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The Score
Spring 2012
Alumni News
Nicholas Brown '10 received a Master of Music in Musicology from King's College London. He recently completed an internship at The White House, serving in the Social Office in the Office of the First Lady.
Composer John Aylward PhD '08 is a recipient of two prestigious awards. He has received a Radcliffe Fellowship for 2011/12, and was recently awarded a commission from the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation.
As a Radcliffe fellow, he will compose a new work for the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society and a new work for a percussion quartet, which is a commission from Samuel Solomon (Boston University) and Tom Kolor (State University of New York at Buffalo). If time allows, he will work on a piano trio for the cellist Jeremiah Campbell.
The Koussevitzky award is in the form of a commission to write a chamber ensemble work for the Washington Squate Contemporary Music Society.
John's debut album—featuring the conductor Matthias Pintscher and the soprano Jo Ellen Miller—was released on Albany Records in summer 2011. He has been awarded a Goddard Lieberson Fellowship by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright grant to Germany, and a composition prize from the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). He has also been awarded fellowships or residencies by the Aspen Music School, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Tanglewood Music Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. John is on the faculty of music composition and theory at Clark University.
Graduate Student News
Masters student in Composition Hermann Hudde has been awarded a 2012 Jane's Travel Grant by the Brandeis Department of Latin American and Latino Studies Department for his research project The Untold Story about Latin American Music Composers at Tanglewood. In the coming months Hermann will be traveling to the Library of Congress to research the Aaron Copland Collection, which contains letters between Copland and Latin American composers, photographs, and documents related to Tanglewood. His research will also include interviews with many Latin American composers who were Tanglewood fellows or faculty including Mario Davidovsky, Juan Orrego-Salas, José Serebrier, Oswaldo Golijov, Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez, and Alvaro Cordero. The project promises to shed new light on the many contributions that Latin American composers have made to the western art classical music tradition.
Fall 2011
Faculty News
Composer Eric Chasalow has a number of premieres (actually 4!) this academic year.
- European premiere of Are You Radioactive, Pal? for alto saxophone and electronic sound with Enzo Filippetti, a. sax. in Rome, Italy, at the the EMUFest. Performance date: October 12th, 2011. http://www.emufest.org/emufest_en/index_en.htm
- World premiere of Horn Concerto with renowned soloist, Bruno Schneider on January 14th, 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona, followed by its Boston premiere on January 27th with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, at Jordan Hall, Boston.
www.southwesthornconference.org/
http://www.bmop.org/season-tickets/2011-12-season-announcement
http://www.solea-management.com/Bruno-Schneider,51?lang=en - World premiere of a newly commissioned large-scale work (Barlow Endowment commission) for the Talea Ensemble, Tenri Institute, NYC, on March 9, 2012.
http://www.taleaensemble.org/ - World premiere of a newly commissioned large-scale work (Chamber Music America commission) for the New York New Music Ensemble's 35th Anniversary Celebration, at Merkin Hall - NYC on April 16, 2012. http://www.nynme.org/
Undergraduate Student News
Vocalist Ariella Stein '13 is the recipient of the Jacqueline Foster Award for 2011/12. Ariella is a double major (Music Performance and Business), with a minor in East Asian Studies. She studies voice with Jason McStoots and is a member of the Brandeis Early Music Ensemble where she sings, plays lute and viola da gamba.
The Jacqueline Foster Award is given to a particularly talented undergraduate vocalist as voted by the voice faculty. The prize is to be used in support of continuing vocal study at Brandeis. Past recipients include Mariah Henderson, Aimee Birnbaum, Christine Cable, and Megan Bisceglia.
Katrina Osborne, a Brandeis junior from Massachusetts, is the recipient of the Susan Glover Hitchcock Award for the 2011/12 academic year. This grant, established by Madeleine H. Soren, is selectively awarded to female students of music. Katrina is double-majoring in Music and Health: Science, Society, and Policy, with a minor in Italian Studies.
Graduate Student News
We are pleased to announce that Nathaniel Eschler has successfully defended his dissertation "Duality in Elliott Carter's Third String Quartet, and an original Composition Divisi for Chamber Ensemble and Duo. He will be receiving his PhD in February, 2012.
Congratulations, Nathaniel!
Peter Van Zandt Lane (PhD candidate in theory and composition) was awarded a General Commission from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition to write a work for the Quux Collective. The work is to be scored for saxophone, bassoon, electric bass, percussion, and electronics. Info here.
Alumni News
Seung-Ah Oh (PhD in theory composition '05) begins a tenure-track position at DePaul University in Chicago this fall. She has previously held teaching positions at Oberlin Conservatory, University of Florida, and Brandeis.
Summer 2011
PASSINGS
The past few months have presented us with the loss of three musicians who were close to the music department.
In April, composer Peter Lieberson Ph.D. 1985 passed away after an extended illness. Peter was an inspired and inspiring composer and teacher, and. five-time Pulitzer Prize nominee. His Neruda Songs (2005), which were dedicated to his wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, received the Grawemeyer Award for 2007.
June saw the passing of distinguished musicologist Caldwell Titcomb who was one of the earliest Brandeis music faculty. He began his 35-year tenure at Brandeis in 1953 and greatly influenced the development of the music department. Caldwell was known for his "kind, gentlemanly demeanor" and also for his energetic support of the Boston theater scene. He was president of the Boston Theater Critics Association and founder of the Elliot Norton Awards.
Composer Gustav Ciamaga also passed away in June following an extended illness. Gus came to Brandeis in 1956 to study with composers Irving Fine, Arthur Berger, and Harold Shapero. While at Brandeis he founded the Electronic Music Studio in 1961. He joined the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, in 1963 and became Director of its Electronic Music Studio in 1965. As Eric Chasalow states: "Gus was a real electronic music pioneer..."
Professor Emeritus Marty Boykan with Gus Ciamaga in 2008
Congratulations to our degree recipients for 2011!
Undergraduates
Matthew J. Cohen
Bachelor of Arts in Music
Additional major: Theater Arts
Minor: Education
Matthew completed the Performance Track within the Music major.
Jared M. Field
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude with highest honors in Music
Additional major: Philosophy
Minor: Film, Television and Interactive Media
Jared completed the Composition Track within the Music major and is recipient of the Dorothy Haas Siegel Music Award.
Joshua Jeremiah Louis Goldman
Bachelor of Arts in Music
Joshua completed the Composition Track within the Music major and is recipient of the Rosalie L. Warren Award in Music.
Nicholas Gordon
Bachelor of Arts in Music
Additional major: Computer Science
Nicholas completed the Composition Track within the Music major.
Andrew S. Litwin
Bachelor of Arts in Music
Minor: History
Andrew completed the Composition Track within the Music major.
Ori Nevo
Bachelor of Arts in Music
Additional major: Psychology
Ori completed the Composition Track within the Music major.
Paul T. Norton
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude with highest honors in Music
Additional major: Economics
Paul completed the Performance Track within the Music major and is the recipient of the Harry, Joseph, and Ida Stein Memorial Award, and the Florence and Charles H. Milender Prize in Music.
Rani L. Schloss
Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude with highest honors in Music
Additional major: Education Studies
Rani completed the Composition Track within the Music major and is the recipient of the David A. Greene, M.D., Class of '71, Memorial Prize in Music
Michael Peter Shafir
Bachelor of Science Summa Cum Laude with highest honors in Music
Additional majors: Computer Science with highest honors, Language and Linguistics
Michael completed the Performance Track within the Music major and is the recipient of the Phyllis and Lee Coffey Award in Music, and the Computer Science Prize for Outstanding Achievement.
Ann-Nin A. Wong
Bachelor of Arts with high honors in Music
Additional major: Economics
Minor: East Asian Studies
Graduate Students
Stephanie Michelle Barner
M.A. in Musicology
Nicolas Riley Cherone
M.A. in Musicology
Eric Chow
M.F.A. in Composition
Andrew A. Davis
M.F.A. in Composition
Kelly Marie Dewees
M.F.A. in Musicology
Joanna M. Fuchs
M.F.A. in Musicology
Joanna is enrolled in the doctoral program in musicology.
Mala Sushiel Kanan Gillin
M.A. in Musicology
Emilio C. Gonzalez
Ph.D. in Musicology
Dissertation entitled: Juan del Encina, Antonio de Nebrija, and Music for Poetry in Late Fifteenth-Century Spain
Jennifer Ritvko Hughes
M.A. in Musicology
Stephen L Perriere Loikith
M.F.A. in Musicology
Alexander Raymond Ludwig
Ph.D. in Musicology Dissertation entitled: Three-Part Expositions in the String Quartets of Joseph Haydn
Robert D. Pearson
Ph.D. in Musicology
Dissertation entitled: More Dramatic than Any Drama: History, Narrative, and Analysis in the Writings of Donald Francis Tovey
Sarah Caissie Provost
Ph.D. in Musicology
Dissertation entitled: Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert
Jared William Redmond
M.F.A. in Composition
Jasmine Victoria Richard
M.F.A. in Musicology
Jeremy A. Spindler
Ph.D. in Composition
Dissertation entitled: Ligeti's Wedge: Expansion, Contraction, Transformation; and an original composition, “Concerto for Seven for flute, clarinet, trumpet, piano, percussion, violin, cello.”
Faculty News
Professor Judith Eissenberg was selected to attend the 2011 International Gugak Workshop at the National Gugak Center in Seoul as a guest of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in the Republic of Korea.
The National Gugak Center (NGC) is under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Korea. Its roots date back to more than 1,400 years ago as a royal musical organization. The NGC has been making a great effort to preserve and restore the great Korean traditional heritage through performance and the development of academic and educational programs for professional musicians and scholars in and out of Korea.
The 2011 International Gugak Workshop is an extension of these endeavors, and will be held from 20 June until 1 July, 2011 at the National Gugak Center in Seoul, Korea. The program consists of lectures, on various elements of Gugak (the Korean traditional music and dance), instrumental lessons by renowned professionals, and fieldtrips.
Ethnomusicologist Ann E. Lucas joins the music department for the coming two years as ACLS New Faculty Fellow in Music and Lecturer in Music. Ann is an expert on music of the Middle East, with a particular emphasis on Persian music. She has performed with Middle Eastern music ensembles, as well as in jazz clubs, and is also a classically trained pianist and singer. Ann will be offering three very varied courses for each of her two years at Brandeis. For example, in 2011/12 she will offer: MUS 153a: Music and Culture in the Middle East, MUS 27b: Music and Ecstasy, and MUS 180b: Proseminar in Ethnomusicology.
The Alumni Club of Chicago welcomed Irving Fine Professor of Music Eric Chasalow for a Faculty in the Field event. Professor Chasalow discussed how he draws inspiration from various media to create new musical works. This event was hosted by Cindy Weinstein '80.
Alumni News
Composer Jeff Roberts Ph.D '08 has been appointed Visiting Faculty in Composition and 20th Century Music History at Williams College. In addition to composition, Jeff will teach some exciting history courses: New York School of Experimental Music and Abstract Expressionism, 20th Century Western Composition and Interaction with World Cultures, and The Silk Road, Chinese Music and Intercultural Influence in Japan and Korea.
Undergraduate News
Yonatan (Yoni) Battat '13 is one of five Brandeis rising juniors to receive the Brandeis Achievement Award for 2011. A music major in the composition track, Yoni the principle violist of the Brandeis-Wellesley Orchestra, a member of the Company B a cappella group, Brandeis Chamber Choir, and a string trio that performed at the EL2 (Experiential Learning, Engaged Learning) symposium. He is also a music director of the Brandeis Undergraduate Theater Collective, where he conducts the pit orchestras and privately coaches vocalists, and the co-founder, business manager and bandleader of the Deiskeit Klezmer Ensemble, where he creates custom arrangements emphasizing modern and historical approaches to Yiddish music. In his application essay he focuses on how he chose Brandeis over a music conservatory, even though he plans to devote his life to music, in order to satisfy his other intellectual curiosities, which he continues to discover at Brandeis. He now thinks "successful performances are achieved through questioning and exploring the big ideas of life and the world around us." (Complete Personal Statement)
Other News
On June 15 the Brandeis Early Music Ensemble (EME) performed in the premiere of Early Music America's (EMA) Young Performers Festival. The festival ran in conjunction with the semi-annual Boston Early Music Festival. Directed by Sarah Mead, associate professor of the practice of music, the Brandeis ensemble performance included "Sonata: La Fontana" by Cesario Gussago and "Sinfonia I + Coppia gentil" by Cristofano Malvezzi, all from their program "Italian Wedding Soup."
This year's IBM Innovation Awards were presented at 2011 Boston Cyberarts Festival. The Performance Award went to the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio (BEAMS) 2011 Music Marathon, an annual event curated by Brandeis's Irving G. Fine Professor of Music Eric Chasalow showcasing the very best electroacoustic music of emerging and established composers from around the world with an international array of top performers. The concert presented more than 50 electronic and mixed-media works that ranged from Milton Babbitt's 1964 "Ensembles for Synthesizer" and Steve Reich's "Violin Phase" to several world premieres. Among the participating artists were James Dashow, Gabriela Diaz, Ensemble Phoenix, Christian Gentry, Michael Lowenstern, Krista Reisner, Matthew Rosenblum, Butch Rovan, Steven Takasugi and the Talea Ensemble. The 2011 BEAMS Electronic Music Marathon featured a state of the art sound system installed in the intimate and acoustically excellent Slosberg Recital Hall allowing audiences to experience the music uncompromised-the way that the composers intended for it to be heard. The press release can be found here.
Spring 2011
Faculty News
Composer and emeritus faculty member Martin Boykan has recently been elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters (link). He shares this honor with former Brandeis music faculty members Yehudi Wyner (elected 1999) and Arthur Berger (elected 1972). And Marty's new book The Power of the Moment has just been published by Pendragon Press (link).
On Sunday, February 13 the Music Department joins the many institutions and ensembles that are celebrating the 80th birthday of composer Martin Boykan with a 3:00 pm. concert of his music in the Slosberg Recital Hall. The program includes two world premieres: Piano Sonata No. 3 (In Memory of Edward Cohen), which will be performed by Donald Berman, and Soliloquies of an Insomniac, with mezzo-soprano Pamela Dellal and pianist Berman. The other works for the afternoon concert are Marty's Psalm 121 for Voice and String Quartet (Dellal, violinists Yohanan Chender and Emil Altschuler, violist Mary Ruth Ray, cellist Joshua Gordon, and pianist Berman), Romanza for Flute and Piano, (Sue-Ellen Hershman-Tcherepnin, flute, Berman), Impromptu for Solo Violin (Chendler, violin), Nocturn' (Gordon, 'cello, Steven Weigt, piano, Robert Schulz, percussion), and Third Trio for Violin, 'Cello, and Piano: Rites of Passage (Chendler, Gordon, Weigt). The concert is free.
Alumni News
Richard Beaudoin, PhD '08 had been appointed Preceptor in Music in the Music Department at Harvard University. For the past three years Rick has served as Lecturer at Harvard, which was a one-year renewable appointment. Congratulations Rick!
As music artistic director of Yishu-8 Art Space, composer Jeff Roberts (Ph'D '08) founded and oversaw the 1st Music Beyond the Moongate International Chamber Music Festival in March. The goal of the festival, in partnership with Beijing Central Conservatory of Music, is to stimulate Beijing's fledgling New Music scene by circulating new music ensembles from throughout the world through Beijing. Yishu-8 welcomed German group Ensemble Emex in March and ensembles from France, Italy, Japan and the US will visit in the future.
Jeff also works as director of music ethnography for The Beijing Center For Chinese Studies excursions to remote parts of China including Tibet, Xinjiang, Yunnan and Sichuan. He directs US students in music fieldwork projects to bring them closer to different cultures. He conducts his own research and study in these remote regions. One project involving Chinese and Uyghur/Central Asian music will provide material for two composition commissions in Europe and a newly commissioned CD/Book of guqin & guitar improvisations (with guqin master Wu Na) and collected academic essays.
His book Guitar Atlas China was recently released in 2010 and has articles on music in China to be published in the research journal Cross-Currents (Ricci Institute ) in 2011. He toured the US and Europe in the last year, performing traditional guqin music and modern improvisation using guqin and Max/Msp and will be in residence at the Virginia Center for The Creative Arts in 2011 to work on his commissions and CD project.
Composer Jack Gottlieb, M.F.A. '55 was one of the first graduate of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, with a master's of fine arts degree in Music. Sadly, he passed away last week after a long and distinguished career. Born October 12, 1930 in New Rochelle, NY, Gottlieb was first encouraged to become a composer by Max Helfman, noted composer of synagogue music. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Queens College, NY [Phi Beta Kappa] in 1953, his Master of Fine Arts from Brandeis University, 1955, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Illinois, 1964. His teachers of composition were Karol Rathaus, Irving Fine, Robert Palmer and Burrill Phillips. He also studied with Aaron Copland and Boris Blacher at the Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood. The New York Philharmonic named him the Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence for their 2010-2011 season. For a complete bio go to this link
Composer Richard Beaudoin, PhD '08 thinks big, according to Harvard where he is currently Lecturer on Music in the Department of Music. Recently Harvard students elected him as one of 10 Harvard professors to present brief talks at the Harvard Think Big2 Symposium. Richard spoke about musical time, urging students to stop and listen to the songs. The event took place at Sanders Theater in Cambridge on February 17.
Article: Harvard Gazette
Composer John Aylward, PhD '08, is a recipient of the prestigious Goddard Lieberson Fellowship for 2011 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The award, which is in the amount of $15,000, was endowed in 1978 by the CBS Foundation and is given to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts. Stillness and Change, John's first album, will be released by Albany Records this spring. John has also received grants, fellowships, and awards from the MacDowell Colony, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, ISCM, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Aspen Festival, and Tanglewood. In 2009 he founded the Etchings Festival for contemporary music. John is currently Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Theory at Clark University in Massachusetts.
Graduate Student News
Two of graduate students, James Borchers and Brian Levy, have received the prestigious Mellon Dissertation Year Fellowship for next year (that's 2 of 8 awarded!). Rob Pearson and Jeremy Spindler are this year's recipients in Music.
Graduate student Gil Harel is one of only 5 students to be awarded a University Prize Instructorship for his course Musical Evolution in the Land of Israel. Gil will offer this course next spring.
Graduate composer Mu-Xuan Lin has been invited to participate in the Composers' Forum in Mittersill, Austria in September, 2011. The 10-day workshop/performance in Mittersill will be followed by two weeks in Salzburg. The Mittersill Composers' Forum was founded in 1996 by Wolfgang Seierl and Christian Heindl as a dynamic memorial to Austrian composer Anton Webern who was killed in 1945 in Mittersill under tragic circumstances. The forum, which has grown into a small festival, is held every September and serves as a platform for contemporary music with concerts, publications, broadcasts, and recordings.
Graduate student and tenor saxophonist Brian Levy is having a busy year in Germany and here in the US. In January you could have found him on stage in Munich performing with tenor saxophonist Max von Mosch. And in the US he has been working with world-renowned jazz saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi on a 4-DVD set entitled "Creating a Jazz Vocabulary." THE DVDs are instructional improvisation videos that will be released by the company Jazz Heaven under Jerry Bergonzi's name. Brian performs saxophone on all of them, and also accompanies Bergonzi on piano. Brian will be credited as performer (saxophone and piano), artistic advisor, and editor. The first two volumes are being released this winter.
Musicology doctoral student Joel Schwindt will be presenting his paper, "Monteverdi's L'Orfeo: 'Discovering' Symmetry", at two conferences during the coming six months. The first is an interdisciplinary conference, the annual meeting of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies,February 10-12; the other is the "Song, Stage, and Screen VI" conference (the annual meeting of the academic journal Studies in Musical Theater) at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, June 20-23.
Also, his edition of and commentary on Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Christmas oratorio, In nativitatem Domini canticum (c. 1690), will be published by Baerenreiter-Verlag (www.baerenreiter.com) in May of 2011.