The following lists achievements of and news from graduates from the Department of Music from multiple years. If you are a recent graduate and have news/accomplishments to share about yourself or wish to be added to this page, please send an email with your degree, year of graduation, and information you want to include to concerts@berkeley.edu Put “alum-news-addition” in the subject field.
Search: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W
Marié Abe (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2010)
2009/2010: Completed her dissertation, “Sounding Counter-Geographies: Chindon-ya Resurgence and Japan’s ‘Multicultural Question,’ ” and was awarded a post-doctoral position at Harvard
2011: Assistant Professor at Boston University. Finished an NPR radio documentary on the accordion in California; and developed a companion website, too, which was a new challenge.The program has been picked up by several NPR stations across the country. KALW is definitely going to broadcast it. She is also working on several articles, a contribution for an edited volume, and a book manuscript.
2012: Is an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Boston University, and reports that the radio program which was funded by the California Council for the Humanities, “Squeezebox Stories,” a 60-minute public radio documentary about immigration histories in California told through the accordion as a common trope, won the Excellence in Journalism Award (Best Arts and Culture Reporting),The Society for Professional Journalism. She has two forthcoming publications: “Response to Steven Feld’s Hiroshima: the Last Sound” for the Online multimedia Journal Sensate: Journal for Experiments in Critical Media Practice (Department of Anthropology, Harvard University) and “Resounding Imaginative Empathy: Chindonya’s Affective Economies on the Streets of Osaka, Japan” in Sound, Space and Sociality in Japan, edited by Carolyn Stevens and Joseph Hankins. (Routledge, Sensory Anthropology Series). Marié continues her fieldwork among the indigenous Oaxacan farmworkers in Central Valley, CA, field-recording and follow-up research on the acoustic politics around the new U.S. military base construction plan in Henoko, Okinawa, and fieldwork on the chindon musicians’ participation in the antinuclear power movement in post-tsunami disaster in Tokyo, Japan.
Eliane Aberdam (PhD, Composition, 1998)
2012: Works at URI as an Associate Professor in their Music Department. Teaches Theory, Orchestration, Analysis, Electronic Music, Counterpoint, & Composition to Undergraduate & Graduate students. Recent works: Around the World in 8 Minutes, Les Bons Augures, 7 Deadly Sins, and more. Website: http://www.composer.aberdam.com/
Jean Ahn (PhD, Composition, 2008)
2008: Received her degree with her thesis piece, “Salt for Orchestra.” Ahn will participate in Berkeley Symphony’s composer-in-residence program. She will develop three original works, which will be performed by the Berkeley Symphony.
2009/2010: Completed her composition: “Salt for Orchestra” in 2010.
Rebekah Ahrendt
2009/2010: Held research fellowships from the University of Utrecht (the Netherlands) and the DAAD (academic year in Berlin). She also received the Eugene K. Wolf Travel Grant from the AMS for further work in France and Belgium. Two of her conference papers were honored with awards: the Irene Alm Memorial Prize of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music and the Paul A. Pisk Prize of the AMS. She will finish her dissertation work in 2011 as an Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Early Career Fellowships Dissertation Completion Fellow. Her ensemble, “Les grâces” (including fellow graduate student Jonathan Rhodes Lee), completed its first professional recording in June 2010; the CD is scheduled for release in late 2010.
2012: Joins the faculty of the Yale Department of Music in fall 2013 as an Assistant Professor. She enjoyed her time as a Mellon Postdoctoral Scholar in the Humanities at Tufts University, where she organized the international, interdisciplinary conference “Music and Diplomacy” (March 2013). Conference organizing continues with the symposium for the Utrecht Early Music Festival 2013, entitled “Negotiating Music.” She also recently published an article in Opera Quarterly.
Marisa K. Ames (BA, 2001)
2012: Received her DVM in 2007 and recently attained board certification with the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. She is currently a cardiologist at the North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine.
Shalini Ayyagari (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2009)
2009/2010: Began a two–year Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities at Dartmouth College, and recently filed her dissertation entitled, Small Voices Sing Big Songs: “The Politics of Emerging Institutional Spaces Among Manganiyar Musicians in Rajasthan, India.”
2011: Holds a tenure-track assistant professorship at American University. She’s had an article accepted in Asian Music that will be coming out in early 2012, is almost finished with another article, and presented two new small projects as conference papers (Madison South Asia conference and SEM) that she hopes to turn into articles later this year. She’s started work on the book manuscript and spent a month in India in June doing some follow-up research for it.
2012: Recently completed her first year as Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at American University in Washington, DC Shalini is the author of 2012 “Spaces Betwixt and Between: Musical Borderlands and the Manganiyar Musicians of Rajasthan,” Asian Music, 2012, 43 (2) and the forthcoming “Out of Patronage and Into the Studio: Manganiyar Music and Record Production in Rajasthan.” In Popular Music in India: Dancing with the Elephant. Bradley Shope and Gregory Booth, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Jeanne (Shapiro) Bamberger (MA, 1951)
2012: Her new book, Discovering the Musical Mind, will be published by Oxford U. Press in spring 2013. It’s a collection of her papers published between 1972 and 2011.
Brian Banks (PhD, Composition, 1995), Professor Titular, Depto.de Artes, Uhiv. de las Americas
2009/2010: Puebla Cholula, Mexico had six premiere performances in 2009. In addition, both he and Dwight Banks (PhD, Composition, 2003) were selected to have a chamber orchestral work performed by the North/South Chamber Orchestra of New York last spring.
Laura Basini (PhD, Musicology, 2003)
2005: Received a Mellow Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania for 2003-05 and is now Assistant Professor at Sacramento State University.
Eliot Bates (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2008)
2008: Received his degree with his thesis “Interactions, Networks, and the Production of Digital Audio” in an Istanbul Recording Studio. Bates begins a two-year appointment as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
2009/2010: Finished a two–year position as visiting assistant professor at the University of Maryland and took up a two–year ACLS post-doctoral position at Cornell University. His book Music in Turkey appeared in the Global Music textbook series edited by Professor Bonnie Wade.
2011: Eliot is in his second year as an ACLS post-doc at Cornell. His book Music in Turkey (2011) is part of the Oxford University Press’s Global Music Series and his Digital Tradition: Arranging and Engineering Traditional Music in Turkey, is in the pipeline for Oxford. He is working on several articles for publication.
2012: Has accepted a post at the University of Birmingham in England. It is a newly-created position that will focus on his expertise as an ethnomusicologist and in which he will help develop a curriculum that responds to the larger and varied communities that are part of Birmingham. His second book, Digital Tradition: Arranging and Engineering Traditional Music in Turkey, is in the publication pipeline. Eliot’s article, “The Social life of Musical Instruments,” appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of Ethnomusicology, vol. 56, # 3, pp. 363-392.
Mason Bates (PhD, Composition, 2008)
2008: Received his degree with his thesis piece “Liquid Interface,” for orchestra and electronica. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and received a commission from the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the Gerbode Foundation for a new piece with the Chanticleer Ensemble. In February 2008, Bates’s composition “Liquid Interface” had its New York premiere opening the program for Leonard Slatkin’s final Carnegie Hall appearance as Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra. Bates will be Composer in Residence for the California Symphony until 2010.
2009/2010: Composed The B sides, commissioned and premiered by the San Francisco Symphony in the their regular season at Davies Hall.
2012: Recently performed in the NY premiere of his latest work, Altenative Energy, at Carnegie Hall with the Chicago Symphony under Riccardo Muti. His post of composer-in-residence at the CSO was recently extended for another two years, and he also serves as this year’s Composer of the Year with the Pittsburgh Symphony. The PSO will perform many of his works this year, including a Violin Concerto for Anne Akiko Meyers under the direction of Leonard Slatkin. His classical/club project Mercury Soul, which drops sets of new classical music into an evening of DJing, recently sold out two shows at the New World Symphony.
2013/2014: Is currently Composer in Residence with the San Francisco Symphony and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In January the San Francisco Symphony will present the Beethoven and Bates Festival with three of his works featured to be recorded for release. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra will play Bates’ Violin Concerto in the spring. Mason is currently working on commissions from the St. Paul and Toronto Symphonies as well as a cello concerto for the Seattle Symphony and the LA Chamber Orchestra.
Serena Evans Beeks (BA, 1977)
2012:In working for the schools and preschools of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, and volunteering with the Episcopal Church in Haiti, making about 4 trips a year since 1999. Music in Haiti creates community and a hopeful outlook!
Fernando Benadon (PhD, Composition, 2004)
2005: Appointed Assistant Professor at American University in Washington, D.C.
2006: Winner of the 2005 International Society for Contemporary Music’s composition competition which included a premiere of a work by the New York New Music Ensemble. The New York Times called the piece, “a perfect curtain-raiser of ear-grabbing invention.”
2008: Commissioned by alumni Ivan Ilic to write a solo piano piece, Bugi Wugi, performed by Ilic at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall, New York City, June 23rd.
2009/2010: Received a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2009–10. He is a member of the Music Department faculty of American University. Fernando just released a new CD on Innova Recordings. Information and audio tracks are available for listening on the CNMAT web site at: http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/node/8076.
2012:Received tenure at American University, Washington DC, and is now chairing the Department of Performing Arts. Received a $50k grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a Map of Jazz (www.mapofjazz.org).
Nancy Bettencourt (BA, 1968)
2012: Taught music for about 15 years at the elementary level, before switching to Library/Information Science (Graduate Degree Rowan Univ, N.J.) and will retire from teaching at the end of this academic year. Nancy lives and works about 20 minutes east of Philadelphia in Burlington and Camden counties, New Jersey. She is the mother of five sons, three of whom majored in Music, and two who teach instrumental music.
Jane Bernstein (PhD, H&L, 1974)
2006: Currently Professor of music at Tufts University, has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
2007: Currently Professor of musicology at Tufts University, is now the new president of the American Musicological Society.
David Bithell (PhD Composition, 2004)
2005: Taught at Pomona College last year and this year is the recipient of a Townsend Center Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2005-06.
2006: Accepted a tenure track position as Assistant Professor in the Division of Composition Studies at the University of North Texas College of Music.
2012 : Was promoted to Associate Professor of Digital Art in the Department of Art and Art History at Southern Oregon University. His interdisciplinary works have been featured recently at the Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), and a portrait concert by NYC-based Yarn/Wire.
Philipp Blume (PhD, Composition, 2006)
2005: Accepted a position at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in theory and composition. Blume was awarded the Ferruchio Busoni Prize for 2004 in Germany.
2008: Is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
2012: Presented his trombone quartet Evge, Klvgerella! in the series Ensemble Europa, Köln, in September. The work was commissioned and broadcast by West German Radio (WDR) and premiered by the composers slide quartet. Other recent collaborators include Ensemble dal Niente, Chicago, and the Argento Ensemble in New York City. Also in 2012 Philipp co-founded the New Music initiative SUONO MOBILE USA, based in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.
Stephen Blumberg (PhD, Composition, 1994)
2007: Granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor of Music in the Department of Music at California State University, Sacramento where he teaches composition and music theory and serves as the Artistic Director of the Festival of New American Music.
Rebecca Bodenheimer (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2010)
2009/2010: Selected for a post-doctoral position at Hamilton College in New Hartford, New York. Her dissertation: “Localizing Hybridioty: the Politics of Place in Contemporary Cuban Rumba Performance”
2011: She is in her second year as a post-doc at Hamilton College, and is working on writing projects for completion in the coming year.
2012: Dissertation: “Localizing Hybridity: The Politics of Place in Contemporary Cuban Rumba Performance”
Thomas Brothers (PhD, History & Literature, 1991), Professor of Music at Duke University
2007: Published Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans (New York: W. W. Norton).
2009/2010: Awarded a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship in Folklore and Popular Culture. His 2007 book entitled Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans continues to receive received high critical acclaim.
Anthony Brown (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 1997)
2008: Continues as an Associate Scholar at the Smithsonian. Scholar and percussionist, Brown keeps “one foot in the academic world and the other in performance and composition.” His book, Give the Drummer Some! appeared in 2007 and Rhapsodies, the last in the trilogy of Anthony Brown Orchestra recordings interpreting the works of three great American composers through an Asian American musical prism, appeared in 2006. The first in the trilogy, Far East Suite, received a Grammy nomination for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album.
Kristi Brown-Montesino (PhD H&L, 1997)
2007: Published Understanding the Women in Mozart’s Operas with the University of California Press.
Carla Brunet (Ph.D., Ethnomusicology, 2012)
2012:Was the winner of the Northern California SEM Chapter’s Marnie Dilling Prize for her “The Carnaval Stage: Singing as Transformative Encounter.” Carla will be teaching the Music of Brazil course in spring semester, 2013, at the University of California, Berkeley.
Zachary Bruno (BA, Music, 2006; MA, UOP, 2008; DMA, Boston University, 2008) is the newly appointed Director of Bands at Skyline College in San Bruno.
Keith Cerny (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 1983), Double major in music and physics and Hertz and Fulbright-sponsored pianist
2005: Appointed Executive Director of the San Francisco Symphony.
Mona Chiung-Wen Chang (BA, 2002)
2012: Mona received her Ed.M. at Harvard and has done capacity building and program development work for several nonprofits including Employment Resources Inc, the Boston Civic Symphony, and the New England Aquarium.
Lisa Chao (was Lisa Tseng) (BA, Music/Psychology, 1999)
2012: Is an adult figure skater for the U.S. Figure Skating Association. As a skater and a musician, she loves listening to all types of music and editing them for skating programs.
Lily Chen
2012: Lily, a Ph.D candidate, was recently awarded the “music classics” prize given by the National Symphony Orchestra in Taiwan. Her piece for 21-string prepared Zheng solo was selected for performance at the 29th Asian Composers League Conference and Festival in Taiwan.
Brian Christian (BA, 2002)
2012: Is married to another pianist, Clara, who performs his compositions. They have a two-year-old son named Jesse and they are both piano teachers in the Chicago area.
Miguel Chuaqui (Ph.D., Composition, 1994)
2012: Is the Head of the Composition Area at the University of Utah School of Music. He just came back from a residency at the University of Chile in Santiago, and is currently writing a new work for piano and electronics for pianist Keith Kirchoff. Chaqui’s works are released on Centaur Records, New World Records, and Albany Records. http://music.utah.edu/faculty/miguel-chuaqui.php
Steven Clark (Ph.D., Composition, 1997)
2012: Director of Production at Tribal Brands: creating entertainment apps, games, and installations. Founding member of the Immersion Composition Society: an international confederation of recording artists engaged in monthly, intensive day sessions dedicated to generating new music.
Victor Coelho (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 1979)
2008: Currently professor of musicology at Boston University and new Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education, is a scholar of Italian Renaissance music and a professional lutenist. Although his research focuses on 16th- & 17th-century Italian music, his work in African American music and rock history have landed him appearances on Fox, CBC (Canada), PBS, and MTV. He also plays guitar in the Rooster Blues Band which regularly tours the blues circuit with Chicago R&B artist Lou Pride. He teaches the very popular course called “The Rolling Stones: Rock Exiles.” Coelho taught for 20 years at the University of Calgary in Canada, and prior to that at the University of Wisconsin, the École Normale Supérieure (Paris), the University of Melbourne (Australia), and Cornell University.
Jeremy Cohen (BA, 1973)
2012: Was playing music professionally before he got to Cal and has continued for his whole life. He has also taught music lessons and has had several students who went on to national and international fame. Although his instrument in college was clarinet, his career has been as a bass guitarist; he has played all kinds of music. You can hear some of it at http://www.jeremycohenbass.com. Cohen is happily married to a classmate from Cal (Jane Sharp) and they still live in Berkeley. They have a grown son who works at Microsoft.
Jeremy Cohen (BA, 2002)
2012: Is a composer, percussionist and teaching artist. He directs the award-winning Study in Ghana program at UMass Amherst and conducts African drumming workshops nationwide, including at: The Kennedy Center, The Boston Symphony Orchestra, New England Conservatory, Memphis City Schools. More info at: http://thisworldmusic.com/
David Coll
2009/2010: Selected as the Composer in Residence with the Berkeley Symphony during its current season, for the “Under Construction:” series.
Sean Curran, PhD 2013, History and Literature
2009/2010: Spent the academic year 2009–10 at King’s College, University of Cambridge, funded by the Sydney Ehrman Fellowship from UCB. He also won the Grace Frank Dissertation Award from the Medieval Academy of America, & the Elizabeth C. Bartlet Award from the American Musicological Society to pursue manuscript research in Paris in 2010.
2013/2014: Filed his dissertation: Vernacular Book-Production, Vernacular Polyphony, and the Motets of the “La Clayette” Manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, nouvelles acquisitions françaises 13521). Sean has been awarded a four-year Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, University of Cambridge.
Brian Current (PhD, Composition, 2002)
2005: Received several awards, including the Barlow Prize, the International Rostrum of Composers, ASCAP, the Grand Prize CBC National Radio Competition for Young Composers, and the Grand Jury Prize at the NEM International Forum for Young Composers.
2006: Received a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship. Recent performances of his include “Symphonies in Slanted Time” with the Indianopolis Symphony and a concert in Carnegie’s Zankel Hall with the American Composers’ Orchestra in April of 2006 (www.briancurrent.com)
2007: Received a Koussevitzky commission for a new orchestra piece and had excerpts of his chamber opera “Airline Icarus” premiered at the New York City Opera Vox Festival.
2008: His music was nominated for a Juno award, the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys. Montreal’s St. Lawrence Choir, under the direction of Choral Director, Marika Kuzma, commissioned his “Inventions on Et in terra pax,” well-received at its premiere in April 2008. He also was awarded a Koussevitsky commission for Symphony Nova Scotia.
2012: Brian Current’s works were performed by the Toronto Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, The Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the National Symphony of Taiwan and numerous others. In 2011 he won Italy’s International Premio Fedora for New Chamber Opera. ”
Martin Deasy (PhD, Musicology, 2005)
2005: Will be a Junior Research Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, for 2005-06.
Susan de Ghize (neé Kim) (BA, 1996)
2014: Is an Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Texas at Brownsville.
Esther Criscuola De Laix (PhD, History & Literature, 2009)
2009/2010: Completed her dissertation, “Cultures of Music Print in Hamburg,” ca. 1550–1630.
Donald E. Denniston (BA, 1985)
2012: Presently Music Library Coordinator/Mugar Library at Boston University. This past spring he was one of the few selected as Student Supervisor of the Year. Outside of general reference and searching work, Denniston supervises a staff of undergraduate/graduate students. Compositions include Normandie (for strings, March/09); Trois petite pour piano (Homage a Claude Debussy) (Aug/10); Wedding Fanfare for three b-flat trumpets (2002). At this time, he is on sabbatical from composing but plans to be back at it soon.
Anthony DeRitis (PhD, Composition, 1997)
2007: Received a 15,000 Euro award to develop interactive web-based materials for the teaching of Music Perception & Cognition along with fellow graduate Georg Hajdu (PhD, Composition, 1994) & Berkeley professor of composition and co-director of CNMAT, David Wessel.
Juliet Byrd DeWitt (ba, 1948)
2012: Is retired; She lives in a retirement home and plays the violin about 2 or 3 times a month.
Mark DeWitt (PhD, Ethonomusiciology, 1999)
2009/2010: Selected for an endowed chair in traditional music at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he has been asked to create a new BA program and an interdisciplinary research center in traditional music. While Cajun and Creole dance music from the region “will play a prominent part in this new endeavor,” he writes, “there will be room for a far greater range of musical expression and scholarly inquiry.”
2011: Appointed full professor and is the Dr. Tommy Comeaux Endowed Chair in Traditional Music at the School of Music & Performing Arts, University of Louisiana.
Sidonia Diaz-Hubbard (BA, 1966)
2012: Retired from Optometry in 2005. Took up violin as a second instrument three years ago and now plays in the Port Townsend Orchestra. The Olympic Peninsula is full of talented, dedicated and supportive artists, especially musicians. Love my “second career.”
Robert Dickow (Ph.D., 1979)
2012: On the music faculty at the University of Idaho since 1984. Hornist and composer, performer in the Inland Northwest.
Richard Dudas (PhD, Composition, 2004)
2006: Selected to have his piece, “Prelude for Flute and Computer”, premiered at the 2006 ICMC and the Seoul International Computer Music Festival.
2007: Continuing as a visiting lecturer in computer music at the Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea.
2008: Accepted a position as Associate Professor of Composition and Computer Music at the Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea.
2009/2010: In November 2008, he participated in the Moscow Autumn Festival in Moscow, Russia. He also taught a master class at the Moscow Conservatory.
Shannon Dudley (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 1997)
2005: Promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in the School of Music at the University of Washington. He is the author of Carnival Music in Trinidad, Oxford University Press, 2004, and is presently completing a monograph on music in the Caribbean.
Peggy Duesenberry (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2000)
2005: Was formerly the ethnomusicology editor for the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and recently head of the ethnomusicology section of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dance, has accepted a new position in the Academy’s Research Department to lead research in Scottish music and ethnomusicology.
Aaron Einbond (PhD, Composition, 2009)
2009/2010: Completed two years of the Cursus in Music Composition and Technology at IRCAM, culminating in the premiere of his work What the Blind See for five instruments, electronics, & video by Ensemble L’Instant Donné at the CentQuatre in Paris as part of IRCAM’s Agora Festival. His stay was supported by a Fulbright Scholarship & UC Berkeley’s Georges Ladd Prix de Paris. He simultaneously completed his DEM studies with Philippe Leroux. Recent works & performances include the premiere of “Starting Over” for contrabass recorder and electronics by Antonio Politano in Lausanne, Switzerland; Break for baritone saxophone & electronics at the World Saxophone Conference in Bangkok by Jérôme Laran; the sound installation What the Blind See at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin; & “Beside Oneself” for viola & electronics selected for performances at the International Computer Music Conference in Montréal & the Seoul International Computer Music Festival. He composed a new work for the Ensemble Cairn that was premiered at the Darmstadt Summer School in 2010. Aaron is finishing his second year on a post–doc to Columbia University and has been commissioned to write a new work for the Ensemble Recherce & Freibrug Barockorchester for 2011 Cambridge, funded by the Sydney Ehrman Fellowship from UCB. He also won the Grace Frank Dissertation Award from the Medieval Academy of America, & the Elizabeth C. Bartlet Award from the American Musicological Society to pursue manuscript research in Paris in the summer of 2010.
2012: Joined the University of Huddersfield as a Research Fellow in 2012 after spending two years as Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University.
Rebekah Ekberg (BA 1997; MA, Counseling Psychology, 2008)
2012: On track for licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist, with an emphasis on using music and other arts in the therapeutic process. Currently working with elementary school-aged children. Akbeerg also has a six-year-old daughter.
Sivan Eldar
2009/2010: Invited to join the composition faculty of the John Adams Young Composers for the 2010–11 academic year, teaching weekly composition workshops for students at the advanced level. She was also part of the group show, Teen Age: You Just Don’t Understand, curated by UC Berkeley’s Ken Goldberg and presented at the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco ib fall.
Leah Ellis (BA 1998)
2012: Is working as a banking professional in Sacramento. She has two handsome sons and a lot of music in their home.
Melina Esse (PhD, Musicology, 2004)
2005: Won an AMS 50 Fellowship in 2003. She was appointed an Assistant Professor at Eastman in fall 2004.
Robin Estrada
2005: Current Ph.D. candidate in composition Robin Estrada has been teaching at the University of San Francisco in the Philippines Studies Program with a new course “Ancestral songs and Performance: Revisiting the past Through Contemporary Choral Music.”
Rob Fallon (PhD H&L, 2006)
2006: Taken up a position as assistant professor at Bowling Green State University.
2009/2010: Robert Fallon is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Carnegie Mellon University. He is editing the journal Ars Lyrica, and co-editing a two-volume book Messiaen Perspectives (Ashgate, 2012).
Nick Fettis (BA, 1973) is a resident of Carmel. Last January he became music director of Whalefest Monterey. Among other duties he has created music to accompany live whale sounds which the attendees appreciated and he’ll be back at it again on January 21. He is always looking for recorded whale sounds and is in search of Killer whale recordings. He is a frequent guest of San Francisco’s Bohemian Club where he performs on the piano at the Bohemian Grove. He also services pianos and preps them for performances, and feels at home there with so many Cal graduates! His latest CD is all original music “Yosemite the Soundtrack.” He has fond memories of Andrew Imbrie, a gentleman and fine composer.
Evelyn Ficarra
2009/2010: Premiered a solo piano piece at the Chamber Bridge in May 2010 called “The Arbitrariness of Language.” She also performed in San Francisco and Switzerland and played in the November 2009 MANCA Festival, where she was in a premiere of a string trio with electronics known as Vague–Fenêtres. She was awarded the 2010 George Ladd Prix de Paris.
2013: Evelyn filed her PhD in Composition at UC Berkeley in Dec 2010 and continues to be active as a composer, writing across a range of interdisciplinary genres including electroacoustic music and music for dance, film, theatre and the concert hall. Recent projects include Memory Table, part funded by the Zellerbach Foundation, with performances in San Francisco and the UK. In 2012 she was appointed to be Lecturer in Music Theatre at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England.
Christine (Breves) Field (BA, 1986)
2007: Married with two daughters, ages 7 and 10. Graduated UCSC graduate science illustration program. Held a position at Stanford Medical School as medical illustrator. Currently employed by Stanford University as Art Director/Design Manager for the office of development.
Robert Fink (PhD, H&L, 1994)
2007: Currently Associate Professor of Music at UCLA, has recently published Repeating Ourselves: American Minimalism, with UC Press.
Mark Fish (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 1991)
2008: Arrangement of Ravel’s “Ma M`ere l’Oye (Mother Goose Suite)” for cello and piano was published by Editions Durand (Paris).
Philip Flavin (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2002)
2006: Spent the last two years in Kyoto, Japan, as the recipient of a SSRC Post-doctoral fellowship. Presently he is preparing his dissertation, “Sakumono: Musical and Textual Humor in Japanese Chamber Music of the Tokugawa Period,” for publication while continuing research in Japan on another project. Flavin also was honored by being named Daishihan, an honor rarely given, the highest recognition of achievement in the Seiha ryu music tradition in Japan.
2007: Produced a five-CD-set of recordings of the complete surviving sakumono repertoire in Japanese music (Japan Victor, 2006) as a result of a 2-year SSRC/Japan Foundation Post-doctoral fellowship. He has just accepted a multi-year arts postdoctoral fellowship at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. With this prestigious award Flavin will work on his Sôkyoku-jiuta project & also join a team of Japanese specialists on a long-term interdisciplinary project.
Heather Frasch
2009/2010: Had a performance of her piece “Segmented Fragmentations” by the SurPlus Ensemble in Freiburg in Dec 2009. SFSound commissioned and premiered a new work to disassemble & reconstruct in SF, Jan 2010. Her piece “Métal re–sculpté” was performed at SEAMUS 2010 & NYCEMF 2010. It will also be performed at the festival Third Practice Electro–acoustic Festival this fall. Her collaborative installation post–industrial organisms, was featured at the NYCEMF. This summer Frasch was a participant in the Matrix 10 course at the SWR Experimental Studio in Freiburg, where she took courses with Vinko Globokar and Detlef Hussinger.
Walter Frisch (PhD, H&L, 1981)
2007: Currently Professor of Musicology at Columbia University and past chair of that department, recently published German Modernism: Music and the Arts with the University of California Press.
Renee Froman (ba, 1977)
2012: Has worked as a violinist since graduating Cal – first, overseas in Israel, and now, back in the Bay Area- Marin and Vallejo Symphonies, free-lance work, and teaching piano in Berkeley. She has fond memories of Michael Senturia’s conducting class and chamber music with Felix Khuner. She has been married and raised 3 children.
Stephen Gamboa (B.A., 2008)
2012: Won Third Prize at the Westfield International Harpsichord Competition, and was a finalist – with Zweikampf harpsichord duo in Early Music America’s baroque performance competition.
Drew Gascon
2012: Drew, double-major in Music and MCB, auditioned and was chosen to present a Weber Bassoon Concerto at the March 21st, 2012 Noon Concert in Hertz Hall.
Matthew Gelbart (PhD, Musicology, 2002)
2008: Currently new Assistant Professor at Fordham University, is the author of The Invention of “Folk Music” and “Art Music”: Emerging Categories from Ossian to Wagner (New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism), Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Lisa Gold (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 1998)
2005: Published Music in Bali: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford University Press, 2005). She formerly taught at Colorado College and currently teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and in the Music Department at San Jose State University.
2011: Lisa Gold was invited as the North American representative to the Bali World Culture Forum, an international conference held in June, 2011 examining globalization, change, and tradition. She spoke on “Cultural Sustainability: Musical Knowledge, Innovation, and Transmission Within the Eco-System of Balinese Wayang Performance,” on a panel with the director of UNESCO for Southeast Asia, the Governor of Bali, and Australian cultural historian Adrian Vickers. She also performed and conducted fieldwork in Bali following up on dissertation research that will be incorporated in a book on which she is currently working. This paper and the book develop ideas explored in a paper presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology national meeting in fall of 2010. Gold is scheduled to present in the Center for Southeast Asia lecture series in February of 2012.
Lisa participated in the San Francisco Asian Art Museum’s exhibition, Bali: Art, Ritual, and Performance (February to September, 2011) as a consultant and lecturer (in The Society for Asian Art Lecture Series), and performer. This included several shadow plays and lecture demonstrations on music and wayang with renowned Balinese dalang (shadow puppet masters) I Wayan Wija and I Made Sija. Lisa’s other performance activities have included gamelan gong kebyar concerts with Gamelan Sekar Jaya, both in the Bay Area and in Los Angeles at the World Festival of Sacred Music. Lisa Gold’s gender wayang group also accompanied Wayan Wija in a shadow play that was enthusiastically received by a Hertz Hall audience, following a lecture demonstration for her Music in Bali class. Students in that class learned to play Balinese music in a performance component of the course co-taught with I Dewa Putu Berata, guest musical director of Gamelan Sekar Jaya, whom Gold also assisted in another course at Berkeley, Balinese Gamelan. The gamelan class premiered a composition of Dewa Berata’s at a Noon Concert in Hertz Hall.
Sylvia Galitzer Goldstein (M.A., Music, 1962)
2012: Pianist, teacher and composer, living in Connecticut for many years. Her career includes: piano department chair, Hartford Conservatory; adjunct professor, community college; temple music director, and published composer of liturgical music.
Matthew Goodheart
2009/2010: Toured Germany this summer with concert appearances and installations in Bonn, Wupperal, and Berlin.
David Goodman (Ph.D., Composition, 1982)
2012: Over the past 30 years Goodman has taught at Pomona College, UCLA, and since 1997 as a full-time Professor of Music Theory, Composition and Music Technolgy at Santa Monica College. He has been the recipient of two Ilona Katz Chair of Excellence Awards from the SMC Foundation and continues to flourish as a composer and pianist. Throughout the course of his teaching career, Goodman has mentored hundreds of music students who have gone on to pursue higher degrees and successful careers in music. His most recent work, Prayers for the Planet, has as its central theme the issue of human and global responsibility and was premiered by the Los Angeles Concert Orchestra and SMC Concert Chorale in 2011.
Pheaross Graham (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2009)
2009/2010: Will be attending UC Irvine this fall for his graduate studies in Piano Performance. He was accepted to other schools as well with scholarships, including the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Janet Goodman Guggenheim (B.A, 1960)
2012: Living in Portland and Bay Area. Member of the Florestan Trio and affiliated with Portland State University. Former faculty at UC Berkeley. Former touring pianist, with a long collaboration with Itzhak Perlman. Guggenheim recently played recital at Abiquiu Music Festival with fellow Cal alum, violist John Graham. This was a reunion from their Cal days in the Music Department. The concert was attended by Ben Trimble, former violinist from UC Orchestra in the 1950s. It was great to have a U.C. musical reunion after fifty-plus years, and they hope to repeat this program – maybe in Berkeley!
Nalini Ghuman Gwynne (PhD, Musicology, 2003)
2005: Currently Assistant Professor of Music at Mills College.
Joseph Hammer(Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2004)
2005: Was accepted into the New England Conservatory’s Masters progra. He sang the title role in a production of Don Giovanni at Harvard University in spring 2005.
Justin Hellman(BA, 2002)
2012: After nine years working as a bass player/music teacher, Hellman is now in medical school at the University of Chicago. Check out www.justinhellman.com to listen to some of his albums or search for him on iTunes.
Keith Hernandez (BA, 2008)
2012: Is a Recording Studio Manager at the Berkeley Language Center (UC Berkeley)
Kay Hettich (M.A., 1993)
2012: Is the owner of Recorder and Piano World in Redding, CA. Music performance and instruction.
Caleb Holtzinger (BA, Music/Math, 2011)
2012: Is working at PayPal in Risk, furthering his musical studies on the side with friends, and writing before committing to graduate school in the next few years.
Partow Hooshmandrad (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2004)
2005: Recipient of the National Geographic Society’s Conservation Trust Advisory Board grant. The prestigious award will support her field research on the cultural heritage of the Kurdish Ahl-i Haqq of the Guran region in Kermanshah (Iran).
2006: Returned from a year in Iran on a prestigious National Geographic Cultural Heritage Preservation Fellowship. She is now academic specialist for research and development in the World Cultures Institute at UC Merced.
2007: Currently Academic Specialist for Research and Development at the World Cultures Institute at UC Merced, has accepted what she calls “a dream job,” as Assistant Professor at the University of Kurdistan, Hawler in the Federal Region of Kurdistan in Iran. UKH is a newly-established research university in collaboration with two universities in the United Kingdom: Bradford University for its undergraduate programming and the University of Nottingham for its graduate programs. She writes, “This will give me a chance to work with a wonderful international community of colleagues from many countries” and numerous perquisites.
2008: Accepted a full time position at California State University, Fresno. Her “dream position” at the Hawley University in Kurdistan where she was teaching proved a difficult politico-military venture. Her Performing the Belief: Sacred Musical Practice of the Kurdish Ahl-Haqq of Guran has been accepted for publication.
2012: Has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Persian Language & Culture at California State University, Fresno. Her home department will be Music, but her course load with be split between music, linguistics, and Middle East studies courses. She sends her regards to colleagues at the Music Department who are “great musicians and scholars, amazingly kind and supportive individuals.”
Vivian Hou
2012: Vivian, current undergraduate student, auditioned and was chosen to present the Dvorak Violin Concerto during spring 2013 in Hertz Hall.
Pattie Hsu (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2010)
2009/2010: Completed her dissertation, “Living Taiwanese Opera: Improvisation, Performance of Gender, and Selection of Tradition.”
Jeremy Hunt (PhD, Composition, 2008)
2008: Completed his degree with his thesis piece, “in_videophone_surround.”
Ivan Ilic (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2001)
2005: Has been studying and concertizing in Paris, and has won a number of awards for his performances in Paris and the United States.
2008: Commissioned solo piano works by six UC Berkeley graduate composers in 2006 – Fernando Benadon, Keeril Makan, Dmitri Tymockzo, Brian Current, Reynold Tharp, and Mei-Fang Lin – and has toured the British Isles and America performing the pieces. Since receiving a Hertz Traveling Fellowship in 2001 Ilic has been doing graduate study in Paris and reports that things have taken off in the last two years …”and I am now comfortably making a living from my concerts in Europe. My first commercial CD, The Complete Debussy Préludes, will be released in France in spring 2008. “I was first introduced to the Préludes in Richard Taruskin’s music history class and David Pereira’s harmony class; what I learned at Berkeley follows me wherever I go.”
Vijay S. Iyer (PhD Technology and the Arts, 1998)
2005: Current recipient of CNMAT’s unique PhD, is featured in the June issues of both the Jazz Times and Downbeat, with a review of his latest CD in the latter, and an extensive article on him in the former. His website shows him to be quite the star (http://www.vijay-iyer.com/)
2006: Was voted the #1 Rising Star Jazz Artist, the #1 Rising Star Composer, and the #2 Rising Star Pianist. The cover of the August issue of DownBeat announced Iyer’s exceptional sweep of the 54th Annual Critics Poll and mentions his unique PhD in “music and cognitive science” from UC Berkeley and his dissertation, “Microstructures of Feel, Macrostructures of Sound: Embodied Cognition in West African and African-American Musics.” His published papers are receiving attention in the cognitive musicology literature as well.
Lisa Jakelski (PhD, History & Literature, 2009)
2009/2010: Completed her dissertation, “The Changing Seasons of the Warsaw Autumn: Contemporary Music in Poland, 1960–1990;” she has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.
Maria Johnson (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 1992)
2005: Promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Alexander Kahn (PhD, History & Literature, 2009)
2009/2010: Completed his dissertation, “Double Lives: Emigre Composers in Los Angeles,” and was recently appointed Director of Orchestral Activities at the Sunderman Conservatory of Music at Gettysburg College.
Brian Kane (PhD, Composition, 2006)
2006: Accepted a two-year Mellon post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Music at Columbia University.
2008: Accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor at Yale University beginning fall 2008.
Miki Kaneda (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2012)
2012: Is presently the Mellon C-MAP Postdoctoral Fellow at the Museum of Modern Art, Department of Painting and Sculpture, New York. She has written an invited article on video games. “Rhythm Heaven: Fantasy, Play, and Racializing Japanese National Bodies,” for a volume on portable games in the Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music and Sound Studies, edited by Jason Stanyek and Sumanth Gopinath. For it she selected a Japanese game that assumes a lack of rhythmic sensibility in the Japanese body and tries to train the players. She interrogated that essentialist assumption as well as the game itself from various points of view.
Andrew Kaye (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 1979)
2005: Beginning his sixth year as Assistant Professor in the Music Department at Albright College in Pennsylvania. He was guest professor last year on the Facultad de Filosofia y Letras of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and has recently published Musica dell’Africa Nera, co-authored with Leonard D’Amico (Palermo: Edizione L’Epos, 2004).
Diane Kennedy (Weisberg) (BA, 1975)
2012: Is an active performer and teacher in South Florida
Ravi Kittappa
2012: Ravi, a Ph.D. candidate, continues to curate “Permutations,” a new music series in Harlem NYC, raising over $4,000 for various ensembles, festivals and recording projects.
Mari Arko Klemenc (PhD Ethnomusicology, 2004)
2006: Now teaching at the University of New Mexico. She reports a small but growing ethno community in the greater Albuquerque area.
Chadwick Ko (BA, Music/MCB, 1999)
2012: Is currently an Anesthesiologist working in Los Angeles. After graduating from Cal, he lived abroad, learned a new language and performed music overseas, and feels lucky to have been able to travel the world, and is always looking forward to his next adventure.
Helen Konowitz (neé Walker) (M.A., 1970)
2012: Is in her 6th year of teaching private piano lessons at the San Domenico School Music Conservatory; continuing my own piano and voice studies; and participating regularly in Contemporary Opera of Marin productions, including a role as Mrs. Trotsky in the summer, 2012 production of Robert Rodriguez’ FRIDA.
Donna Kwon (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2005)
2005: Currently Post-doctoral Fellow and Assistant Professor of Music at Rhodes College.
2006: Completed a year as post-doctoral fellow and visiting assistant professor at Rhodes College and is teaching at Grinnell College in 2006-07.
2007: Has been teaching at Grinnell College moves to Lawrence University in Wisconsin in fall 2007. Kwon has also just received a major grant from the Korea Foundation to support her project, “Multi-Media Engagement with Korean Music and Culture.”
2008: Accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professorship at the University of Kentucky. Kwon has been teaching at Lawrence University and this past year had a major grant from the Korea Foundation to support her project, Multi-Media Engagement with Korean Music and Culture.
2011: Has just had published her book Music in Korea (Oxford University Press) for the Global Music Series. She is also working on articles for publication.
2012: Is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Kentucky. In 2012 she published Music in Korea with Oxford University Press. She reports that teaching and her research are going well and she has a good coterie of students and wonderful colleagues at U of K. Donna is working on a new book manuscript.
Joyce Kwon (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2009)
2009/2010: Has been spending the past 5 weeks teaching basic music theory & keyboard to indigenous people in the upper Rio Negro region of the Amazon, as well as performing songs from her singer/songwriter album at various villages there.
2011: Released an EP of a collection of original songs addressed “To a Certain Boy,” to serenade lovers and avert creepers. Studied the Korean twelve-string zither (gayageum) for two years in Los Angeles, before movingto New York to pursue a M.M. in jazz voice at the Manhattan School of Music.
2012: Released an EP of a collection of original songs in 2011 addressed “To a Certain Boy,” to serenade lovers and avert creepers. Studied the Korean twelve-string zither (gayageum) for two years in Los Angeles, before moving to New York to pursue a M.M. in jazz voice at the Manhattan School of Music.
Craig Latta (BA, 1991)
2012: Is writing music and code in Amsterdam! He moved to the Netherlands in 2010 and loves it. Earlier this year he edited a film which was nominated for Best Short in the Marbella International Film Festival in Spain.
Elisabeth LeGuin (PhD, H&L, 1997)
2007: Currently Associate Professor of Musicology at UCLA and this past semester was visiting professor at Berkeley. She has just published Boccherini’s Body with the University of California Press.
Anita Harvey Leimone (BA, 1970)
2012: Music Arranger – published several with Fred Bock Publishing Co, arranger of two musicals by Bryan Jeffery Leech, and is currently working on a third: “Austen-tatious” – based on Pride and Prejudice. Pianist/organist of churches from age 14 to current. Married with two children, one of whom is in New Zealand with wife and son.
Erica Levenson (BA, Music/English, 2009)
2012: Is currently in her third year of a Doctoral program of Musicology at Cornell University. This year she will take her qualifying exams and prepare to begin her dissertation work.
Tammy Lian
2012: Current music major Lian will be performing Messiaen Theme and Variations for Violin and Piano, the Debussy Sonata for Violin and Piano, and Ysaye Sonata #3 Ballade for solo violin, all during the April 18th, 2013 Noon Concert in Hertz Hall.
Elaine Lin (BA, 2007)
2012: Elaine graduated from Harvard Law School and now works with a boutique consulting firm teaching and consulting in negotiation and conflict resolution.
Mei–Fang Lin (PhD, Composition, 2007)
2007: Completed her degree with the composition, Multiplication Virtuelle. She took second prize in a major international composition contest held in Seoul, South Korea this past spring. Lin has accepted a one-year position at the University of Illinois, Champagne for 2007-2008.
2008: Began her second year as a Lecturer at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign for 2008-09.
2009/2010: Accepted a tenure track position in music composition at Texas Tech University.
Jimmy López
2009/2010: Awarded the following prizes: 2009 Georges Ladd Priz de Paris (UCB); Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at the 2008 Darmstadt International Course for Contemporary Music (Germany); 2008 Morton Gould Young Composer Award (New York); and 2008 Nicola De Lorenzo Prize (UCB). His music has been performed in venues including Carnegie Hall, Aspen Music Festival & Donaueschingen Contemporary Music Festival and by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Symphony Orchestra of Chile and the National Symphony Orchestra of Peru. His portrait CD titled Musuq Peru was released under the label Filarmonika LLC in 2008. Recent premieres include “Lago de Lágrimas” (concerto for flute & orchestra) with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in 2009, and 15 études for string octet by the Arditti Quartet and Jack Quartet during the 2010 Darmstadt Contemporary Music Festival. Future collaborations include performances by conductor Lorraine Villancourt & the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne; conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya & the Boston Symphony & Philadelphia Orchestra; conductor Darrel Ang & the Singapore Youth Orchestra of the World: and conductor David Claudio & the Sibelius Academy Orchestra.
2012: Jimmy is busy working on a full-length opera commissioned by the Chicago Lyric Opera and Renee Flemming. Major appearances include concerts with the Sydney Symphony in Austrialia, and the premiere of his dissertation compositon SynesthŽsie, performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.
Clarissa Lyons (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2006)
2009/2010: completed a Master’s in Voice from the Manhattan School of Music in May. She studied with Deborah Benedict while she was at Berkeley. At the Manhattan School of Music she performed in the New York premiere of John Musto’s opera Later the Same Evening based on paintings by Edward Hopper and the New York premiere of Fred Lerdahl’s The First Voices. Ms. Lyons also was invited to perform Puccini and Bellini arias with the Vermont Philharmonic’s 50th Anniversary season in October. In March, Clarissa received the James Schwabacher Award from the Henry and Maria Holt Competition through West Bay Opera. She appeared as Mimi in La Boheme with the Martina Arroyo Foundation’s Prelude to Performance Program in July. Ms. Lyons continues her studies at Dawn Upshaw’s Vocal Arts Program at Bard College Conservatory. She won her apprenticeship in this program after an intensive series of auditions–only 8 singers from around the globe are accepted per year.
2012: Just won grand prize in the Carmel Music Society Vocal Competition. In summer 2012 she enjoyed her second stint as a Tanglewood fellow/soloist and with the Mostly Mozart, sang at the Lincoln Center in New York as part of the Mark Morris Dance Company’s version of the Purcell opera Dido and Aeneas, and also sang at New York’s Symphony Space as part of a concert by the New York Choral Society featuring the Felix Mendelssohn oratorio Elijah. You can read an article from the Davis Enterprise about Lyons by visiting here http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/clarissa-lyons-makes-her-mark-as-asoprano/. After graduating from UC Berkeley, she pursued studies at the Manhattan School of Music and at Bard College. Last September she married John Peter Shumway, whom she met while at Berkeley. “My husband is super-supportive of my career choice,” says Lyons. “It involves a fair bit of travel.”
Alana Mailes
2012: Undergraduate student Mailes will be singing arias and cantatas of Caccini, Peri, Monteverdi, Rossi, Lully and Charpentier at the April 18th 2013 Noon Concert in Hertz Hall.
Keeril Makan (PhD, Composition, 2004)
2005: Currently Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, has had recent commissions from the Kronos Quartet, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, and the Bang on a Can Music Festival in New York City. Makan is also the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award for 2004 and received the Charles Ives Scholarship of $7,500 given to composition students of great promise.
2006: Accepted a tenure track position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) beginning in the Fall of 2006. He is currently working on a commission from the Kronos String Quartet.
2007: Currently Assistant Professor of Music at MIT, was awarded a Fellowship at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Italy in 2006.
2008: Currently Assistant Professor of Music at MIT, was commissioned to write a solo piano piece, “Afterglow,” was for one of our undergraduate alums, Ivan Ilic, who performed it at Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, on June 23rd.
2009/2010: Promoted to Associate Professor at MIT and awarded the Lister Brothers Career Development Chair. Keeril was the Composer in Residence at the Carlsbad New Music Festival and was the featured composer at the Musica Nova Festival in Helsinki, Finland.
2012: Was awarded tenure at MIT and is a recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. His music has been published by Schott Music. He’s received commissions from Meet the Composer and the Celebrity Series and has been a Composer-in-residence, Bennington Chamber Music Conference.
Michael Markham (PhD 2006, History and Literature)
2006: Was the commencement speaker at the department graduation (see excepts herein). In the fall he takes up a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford.
Scott Merrick (M.A., 1954)
2012: Was a Fulbright Scholar 1956-58. Venice, Italy; a Music Instructor at S.F. Drake H.S. 1959-64; a Professor of Music at Diablo College 1964-67; Professor of Music College of Marin 1967-84; and a Music Instructor for Adult Ed. C.O.M 1989-2006.
Nanette McGinnis (PhD 1990, History and Literature)
2014: A soprano, she has performed in Italy, France, the Czech Republic, and most recently Berlin, Germany, as well as on both coasts of the U.S., in roles/ works that include Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, Mimi (La Boheme), Cleopatra (Giulio Cesare), Freia (Das Rheingold), and Erste Dame (Die Zauberfloete), among others. With a repertory that ranges from 1600-present (including numerous premieres) and that encompasses 10 languages, she has been a Teaching Artist for the S.F. Opera Guild and Opera San Jose, and is co-founder of two active chamber music groups: the Vinaccesi Ensemble (Baroque music for solo voice(s) and continuo), which just released a debut CD, Benedetto Vinaccesi: the Solo Cantatas; and the Jewish Music & Poetry Project (soprano, cello, piano, and composer), which commissions and performs new music to Jewish women’s poetry or by women composers, and also performs “verfemte” works (music banned during the Holocaust). The JMPP has a multi-year commissioning project in progress, 20th Century Jewish Women’s Voices, as well as a new piece by alum Laura Schwendinger in the works for later this year. McGuinness’ first CD, Fabulous Femmes (2000, 2007), with the Athena Trio, consists of music by 19th- and 20th-century women composers and continues to receive high critical acclaim. She maintains a private voice studio in Berkeley.
Ben Mitchell (BA, 2012)
2012: Ben is writing music for the app mentioned in the video at www.incidentgtar.com . The gTar is a fully digital guitar that enables anybody to play music quickly and easily with the help of LEDs and a docked iPhone.
Hannah S. Mitchell (BA, 1986)
2012: Currently singing with Hexaphone, an a cappella sextet in Victoria, British Columbia that won the Elmer Iseler Award for “Best performance of a Canadian work” at the 2012 Kathaumixw Festival.
Ali Momeni (PhD, Composition, 2005)
2005: Currently now working for SONY in Paris. He won a commission for a major sound installation in Barcelona. Last year he taught at La Kitchen in Paris, had a residency at the Electronic Music Studio in Stockholm, and a performance of his compositions at the Manca Festival in Nice.
2006: Appointed as an assistant professor in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota.
2007: Accepted an Assistant Professorship in New Media Practice at the University of Minnesota. He will teach music and technology in the department of Music.
Klara Móricz (PhD, Musicology, 1999)
2008: Currently the Valentine Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Amherst College. Her monograph, “Jewish Identities. Nationalism, Racism, and Utopianism in Twentieth Century Music” was published by the University of California Press in 2008.
Roger Moseley (PhD, Musicology, 2004)
2005: Will be a Junior Research Fellow at Oxford University in 2005-06.
Allan R. Mosher (BA, 1977)
2012: Dr. Mosher has taught Voice and directed the Opera program at the Dana School of Music, Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio for the past twenty years.
Adeline Mueller
2009/2010: Organized a multi–day conference on Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” and she is slated to guest–edit an upcoming special issue of Opera Quarterly on the subject. She was the recipient of a UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Fellowship in the 2009–10 academic year. She has presented papers at the annual meetings of the AMS (2008 and 2010) and the American Society for Eighteenth–Century Studies (2009 and upcoming in 2011). An article she wrote on the music for Fritz Lang’s 1924 film Die Nibelungen appears in the edited volume Wagner and Cinema (Indiana Univ. Press, 2010).
Jonathan Nadel (BA, Music/History, 1986)
2012: Teaches voice at UC Davis and privately in Berkeley/El Cerrito. An AGMA artist, he has performed lyric roles throughout the US and western Europe. Sends his thanks to the incredible teachers he had at Cal and NEC!
Michael Nicholas
2012: Michael, a Ph.D. candidate, has been selected to take part in the Berkeley Symphony’s Under Construction program this year.
Anna Nisnevich (PhD H&L, 2006)
2006: Began teaching at the University of Pittsburgh in fall 2006.
Loretta Notareschi (PhD, Composition, 2007)
2007: Completed her degree work with a composition entitled Sand in Machine for Wind Ensemble. She has accepted a tenure-track position at Regis University in Denver, Colorado. Two of her pieces will be published in 2008 by Hofmeister Musikverlag. She was recently commissioned by the Sacred and Profane Chamber Chorus to write an a cappella choral piece for their 2007-2008 season. She also recently received a Subito grant from the American Composers Forum to support poetry written by Margaret Ronda for a new song cycle.
2008: Currently Assistant Professor at Regis University, Denver, is writing a new piece for soprano and chamber ensemble with text by Margaret Ronda.
2012: Is expecting a CD release titled Two About Two for soprano saxophone and guitar by the Duo Montagnard.
Mindy LaTour O’Brien (BA, 2002)
2005: Earned an M.A. in Ethnomusicology at UC Riverside in 2008. She is currently working on a Ph.D. in Musicology at UCLA with the support of an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Distinction and a Diebold Fellowship, and recently celebrated 10 years of happy marriage to Patrick O’Brien.
Josh Ong (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2005)
2005: Delivered the undergraduate commencement address for 2005 in the Music Department graduation.
Kristine Pacheco (BA, 2008)
2012: Completed her Masters of Music degree in Violin Performance in May 2012 from San Francisco State University. Currently a freelance violinist and teacher in the Santa Barbara area. Kristine is also the assistant to the Director of Education at the Santa Barbara Symphony.
Jeff Packman (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2007)
2007: Completed his thesis “We Work Hard at Entertainment: Performance and Professionalism in the Popular Music Scenes of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.” Jeff will be teaching at the University of Toronto in 2007-08. He has begun his next research project, an interdisciplinary, international, ethnography of Samba de Roda, an enormously important music and dance complex of the African diaspora, often cited as an antecedent of the nationalized sambas from Rio. One of his collaborators on this project is his wife, dance ethnologist Danielle Robinson (PhD, UC Riverside), who is a faculty member at York University. Jeff writes that some of their goals for the study include “developing a better understanding of the relationships between music and dance–which we are treating as structured improvisations. We are also considering the discursive production of ‘roots’, a notion that ties the many manifestations together, provides a sense of history and authority to practitioners and is often deployed as a marker of authenticity as samba de roda becomes more visible in commercial markets.”
2008: Began his second-year as visiting Lecturer at the University of Toronto. He is conducting research with Danielle Robinson (York University, Canada) and Eloisa Domenici (UFBA, Brazil) for a book on the music and dance of samba de roda in Bahia, Brazil. The project is being funded by The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
2011: Holds a tenure-track assistant professorship at University of Toronto. His article “Musicians’ Performances and Performances of “Musician” in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil,” was published in Fall 2011 Ethnomusicology. He is currently writing other articles and preparing book manuscripts.
2012: Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Toronto, served on the program committee for the Society for Ethnomusicology’s joint meeting with the AMS and SMT in New Orleans. In addition to completing a book on professional musicians in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, Jeff is co-leading an interdisciplinary collaborative study of samba de roda, an Afro-Diasporic music and dance complex from the same region that was recently recognized by UNESCO as a masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage.
Melissa Panlasigui (BA, 2009)
2012: Microscopist, UC Berkeley Department of Optometry, and Assistant Conductor, UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra
Benjamin Park (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2002)
2005: Accepted into the vocal performance Master’s program at the Peabody Conservatory, on full Scholarship.
2006: Recently graduated from the Peabody Conservatory, continues his studies there with John Shirley-Quirk, finishing his opera graduate performance diploma this year on a full merit scholarship.
Woo Ho Park
2012: Woo Ho, current music major, performed the Saint Saens Violin Concerto No. 3 at the 2012 Cal Day celebration.
Kimberly Parke (PhD, Musicology, 2006)
2006: Taken up a position at the University of Tennessee, Chatanooga.
2008: Currently Lecturer in the College of Music at Mahidol University, Bangkok
David Paul (PhD Composition, 2006)
2006: Was among four winners of the American Musicological Association’s AMS 50 Fellowships for his dissertation Converging Paths to Canonicity: Charles Ives, Gustav Mahler, and American Culture. He joins the music faculty at UC Santa Barbara this fall.
2008: Currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
John-Carlos Perea (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2009)
2009/2010: Completed his dissertation, Witchi Tai To: An Historical Acoustemology.
2011: Completed his book, Intertribal Native American Music in the United States, for Oxford University Press to appear in 2012 in the Global Music Series. He has been nominated for and won a Grammy in the past for his recordings of American Indian music.
2012: Dr. Perea recently published an article based on his dissertation research, “The Unexpectedness of Jim Pepper,” available this fall in a special issue of MUSICultures on the theme of Indigenous Modernity.
Hector Perez (BA, Music, 1994)
2013: Hector “Hecdog” Perez, is a rare composer who meshes the traditional music of Veracruz, Mexico, with the hip, chill beats of electronica. His debut album, Sistema Bomb Presenta Electro-Jarocho — a 21st-century re-imagining of the Afro-Mexican son jarocho style — oozes so much cross-genre cool that it grabbed a 2013 Grammy nomination for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album. Hecdog also co-produced the album Sembrando Flores by Los Cojolites, which scooped up a 2013 nomination for Best Regional Mexican Music Album. In addition to his award-worthy work, Hecdog is the founder of Music Orange, a commercial music company that counts Apple, Sony, Gap, eBay, and VISA among its clients.
Mark Allen-Piccolo (BA, 2006)
2012: Has been composing music, writing songs, and playing in bands. His day job is split between electronic engineering and working as a house engineer in a recording studio in Emeryville.
Emily Richmond Pollock (MA, 2008)
2012: Began teaching as an Assistant Professor of Music in the Department of Music and Theater Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in September 2012.
Steven Pond (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2000)
2006: Received tenure and promotion to associate professor at Cornell University. His book Head Hunters: The Making of Jazz’s First Platinum Album, has received excellent reviews.
2011: Is now the Chair of the Music Department at Cornell University.
William Quillen (PhD, History & Literature, 2010)
2009/2010: In November 2008, several UCB graduate student composers performed at the Moscow Autumn festival in Moscow, Russia. The participating Berkeley composers were Aaron Einbond, Evelyn Ficarra, & Heather Frasch. Richard Dudas, (PhD, Composition, 1998) also participated in the festival, & taught a masterclass at the Moscow Conservatory. One of the closing concerts, entitled “Berkeley-Moscow: A New Generation in Electroacoustic Music” featured music by Berkeley’s four composers plus new works by six composers from the Moscow Conservatory, with performances by the Moscow Conservatory’s Studio for New Music, one of Russia’s leading new music ensembles. The concert was co–organized by Igor Kefalidis, a professor at the Moscow Conservatory and director of the conservatory’s Electroacoustic Center, and William Quillen. Quillen recently completed his dissertation, “After the End: New Music in Russia from Perestroika to the Present.”
Matt Rahaim (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2009)
2009/2010: Accepted a position as assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. His dissertation: “Gesture and Melody in Hindustani Music.”
2011: Matt Rahaim is Assistant Professor of Musicology/Ethnomusicology at the University of Minnesota. Matt is on leave from teaching for the spring and summer, living in India and Lebanon, and continuing his musical training (vocal music and oud) and language study (Hindi and Arabic). His article “That Ban (e) of Indian Music: Hearing Politics in the Harmonium” appeared in the August 2011 issue of the Journal of Asian Studies and recently covered in the ‘In Essence’ section of the Wilson Quarterly. His book Musicking Bodies: Gesture and Voice in Hindustani Music has been accepted by Wesleyan University Press and will appear in 2012.
2012: Is an avid performer of Hindustani vocal music both in India and in North America. He is teaching ethnomusicology at the University of Minnesota, and just returned from a sabbatical in India and Lebanon. Rahaim is otherwise having a great time canoeing in snowy Minnesota. His first book, Musicking Bodies: Gesture and Voise in Hindustani Music, has just been published by Wesleyan University Press. In addition, his article “That Ban(e) of Indian Music: Hearing Politics in the Harmonium,” appeared in the 2011 Journal of Asian Studies 70 (3): pp.657-682, which also featured him on the cover.
Jared Redmond (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2007)
2008: Was the first winner of the new Piano Competition (see writeup p. 13).
Alan Rich (MA, H&L, 1952)
2007: Currently music critic for the LA Weekly, has recently published So I’ve Heard: Notes of a Migratory Music Critic (Amadeus).
John A. Rice (PhD, H&L,1987)
2007: Published The Temple of Art at Schönau (American Philosophical Society). Rice has been commissioned by W.W. Norton to write a volume on Music in the classical age in W.W. Norton’s new series.
David Roche (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 1996)
2008: Currently the Director of Fine and Performing Arts for the Chicago Public Schools. A scholar and performer of South Asian music, Roche had been Director of the famous Old Town School of Folk Music prior to his new appointment.
Mark Rodgers (BA, 2011; MS Oxford,Musicology, 2012)
2008: Earned an MS in Musicology in July from the University of Oxford (with distinction), and is now a first-year PhD student in Music History at Yale University.
Joseph (Butch) Rovan (PhD, Composition, 1999)
2005: Currently Associate Professor at Brown University. He previously taught at Florida State University and was the director of the Center for Music and Intermedia (CEMI) at the University of North Texas.
George Ruckert (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 1994)
2005: Currently on the faculty of music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has just had published, Music in North India: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford University Press: 2004).
Santosa (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2001)
2005: Currently professor at STSI, College of the Performing Arts, the main arts academy of Indonesia.
Christina Schiffner (PhD, History & Literature, 2009)
2009/2010: Completed her dissertation, “Singing Silence, Silencing Noise: Rossini’s Opere Serie for Naples, 1815–1822.”
David Schneider (PhD, Musicology, 1997)
2005: Currently Associate Professor at Amherst College and will assume the chairmanship of the Department of Music there in fall 2005.
Arman Schwartz (PhD, History & Literature, 2009)
2009/2010: Completed his dissertation, “Modernity Sings: Rethinking Realism in Italian Opera.“
Laura Schwendinger (PhD, Composition, 1993)
2009/2010: Was the recipient of a 2009 Goddard Liberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. She is an Associate Professor of Composition at the Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison and Artistic Director of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble.
Elizabeth Marie Sinclair-Smith (BA, 2006)
2012: Has been working abroad since December 2007 in Moscow, Russia and Amman, Jordan. She will be returning to the US in 2013.
Ronald Smith (PhD, Composition, 1992)
2005: Appointed Assistant Professor at Northeastern University.
Janet Somers (BA,1990)
2012: Is teaching jazz piano in Rockridge.
Henry Spiller (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2001)
2005: Joined the faculty of the Department of Music at UC Davis after previously teaching at CSU San Luis Obispo and Kenyon College in Ohio. At Kenyon he was awarded the Whiting Scholarship in recognition of teaching excellence. Spiller is the author of Gamelan: The Traditional Sounds of Indonesia. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2004.
2011: Is Associate Professor at UC Davis and chair of its Search Committee for ethnomusicology. He recently served as Newsletter Editor for SEM. He won honorable mention for the Alan Merriam Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology, for his 2010 book Erotic Triangles:Sundanese Dance and Masculinity in West Java. The Merriam Prize is a recognition of the most distinguished and published English-language monograph in the field of ethnomusicology. There was one winner and two honorable mentions out of 43 submissions.
Sam Stanley (BA,1975)
2012: Is playing violin in the Grosse Pointe Symphony Orchestra and has recently started a string quartet.
Nathaniel Stookey (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 1992)
2006: Had his piece, The Composer is Dead, performed by the San Francisco Symphony for the Summer in the City series in early July and received quite positive reviews in local papers. Daniel Handler, “Lemony Snicket,” narrated. The piece educates about orchestral music and appeals to children and young people in general.
Andrew Sturges (BA,2005)
2012: Graduated from Rutgers in 2008 with an MA in Jazz History & Research, and from Duke in 2012 with an MA in Energy & Environment. Since 2009 Sturges has been working in Berkeley at LBNL, in the Energy Analysis group. Before that he was in NYC for two years in the development office at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Christina Rowland Sunardi (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2008)
2007: Assumed a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor at the University of Washington 2007-08. Sunardi, a specialist in Southeast Asian music, wrote her dissertation on East Javanese identity in music and dance. She joins another Berkeley PhD, Shannon Dudley, 1997) among Washington’s six ethnomusicologists.
2008: Completed her degree with her thesis, “Gendered Dance Modes in Malang, East Java: Music, Movement and the Production of Local Senses of Identity.” Sunardi is Assistant Professor of Music at the Universityof Washington.
2011: Her article “Negotiating Authority and Articulating Gender: Performer Interaction in Malang, East Java,” appeared in winter 2011 Ethnomusicology. She is currently writing other articles and preparing book manuscripts.
Eric Tamm (Ph.D., Musicology,1987)
2012: Is employed as a marketing writer at software support company Rimini Street in Pleasanton, CA, where he recently started a company band called The Hotline. The group’s first gig was the office Halloween party last month – a condensed flight through rock and roll history with “Hey Good Lookin'” (Hank Williams, 1951), “Little Red Riding Hood” (Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, 1966), and “Soul Sister” (Train, 2009).
Ken Tang (BA, 2003)
2012: Received his Master of Science in Information Management at the University of Washington (2012). Continuing to advance his I.T. career in Seattle, WA.
Reynold Tharp (PhD, Composition, 2003)
2005: Joined the faculty at Northwestern University after teaching at the University of Illinois last year.
2006: Accepted a two-year appointment as visiting assistant professor at the University of Illinois beginning of in the fall 2006.
2008: Accepted a tenure-track appointment at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Gary Tomlinson (PhD, H&L, 1979)
2007: Currently Professor of anthropology and music at the University of Pennsylvania, has just published Music and Historical Critique: Selected Essays (Ashgate Contemporary Thinkers on Critical Musicology Series) as well as The Singing of the New World (Cambridge University Press).
Gary Toops (BA, 1969)
2012: Retired from full time Community College music teaching. Continues to perform as a concert and church organist, and as Artistic Director for a Community Chorus.
Mosa Tsay
2012: Mosa, an undergraduate, won second Place in the 2012 MTNA (Music Teachers National Association) National Young Artists Competition. She performed Brahms Cello Sonata No. 2 Noon Concert in Hertz Hall in September 2012 and is a spring 2013 Concerto Competition winner and will be performing the Bloch Schelomo for cello and orchestra.
Dmitri Tymoczko (PhD, Composition, 2002)
2005: Has been Assistant Professor at Princeton University for the past several years.
2006: Currently a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and is writing a piece for the acclaimed Pacifica Quartet who recently premiered his Eggman Variations with Ursula Oppens. Now an assistant professor of music at Princeton, he has further distinguished himself by publishing an article, “The Topology of Music,” on a new and novel geometric representation of harmonic structure, in Science (7/2006). Tymaczko’s paper’s cognitive science approach to music theory is the magazine’s first publication in the field of music theory, and generated a lot of press.
2007: Currently Assistant Professor of Music at Princeton University, has received a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for 2007-08.
2008: Promoted to tenure at Princeton University. His The Story of Jazz, commissioned by Ivan Ilic, performed by Ilic at Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, on June 23rd.
Michael Uy (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2007)
2008: Received the Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize for 2007-08, one of the highest honors Berkeley can bestow on a new graduate, for his project, “Analysis of Venezuela’s Music Education System, ‘El Sistema,’ and its Potential Application to the Los Angeles-Based Program, Project Harmony.” As an undergraduate Uy, a double major in the Political Economy of Industrial Societies and in Music, was a Regents’ and Chancellor’s Scholar, the university’s most prestigious scholarship for incoming students. At the time he was informed of the award, Michael was in rural China teaching English to children from families displaced by the building of a dam.
Dan VanHassel
2012: Dan a Ph.D candidate in composition (expected 2013), was commissioned by the Boston ensemble Dinosaur Annex for a new piece to be performed in November of 2012. He is co-directing and playing electric guitar with the new music ensemble Wild Rumpus.
Yiorgos Vassilandonakis (PhD, Composition, 2007)
2006: Won first prize in April 2006 in the Mediterranean Music Center’s 3rd International Composition Competition, among 119 scores from 17 countries. The piece was La Tierra for Soprano, Horn, Piano, Violin and Cello, on a poem by Pablo Neruda. Yiorgos has been commissioned by the Experimental Stage of the Greek National Opera to write a new theater piece to be premiered in May of 2007.
2007: Completed his degree with the composition Thalassino. Yiorgos was commissioned by the Experimental Stage of the Greek National Opera to write a new theatre piece which premiered in May, 2007. He is a lecturer in the UCB Department of Music during AY 2007-08.
2012: Is Assistant Professor of Composition & Music Theory at the College of Charleston, where he also founded and directs the contemporary music series Magnetic South in partnership with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. He is currently composing a new work for chorus and orchestra on poetry by Margaret Ronda, commissioned by the Charleston Symphony Chorus.
Adriana Verdie (PhD, Composition, 2002)
2005: Has been Assistant Professor at CSU Long Beach for the past few years.
Noel Orillo Verzosa (PhD, History & Literature, 2009)
2009/2010: Completed his dissertation, “The Absolute Limits: Debussy, Satie, and the Culture of French Modernism, ca. 1860–1920.”
Elizabeth Ravitz Wagele (BA, 1961)
2012: Still plays the piano and has also become an author of books on personality types: The Enneagram Made Easy, Are You My Type, Am I Yours?, The Enneagram of Parenting, Finding the Birthday Cake, The Happy Introvert, The Career Within You, The Beethoven Enneagram CD, and The Enneagram of Death.
Benjamin Walton (PhD, Musicology, 2000)
2008: Currently Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at Jesus College and University Lecturer at Cambridge University. His “Rossini in Restoration Paris” in The Sound of Modern Life Series: Cambridge Studies in Opera, was published by Cambridge University Press (2008). In May Walton co-organized with UC Berkeley assistant professor Nicholas Mathew “Beethoven and Rossini: Crossing Musical Cultures Conference” in Cambridge, which was attended by Berkeley graduate student Yael Braunschweig and professors Mary Ann Smart and Richard Taruskin.
Holly Watkins (PhD, Musicology, 2004)
2005: Was appointed Assistant Professor at Eastman in 2004.
Andrew Weintraub (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 1997)
2005: Tenured and Associate Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh. His book Power Plays: Wayang Golek Puppet Theater of West Java, was published in 2004 by the Ohio University Press. He and a colleague are recipients of a large grant from the Ford Foundation to develop a three-year project on Music and Cultural Rights. The first conference on it was held in April 2005 and Weintraub is co-editing a volume based on the conference papers and presentations. He is now conducting research in Indonesia for a new book-length project on dangdut, Indonesia’s most popular music.
2011: is Professor of Music and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
Trevor Weston (PhD, Composition, 1997)
2005: Currently Assistant Professor of Music at the College of Charleston, was a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2004 Music Award. He has also been awarded a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, given to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts by the CBS Foundation.
2009/2010: Has been appointed to Drew University in New Jersey as Associate Professor of Music after achieving tenure at the College of Charleston. He began his appointment in September 2009. Last January, his composition Truth Tones for Choir and Violoncello was performed by the Boston Children’s Chorus at historic Jordan Hall in the New England Conservatory of Music as part of the 2009 Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr. Concert. This performance was featured on a live national telecast, broadcast to over 200 affiliate stations across the nation at different times during the months of January and February 2009.
Mildred Wickham (BA, 1948)
2012: Taught elementary school for 15 years and obviously made music a great part of her curriculum, trading with other teachers to do their music as an exchange for math or science. All of her children have been active in the music world (teaching music, teaching dance, singing in choirs, etc). Music is, and always will be a number one source of pleasure in her life.
Heather Wiebe (PhD, Musicology, 2005)
2005: Received an AMS 50 Fellowship in 2004. She has been nominated to the Michigan Society of Fellows and will take up a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Michigan in fall 2005.
2008: Currently a newly- appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia.
Christopher Williams (PhD, History & Literature, 2008)
2009/2010: Completed his dissertation, “Mahler, Schoenberg, and the Trasmission of Musical Style.”
Blake Wilson (BA, 1978)
2011: is Professor of Music (musicology) at Dickinson College (PA), having previously taught at Vanderbilt University and Colby College. He is a former fellow of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, where he returned in 2011 as a visiting professor. His research focuses on the musical cultures of late medieval and Renaissance Italy. He is the author of Music & Merchants: the Laudesi Companies of Republican Florence (Oxford, 1992), Singing Poetry in Renaissance Florence: the Cantasi Come Tradition c. 1375-1550 (Olschki, 2009), an edition of the Florence Laudario (A-R Editions, 1995), and articles in the New Grove Dictionary, Journal of Musicology, Early Music History, Recercare, and the Rivista Italiana di Musicologia. He is currently at work on a study of oral poetry and improvisatory singing traditions in early modern Italy.
2012: Currently chair of the Music Department at Dickinson College. Recent publications include “Poliziano and the Language of Lament from Isaac to Layolle,” in Sleuthing the Muse: Essays in Honor of William F. Prizer (NY: Pendragon Press, 2012), 85-114; “If Monuments Could Sing: Music and the Origins of Civic Devotion Inside Orsanmichele,” in Orsanmichele and the History and Preservation of Civic Monument, ed. Carl Strehlke, National Gallery, Wash., DC; Studies in the History of Art 76 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012), 139-68.
Jim Wilson (BA, 1959)
2012: A former elementary school principal, has now been retired for 15 years. Wilson lives in Hayward, California, and has been married for 42 years.
Carol Moen Wing (graduated as Carol Marie Moen) (BA, 1992)
2012: Is living in Oakland and married to fellow Cal graduate Jereld Wing since 1997. They still play their trombones in a jazz band in Berkeley, along with a number of friends from college. Carol works for an organization that arranges volunteers for wildlife conservation projects in southern Africa, and she is actively involved with volunteer work herself, both overseas and at the Oakland Zoo.
William Wolfe (BA, 1984)
2012: Is a composer living in Oakland, a piano accompanist for UC Berkeley Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, Mills College, San Francisco Ballet, Berkeley Ballet, Smuin Ballet, and ODC. He lived in Austin, Texas, for 25 years, where he was music director for Ballet Austin. He is currently teaching piano as well.
Joyce Wu (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2003)
2005: Accepted into the Graduate School at Columbia University.
Lisa Wu
2012: Lisa, current double-major in Music and Cognitive Science, auditioned and was chosen to present Liszt Totentanz Concerto in the May 4th and 5th, 2012 UCB Symphony Orchestra Concert in Hertz Hall. She volunteered to perform the same piece at the 2012 Cal Day celebration.
John Paul Young (BA, 1994)
2012: His current primary endeavors are serving as Chief Technology Officer supporting NOVA Research Company’s public health work, and leading weekly training rides in preparation for his 9th annual AIDS/LifeCycle charity fundraiser next June.