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.

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 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.

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 Department warmly congratulates Dr. Lucie Vágnerová, who successfully defended her PhD dissertation, Sirens/Cyborgs: Sound Technologies and the Musical Body on Thursday, May 12, 2016. Dr. Vágerová's dissertation was advised by Prof. Ellie Hisama, and her committed included Profs. George Lewis, Benjamin Steege, Ana Maria Ochoa, and Alondra Nelson.

Congratulations Dr. Vágnerová!

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.

The Department of Music warmly congratulates Ethnomusicology PhD Alumnus Dr. Timothy Mangin, who has been appointed Assistant Professor of Music at Boston College. Timothy Mangin completed his PhD in Ethnomusicology at Columbia in 2013. Prof. Mangin is an ethnomusicologist and musician researching the intersection of popular music, race, ethnicity, religion, and cosmopolitanism in West Africa and the African Diaspora. He has received fellowships from the Columbia University’s Center for Comparative Literature and Society, St. Lawrence University’s Department of Music, Mellon Foundation, the Foreign Language Areas Studies Program and a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Research Abroad Program. He taught at Columbia University, New York University, St. Lawrence University, and the City University of New York. An improvisational flutist, Tim founded St. Lawrence University’s Jazz and Improv Ensemble and also studies mbira and is a member of Capoeira Brasil. His writings have appeared in the edited volumes Begegnungen: The World Meets Jazz and Uptown Conversations: The New Jazz Studies as well as reviews in The Yearbook for Traditional Music and Ethnomusicology On-Line. Tim is working on a book examining indigenous cosmopolitanism through the intersection of the Senegalese urban dance music called mbalax and the practice of black, Wolof (the dominant ethnic group), gendered, and Muslim identities. He is also exploring blackness in Senegalese hip hop and the dynamics of improvisation in New York City’s underground hip hop and jazz scene. The Digital Humanities is a key part of Tim’s pedagogy and research that began when he worked at Columbia’s Institute for Research in African American Studies on the Malcolm X Project, under the direction Manning Marable, and further developed with students at The City College of New York. Dr. Mangin's Columbia PhD dissertation, on Senegalese mbalax, was advised by Prof. George Lewis.