Class Notes: Alumni News
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 Kathleen Karn, kkarn@berkeley.edu. Put "alum-news-addition" in the subject field. For current year alumni and student news, please visit the Alumni News page in the newsletter.
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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.
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.
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.
2009/2010: Puebla Cholula, Mexico had six premiere performances in 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 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.
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.
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 Record. Information and audio tracks are available for listening on the CNMAT web site at: http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/node/8076.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Martin Deasy (PhD, Musicology, 2005)
2005: Will be a Junior Research Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, for 2005-06.
Esther Criscuola De Laix (PhD, History & Literature, 2009)
2009/2010: Completed her dissertation, Cultures of Music Print in Hamburg, ca. 1550–1630.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Jus Don’t Understand, curated by UC Berkeley’s Ken Goldberg and presented at the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco this fall.
Melina Esse (PhD, Musicology, 2004)
2005: Won an AMS 50 Fellowship in 2003. She was appointed an Assistant Professor at Eastman in fall 2004.
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 Ficarra2009/2010: 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.
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.
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.
Matthew Goodheart
2009/2010: Toured Germany this summer with concert appearances and installations in Bonn, Wupperal, and Berlin.
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.
Nalini Ghuman Gwynne (PhD, Musicology, 2003)
2005: Currently Assistant Professor of Music at Mills College.
Maria Johnson (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 1992)
2005: Promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Joseph Hammer(Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2004)
2005: Was accepted into the New England Conservatory's Masters program, He sang the title role in a production of Don Giovanni at Harvard University in spring 2005.
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.
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.
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: Aaccepted 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.
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).
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.
Donna Kwon (PhD, Ethnomusicology, 2004)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Michael Markham (PhD H&L, 2006)
2006: Was the commencement speaker at the department graduation (see excepts herein). In the fall he takes up a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford.
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.
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).
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.
Josh Ong (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2005)
2005: Delivered the undergraduate commencement address for 2005 in the Music Department graduation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ronald Smith (PhD, Composition, 1992)
2005: Appointed Assistant Professor at Northeastern University.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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."
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.
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) 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.
Joyce Wu (Undergraduate Alumni, BA, 2003)2005: Accepted into the Graduate School at Columbia University.