Achievements News

Lauren Flood Appointed Post-Doctoral Fellow at MIT

The Department of Music warmly congratulates PhD alumna Dr. Lauren Flood, who has been appointed as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lauren Flood earned the Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Columbia in 2015. She researches sound technologies and experimental instrument building practices in the contexts of the do-it-yourself ethos, maker culture, and popular and experimental music scenes. She held a Whiting Fellowship for her dissertation, “Building and Becoming: DIY Music Technology in New York and Berlin,” with fieldwork supported by the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies and the National Science Foundation. Lauren’s work is situated at the nexus of music, anthropology, sound studies, and science and technology studies. She engages with dialogs on critical organology, creativity and knowledge production, histories and aesthetics of sound and recording practices, vernacular technologies and everydayness, ethics and labor in the music industry, alternative methods in science and technology education, and the contemporary sense of self as mediated through the arts.

At Columbia, she has been a teaching fellow in Music Humanities and Asian Music Humanities, the graduate assistant for the Center for Ethnomusicology, an editorial board member and reviews editor for Current Musicology, and on the organizing committee of the Columbia Music Scholarship Conference. She has presented her work at annual meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the American Anthropological Association, the Society for the Social Studies of Science, and the EMP Pop Conference.

Prior to her graduate studies, Lauren completed her undergraduate degree at Drexel University, with a major in music industry and a minor in anthropology. While living in Philadelphia, she studied and performed as a guitarist, worked in copyrights and licensing, and assisted with research at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. She also completed field schools in Latin American ethnomusicology and archaeology, maintaining a long-standing interest in Mesoamerica and the modern Mayan region.

Dr. Flood's Columbia PhD dissertation was advised by Prof. Ana Maria Ochoa.

DMA Candidate Christopher Trapani Wins 2016-2017 Rome Prize

The Department of Music warmly congratulates DMA candidate Christopher Trapani who has been awarded a 2016-17 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome.

The Rome Prize is "awarded to about thirty emerging artists and scholars who represent the highest standard of excellence and who are in the early or middle stages of their working lives." Mr. Trapani is the second Columbia DMA student to win the Rome Prize in as many years.

Learn more about Mr. Trapani and his music at:

http://christophertrapani.com/

A composer with a genuine international trajectory, Christopher Trapani maintains an active career in the United States, the United Kingdom, and in Continental Europe. Commissions have come from the BBC, the JACK Quartet, and Radio France, and his works have been recently heard at Carnegie Hall, the Southbank Centre, IRCAM, and Wigmore Hall.

Christopher’s music synthesizes disparate influences, weaving both American and European stylistic strands into a personal aesthetic that defies easy classification. Snippets of Delta Blues, Appalachian folk, dance band foxtrots, and Turkish makam can be heard alongside spectral swells and meandering canons. As in Christopher’s hometown of New Orleans, diverse traditions coexist and intermingle, swirled into a rich melting pot. Consonance is a central preoccupation; microtonality and just intonation are often employed. Timbral explorations are also manifold, from experiments with a wide range of mutes and preparations to an unusual instrumentarium, with scorings that call for electric guitar, dulcimer, qanûn, stroh violin, and retuned autoharps. Several of Christopher’s compositions bear the mark of his training in literature, influenced by novelists and poets including Thomas Pynchon, Geoff Dyer, and C. P. Cavafy. Many recent works also incorporate an idiosyncratic use of electronics, expanding the possibilities of color, pitch, and timing beyond the acoustic realm.

Christopher was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1980. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard, where he studied composition with Bernard Rands and poetry under Helen Vendler. He spent most of his twenties overseas: a year in London, working on a Master’s degree at the Royal College of Music with Julian Anderson; a year in Istanbul, studying microtonality in Ottoman music on a Fulbright grant; and seven years in Paris, where he studied with Philippe Leroux and worked at IRCAM, both on the composition cursus and later on a musical research residency.

Christopher is currently based in New York City, where he has worked on a doctorate at Columbia University, studying with Tristan Murail, Georg Friedrich Haas, Fred Lerdahl, and George Lewis.

Christopher is the winner of the 2016 Rome Prize, as well as the 2007 Gaudeamus Prize, the first American in over 30 years to win the international young composers’ award. Other recent honors include an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2015), a nomination for a British Composers Award (2014), and a grant from the French-American Cultural Exchange (FACE) towards a new piece for ICE and Ensemble L’Itinéraire. He has also won the Julius F. Ježek Prize (2013), three Morton Gould Young Composers Awards from ASCAP (2005, 2006, and the Leo Kaplan Award in 2009), and a BMI Student Composer Award (2006). His scores have been performed by ICTUS, Ensemble Modern, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Nieuw Ensemble, Asko Ensemble, Ensemble L’Itinéraire, Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, Ensemble Mosaik, Talea Ensemble, Argento Ensemble, Wet Ink, Earplay, Yarn/Wire, Atlas Ensemble, pianists Sergey Schepkin and Marilyn Nonken, and the American Composers Orchestra.

tIn March 2011, Christopher was featured in a portrait concert on the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Music of Today series at the Royal Festival Hall in London. His music has also been programmed in international festivals such as the Venice Biennale, Ultraschall Festival in Berlin, Musica Nova Helsinki, and IRCAM’s festival Agora. He has held residencies at Copland House (New York), Récollets (Paris), and Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris), and was a 2013-15 fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart).

Recent and upcoming projects include a commission for the Quatuor Béla and GRAME in Lyon, a new orchestral work for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, a commission for orchestra and electronics (IRCAM) for the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Festival Présences 2015, and a new work for Ensemble Modern for the 2015 cresc… Biennial for Modern Music in Frankfurt.

Susan Boynton Wins Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award

Congratulations to Department Chair Professor Susan Boynton, winner of a 2016 Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award!

Eight Faculty Members Win 2016 Lenfest Awards Great teachers are an inspiration to their students and admired by their peers. This year’s winners of the Columbia Distinguished Faculty Awards were nominated by department chairs and their fellow faculty members:

http://news.columbia.edu/content/eight-faculty-members-win-2016-lenfest-...

Three DMA Alumni Awarded Guggenheim Fellowships

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded 175 Fellowships this year, three of whom are Composition DMA alumni from our very own department:

Edmund Campion (DMA, Composition, 1993)

Anthony Cheung (DMA, Composition, 2010)

Bryan Jacobs (DMA, Composition, 2015)

Congratulations to all three composers on their well-deserved fellowships!

Courtney Bryan (DMA Composition 2014) Performances, Spring 2016

Courtney Bryan (DMA Composition 2014) will be participating in a number of performances this spring. More detailed information below -- if you're in the area, check these concerts out!

Friday, March 25, 10:30am/11:45am
Relation: A Performance Residency by Vijay Iyer
I. "Songs of Laughing, Smiling, and Crying" for solo piano and recorded sound
II. Courtney Bryan and Brandee Younger, originals and music of Alice Coltrane
The MET Breuer Lobby Gallery of The Metropolitan Museum of New York
http://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/met-live-arts/vijay-iyer-met-br...

Friday, March 25, 7:30pm
Counterpoint: Classical Music and Nina Simone
Courtney Bryan and Eun Lee
Online concert and discussion
Fundraiser for #SingHerName concert, see link:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/singhername#/
https://www.facebook.com/events/1564305780564073/

Thursday, March 31, 8:00pm event (with 7:00pm reception)
HER (in honor of): a performance and discussion
Paul Robeson Center for the Arts
102 Witherspoon Street
Princeton, NJ 08542
HER (in honor of): a performance and discussion, co-sponsored by the Arts Council of Princeton, Princeton University Department of African American Studies and Princeton University Department of Music, will include a live performance byHER (in honor of) -- vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles, harpist Brandee Younger, pianist Courtney Bryan, bassist Mimi Jones, and drummer Kimberly Thompson -- and a discussion with the musicians on the history of women in jazz and related contemporary issues, to be moderated by journalist, Rajul Punjabi.
http://artscouncilofprinceton.org/

Thursday, April 7 and Friday, April 8 at 7:30pm/9:00pm
(Courtney will perform April 8 at 9:00pm, "A Presence" for solo piano and recorded sound)
Fromm Players at Harvard University
Creative Music Convergences, curated by Vijay Iyer
John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, Department of Music
Harvard University, Cambridge MA
FREE and OPEN TO ALL! No tickets required. First come, first seated.
http://frommfoundation.fas.harvard.edu/fromm-players-at-harvard

Review of Georg Friedrich Haas' "American Immersion" Concert

Last week, Professor Georg Friedrich Haas' work was performed by JACK Quartet and the Talea Ensemble in an event for the Austrian Cultural Forum. The two concerts were part of an event entitled "American Immersion," held at the Bohemian National Hall in New York City. The concert garnered multiple glowing reviews by MusicalAmerica's Daniel Stephen Johnson (whose review can be read here) and the New York Times' Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim (whose review can be read here). Congratulations, Professor Haas!

Image: Soprano Tony Arnold with Talea Ensemble; copyright Richard Termine, NYT.

Daniel Lazour Among Winners of 2016 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater

Daniel Lazour, a recent graduate of Columbia College who finished his degree in music this past December, is among the recipients of the Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater, administered by the Academy of Arts and Letters, for the musical We Live in Cairo, which he wrote with his brother, Patrick Lazour. We Live in Cairo "tells the story of six student revolutionaries coming of age in today's Middle East, who confront the past in their search for freedom. Young men and women, armed with laptops and cameras, guitars and spray paint cans, inspire millions to take to the streets of Cairo to overthrow their president, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak."

For more information, please see Playbill's announcement: http://www.playbill.com/article/hadestown-a-modern-day-twist-on-the-orph... Congratulations, Daniel!

Jenny Payne Awarded Luce Scholarship

Congratulations to Jenny Payne (BC 2016), a neuroscience and ethnomusicology major, for being awarded the prestigious Luce Scholarship! The Luce Scholars Program provides professional placement, in addition to language study and stipends, in Asia for American college seniors, graduate students, and young professionals. The program's goal is to "enhance the understanding of Asia among potential leaders in American society." Jenny gave an interview to the Columbia Spectator, in which she outlines her personal and professional journey and goals: read it here.

Matthew Morrison Appointed Assistant Professor at NYU

Matthew Morrison (Ph.D, Historical Musicology, 2014) has been appointed a tenure-track Assistant Professor, Recorded Sound in the Tisch School of the Arts (Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music) at New York University. Since 2014 he has been an Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow in the Institute. Congratulations Matthew! https://tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/clive-davis-institute/918859097 Check out Matthew's website here: http://madmoimpresario.com/

Professor Zosha Di Castri Wins 2016 Yvar Mikhashoff Trust Competition

Professor Zosha Di Castri and pianist Julia Den Boer have won the 2016 Yvar Mikhashoff Trust competition, whose goal is "to encourage the composition and performance of new works for solo piano reflecting and continuing the legacy of the distinguished American pianist, Yvar Mikhashoff" (http://www.mikhashofftrust.org/).

Professor Di Castri will be collaborating with Dr. Den Boer next year to write a new work for solo piano that will be premiered at the Banff Center for the Arts. Congratulations, Professor Di Castri!

Prof. Ana Maria Ochoa Wins 2015 Merriam Book Prize from Society for Ethnomusicology!

The Department warmly congratulates Prof. Ana Maria Ochoa (Ethnomusicology), whose new book Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth Century Colombia (Duke University Press, 2014) has been co-awarded the prestigious Alan Merriam Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology.

The Merriam Prize recognizes "the most distinguished, published English-language monograph in the field of ethnomusicology" of the prior two year period.

Tina Frühauf Receives Ruth A. Solie Award from AMS

Tina Frühauf, along with her co-editor Lily E. Hirsch, won the American Musicological Society's Ruth A. Solie award this year for their edited volume, Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture (Oxford University Press, 2014). Solie Committee Chair Professor Colleen Reardon (UC Irvine) described the volume at the award presentation:

"The Solie award winner this year tackles themes of transnationalism, displacement, and memory by examining the fascinating and often problematic relationship between Jewish music and German culture in the shadow of the Holocaust. An introduction that leads naturally into a survey of postwar writings on Jewish music, and an illuminating postscript on the “represence” of Jewish music in Germany frame a collection of essays that elegantly mirror the theme of the volume by traveling backwards and forwards in time, by exploring music in the camps and outside its borders, and by tackling such difficult topics as the discourse of avoidance and narratives of survival."

At Columbia, Dr. Frühauf teaches Jewish Music of New York (MUSI V2030) and Masterpieces of Western Music (Music Humanities).

George Lewis' Afterword Streamed on BBC Radio 3

The live (audio) recording of George Lewis's new opera Afterword, performed in the Lawrence Batley Theater as part of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in November 2015, is being streamed on the BBC Radio 3 site, as part of its “Hear and Now” series.

The opera, Afterword, celebrates the work of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a pioneering collective of musicians that took root in Chicago in 1965.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06r432b#play

Joelle Lamarre (soprano)

Julian Terrell Otis (tenor)

Gwendolyn Brown (contralto)

International Contemporary Ensemble

David Fulmer (conductor)

Sean Griffin (director)

(Pictured: Julian Terrell Otis, Gwendolyn Brown, and Joelle Lamarre -- copyright Ross Karre and I Care If You Listen, 2015)

Ana María Ochoa at CENIDIM for the Cátedra Jesús C. Romero 2015

Professor Ana María Ochoa delivered four public lectures from November 2 to November 6 for the Cátedra Jesús C. Romero 2015 in Mexico's CENIDIM (Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical "Carlos Chávez"). The lecture series was entitled "Figuraciones de lo sonoro en América Latina y el Caribe." More information can be found here.

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