Composition at Columbia University

The Music Department's Academic Department Administrator, Anne Gefell, is profiled in the current issue (vol. 3709) of the Columbia Record, celebrating her 16 year career at Columbia and her many activities and accomplishments beyond the Department.   Congratulations to Anne!

"WHAT SHE DOES: Anne Gefell manages the Department of Music’s office and its staff of four in Dodge Hall. On any given day, she handles payroll, talks with prospective students and their parents, troubleshoots technology issues in the classrooms, investigates leaks and other building problems, and interviews candidates for staff and work-study positions in the department. As the academic year winds down, Gefell is already busy preparing next year’s budgets, pre-registration and courses, and monitoring the faculty hiring processes.
Gefell is also a part of the seven-member steering committee of academic department ad- ministrators of Arts & Sciences at the University. And she manages the Alice M. Ditson Fund, a grant program that supports performances and recordings of works by American composers, and sits on the advisory board of the department’s journal, Current Musicology. Founded in 1965, it is the oldest musicology journal run by graduate students in the country."

Read more . . . Download the full article (PDF)

Above photo: Matthew Star (CC '12) and Sarah Dooley (BC '11) in the recording studio. Click to enlarge.

Graduating Music Major Matthew Star wins Louis Sudler Prize

The Department of Music congratulates graduating senior and music major Matthew Star, who has been awarded Columbia's prestigious Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts.  The Sudler Prize is awarded annually to a graduating Columbia College senior who, in the opinion of the Faculty, has demonstrated excellence of the highest standards of proficiency in performance or execution or in the field of composition in one of the following general areas of performing and creative arts: music, theatre, painting, sculpture, design, architecture, or film.

Mr. Star was awarded the Sudler Prize for his senior honors thesis, which entailed producing a new album of music by Sarah Dooley's (herself a Barnard College alumna, 2011). This project grew out of conversations Mr. Star had with the Computer Music Center's Terry Pender about what it means to be a 21st century music producer, especially with the advances in recording technology.   Star writes that "after [these] discussions, I read as much as I could about record producing and recording techniques to learn how to use all of the Computer Music Center's recording equipment and microphones. Sarah had always wanted to record an album of her original songs; she's an amazing songwriter but she's always been a solo artist, meaning each song only has vocals and piano parts. In producing her album, I arranged and recorded instrumental parts, and then mixed them all together."  He also worked extensively with Prof. Brad Garton, Director of the Computer Music Center.

Two of the completed songs produced by Mr. Star for Ms. Dooley's album may be heard at Ms. Dooley's website: http://sarahdooley.bandcamp.com/

Mr. Star is spending the summer in New York City, recording, building up his music library and doing freelance jobs, as well as scoring a web series and a video game, and recording as much music as he can. He plans to continue his career in music and media production.

Mr. Star is also bassist for the band Capital, which features fellow Columbia graduating seniors and Jazz Performance Program students Jesse Chevan and Evan Johnston.

Matthew Star Biography:
Mr. Star got his first taste of music with piano lessons when he was 6 years old.

For Fall 2012, the Department of Music and the Music Performance Program are pleased to offer six "World Music" ensembles, including Bluegrass, Klezmer, Japanese Gagaku/Hogaku (separate ensembles), Middle Eastern, and Latin groups.  All four are offfered as 1 or 2 credit ensembles under the course number MUSI V1625. (Click on each section number to go to the associated Directory of Classes listing.)

NB: For most participants, these ensembles expect a year-long commitment (fall and spring semester registration) and hold auditions for new members ONLY in the Fall.

For more information on these ensembles, contact:
The CU Music Performance Program (Becky Lu, Program Coordinator)
Office Hours: Tuesday-Friday, 12:00 to 5:00PM in 618 Dodge
Email: mpp@columbia.edu         Phone: (212) 854-1257
Website: www.music.columbia.edu/mpp/

WORLD MUSIC ENSEMBLE-BLUEGRASS
Call Number: 64457 Points: 1-2 
Notes: AUDITIONS REQUIRED & ARE IN FALL ONLY. SIGN UP IN 618 DODGE
Instructor: Jordan Shapiro

Fall 2012 Music V3310
TECHNIQUES OF 20TH CENTURY MUSIC
Section 001 Call Number: 22386 Points: 3
Time/day, location, instructor TBA shortly
Materials, styles, and techniques of 20th-century music. Topics include scales, chords, sets, atonality, serialism, neoclassicism, and rhythm. Prerequisites: MUSI V3322 or instructor's permission.

This course fulfills the requirement of the 3000-level advanced theory elective, or the non-tonal repertoire course (not both) for the Major.

The prerequisite for this course is V3321x Chromatic Harmony and Counterpoint I.

The current blog of The New Republic features a story on the legendary songwriter and composer Nick Hathaway, described by his discoverer and Columbia Journalism Professor David Hajdu as "the genre- and taste-defying songsmith known for having the kind of talent that is truly not to be believed."

The blog post is in honor of the first anniversary of Hathaway's death at the piano in Chester, Pennsylvania, on April 1, 2011. It features a riveting video performance of Hathaway's best-loved unheard piece of work: the words and music he wrote for “Man in a Mousetrap,” the conceptual production directed in 1953 by the avant-gardist Jeffrey Cordova. Here, in the piece’s debut, Theo Bleckmann, the esteemed experimental vocalist, performs “Man in a Mousetrap” at Columbia University, with Jon Weber (pianist and host of the NPR radio series “Piano Jazz Rising Stars”), Chris Washburne (respected trombonist and director of the Jazz Performance Program at Columbia), and the violinist and scholar (and Columbia musicology PhD candidate) Matthew Morrison.  The performance also features a consideration of Hathaway's historical importance by Columbia's Edwin Case Professor of Music, George Lewis, who concludes that "in the history of the American avant-garde, Nick Hathaway stands out as a figure of rare conventionality."