On April 7, Professor Zosha Di Castri's piece "Near Mute Force," a setting of an adapted text by Rivka Galchen, for two sopranos, viola, piano, and drumset, commissioned by the Women's Musical Club of Toronto, will be premiered in Dannthology, a concert featuring violist Steven Dann taking place in Toronto. Read the Toronto Star's write-up about the upcoming concert here.

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

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!

Please mark your calendars for the Columbia Composers 2015-16 concert season:

Saturday, December 5th, 2015 at 8:00 PM: Electroacoustic works

at Prentis Hall (3rd floor), 632 W. 125th Street

Featuring works by MFA students Danielle Dobkin, Chatori Shimizu, Geronimo Mercado, and Frank Spigner, and DMA students Sam Yulsman, Ryan Pratt, and Martin Heindl, with special guests Carrie Frey (viola), Chris Pitsiokos (saxophone), William Cepeda (conch shell), Dana Malseptic (synthesizer), and Nathan Bellott (saxophone)

Friday, March 11th, 2016 at 8:00 PM: Ekmeles and Yarn/Wire

at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, 450 W 37th St

Featuring works by Christopher Trapani, Yair Klartag, Martin Heindl, Matthew Ricketts, Ashkan Behzadi, Bill Doughery, and Shih-Wei Lo

Saturday, April 2nd, 2016 at 8:00 PM: Mivos Quartet and Loadbang

at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway

Featuring works by Tyshawn Sorey, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Paul Clift, John Rot, Stylianos Dimou, Onur Yildirim, and Sam Yulsman

Saturday, April 30th, 2016 at 8:00 PM: Wet Ink (Large Ensemble and Band)

at St. Peter's Church, 346 W 20th St

Featuring works by David Bird, Sky Macklay, Ryan Pratt, Taylor Brook, Roberto Toscano, Alec Hall, and Nina C. Young

More information about the Columbia Composers' concerts can be found on their website.

Columbia Sounds: A New Concert Series at Columbia Global Centers | Paris

At Columbia Global Centers | Paris, the Department of Music offers a new concert series featuring Department faculty, students, and alumni. Held at Reid Hall (4, rue de Chevreuse, 75006 Paris), the performances will be free of charge.

Columbiana, on February 15, 2016, at 7 pm, will present the cellist Anssi Karttunen and the violinist Marina Chiche. The program includes music of Edmund Campion, Tan Dun, Fred Lerdahl, Bryan Jacobs, Taylor Brook, Zosha Di Castri, Yoshiaki Onishi, Pablo Ortiz, Nina C. Young, Magnus Lindberg, Kaija Saariaho, and Henri Dutilleux. Karttunen, widely praised as the most distinguished cellist performing new music today, has collaborated extensively with Columbia composers of several generations. After the concert, Karttunen will join Nina C. Young (Columbia DMA student and Fellow of the American Academy in Rome) in a conversation about the Creative Dialogue project that gave rise to several of the works on the program.

Ensemble Pamplemousse: This is the Uplifting Part, on March 15, 2016, at 7 pm, will feature the composer/performer collective Ensemble Pamplemousse in a program of experimental new music by the collective’s members, including prominent Columbia DMA alumni Natacha Diels and Bryan Jacobs. Diels, now Assistant Professor of Composition at UC San Diego, founded the Ensemble in New York in 2003. Each of the Pamplemousse members specializes in a unique aspect of composition, from micro-detailed instrumental writing to experimental theatre with electronics to electro-mechanical musical robotics. Their performances combine weirdness and beauty with pop culture and classical virtuosity. After the concert, the musicians will discuss their work in conversation with Susan Boynton (Chair, Department of Music and organizer of the series).

Event Sponsors: Columbia Global Centers | Europe; Department of Music, Columbia University; Office of Global Programs, Columbia University; Alice M. Ditson Fund

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)

Prof. George Lewis (Case Professor of American Music) gave the President's Endowed Plenary Address at the 2015 meeting of the American Musicological Society (AMS) to a capacity crowd. The lecture, entitled “Putting Scholarship into (Art) Practice: Four Cases," was described in the AMS program as follows:

“This talk troubles the bright line separating creative work from academic research, through an examination of four cases from my own work as a composer and interactive artist. The works themselves are diverse in content and affect, and range from computer music performance and interactive installations to opera. Each of these works, however, was developed through a combination of ethnographic method, historical and archival work, analysis of musical practice, and critical examination. The results are serving in turn as the impetus for my musicological writing—on the works themselves, on histories of larger networks of musical practice that these works draw upon, and on still larger socio-technological networks and practices that all of us encounter every day. Thus, the talk affirms the fact that the world continues to draw critically important lessons from music—often cryptically, and despite an ongoing and deleterious trope that portrays music as peripheral to American intellectual life. In staunch opposition to this trope, musicologist Jann Pasler has proposed that ‘music can serve as a critical tool, activating and developing multiple layers of awareness... I invite the reader to listen for music’s resonance in the world and, through music, to help us imagine our future.’ My talk makes common cause with Professor Pasler’s view, echoing philosopher Pierre Hadot’s understanding that ‘in philosophy, we are not dealing with the mere creation of a work of art: the goal is rather to transform ourselves.’”

Congratulations to Prof. Lewis!