern University. Papers were presented by graduate students from Harvard, Rutgers, U. of Michigan, SUNY: U. of Buffalo, USC, and U. of Miami. Funding for the conference was provided by the Music Department and a grant from the Poses Fund.
Faculty News
Composer Eric Chasalow has a new comprehensive CD of his electroacoustic music Are You Radioactive, Pal? The CD issued on Suspicious Motives Records includes works from 1991, 1999, 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010, and 2014. Philipp Stäudlin performs a work for alto saxophone and tape, and Dan Stepner a work for violin and tape. This follows on the heels of his 2014 CD feather, breath, mirror.
Musicologist Eric Chafe's new book Tears Into Wine: J.S. Bach's Cantata 21 in its Musical and Theological Contexts was published this May by Oxford Press. In the book, "Chafe shows that Cantata 21 reaches beyond the scope of the individual liturgical occasion to voice a breadth of meaning that encompasses much of the core of Lutheran thought." Tears Into Wine follows his monumental book J.S. Bach's Johannine Theology, which was published in May 2014 also by Oxford.
Lydian String Quartet first violinist and Professor of the Practice Dan Stepner has received a Provost's Innovations in Teaching Grant for 2015/16 for his project An Integrated, Transposable System of Scales and Arpeggios for Violinists and Violists. He will be creating a video as part of the project. The fund is intended to support and enhance the teaching and research excellence for which Brandeis in known.
Undergraduate and Graduate Student News
In May Charlie Madison '15 was a guest on WBUR Radio's On Point where college seniors were invited to discuss their senior theses. Charlie is an Independent Interdisciplinary Major in Theater Arts who has composed an original musical Grace. He will graduate with honors and accolades!
Composer and Ph.D. student Victoria Cheah has received a Mellon Research Grant for 2015/16. The grant will enable her to study a manuscript at the Sachar Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland that is directly related to her dissertation work.
Composer and Ph.D. student Emily Koh will be spending July as a resident composer at the Mizzou International Composers Festival where her works will be performed by the chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound. She recently was in San Francisco for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble's premiere of her composition "implodex!!", which they commissioned. When Emily is not composing she runs the concert series at the Boston New Music Initiative and also serves as principal bass for the New England Philharmonic Orchestra.
Alumni News
Musicologist Paula Musegades Ph.D'14 has been appointed Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Music and American Culture and Lecturer in the Department of Music and in the American Studies Program at Brandeis. Her two-year appointment begins July. Paula completed her dissertation research on Aaron Copland and Hollywood Film Music and has taught courses at Brandeis and at Emerson College. She has also served as senior academic administrator for the American Studies and Journalism Programs at Brandeis. While at Brandeis Paula will be continuing her research and also offering courses each semester.
Composer Peter Van Zandt Lane Ph.D. '13 has been appointed Assistant Professor of Composition at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, U. of Georgia. He will also be the director of the Roger and Phyllis Dancz Center for New Music at the university. Peter was most recently Visiting Assistant Professor at U. of Florida.
Fall 2014
Department News
The music department's Ghanaian Drumming and Dance Ensemble Fafali was invited to perform for the visit to Brandeis of the President of Ghana John Dramani Mahama on September 29. Lead by the ensemble's director Faith Conant, Fafali offered a traditional welcome for dignitaries from Ghana.
Fafali performs for John Dramani Mahama, president of Ghana. Photo by Mike Lovett
A Tribute to Erwin Bodky
On Sunday, October 19 the music department collaborated with the Cambridge Society for Early Music to present A Tribute to Erwin Bodky in the Slosberg Recital Hall. Violinist Dan Stepner, Pianist Evan Hirsch, harpsichordist James Nicolson, and mezzo-soprano Deborah Rentz-Moore performed works by Bodky and Bach. Remarks were offered by James Nicolson, former Bodky students Adele Borouchoff and Nancy Golden (Brandeis class of '52), and musicologist Mark Lindley (from India via Skype). Also in attendance were Bodky grandsons Matthew and Nathaniel, and Brandeis alums and Bodky students Paul Goldstein '53, and Diane Goldstein '54. Coincidentally it is Paul who suggested to Bodky that the Brahms Academic Festival Overture be used for the music for a Brandeis alma mater.
A Tribute to Erwin Bodky program cover.
Bodky grandsons and their spouses with Dan Stepner
Nancy Golden, Diane and Paul Goldstein
Adele Borouchoff
Erwin Bodky was Brandeis's first music professor and founder of the Cambridge Society for Early Music. A distinguished musicologist, keyboard player, and composer, Bodky studied in Berlin with Ernst von Dohnányi and at the Prussian Academy of the Arts with Richard Strauss and Ferruccio Busoni. He went on to serve on the faculty of the Prussian State Academy for Church and School Music until 1933 when the academy director was forced by the Nazis to dismiss him. Immigrating first to the Netherlands in 1933 and then to Boston in 1938, he secured a part-time position at the Longy School of Music. He was later appointed to the faculty of the famous Black Mountain College. Following his recommendation to Brandeis's first president Abraham Sachar for the establishing of a music department, Bodky was hired as Assistant Professor of Music in 1949, and later promoted to full professor. In 1954 Bodky was appointed chairman of the Brandeis School of Creative Arts. In 1957 the West German government designated him a professor emeritus, and in 1968 the Cambridge Society for Early Music established its Bodky Competition in his honor. Erwin Bodky authored many important books including Performance Practice of Early Keyboard Music and Interpretation of Bach's Keyboard Music.
On Saturday, November 15 the Music Department formally celebrated the 100th anniversary of composer Irving Fine with an afternoon symposium and evening concert.
The symposium featured a discussion with composer and Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Wernick '55, Cantor Ramon Gilbert '54, composer and Pulitzer Prize winner Yehudi Wyner, and Irving G. Fine Professor of Music Eric Chasalow. Former students of Irving Fine, Gilbert and Wernick shared many memorable moments spent with the composer who served as teacher and mentor, and co-creator of the first Brandeis Festival of the Arts. Wyner and Chasalow offered insights into the importance of the "American Neo-classicists" and the central role that Fine played in that group, which included Aaron Copland, Harold Shapero, and Leonard Bernstein.
The evening concert presented musicians from Copland House (Eve Gigliotti, mezzo-soprano; Harumi Rhodes, violin; Danielle Farina, viola; Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello; and Michael Boriskin, piano) performing Irving Fine's Music for Piano (1947), Fantasia for String Trio (1956), Childhood Fables for Grown-Ups (1955, 1958), and Sonata for Violin and Piano (1946). Attending the symposium and concert were Irving Fine's three daughters: Claudia, Emily, and Joanna, and granddaughter Alicia.
Irving Fine Centennial Celebration Program Cover
Eric Chasalow, Raymon Gilbert, Richard Wernick, Yehudi Wyner
Future celebratory events include a week-long Irving Fine Centennial Festival hosted by the Library of Congress (December 2 – 6), and the release of the cd of Irving Fine's Symphony performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.
Faculty News
Eric Chasalow's new cd feather, breath, mirror has just been released. Works on the cd are: Due Cinta mani (2002) for piano and fixed media, Flute Concerto:three love poems (2005) for flute and chamber ensemble, Trois Espaces du Son (2004) for piano, percussion and fixed media, and Horn Concerto (2008) for horn and chamber orchestra.
Marty Boykan's cd Music for Piano (1986 - 2007) has just been released on Bridge. The pianist is Donald Berman.
Davy Rakowski's Dance Episodes Symphony No. 5 will be premiered on October 25 by the New England Philharmonic, Richard Pittman, conductor. And he has just competed a flute concerto for a November 12 premiere on Oklahoma. While on leave this coming spring, Davy will be in residency at the MacDowell Colony and at Ragdale in Lake Forest, IL.
Musicologist Allan Keiler has been awarded the 2014 Silberger Essay Prize from the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. The $1000 prize is given for for an essay that "demonstrates outstanding psychoanalytically informed research and scholarship in the biobehavioral sciences, social sciences, arts, or humanities." Keiler will present his essay Liszt as Romantic Hero: Imposturing and the False Self at the Institute on October 22, 2014.
Allan Keiler (left) with Paul Buttenwieser (conversant for Silberger Lecture)
Professor Emeritus and Pulitzer prize-winning composer Yehudi Wyner has been elected president of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters. The American Academy of Arts and Letters, founded in 1898, was established to "foster, assist, and sustain an interest in literature, music, and the fine arts," and is chartered by Congress. Each year, the Academy gives over one million dollars in awards to artists, architects, writers, and composers. It presents exhibitions of art, architecture, and manuscripts, and subsidizes readings and performances of new musicals. The 117-year-old organization is located in three landmark buildings on Audubon Terrace in NYC.
Wyner was elected to the Academy in 1999. He won the Pulitzer in 2006 for the piano concerto "Chiavi in Mano." Emeritus Professor and composer Martin Boykan is also a member. See the full press release here.
Vocal Instructor Jason McStoots is a soloist on the Boston Early Music Festival's recording of Charpentier's La Descente d'Orphée aux Enfers and La Couronne de Fleurs for CPO (Classic Produktion Osnabrück), winner of the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording! Congratulations Jason et al.
Graduate Student News
In October composer and pianist Jared Redmond will compete in the 2014 International Edvard Grieg Piano Competition in Bergen, Norway. Later in the year he will perform a concert of contemporary piano and percussion music at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea, which will include a new work of his, as well as works of John Cage and Maurice Ohana.
Musicologist Georgia Luikens has been invited to serve as moderator for a panel discussion on the music of Irving Fine at the Library of Congress on Saturday, December 6. Panelists will include Fine Professor of Music Emeritus (Brandeis U.) Marty Boykan and conductor, composer, pianist Joel Spiegelman (Brandeis MFA '56 and former Artist in Residence). The panel discussion is part of the Library's Irving Fine Centennial Festival and will take place in their Library's Coolidge Auditorium at 2 pm.
The recording of composer Mu-Xuan Lin's Double Jeopardy (2013) for octet from the February premiere by the Ensemble Proton Bern has recently been released. To listen, please go to Mu-Xuan's website or Soundcloud. And, Mu-Xuan has been invited by Novalis Music+Art Festival in Croatia as one of their guest-composers for the summer, 2015. The festival has commissioned her to write a piece for chamber orchestra and video in collaboration with Secession Orchestra (France) and video artist Claudia Joscowicz (New York).
Composer David Dominique spent October as an artist-in-residence at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in Wyoming. While there he worked on music for his next LA theater project No Shore to Break On, which will be staged in March. He will conduct his original score live for each of the six performances. He is also composing and recording a collection of electronic songs to be released as an album called Mask in May. David has recently been accepted for an artist residency for September 2015 at Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, California.
Undergraduate Student News
Milton Shapiro, clarinet, Leah Shapiro, horn, Michelle Kim, violin and Jeremy Koob, piano, performed a patriotic themed concert on November 9th, Veteran's Day, at Maristhill Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Waltham. These musicians are members of the Brandeis Community Service Chamber Music Club, founded by brother and sister musicians Milton and Leah Shapiro. They are looking forward to performing at Maristhill again next semester.
On November 16th, Andrew Ho and Krista Hu, violins, Sarah Shin, viola, Jacob MacKay and Seth Rait, cellos, Natsuko Yamagata and Jeremy Koob, piano performed an afternoon of chamber music at Newbridge on the Charles Assisted Living Center in Dedham. This is the second time Brandeis students have performed at Newbridge on the Charles. They have been enthusiastically invited back for future performances!
Alumni News
Peter Van Zandt Lane, Ph.D. '13 in composition has received his second commission from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition. The work will be performed by the EQ Ensemble. Peter is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Florida.
Peter McMurray, MFA '08 in composition recently completed his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at Harvard University. He has just been awarded a post doctoral fellowship appointment at MIT.
Former music major Megan Bisceglia, '07 is Manager of Operations for the Concord Conservatory of Music, Concord MA. where she is helping launch a new Concert and Lecture Series. The first four concerts and accompanying lectures are devoted to the music of J. S. Bach.
Musicologist Joseph Morgan, Ph.D. '09, has been appointed Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Middle Tennessee. And Joe has a book out Carl Maria von Weber, Oberon and the Cosmopolitanism of the Early German Romantic published by Rowman & Littlefield.
Musicologist Silvio dos Santos, Ph.D. '03 has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Musicologist and chair of Music History and Musicology at New England Conservatory of Music Katarina Markovic, PhD '04 presented the program Goya and Beethoven: Revolution and Madness at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts on December 14. Joining Katarina were faculty and students from NEC performing music of Beethoven. The program included projected images of Goya's works, and readings from letters and contemporaneous documents. Katarina demonstrates how the two artists shared "a certain aesthetic temperament," which she discovered through studying each artist's works, correspondence, and other primary documents. You can read the notice carried in the December 12 issue of the Boston Globe
Composer Jeremy Spindler. PhD '11 has recently been exploring a different set of (sweet) talents. Spindler Confections of Somerville produces artisanal sweets that are available at local areas gourmet and arts and craft shops, or online: www.spindlerconfections.com.
Read about Spindler Confections the Boston Globe here:
Summer 2014
Commencement News
Violinist Rachel Levine '14 performs the "Adagio" from Bach's Sonata No. 1 in G minor
Emily Eng '14 receiving her diploma
Eric Chasalow hoods Ph.D. in Composition recipient Seunghee Lee
Our grads (and a few faculty)
Congratulations to our 2014 degree recipients!
•Emily Mariko Eng
Bachelor of Science Summa Cum Laude
Majors in: Music with highest honors: Composition Track
Minor in: Chemistry
Prize: Reiner Prize in Music Composition
•Jacoba B. Fleischman
Bachelor of Arts Cum Laude
Majors in: Music: Cultural Studies Track
•Benjamin M Gartenstein
Bachelor of Arts in Music
Prize: Florence and Charles H. Milender Prize in Music
•Rachel E Levine
Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude with high honors in Music: Performance Track
Minor in: International and Global Studies
Prize: Phyllis and Lee Coffey Award in Music
•Ben Hillel Plesser
Bachelor of Arts in Music: Composition Track
Minor in: Classical Studies
•Christopher M Stanton (not attending: received degree in February)
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude
Majors in: Music with high honors: Composition Track
Computer Science with high honors
•Isaac A Vesery
Bachelor of Arts Cum Laude with honors in Music:
Cultural Studies Track
Minors in: Business, Anthropology
Prize: Sandra Shea Fisher '56 Prize for Creative Arts
Graduate Students:
Master of Arts in Musicology
•Nicole Marie Brellenthin
Master of Fine Arts in Music Composition and Theory
•David A Dominique
•Bradley John Kuhn-Mckearin
•Frank S. Li
•Rebecca Brentano Sacks
•Kyo Shimizu
•Yiguo Yan
Master of Fine Arts in Musicology
•Elizabeth Anne Crisenbery
•Thomas Michael Croke V
•Aldona Dye
•Matthew Flynn
•Ian Michael Lorenz
•Derek Robert Strykowski
•Julie Ann VanGyzen
•Jessica Mae Vincent
Doctor of Philosophy in Music Composition and Theory
•Travis Spencer Alford
Dissertation: It Goes to Eleven: Serialism, Derivation, and Continuity
in David Sanford's Scherzo Grosso, and an original composition,
Emily's Window for soprano, clarinet/bass clarinet, and piano
•Edward Maxwell Dulaney II
•Dissertation: Continuing the Tradition Untraditionally: Helmut Lachenmann's
Restructuring of Musical Dialectic Through an Analysis of His
Three String Quartets, and an original composition, Harmonica Concerto
•Seunghee Lee
Dissertation: An Analytical Study and Survey of Compositional Style
in Augusta Read Thomas's Jubilee for Orchestra, and an original composition,
Bon II for Soprano and six instruments
Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology
•Paula Jo Musegades
Dissertation: Speaking the Unspoken Through Silence and Sound:
Aaron Copland and Hollywood Film Music
•Stephen Rogers Radcliffe
Dissertation: Structural Integration and Dramatic Displacement in
Early Verdi Recitatives and Scenas
•Joel David Schwindt
Dissertation: Academicism in Monteverdi's Orfeo: Oratory, Gendering, and
Architecturalism as Expressions of the Academic and Social Philosophy of
the Accademia degli Invaghiti
A Fine Centennial Begins
A commemoration of the centennial of Irving Fine's birth has begun. On May 16, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project under the directions of Gil Rose performed Fine's music and that of his colleagues Arthur Berger and Harold Shapero in Boston's Jordan Hall. The highlight of the program was Irving Fine's Symphony (1962), which was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra shortly before Fine's death in 1962. The project was co-sponsored by the Fine family, The Irving Fine Society, and Brandeis.
A recording of all of Fine's orchestral works including the Symphony as well as Harold Shapero's Serenade in D will be issued next fall.
On November 15, 2014 the music department will host a symposium and a concert of Fine's music by musicians from Copland House in the Slosberg Recital Hall.
Nick Brown '10 and Fine sisters Emily, Claudia, and Joanna at a reception following the concert.
The Slosblog has its debut
This May the first issue of the new music department newsletter The Slosblog appeared on newsstands throughout Slosberg. Creator and editor-in-chief Cheryl Nalbach promises scintillating news items in forthcoming issues!
Faculty News
•James Olesen announced his retirement after 42 years of distinguished service at Brandeis. Jim has had an illustrious career here directing the University Chorus and Chamber Choir, teaching courses in conducting, directing the vocal study program, and serving as department chair. While there have been many changes in the department and on campus since Jim's coming to Brandeis in 1972, what has always been present is his tremendous respect for and commitment to the music, the students, and his colleagues. We will miss you Jim.
Jim speaking at a luncheon in his honor in Slosberg on May 9
Jim's final choral concert at Brandeis on April 5, 2014
• Daniel Stepner's latest CD Music at Brandeis is due to be released in June. The recording of works by Brandeis composers includes Harold Shapero's Sonata for violin and piano (1942), Irving Fine's Sonata for violin and piano (1946), Yehudi Wyner's Concert Duo (1955-7), David Rakowski's Pied-á-terre (1999), and Yu-Hui Chang's Worries J.S. as Real (2008). The recording was supported by funding from the Poses Fund for the Arts.
Click here to read a review of Dan's CD, 20th-Century Masterworks for Solo Violin in the May 16, 2014 Fanfare Magazine.
•Live, from Peru:
On April 4 Judy Eissenberg presented a live video conference with Peruvian musicians in Cusco, Peru for her class MUS 3b: Introduction to World Musics. Ethnomusicologist Holly Wissler and Peruvian Q'eros musicians Inocencia Quispe, Lucio Chura, and Victor Flores spoke to the class for over an hour from a hotel room in Cusco. View the entire video conference HERE.
Student News
•Lydians perform works by students of MUS 101
Every spring students of MUS 101b: Theory and Musicianship I: Part 2, taught by Whitman Brown, are required to compose minuet movements as a final project. The works are then performed and recorded by the Lydian String Quartet. This is always the highlight of the year in music theory and one of the many unique aspects of a musical education at Brandeis.
May 9, 2014: Lydian String Quartet performing minuet by Elana Kennedy
•Musicology Ph.D. student Joel Schwindt is the 2014 recipient of the Elizabeth Bartlet Award from the AMS. He will be using the funds for a trip to Paris to complete archival research on his Monteverdi-Invaghiti book project. Joel will receive his Brandeis doctoral degree in August. His dissertation is entitled "Academicism in Monteverdi's Orfeo: Oratory, Gendering, and Architecturalism as Expressions of the Academic and Social Philosophy of the Accademia degli Invaghiti."
•Composer and doctoral student Jared Redmond has been invited for a 2-week residence at the 2014 International Gugak Workshop at the National Gugak Center in Seoul, Korea. 17 participants were selected: scholars, composers, performers, ethnomusicologists. The workshop consists of lectures, demonstrations, and lessons on the history, practice and philosophy of traditional Korean music, as well as cross-cultural contemporary collaboration.
•Jared Redmond and musicology Ph.D. student Derek Strykowski have been awarded Outstanding Teaching Fellows for 2013-14.
•Musicology Ph.D. student Georgia Luikens gave a fascinating talk on Leonard Bernstein on Friday, April 25 in the Rapaporte Treasure Hall, Goldfarb Library, kicking off the 2014 Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Arts. The talk Lunchtime with Lenny B. covered many aspects of Bernstein's life as a composer, conductor, teacher, activist, and arts advocate. Then a Brandeis select community chorus assembled by Georgia for the event performed a choral setting of Bernstein's "Make Our Garden Grow" from Candide (Georgia conducted). Awarded a 2013/14 University Prize Instructorship, Georgia created and taught the spring semester course "America's First Maestro: Leonard Bernstein's Music and Role in New York Cultural Life."
Alumni News
•Composer Peter Van Zandt Lane, Ph.D. '13 has recently been appointed Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Florida. Peter has already taught courses for the Brandeis music department, summer school, and University Writing Program. He has recently completed a two-week residency at the MacDowell Colony finishing up Hivemind, a piece for wind ensemble commissioned by the Sydney Conservatorium Estivo summer music program. The work will be premiered in Verona, Italy, in July by players from Sydney, Verona Conservatory, and University of Georgia. He has also begun a composition commissioned by the Emory University Wind Ensemble, which will be an opener for a concert in Spring 2015.
The CD of his ballet Hackpolitik is set for a June 24th release on Innova Records. Click HERE for the listing.
HackPolitik and the new version for wind instruments of his Slant Apparatus are both semi finalists in their respective categories for the American Prize in Music Composition.
•Christian Gentry, Ph.D. '12 in composition, has been appointed Assistant Professor of Music at Framingham State University. He will teach courses in music theory and history, and will start a new music technology program.
•Jared Field '11 has been working with his sister Jessie (also a Brandeis alum) on a new musical, "Always, Rachel". The work has been selected for a staged reading in the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Jared and Jessie will be working with a dramaturg over the next few months to revise and polish the show, and then producing three staged readings of it in Midtown this July. "Always Rachel" is based on the life of biologist and nature author (Silent Spring) Rachel Carson. You can visit the show's website at www.alwaysrachel.com to learn more about the show and to stay updated on the festival. Conductor, composer, clarinetist, and music educator, Jared Field was a music major who graduated Brandeis summa cum laude with highest honors in music, with an additional major in philosophy and a minor in film, television, and interactive media. He currently works part time at the Arts Initiative at Columbia University and writes blog posts on New York City museums for Columbia.
•A number of music alumni gathered at Connor Larkin's Pub in Boston on Friday, May 16 for food, drinks and good conversation. Then they were off to the Irving Fine Centennial Concert at Jordan Hall.
From l to r: Jared Field '11, Janette Myette '13, Rani Schloss '11, Lea Carnow '12, Yoni Battat '13, Dan Newman '09 and guest, Ann-Nin Wong '11, Devora Gleiber '13. Not pictured: Hannah Saltman '12, Karen Lowe '10.
Spring 2014
Faculty News
•Mark Berger, violist, Brandeis Ph.D. '12 has been appointed as the newest member of the Lydian String Quartet and as Associate Professor of the Practice in the department of music. Mark performed extensively with the Quartet last season and has been teaching viola and chamber music in the department this past year. His official status begins on July 1. Welcome (back) Mark!
•Eric Chafe's new book J.S. Bach's Johannine Theology: The St. John Passion and the Cantatas for Spring 1725 has just been released by Oxford University Press.
•Bob Nieske has a new cd out Bob Nieske 10 – Fast Track on the CIMP label. He is joined by Jon Damian, guitar, Bob Tamagni, drums, saxophonists Allan Chase, Tony Carelli, and Tom Hall, trumpets Ken Cervenka and Phil Grenadier, and trombonists Jeff Galindo and Phil Swanson. All compositions and arrangements on the CD are by Bob.
•Davy Rakowski has recently had a transcription of his piano music Sibling Revelry recorded by the President's Own US Marine Band on their CD From the keyboard, and his piano work Hotfingers recorded by pianist Nicholas Phillips on a CD titled American Vernacular: New Music for Solo Piano. Recent publications of his music by CF Peters include Exact Change (flute and soprano saxophone), Sibling Revelry (wind ensemble), Hotfingers (piano solo), Piano Concerto (piano/toy piano and orchestra), Préludes Book II (piano solo), Préludes Book III (piano solo) Blue Horizon (piano solo), Compass (saxophone quartet), and Thickly Settled (mixed quintet).
•Allan Keiler was recently interviewed by NPR's Susan Stamberg on All Things Considered on the 75th anniversary of legendary contralto Marian Anderson's historic Lincoln Memorial Concert in Washington DC. The feature aired on NPR on April 9. Allan is the author of Marian Anderson: A Singer's Journey. Allan also contributed a chapter entitled "Liszt on Schubert's Alfonso und Estrella: Translation and Commentary," for the forthcoming book The World of Schubert, eds. Christopher H. Gibbs and Morten Solvik (Princeton University Press, 2014), and an article for the Journal of Music Theory, vol. 57.2014 entitled "The Problem of the Retrieval of Musical Knowledge: the Thoroughbass Tradition and its Relationship to Rameau."
•Violinist and Professor of the Practice Dan Stepner was featured in the winter 2014 issue of Brandeis Magazine. The article Stepner's Graceful Bow to the Past, and present can be read HERE.
•Vocal instructor Pamela Dellal has a new CD Reviving Song: Spirited Works by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Héléne Montgeroult and Louis Spohr. Pam is joined by Diane Heffner, period clarinet, and Vivian Montgomery, fortepiano. The CD was produced by the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center.
Graduate Student News
•Composer Mu-Xuan Lin received an invitation from la Cité Internationale des Arts for a four-month residency in one of the 15 Paris city owned studios. She is currently in her Paris studio (next to the Seine) conducting dissertation research and writing music.
•Musicologist Jessica Vincent completed an almost year-long project planning and curating the special exhibit Beginnings of Music at Brandeis for the Robert D. Farber Archives & Special Collections. The exhibit, which highlights Erwin Bodky, Irving Fine, Leonard Bernstein, Harold Shapero, and Arthur Berger during their years at Brandeis, opened on Wednesday, April 2, 2014, and will remain open throughout the summer. Click HERE for details, and to read an interview with Jessica.
•Musicologist Daesik Cha has been awarded a Mellon Dissertation Year Fellowship for 2014-15 to complete work on his dissertation The Keyboard Fantasia in the Classical Period. Musicologist Charles Stratford and composer Mu-Xuan Lin have also received Mellon Dissertation Research Grants for 2014-15.
Undergraduate Student News
•Composer Nate Shaffer '16 was featured in the winter/spring issue of the State of the Arts and in a Brandeis Now article Clinton, Mozart, and me in which he recalls how he found his calling as a composer. Click HERE to read the complete article.
Fall 2013
Faculty News
•A number of news updates from Sarah Mead, gambist and Director of the Brandeis Early Music Ensemble:
*Her new piece, Fantasia Sine Nomine has just been published by PRB Productions. The work was premiered at the Conclave of the Viola da Gamba Society of America last August in Forest Grove, OR. Its Australian premiere will be on March 29th, 2014, in Sydney, with the viol consort Josie and the Emeralds.
*Her ensemble, Nota Bene recently completed a five day residency at Brandeis, which included class appearances for undergraduates studying Art History, Shakespeare, Renaissance Italian Literature, Cervantes, and Music History; a house-concert for graduate students in musicology; recording and videotaping at the Rapaporte Treasure Hall, Goldfarb Library; a performance at the New England Renaissance Conference hosted by Jonathan Unglaub at the Mandel Center. Presentations featured music from the Gorham Collection housed in Special Collections, with images supplied by Special Collections.
Ensemble Nota Bene recording in Rapaporte Treasure Hall
*Her Spring 2014 sabbatical will take her to the following places:
-Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH–1 month residency as part of the Winter Term program (January).
-UNC, Chapel Hill, NC–1 week teaching residency (February).
-New Zealand and Australia–1 month visit including concerts, lectures, master-classes and coaching (March).
-Trinity Wall St. (NYC) and 2nd Church in Newton (MA)–Tenebrae concerts with Tenet and Nota Bene (April).
-Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London–featured guest presenter (May).
-First New York Early Music Festival (NYC)–educational presenter (June).
-Kyoto, Japan–Viola da Gamba Society of Japan, first international tutor (August).
• Judith Eissenberg recently returned from an 11-day trip to Mali, and brought back an incredible account of her experience. Click here to see her journal!
Toumani Diabaté and Judy in his studio
Tribute to composer Harold Shapero:
•On September 28 the department honored the late Harold Shapero with the program The Piano Music of Harold Shapero. Harold's Variations in C Minor (1947) and his Sonata in F Minor (1948), were performed by Sally Pinkas, and his Four-Hand Sonata (1941) was performed by the Hirsch-Pinkas Piano Duo. Speakers included former Shapero student Michael Weinstein (Ph.D. '91), Harold's sister Pyra (Hannah) Shapero, and a video clip of an interview with Harold filmed by Eric Chasalow. Harold passed away in May 2013. He was 93 years old.
•On October 5 composer Eric Chasalow's Where it Finds Nothing But the Wind had its premiere here in Slosberg. The work, based on texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls, was composed for soprano Tony Arnold and members of the Boston new music ensemble Dinosaur Annex. The program also included an earlier work for soprano and electronics The Furies, which is based on poems by Anne Sexton. The performance of Where it Finds Nothing But the Wind was organized to coincide with the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition at the Boston Museum of Science. The project had the support of the Brandeis Office of the Provost.
•On January 17 composer David Rakowski will have a premiere of his second piano concerto at Jordan Hall. Pianist Amy Briggs will join with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose, for the premiere. Davy wrote it at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France during his 2010 –11 sabbatical. The concerto was commissioned by the Jebediah Foundation and BMOP will record it for their label BMOP/Sound.
•Composers Yu-Hui Chang and David Rakowski are two of 10 composers commissioned by cellist Rhonda Rider (one of the founding members of Lydian String Quartet) to write pieces for her that were inspired by some aspect of the Grand Canyon. Her CD, The Grand Canyon Project for solo cello, has just been released by MSR Classics. Rhonda was Artist in Residence at the Grand Canyon National Park during which time she prepared the pieces for the recording.
•Violinist Daniel Stepner new CD 20th Century Masterworks for solo violin will be released shortly on the Centaur label. The works are by Hindemith, Ysaÿe, Bartók, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. This cd comes on the heals of his recording of solos works for violin by Bach, and will be followed this coming spring by a cd of works for violin and piano composed by Brandeis composers Harold Shapero, Irving Fine, Yehudi Wyner, David Rakowski, and Yu-Hui Chang.
Alumni News
•Composer Peter Lane (Ph.D. '13) has been working with New York-based choreographer Kate Ladenheim on a full-length electroacoustic chamber ballet HackPolitik for the Juventas New Music Ensemble's 2013-14 concert season. The work is based on a series of cyber-attacks conducted by Anonymous in 2010 and 2011, and further inspired by Parmy Olson's book We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency. Portions of the ballet have already been performed in Boston, at the MacDowell Colony (where Peter had a residency this past summer), at Symphony Space in New York City, and at the Syracuse Ballet and Dance Center. The premiere of the full work with Juventas and the New York based dance company The People Movers takes place in Boston on November 15-16at the Boston University Dance Theater. Peter is joining the author for a lecture presented by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis on November 14.
•Composer Max Dulaney (Ph.D. '13) has been appointed Assistant Professor of Music at Tulane University. Max's dissertation included an analysis of Helmut Lachenmann's three string quartets, and an original composition titled Harmonica Concerto.
•Musicologist Brian Levy (Ph.D. '12) has been appointed to the jazz studies and music history faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music. His dissertation Harmonic and Rhythmic Interaction in the Music of John Coltrane examines harmonic and rhythmic interaction in John Coltrane's Classic Quartet.
Graduate Student News
•Composer Dave Dominique has a new album of his music, Ritual, which is scheduled for release on December 3. Comprised of 10 original compositions, Ritual draws inspiration from Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Sun Ra, Ethiopian music from the '70s, John Zorn, Steve Reich, and György Ligeti. The album is characterized by primal physicality and a wide range of instrumental timbres, including flute, violin, clarinet, bass clarinet, electric guitar, alto and bari sax, valve trombone, electronics, and a propulsive jazz rhythm section. Ritual was recorded and mixed to analog tape in Downtown Los Angeles with an ensemble of that city's finest creative musicians. The release date is: December 3, 2013.
Click HERE to listen to the recording!
•Musicologist Matthew Flynn, MFA, traveled to Certaldo, Italy this past summer to present a paper at the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference. His presentation "Manuscript Variations in Three Works of Francesco Landini" examined three Italian manuscripts from the 14th century which all contained the same three pieces by the famous 14th century Italian composer Franceso Landini: L'alma mie piange, Donna s'i t'o fallito, and Poy che da te. He discussed the slight variations in these pieces and explained what they illustrate about how the pieces were conceived and performed in the 14th century.
•Composer Michele Zaccagnini's composition Variazioni su Aldo Clementi has been selected as one of four finalists for an important Italian competition "...a Camillo Togni." The winner of the competition will be selected at a performance of the finalists' works on November 24.
•Musicologist Paula Musegades is specializing on film music and film studies. In addition to her work at Brandeis she is teaching a number of courses at Emerson College, including VM101 History of Media 1965-Present, a survey course for undergraduate students dedicated to the study of film and television history, which explores not only the history of film and television in the United States, but also such countries as Germany, France, China, Japan, and South Korea, including sociological and political influences on the formation of media arts in these countries and how they, in turn, influenced society; and an upper-level seminar Cinephilia and the Auteurs, which investigates the French response of André Bazin andCahiers du Cinéma critics to American cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, ultimately revealing the French influence on both American and French critics. Paula's dissertation topic is Speaking the Unspoken Through Silence and Sound: Aaron Copland and Hollywood Film Music.
•Musicologist Charles Stratford's "Compositional Approach and the Work of E.E. Cummings in Luciano Berio's Circles" will be published in a forthcoming edition of SONUS: A Journal of Investigations into Global Musical Possibilities. Berio's own history with the music department dates back to February, 1961 and a concert that he gave in Slosberg with his wife Cathy Berberian and the ensemble Concerts du Domaine Musical. Included on the program were his Thema (Omaggio a Joyce), Sequenza (1958), and Circles.
Undergraduate News
•A number of our undergraduate majors have gone on to interesting endeavors in and outside of the field of music.
Janette Myette '13 is a Stewardship Assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Nick Gordon '11 has created a startup company new speedway that is developing and marketing new events management software.
Michael Shafir '11 is an Associate Research Scientist at BBN Technologies (Computer Software).
Rani Schloss '11 is Program Coordinator at WGBH, Boston.
Ann-Nin Wong '11 is an Applications Specialist at MediTech in Framingham, MA.
Nick Brown '10 is Music Specialist for Library of Congress Music Division.
Eric Alterman '09 is co-principal cellist with the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra.
David Guerette '08 is IT and Media Specialist for the radio show From the Top.
Matt Stern ' 08 is music director for the Berkshire Theater festival and BU. He is also faculty music director at French Woods camp for the performing arts.
Summer 2013
Commencement News
Travis Rapoza, vl; Yonatan Battat, vla; Alison Fessler, vc; perform work by E. Donányi
Neal Hampton presents diploma to Yonatan Battat
Eric Chasalow congratulates Ph.D. recipient Peter Van Zandt Lane
Congratulations to our 2013 degree recipients!
•Yonatan A. Battat
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude with highest honors in Music.
Yonatan completed the Performance Track within the music major.
Minor: Philosophy
Yonatan received the Sandy Shea Fisher '56 Prize for Exceptional Achievement in the Creative Arts, and the Joseph and Ida Burtman Award for Scholarship and Leadership.
•Christopher M. Defossez
Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude with honors in Music.
Chris completed the Cultural Studies Track within the music major.
•Jennifer Lynn Edwards
Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude
Majors: Music with honors. Jennifer completed the Composition Track within the music major. She also majored in Psychology with high honors.
Minor: Italian Studies
Jennifer received the David A. Greene, M.D., Class of '71, Memorial Prize in Music.
•Alison L. Fessler
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude
Majors: Music with highest honors. Alison completed the Performance Track within the major. She also majored in Anthropology with high honors.
Alison received the Rosalie L. Warren Award in Music, and the Dorothy Haas Siegel Music Award.
•Benjamin Kenet Gold
Bachelor of Arts in Music.
Ben completed the Musical Theater Performance Track within the music major.
Minor: Theater Arts
•Grace E. Killian
Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude Majors: Music with highest honors. Grace completed the Cultural Studies Track within the music major. She also majored in International and Global Studies with high honors.
Minors: Peace and Conflict Studies; French and Francophone Studies
Grace received the Florence and Charles H. Milender Prize in Music.
•Janette M. Myette
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude.
Majors in: Music with highest honors. Janette completed the History Track within the music major. She also majored in French and Francophone Studies.
Janette received the Phyllis and Lee Coffey Award in Music
•Katrina May Osborne
Bachelor of Arts Cum Laude
Majors: Music with honors. Katrina completed the Cultural Studies Track within the music major. She also majored in Health: Science, Society and Policy
Minor: Italian Studies
•Ariella Stein
Bachelor of Arts Cum Laude with honors in Music.
Ariella completed the Performance Track within the music major.
Minor: East Asian Studies, Russian Studies
Ariella received the Jacqueline Foster Award in 2012.
•Jacob A. Weiner
Bachelor of Arts
Majors: Music; Sociology
Graduate Students:
•Mark James Berger
Ph.D. in Composition and Theory
Dissertation: Klang and Structure: Franz Schreker's Chamber Symphony (1916), and an original composition, Upon a Wheel of Cloud (2008) for viola, violoncello and double bass.
•James R. Borchers
Ph.D. in Composition and Theory
Dissertation: The Transcendence of Timbre: Timbre and Spatialization in Jonathan Harvey's Bhakti, and an original composition, Zodiacal Light for string quartet, percussion quartet, and electronic sound.
•Yohanan Chendler
Ph.D. in Composition and Theory
Dissertation: Dutilleux's Memory Concept and 'Progressive Growth' in Ainsi la nuit, and an original composition, String Quartet No. 2 "Tikkun Chatzot" for string quartet.
•Richard Charles Plunkett Chowenhill
M.F.A. in Composition and Theory. Richard is continuing in the Ph.D. program in Composition and Theory at Brandeis.
•Derek Benjamin Jacoby
Ph.D. in Composition and Theory
Dissertation: The Music of Lee Hyla: An Analysis of the First Movement of Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra no. 2 and a Survey of Stylistic Elements in His Music, and an original composition, Palindromic One: Number 31, for seven players.
•Arianne Nichole Johnson
M.A. in Music & Women's and Gender Studies
•Peter Van Zandt Lane
Ph.D. in Composition and Theory
Dissertation: Narrative and Cyclicity in Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto and an original composition, String Quartet No. 1 for string quartet, soprano, and electronics.
Peter received the Sandy Shea Fisher '56 Prize for Exceptional Achievement in the Creative Arts.
•Christina Tallon
M.F.A. in Composition and Theory
Graduate Student News
•Composer Dave Dominique is in LA in June conducting six performances of his original chamber score for Starcrosser's Cut, a new theater collaboration with playwright Joseph Tepperman. Click HERE to read more about it.
•Musicologist Matt Flynn will be giving a paper in July at the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference 2013 in Certaldo, Italy. The title of his paper is Manuscript Variations in Three Works of Francesco Landini.
•Ph.D. student in musicology Elizabeth Perten has been awarded a Mellon Dissertation Year Fellowship for 2013/14.
•Musicologist Daesik Cha and composer Victoria Cheah were awarded Brandeis Outstanding Teaching Fellow Awards in Music for 2013.
•Ph.D. Composer David Dominique and Ph.D. musicologist Joanna Fuchs have received 2013 Mellon/Sachar Dissertation Research Grants. Dave's grant will support his collaboration on a new theater piece, The Starcrosser's Cut, which will have six performances in Los Angeles from June 6 – 16, which he will conduct.
Alumni News
•In his capacity as Music Specialist for the Library of Congress,Nicholas Alexander Brown '10 has the opportunity to work with a diverse range of individuals, not the least of whom is Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden. Nick is also working on a major Irving Fine Centennial Celebration at the Library, which is scheduled for December, 2014.
Nick Brown with Dr. Jill Biden and her granddaughter Natalie Biden
•Composer and violist Mark Berger (Ph.D. '12) has had a very busy performance season that is continuing into this summer. This past year he has served as guest violist in the Lydian String Quartet, performing at Brandeis and around the country. In June he will premiere Brandeis composer emeritus Marty Boykan's Sonata for Viola and Piano (2012), which was written for him as part of the Music at Eden's Edge 2013 summer music series. Performances take place in Danvers, MA. and Essex MA.
Mark will teach the chamber music course MUS 116a: Chamber Music: Performance and Analysis at Brandeis this coming fall.
•Pianist and former music major Kristina Yepez, B.A. '12 has been appointed music director and pianist at Wailuku Union Church in Maui, Hawaii. Her responsibilities include selecting music for the worship services and leading and accompanying the choir in rehearsals and for services. Kristina graduated summa cum laude with high honors in music and was the recipient of the Phyllis and Lee Coffey Award in Music.
Faculty News
•Sarah Mead has been promoted to Professor of the Practice of Music. Sara directs the Brandeis Early Music Ensemble, and teaches courses in history of early music and historical performance practice. She also serves as the department's Undergraduate Advising Head.
•Ethnomusicologist Ann Lucas has been appointed Assistant Professor of Music at Boston College. Her new appointment begins in the fall, following a two-year appointment at Brandeis as ACLS New Faculty Fellow in Music and Anthropology.
At Brandeis Ann has offered courses in ethnomusicology field methods, music and culture in the Middle East, music and ecstasy, and non-western musical traditions. She also organized and directed the Brandeis Middle-East Ensemble Miras.
•A number of our faculty have recordings that have recently been released:
Lydian String Quartet first violinist Dan Stepner performs the J.S. Bach Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, and his own adaptation for violin of the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue on three extraordinary period violins by Sebastian Kloz (ca. 1740), Andrea Amati (1641), and Antonio Stradivari (1693). The recording is on Centaur: CRC 3283/3284.
Composer Eric Chasalow and his wife Barbara Cassidy have a new album Fly Away, which features the Barbara Cassidy Band performing works written by Barbara and Eric.
Composer Martin Boykan has a new recording of two orchestra works, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (2003), with Curtis Macomber, violin, and Symphony for Orchestra (1989) with Sanford Sylvan, baritone, performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project under the direction of Gil Rose. The label is BMOP/sound.
Pianist and chamber music coach Evan Hirsch has released a cd of selections from Olivier Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus on the MSR Classics label (MS 1433).
•In April Allan Keiler, musicologist and author of Marian Anderson: A Singer's Journey was interviewed by Nicholas A. Brown (Brandeis '10), Music Specialist at the Library of Congress, as part of the Library's Songs of America project. Read the interview HERE
•April saw the success of the Denver Stage Theater production of Neal Hampton's Sense and Sensibility,a musical adaptation of the Jane Austin novel (Jerry Hadow, lyricist). Read the Denver Post review HERE
Spring 2013
Graduate Student News
•Composer and Ph.D. candidate Dave Domnique has been invited to present his paper Loops, Filters, Interruption and Fixation in Beat Furrer's Invocation VI at three conferences. This April he presented the paper at The West Coast Conference of Music Theory at UC Irvine and Music Theory Southeast at Appalachian State University. Next fall he will present at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory in Charlotte, NC. The SMT Conference will meet from October 31-November 3, 2013.
•Ph.D. student in musicology Georgia Luikens has been awarded a University Prize Instructorship for her proposed course America's First Maestro: Leonard Bernstein's Music and Role in New York Cultural Life.
•Ph.D. student in composition and theory Emily Koh has received an award from the New Music USA Composer Assistance Program for her composition freyja. The Composer Assistance Program is intended to help emerging to mid-career composers offset costs associated with live premieres and public readings of new or significantly revised works. Supported expenses include copying costs, score and part extraction and reproduction, travel and lodging; costs for obtaining copyrighted material, and more. freyja received its premiere performance on October 15, 2012. Click HERE to read the article on NewMusicBox!
•Graduate composers Peter Van Zandt Lane and Florie Namir are winners of Firebrand Concert Series' 2012 Call for Scores and will have their winning pieces performed at the Local (Boston) Composers Spotlight concert at St. Paul's Episcopal Parish, 26 Washington St. in Malden on January 26th, 2013 at 7:30pm. Florie's piece ISAM Variations will be performed as well as Peter's Piano Trio No. 1 (Taijitu).
Alumni News
•Musicologist Reba Wissner, PhD '12, has been awarded a book contract by Pendragon Press for her book, A Dimension of Sound: Music in The Twilight Zone, about the music for the original Twilight Zone television series. The book is due to be released later this year. Reba is currently an adjunct lecturer at Berkeley College.
Faculty News
•In conjunction with Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble Composer and D.A. Artistic Director Yu-Hui Chang, presented a concert at the MIT Museum on April 14 titled "Hi-Fi-Sci: Music & Science Animation." The concert was featured as part of the Cambridge Science Festival, an event that brings together composers, scientists, and performers. The festival included five world premieres, each of which interpret stunning scientific animations by leading scientists.
Brandeis scientists, musicians and alumni that were prominently featured in this event are:
Irving Epstein, Brandeis University, Chemistry Dept.
Zvonimir Dogic, Brandeis University, Physics Dept.
John Mallia (Ph.D. '03, Director of Electronic Music Studio, New England Conservatory of Music), commissioned composer
Peter Child (Ph.D. '81, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), commissioned composer
Daniel Stepner (Lydian String Quartet) violinist
David Russell (Artist Diploma '97, Music Performance Faculty, Wellesley College) cellist
•In February, composer David Rakowski was composer in residence at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. During the residency he taught composition students and lectured.
Fall 2012
Graduate Student News
Composer Peter Van Zandt Lane will be engaged this coming spring and summer in three distinguished residencies, MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where he will be working on his ballet HackPolitik. The ballet will be premiered by the Juventas New Music Ensemble during their 2013/14 season.
Faculty News
•On Sunday, October 14 the Music Department presented its annual Tribute to Irving G. Fine concert. This year a special program was designed in memory of the 50th anniversary of Fine's untimely death at age 47. A professional orchestra under the direction of conductor and faculty member Neal Hampton, which included leadership by concertmaster and Lydian Quartet first violinist Daniel Stepner and cellist Joshua Gordon, performed Irving Fine's Serious Song, a Lament for String Orchestra (1955) and Notturno for Strings and Harp (1950-51). Pulitzer Prize winning composers Richard Wernick B.A. '55 and Yehudi Wyner (Emeritus Walter W. Naumberg Professor of Music) along with long-time Fine colleague and Brandeis Emeritus Irving Fine Professor of Music Martin Boykan offered tributes and personal reflections on the life and work of Irving G. Fine. Current Irving Fine Professor of Music Eric Chasalow introduced the program with additional reflections on the significance of Irving Fine in the world of music and at Brandeis. In attendance were Fine's sister Barbara, and his three daughters, Claudia, Emily, and Joanna.
In 1950 Irving Fine joined Irwin Bodky as a member of the Brandeis music department, having been recommended to Brandeis founding president Abram Sacher by Leonard Bernstein. Through his indefatigable efforts he founded, established, and expanded the School of Creative Arts, taught classes and composition students individually (including Richard Wernick), while at the same time continuing to produce masterpieces of American contemporary music. Irving Fine died suddenly on August 23, 1962, only a few weeks after having conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in the premiere performance of his final work Symphony (1962).
Joanna, Barbara, Claudia, Emily
Conductor Neal Hampton with Richard Wernick
Daniel Stepner, Emily Fine, Yehudi Wyner
Martin Boykan speaking with Claudia Fine
Eric Chasalow and Richard Wernick
Graduate Student/Alumni News
•In 2011, composer Seung-Ah Oh, PhD '05 joined the School of Music at DePaul University as an Assistant Professor. In Con Brio, the Journal of the DePaul School of Music, she talks about how music is known in her native Korea and how she brings elements of that sensibility to her music. Read the entire article HERE.
•This past summer, composer Peter Van Zandt Lane collaborated with Jacob W. Frank, a photographer working in Denali National Park, to create a video utilizing a series of over 8,000 images of the Aurora Borealis taken from various points in the park. Peter was asked to compose a new piece inspired by these images, that would ultimately be paired with a time-lapse video of the photography and disseminated online. The video was uploaded to YouTube on the September 8th, and has averaged over 1,000 views a day since it's posting.
In Peter's words: "Knowing that he was more familiar with my singer/songwriter material, I took the opportunity to try to do more of a blend of the popular music I've written over the past few years, with some of the electronic sounds I use in my chamber music (some of the sounds in the score were actually pulled directly from my dissertation piece, String Quartet no. 1, composed for the Lydian Quartet). The piece is titled Coronal Mass Ejection, upon the suggestion of Jake, a solar event that incites the effect of the Northern Lights."
•Three of our graduate composers have won semi-finalist awards in the national Rapido! Composition Contest. Derek Hurst, Ph.D. '06 and Mark Berger, Ph.D. '12 have been chosen by Boston Music Viva for the Northeast Region, and current graduate student Frank Li has been selected by Left Coast Chamber Ensemble representing the West Coast. All three composers will have premiere performances of their works this season.
The Rapido! Composition Contest challenges composers to write a chamber ensemble piece in 14 days. Fifteen semi-finalists are selected to compete at the regional level, three from each region, followed by a National Finals Concert with five finalists. Robert Spano, Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, will lead the panel of judges. The first prize is a $7500 commission.
Faculty News
•Composer David Rakowski will be the Karel Husa Visiting Professor at the Ithaca College School of Music this year. He will give a lecture on November 13, offer private composition lessons, and have his music performed on two concerts. For more information see: http://www.ithaca.edu/music/mthc/husaprof/
This fall he will also give the Barlow Lecture at Brigham Young University, and will have his fourth symphony premiered by the New England Philharmonic on October 27, 2012 at 8 p.m. in the Tsai Performance Center, Boston University.
Summer 2012
Commencement News
President Lawrence addressing SCA Commencement
•Joseph Polisi tells arts grads never to compromise artistic integrity. Juilliard president reminds Creative Arts grads their work can display beauty of human spirit. Click HERE to read the full address! Or click HERE for a PDF version.
J. Polisi at 2012 SCA Commencement
J. Polisi receiving honorary degree
Congratulations to our degree recipients for 2012!
Mary Ruth Ray awarding Jacob Friedman
•Bryan M. Belok
Bachelor of Arts in Music
Minors in French and Francophone Studies, and Business
Bryan completed the Composition Track within the music major
•Melinda Marie Cimini
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude
Majors in Music with high honors, and English
Minor in Theater Arts
Melinda completed the Composition Track within the music major
•Jacob Friedman
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude with highest honors in Music
Minors in Economics, and German Studies
Jacob completed the Music History Track within the music major and is the recipient of the Sandy Shea Fisher '56 Prize for the Creative Arts
•Ethan Charles Goldberg
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude
Majors in Music, and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies with highest honors
Ethan completed the Performance Track within the music major and is the recipient ofthe Morris Homonoff Prize in Yiddish
•Mariah Swiech Henderson
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude
Majors in Music with high honors, and Psychology
Mariah completed the Performance Track within the music major and is the recipient of the Dorothy Haas Siegel Music Award
•Elizabeth Ann Hutchinson
Bachelor of Arts in Music
Minor in Hispanic Studies
Elizabeth completed the Composition Track within the music major
•Yakov Israel
Bachelor of Arts in Music
Minor in Economics
Yakov completed the Composition Track within the music major
•Bradley John Kuhn-Mckearin
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude with highest honors in Music
Bradley completed the Composition Track within the music major
•Amelia J. Lavranchuk
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude with high honors in Music
Minor in Education Studies
Amelia completed the Performance Track within the music major and is the receipientof the David A. Greene, M.D., Class of '71, Memorial Prize in Music
•Benjamin Ijiri Oehlkers
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude
Majors in Music with honors, and Computer Science
Minor in Education Studies
Benjamin completed the Cultural Studies Track within the music major
•Katharine C. Peña
Bachelor of Arts Cum Laude
Majors in Music, and Politics
Minors in Social Justice and Social Policy, and Economics
Katherine completed the Performance Track within the music major
•Hanna H. Shansky
Bachelor of Arts with honors in Music
Minor in Peace and Conflict Studies
Hanna completed the Cultural Studies Track within the music major and is the recipeientof the Florence and Charles H. Milender Prize in Music
•Kristina L. Yepez
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude with high honors in Music
Kristina completed the Composition Track within the music major and is the recipient ofthe Phyllis and Lee Coffey Award in Music
Graduate Students:
•Travis Spencer Alford
M.F.A. in Comoposition. Travis is enrolled in the doctoral program in Composition andTheory
•Stacy Malleta Dimapelis
M.A. in Music & Women's and Gender Studies
•Nathaniel Wayne Eschler
Ph.D. in Composition and Theory
Dissertation entitled: Duality in Elliott Carter's Third String Quartet, and an original composition, Divisi: for Chamber Ensemble and Duo
•Christian Allan Gentry
Ph.D. in Composition and Theory
Dissertation entitled: Moment, Object, and Narrative: The "Path" Pieces of György Kurtág's Kafka-Fragmente, Op. 24 for Soprano and Violin, and an original composition,Tableaus for Percussion Quartet and Digital Playback
•Gilad Harel
Ph.D. in Musicology
Dissertation entitled: Expressivities, Modulation and Structure in the Recitatives of Johann Sebastian Bach's Weimar cantatas and St. John Passion
•Hermann Hudde
M.A. in Musicology
•Erin Walker Jerome
Ph.D. in Musicology
Dissertation entitled: Disguise, Deception and the Development of Haydn's Dramatic Voice in the Comic Operas of 1766-1777
•Seunghee Lee
M.F.A. in Comoposition. Seunghee is enrolled in the doctoral program in Compositionand Theory
•Brian Andrew Levy
Ph.D. in Musicology
Dissertation entitled: Harmonic and Rhythmic Interaction in the Music of John Coltrane
•Julia Rose O'Toole
M.F.A. in Musicology
•Reba Alaina Wissner
Ph.D. in Musicology
Dissertation entitled: Of Gods, Myths and Mortals: Francesco Cavalli's L'Elena (1659)
Alumni News
•Good news on the job front! Two of our recently graduated musicologists have teaching appointments: Rob Pearson, Ph.D. '11 has a lectureship at the University of North Texas College of Music, and Gil Harel, Ph.D. '12 has an assistant professor appointment in the Department of Fine Arts, Baruch College, CUNY. Congratulations to Rob and Gil!
Graduate Student News
Travis Alford, Emily Koh, Christian Gentry
•Congratulations, composer Travis Alford, on winning the 2012 ISCM (League of Composers - International Society for Contemporary Music) Composers Competition! His piece, Self, Analyzed (2010) for fl, bcl, perc, guitar, toy piano can be heard on his website: http://www.travisalford.com.
Previous Brandeis winners include: 2011 Sam Nichols (UC Davis faculty), 2009 Mark Berger (recent Ph.D.), 2007 John Aylward (Clark University faculty), 2007 Laurie St. Martin (tenured UC Davis faculty). http://leagueofcomposers.org.
•The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University has just announced its commission winners for 2012. Among them are two Brandeis composers:
Emily Koh is beginning her second year in the doctoral program. She will compose a work for the Lunar Ensemble. Christian Gentry, Ph.D. 2012, will compose a work for the ensemble The Guidonian Hand. This is Christian's second Barlow award.
Each year the Barlow Endowment sponsors its commissioning programs for significant new musical works not yet in progress. Brandeis students and faculty who have received Barlow awards in recent years include Peter van Zandt Lane, Seung-Ah Oh, Yu-Hui Chang, Eric Chasalow, and David Rakowski.
Faculty News
Professor Eissenberg at Macchu Pichu!
As a recipient of a fellowship from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, Judith Eissenberg spent two weeks in Peru this summer where she studied music and culture of the region as part of the Center for World Music's "Andes and Beyond Music and Cultural Workshop" led by ethnomusicologist Holly Wissler. She took part in workshops and presentations of traditional Andean music and dance, studying various indigenous musical styles and rituals. Of particular significance was an intimate sharing of songs between the Q'eros, a secluded people living high in the Andes and a musician from the small Amazonian Wachiperi community. In addition to daily workshops and hands-on lessons with local musicians, Judith visited numerous Incan and pre-Incan cultural sites, including Macchu Pichu.
She looks forward to sharing her experience with the students of MUS 3b: Intro to World Musics in the spring, and intends to take her family back to Peru next summer to hike the Inca Trail! Maybe someday she will return with Brandeis students!
Spring 2012
Alumni News
•The first CD of music by Richard Beaudoin, PhD '08 in Composition and Theory, has been released in New York by Focus Recordings, distributed by Naxos. The CD release is a 2-CD set. Details regarding the CD can be found on his website: http://richardbeaudoin.com. Additionally, this past spring Richard was commissioned by Harvard University President Drew Faust to compose a work for Harvard's 375th anniversary commencement ceremony. The work for a cappella chorus, Villanelle for an Anniversary sets poet Seamus Heaney's text written in 1986 in commemoration of the 350th anniversary of the founding of Harvard College.
•Composer Steve Mackey, PhD '85 has won 2012 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Mackey: Lonely Motel - Music From Slide Rinde Eckert & Steven Mackey; Eighth Blackbird [Cedille Records]. He was also nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Steve Mackey is Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at Princeton University.
•Nicholas Brown '10 received a Master of Music in Musicology from King's College London. He recently completed an internship at The White House, serving in the Social Office in the Office of the First Lady and has been appointed to the position of Music Specialist at the Library of Congress.
Graduate Student News
•Musicologists Gil Harel and Georgia Luikens, and composer Travis Alford were awarded Brandeis Outstanding Teaching Fellow Awards in Music for 2012. Georgia received a second award in English for her Undergraduate Writing Seminar. Gil will embark on his professional teaching career this coming fall with an appointment to a tenure-track position at Baruch College (CUNY) in New York City.
•Composers Seunghee Lee and Michele Zaccagnini have been awarded Mellon Dissertation Year Fellowships for 2012/13.
•Musicologist Elizabeth Perten has received a DAAD Fellowship for research in the Weimar archives on the musical culture life and nature of German musical criticism existing at the time of Liszt's arrival in 1848. The DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst or German Academic Exchange Service) is a publicly funded organization that offers programs and funding to students and researchers to promote scholarship on the German language, culture, literature and the arts, among other areas. Elizabeth was also offered the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, a four month grant, sponsored by the main academic/scholarly organization in Weimar.
•Musicologist Joel Schwindt has received a Mellon Travel Grant to do summer research in Mantua, Padua, and Venice related to his work on Monteverdi's L'Orfeo. He was also awarded the Hollace Anne Schafer Memorial Award from the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society for the top graduate student paper for AY 2011-12 "Monteverdi's L'Orfeo: pulchritude through proportion, and why it mattered to the Accademia degli Invaghiti".
•Composer Emily Koh has won the 2012 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. The ASCAP Young Composers Foundation provides recognition and cash awards to gifted young composers of concert music whose works are selected through a national juried competition. Emily is also a winner of the 2012 Parma Student Composer Competition for her composition [circum]-perceptio for clarinet, violin, cello, marimba, and piano. http://www.parmarecordings.com/studentanthology
•Composer and concert pianist Jared Redmond has been accepted to the 13th Annual International Edvard Grieg Piano Competition, which takes place in Norway from September 1-8.
•Composer Florie Namir will have a performance in Israel of a commissioned piece: Her Beloved Eyes, for recorder, violin, cello, harpsichord. The concert is part of "The Musical Offering to Maria Teresa Agnesi," an international conference by the Israel Women Composer Forum to be held at the Felicja Blumental Music Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel, on July 4.
Score 2007-2009 pdf
Score 2010 pdf
Score Summer-Fall 2010 pdf
Score Summer 2011 (Passings) pdf
Score Fall 2011 pdf


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The BYU Cougars football team continued to load up on seasoned football players the non-traditional way. First, it was former UTEP wide receiver Jordan Leslie for his final season. Next was punt return specialist Keanu Nelson transferring to BYU from Stanford. On Thursday, April 17 the Cougars signed Nebraska transfer Harvey Jackson.
Jackson is a 6-foot-2, 210--pound safety from Fresno, Texas who will graduate from Nebraska this spring with a bachelor's degree in construction management. He still has one year of college football eligibility remaining and intends to use it playing at BYU.
A solid student at Nebraska, Jackson was named Academic All-Big Ten and to the Big 12 Commissioner's Honor Roll during his time in Lincoln.
On the field, Jackson started three games last season for the Huskers and played in 35 games during his four-year Nebraska career. It was a career that included a red shirt season in 2010.
Jackson comes to Provo seeking to crack the BYU starting lineup after the summer. But it is a loaded secondary featuring Notre Dame transfer Chris Badger, along with senior Craig Bills and Robertson Daniel, who converted from cornerback to play the position. That said, BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall is still welcoming Jackson with open arms.
"Harvey is an experienced player and a mature individual with excellent character," Mendenhall said in a statement. "He will join our program after graduating in construction management with a business minor. He is a great fit for BYU on and off the field."
Jackson's Twitter page, which boasts 2,800 followers, is riddled with Biblical references he has posted as well as his re-tweets from well wishers, which include both BYU and Nebraska fans. If there is any animosity from Huskers fans, it certainly doesn't show in their tweets.
Not only that, Jackson -- who started just four games in his entire playing career at Nebraska -- gets a new lease on his own football career at BYU. The Cougars are loaded from top to bottom with talent and experience and that success -- and a chance to learn from Bronco -- had an impact on Jackson choosing BYU over schools like West Virginia and Cincinnati.
Suggested Links
- BYU football: Cougars to welcome Stanford transfer Keanu Nelson into fold
- BYU Cougars football: Why the Cougars fell to rival Notre Dame again
- BYU football: Wisconsin series a sign that independence is working
- BYU football: Why the Cougars got first-ever win over Boise State
- Nebraska football to leave Big 12 for Big Ten?

subset: commoncrawl


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Preliminary Lay out on Strike Cruiser
A rough layout of the Imperial Strike Cruiser. More detailed levels to be coming soon (including an larger and more expanded bridge section).
for more fun similar to this, check us out at Project Floor Plan
Paul Barnard
aka Bad Monkey
Knight Watch Shipping Corporation
not bad... but could use more detail.
Looks like something my kid brother drew.
Im surprised he has more artistic skill then you. http://www.xwingalliance.com/forums/biggrin.gif
Good job paulbarnard
your kid brother DID draw it http://www.xwingalliance.com/forums/wink.gif
"Nearly 100% of all divorces are caused by marriage."
Rogue 6
That's just the preliminary. Actual plan is for three detailed levels plus the bridge triangle.
Most likely levels will be one crew quarters level, a detailed level of the hangar (TIE Racks, AT-AT Barges, etc), and some thing else, whatever our Artist can coble together from the information we're feeding him.
Feed him pizza as well as information. He'll work better. It's a proven fact. Seriously, I like it. Will you be doing other ships as well?
"Nearly 100% of all divorces are caused by marriage."
Rogue 6
For info, try looking in "The Incredible Cross-Sections" book. It's a big, rather neat book. I think there's both an OT and E1 version. There's a ISD, Corvette, Death Star and some other stuff. I think the E1 has a Trade federation battle ship, Radiant VII, Queen's ship and possibly several others. Definetely a cool read.
got them already. one researcher has all the technical manual books...
To answer Thrawn's question, yes. We will do other ships. The Strike Cruiser I chose for our first projcet because it's large, but not collossal. It's also modular, so you can see where componets can be switched out hopefully in later versions.
We won't ever design a level, ship, etc. But if anyone wants to incorporate anything we use in a fiction, level etc, please feel free to use us and cite us as a resource.
[This message has been edited by paulbarnard (edited December 16, 2000).]
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I haven't been able to get a definitive answer about re-stringing a guitar. All the strings at once or 1 at a time. It's easier all at once, but I've been told it is hard on the neck. I've also been…Continue
Started this discussion. Last reply by albert sonnenberg Nov 4, 2010.
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Last Updated: April 30, 2014
2013 (JUNIOR): Played in four games ... logged 10 minutes for an average of 2.5 minutes per game ... attempted two field goals (both 3-point attempts) and grabbed one rebound ... reserve guard ... left the team due to personal reasons following the 2013 fall semester.
PRIOR TO FRESNO STATE: Medically redshirted the 2010-11 season at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah ... transferred to Hartnell College in Salinas, Calif., for his freshman and sophomore collegiate seasons ... two-time team captain and all-conference selection at Hartnell ... averaged 16.5 points, 6.5 assists and four rebounds per game with a 95 percent free throw percentage and 43 percent 3-point field goal percentage.
HIGH SCHOOL: Prepped at Springville High School in Springville, Utah ... a McDonalds All-American nominee, all-state selection, team captain and Most Valuable Player ... led team to state tournament all four years, including the semifinals as a junior ... averaged 19 points, 9.5 assists and five rebounds per game to lead state in assists per game and 3-point field goals per game.
PERSONAL: Born July 14, 1989 in Casper, Wyoming ... parents are Al and Laura ... has four brothers - Chris, Trent, Travis and Tanner ... has one sister, Kelly Meads ... married to the former Amy Andrus ... enjoys going on dates with his wife, reading, serving in his church and traveling ... wrote for his high school newspaper and served a two-year church mission after high school in Houston, Texas ... favorite athletes are Peyton Manning, Pete Maravich and John Stockton ... most admires his wife for sacrificing and supporting him as he chases his dreams ... chose to attend Fresno State because of the coaching staff and basketball program ... majoring in religious studies.
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Ever wondered who could be the pioneer of foreclosure investing in the Philippines? Ever wished you could learn from the master himself?
Well, we are very lucky because Mr. Noli "El Subastahero" Alleje, will be conducting a seminar on May 25, 2013, Saturday, at the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) Auditorium (also known as the Tektite Building in Ortigas) entitled "Make Millions in Foreclosures".
Mr. Noli is considered as one of the first Filipinos to specialize in investing in foreclosures.
Who is Mr. Noli "El Subastahero" Alleje?
Mr. Alleje started investing in foreclosed assets way back 1999 (This was even before Robert Kiyosaki's book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad", which was published last April 1, 2000). During the time when the Philippine economy was down and banks had billions of non-performing assets, he saw the diamonds in the rough and profited from them. It's just like buying stocks when the values are at the lowest.
Mr. Alleje has since been able to invest in different types of real properties. He was able to auction billions of pesos' worth of properties. In other words, he has 14 years of foreclosure investing experience tucked under his belt, surely a veritable treasure trove.
For those who want to know more about Mr. Noli "El Subastahero" Alleje, here's a video of an interview of Mr. Alleje by Mr. Edric Mendoza of ANC "On the Money" – this is a very good "crash course" on foreclosure investing.
Why should we learn foreclosure investing?
At the moment, the Philippine economy is very strong, property prices are high, and construction of new projects are in full swing, so some may not be thinking too much about foreclosed assets. Real estate being cyclical, however, there are people predicting that the good times will soon be over and a property crash is imminent.
While we would never wish bad things on anybody, it is still better to know how to profit from a property bust in case it happens. In any case, it is good to know how to invest in real estate since there are always foreclosed properties (even now that we are in a boom period) that can bring very good returns.
What can we learn from the seminar?
According to Learning Curve, the seminar provider, the following topics will be discussed:
- The multi-billion market opportunity in foreclosures
- The coming real esrare bubble and how you can profit from it
- The 2 reasons why it's better to buy bank foreclosures
- The 3 critical things you should do before buying a foreclosure
- The proper way to determine the right price of foreclosures
- The 5 things to look for when inspecting a foreclosed property
- The problem with real estate gurus and bestselling authors
- The no. 1 mistake when buying a property
- The 1 thing that will solve any problem in real estate
- The 5 strategies to make money from foreclosed properties
- The 5 key factors to consider before you buy a foreclosed property
- The 5 options for financing your purchase
What is most important, I believe, is the question and answer portion. I would love to pick his brains! If you have questions that have been brewing for some time, the seminar will be the best time to ask and finally get your answer.
My husband and I, with our 8-year old son CJ, will be attending his seminar, "Making Millions in Foreclosures" on May 25, 2013. The seminar will be from 1:30 to 5:30 pm at the PSE Auditorium in Ortigas. The learning fee is P1,000.00 per person if a ticket is bought until May 20, 2013. From May 21 to May 25, the fee will be P2,500.00.
I am looking forward to learning a lot from Mr. Alleje. I met him in RCBC Plaza a couple of weeks ago and he seems like a very nice guy. Actually, Jay and I already met Mr. Alleje several years ago when Jay won on his bid for a foreclosed property auctioned by Mr. Noli. Jay said he will write an article about it, that is, if he can find time to do so, since he is very busy with our foreclosed properties database.
Anyway, for those who also want to attend, you may purchase a ticket through the following link:
See you there!
Cherry Vi M. Saldua-Castillo
Real Estate Broker, Lawyer, and CPA
PRC Real Estate Broker License No. 3187
PRC CPA License No. 0102054
Roll of Attorneys No. 55239
2013 Internal Education Head, REBAP-LMP
Text by Jay Castillo and Cherry Castillo. Copyright © 2008 – 2013 All rights reserved.
Full disclosure: If purchase a ticket through our affiliate link, we are entitled to a modest affiliate fee.
Picture of Mr. Noli Alleje from Learning Curve


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"BDSM" now has a fourth edition to the series and we still have the best of your wildest and darkest desires! Don't miss out on a great S&M flick perfect for you enthusiasts out there! We hope you will enjoy watching as much as we enjoyed filming it!
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