2016 Department Newsletter Published
The Department's annual newsletter with faculty, student, and alumni news and accomplishments of the past year is now available for download.
The Department's annual newsletter with faculty, student, and alumni news and accomplishments of the past year is now available for download.
STEPHANIE CHOU, a singer, saxophonist, and composer from NY, combines classical and Chinese influences with jazz and pop harmony and rhythm. She released an album, Asymptote, which features fresh arrangements of Chinese classics including "Kangding Love Song," "The Moon Represents My Heart," a tongue-twister about Eating Grapes, and a setting of one of LiBai's most famous poems.
Alexander Rothe will deliver a lecture on "Revisiting Chéreau’s Bayreuth Centennial Ring Cycle Forty Years Later" on Sunday, December 4, 2016, 2:00pm at the Liederkranz Foundation, 6 East 87th Street.
Stephen Lehman (DMA, Composition, 2012) has released a new album, Sélébéyone, in collaboration with French saxophonist Maciek Lasserre.
Read the interview with Courtney Bryan (DMA, Composition, 2014) about the première of "The Dream Unfinished."
Zosha Di Castri's orchestral piece Lineage had its Japanese première at Suntory Hall on August 30th in a performance by the Tokyo Symphony alongside works by Kaija Saariaho (the featured theme composer) and Jean Sibelius. On September 2, Di Castri's String Quartet No.1 was given its première as the Canadian Commission Round of the Banff International String Quartet Competition.
Columbia Composition DMA student Stylianos Dimou's piece "my grounding | surrounding [it]_self / h_I. v.2" (2015-2016) for one percussionist and electronics has been awarded First Prize at the Concorso Internazionale di Composizione “Amici della Musica di Cagliari” 2016. The piece will be performed in Cagliari on the 28th of September.
DMA alumnus Jeff Talman has been awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship in Music and Sound. Less than 4% of applicants to the award receive it - congratulations for this very prestigious fellowship, Dr. Talman! More information can be found on NYFA's website, here.
Nansong Huang (Columbia College/Juilliard Exchange 2016) gave a successful and well-attended piano recital at the Columbia Global Center in Beijing. Over one hundred people attended, and Nansong gave a short speech to the audience after the recital on the importance of music education. For a more complete write-up of the event, please visit the write-up done by the Columbia Global Center in Beijing.
Alec Hall (DMA, Composition, 2016) is featured as a composer in the Manifeste 2016's Chamber Music Composition Workshop concert in Paris this evening at 7pm. More information here. Congratulations, Alec!
Harald Kisiedu (PhD, Historical Musicology, 2014) has been appointed Post-Doctoral Fellow at Memorial University of Newfoundland's International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation for 2016-2017.
The Department warmly congratulates Dr. Nicholas Chong, who successfully defended his PhD dissertation, Beethoven's Catholicism: A Reconsideration, on Friday, June 3, 2016. Dr. Chong's dissertation was advised by Professor Elaine Sisman, and his committee included Professors Susan Boynton, Euan Cameron (UTS), James Hepokoski (Yale), and Walter Frisch.
Congratulations, Dr. Chong!
The Mivos Quartet will premiere Carl C. Bettendorf's (DMA, Composition, 2009 & current adjunct professor) String Quartet No. 2, Yggdrasil (commissioned by the Ralph Kaminsky Fund for New Music) and Kate Soper's (DMA, Composition) Nadja on Tuesday, June 7 (tomorrow!) at 6 p.m in Miller Theater.
Admission is free and on a first come, first served basis. Check out more information about the concert here on Miller Theater's website.
Maja Cerar will be a featured performer in the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival at the National Sawdust in June 2016. NYCEMF 2016 will showcase electroacoustic music and video art from around the world, and Professor Cerar will perform Tania León's Axon, Ken Ueno's Vedananupassana, Elizabeth Hoffman's Fastenings (world premiere), Liubo Borissov/Maja Cerar's Autopoiesis and Paolo Gatti's Poltergeist.
For more information, please see the NYCEMF's webpage.
Professor Zosha Di Castri's piece "Patina" for solo violin, commissioned by Jenny Koh for the concert "Shared Madness" that took place at the National Sawdust on May 31, was reviewed by Corinna da Fonseca-Wallheim for the New York Times: "Zosha Di Castri's 'Patina' wove contemporary preoccupations -- with microtonal shadings and the relation of music to noise -- in a score tense with wild fluctuations in temperament."
Here is the full text of the review.
The Columbia University Department of Music extends heartfelt congratulations to our 2016 graduates:
Undergraduate Music Majors
Columbia College
Christopher Browner
Jacob Chapman
Ilana Deresiewicz
Quinn Devlin
Fernanda Douglas
Robert Fernandez
Amber Ferrell
Nansong Huang
Chengxi Li
Javier Llaca Ojinaga
Cameron MacCabe
Hannah Murphy
Maya Priestley
Quinn Squyres
Alessandra Urso
School of General Studies
Katherine Cartusciello
Marion Harache
Barnard College
Esther Adams
Eleanor Debreu
Anna Ehrman
Mark King
Jenny Payne
Delaney Ross
Angela Scorese
Graduate Students
Natacha Diels (DMA, Composition)
Shannon Garland (PhD, Ethnomusicology)
Alec Hall (DMA, Composition)
Geoffrey Holbrook (DMA, Composition)
Bryan Jacobs (DMA, Composition)
Ryan Pratt (DMA, Composition)
Alex Rothe (PhD, Historical Musicology)
Marceline Saibou (PhD, Ethnomusicology)
Sara Snyder (PhD, Ethnomusicology)
Lucie Vágnerová (PhD, Historical Musicology)
Jazz Special Concentration (Columbia College)
Sturdy Adams
Stephanie Gozali
Raphael Gilliam
Samuel Glick
Graham Jacobson
Chester King
Dean Marshall
Sound Arts MFA
Alice Emily Baird
Cameron Perry Fraser
Chatori Shimizu
Frank Andrew Spigner
We warmly congratulate Dr. Marceline Saibou, who successfully defended her PhD dissertation on popular music in Togo on Friday, May 13, 2016. Dr. Saibou's dissertation was sponsored by Prof. Aaron Fox, and her committee included Profs. Alessandra Ciucci and George Lewis (Music, Columbia), and distinguished Columbia ethnomusicology alumniProf. Ryan Skinner (Music and African Studies, OSU) and Prof. Andrew Eisenberg (Music, NYU Abu Dhabi).
Congratulations Dr. Saibou!
We warmly congratulate Dr. Sara Snyder, who successfully defended her dissertation on Cherokee language translational poetics and early childhood immersion education on Friday, May 6, 2016. Her dissertation was sponsored by Prof. Aaron Fox, and her committee included Profs. Bambi Schieffelin(Anthropology, NYU), David Samuels (Music, NYU),Ana Maria Ochoa (Music, Columbia), and CU ethno alumna Prof. Amanda Minks (Anthropology, Oklahoma).
Dr. Snyder has also recently been appointed as a visiting assistant professor of anthropology and sociology at Western Carolina University in 2016-17.