Graduate Students

Saagar Asnani

Musicology

Saagar is a PhD student in Musicology and Medieval Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research joins together the disparate fields of musicology and sociohistorical linguistics in an attempt to think historically about the multifarious relationships between music and language. Saagar’s work centers on vernacular musico-poetic traditions in medieval Europe, particularly in France, Occitania, Catalonia, and Italy, analyzing how people have created sounds – notably through language, poetry, and song – in order to reach a more holistic understanding of historical figures in...

Tianyu Zou

Composition

Onur Yildiz

Musicology

Jonathan Wu

Jacob Wolbert

Ethnomusicology

Research interests: popular music in Brazil and the United States, rock and pop around the world, alternative music scenes, social and cultural marginalization, gender and sexuality, race and music, performance studies, critical pedagogy

Jeremy Wexler

Composition

Jeremy Wexler is a musician from Long Island, NY. Studying the drum set from a very young age, Jeremy cites his deep immersion in rhythm, gesture, and timbres of non-pitched percussion instruments in his formative years as a strong influence on his current musical explorations. This has been the central basis of Jeremy’s compositions lately, which feature complex timbres, computer-based sonic analyses, microtonality, and the derivation of musical content based on various aspects of the drum set. He aims to create music that sounds naturally visceral and gestural, rigorously...

Hallie Smith

Composition

Hallie Smith (b. 1995) is a musician based in Berkeley, California. Her research is oriented towards building soft circuits/sensors, coding, installations, and emotional music. Hallie’s music has been featured in festivals such as the Yellow Barn Young Artists’ Program, Summer Institute of Contemporary Performance Practice, the SPLICE Institute, and the Valencia International Performance Academy.

Previous and Upcoming collaborations for Hallie include: the SMASH ensemble, saxophonist Drew Whiting, bassoonist Liam Mcgookin-Cunningham, Mazumal, writer/producer...

Peter Shin

Composition

Curtis Rumrill

Composition

The music of Curtis Rumrill explores the intersection of literary form and modern chamber music. His works with writer, naturalist and visual artist Zachary Webber tell darkly comic stories of animals in desperate or violent predicaments.

In May 2019 Kamratōn, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and Shana Simmons Dance will premiere his new opera, Her Holiness, The Winter Dog. His music has been commissioned, premiered and performed by, among others, Ensemble Dal Niente, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, NAT 28, Kamratōn, Tony Arnold, Thomas Rosenkranz, Aiyun Huang, Jordan...

Danniel Ribeiro

Composition

Danniel Ribeiro is a Brazilian composer born in Bahia. Recently, Danniel’s practice has explored instrumental music, developing ways to expand the use of instruments by way of bespoke techniques, preparations, practical sculptural (and found) objects, amplification, and transduced electronics.

In Brazil, Danniel studied with Paulo Costa Lima and Wellington Gomes, composers who continued the cultural resistance of the Grupo de Compositores da Bahia (Group of Composers of Bahia). In 2012, 2014 and 2016, he was awarded the Funarte Prize for Classical...