Department of Music Blog

Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music Akin Euba and Music Department alumni, including George Dor (PhD 2001), Anicet Mundundu (2005), Sister Marie Agatha Ozah (PhD 2008), and Jason Squinobal (PhD 2008), will participate in UCLA’s Africa Meets North America Conference (AMNA) taking place October 22-25. Professor Euba will make remarks at several sessions and his opera Chaka will be discussed during a scholarly session. Sister Marie Agatha Ozah will chair a scholarly session on Music Performance and Technology in University and Studio Environments and give a paper titled “Understanding the Pre-Compositional Resources in Joshua Uzoigwe’s Egwu Amala.’” George Dor will give a paper titled “West African Drumming and Dance in U.S. Universities: The Resurrection of a Suppressed Genre” and lead a workshop on “Observations on Ghana50 at Ole Miss in Oxford Mississippi.” Anicet Mundundu will chair a scholarly session titled “Melding Traditions: West Africa, USA, China, and Cuba” and give a paper titled “Diversity and Unity in African Music Performance Practice in the U.S.” Jason Squinobal will perform original compositions, including a song he composed for Dr. Euba, with his jazz group Horizon Band. Squinobal’s compositions feature intertwined ostinatos and polyrhythm, and many utilize West African traditional melodies. He will be joined for this performanc. by Ghanaian master drummer J. S. Kofi Gbolonyo (PhD 2009).

Mark Peters (PhD 2003) will give a paper at the conference Poets, Mothers, and Performers — Considering Women’s Impact on the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Peters’ paper is titled “A Woman’s Poetry in Leipzig’s Churches: Mariane von Ziegler as Cantata Librettist.” The paper grows out of Peters’ ongoing research on J. S. Bach’s sacred cantatas to texts by Leipzig Poet Christiane Mariane von Ziegler, research he published in his monograph A Woman’s Voice in Baroque Music: Mariane von Ziegler and J. S. Bach. The conference, which takes place October 16-18, is chaired by Prof. Markus Rathey (Yale) and sponsored by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music in collaboration with the Music Department and the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale.

Mark Peters is Associate professor of Music at Trinity Christian College (Palos Heights, IL) and Chair of the Department of Music. Mark has presented conference papers on Bach, Ziegler, and Johannes Brahms, and his publications include articles in BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute and the monograph “Claude Debussy As I Knew Him” and Other Writings of Arthur Hartmann (University of Rochester Press, 2003), with Samuel Hsu and Sidney Grolnic. He serves as Secretary-Treasurer of the American Bach Society and is currently pursuing new research on the German Magnificat from Martin Luther to J. S. Bach.

Chatham University will celebrate the Global Focus Year of West Africa at the Sounds of Africa Music Festival, Friday, October 2 and Saturday, October 3. Pauline Rovkah, professor of music and the festival director, has assembled Pittsburgh’s finest music scholars and musicians for an incredible weekend of free events in the James Laughlin Music Hall. For more information contact Pauline Rovkah at 412-365-1676 or rovkah@chatham.edu. The festival will include discussions and performances by Pitt Department of Music faculty including Akin Euba, Eric Moe, and Roger Zahab, alumni Anicet Mundundu and members of Alia Musica Pittsburgh, and current graduate students Oyebade Dosunmu, Charles Lwanga, and Ayo Oluranti. The complete schedule and list of participants is after the jump. (more…)

Composer Philip Thompson (PhD, 2002) created the score and produced the music for Will Zavala’s short documentary Virgil Cantini: The Artist in Public. The film is one of four documentaries commissioned by the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and funded by the Heinz Endowments. Each brief documentary celebrates a past PCA Artist of the Year and will be shown continuously in the Center’s video room during their opening to introduce current Artist of the Year, Tim Kaulen. The opening takes place at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts on Friday, September 25 from 5:30-8 p.m. There’s a suggested donation of $5 and PCA members get in free.

Will Zavala is a freelance media producer and an Assistant professor at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. He specializes in documentaries and has credits on productions for ITVS, PBS, MTV, and HBO. His films and videos have screened in festivals internationally and on public television.

Virgil Cantini founded Pitt’s Department of Studio Arts and created many pieces of public art including the sculptures on Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health (Man), in front of Pitt’s School of Law (Ode to Space), in Penn Circle behind East Liberty Presbyterian (Joy of Life), and many more. Cantini passed away in May of 2009.

In case you missed it, The Pitt News ran an extensive feature on recent Department of Music graduate Sachem Orenda.

“Sachem Orenda Clark, who prefers to be called simply Sachem Orenda, majored in music and philosophy at Pitt before graduating this past spring. While at the University, he earned a reputation among some students and professors for writing music with thoughtful lyrics. In his last year at Pitt, he started the Pittsburgh Electronic Musicians student organization to bring together electronic composers and disc jockeys and break down stereotypes about electronic music.”

You can read the complete article here. Congratulations to Sachem for his continued success.

David Hidek’s solo project The Worthy Ghosts received a glowing review in a recent edition of Pittsburgh’s City Paper. As a music major at Pitt, Dave emphasized composing and technology. He began working at Treelady Studios in Turtle Creek during his student days and continues there as Chief Engineer. He’s also in the second year of a graduate program in composition and theory at Duquesne University. Congratulations to Dave on a successful solo debut!

Congratulations to all graduate students who completed their degrees this term!

Our PhD graduates are

J.S. Kofi Gbolonyo, ethnomusicology
Daniel Grimminger, musicology
James Ogburn, composition and theory
Joanna Smolko, musicology
Jason Squinobal, ethnomusicology

Our MA graduates are

Ryan Durkopp, ethnomusicology
Samantha Heere-Beyer, musicology
Benjamin Pachter, ethnomusicology
Alec Summers, composition and theory

Congratulations to all of you for completing this phase of  your academic career! We wish you all the best in the future.

Hee-sun Kim’s (PhD 2004, ethnomusicology) Contemporary Kayagŭm Music in Korea offers the first book-length account of a new musical genre developed in post-war South Korea for kayagŭm, a traditional 12-stringed long board zither. The book examines the process by which a traditional instrument has become a vessel for the expression of new ideas concerning modernity, tradition and identity by examining history and relationships among composition, performance and representation. At the same time, Hee-sun Kim shows how, for kayagŭm practitioners, producing and performing new music has become a means of artistic survival and lately, of social distinction and success.

Contemporary Kayagŭm Music in Korea deals with musical sound, the meaning of performance, aesthetics in specific social contexts, and interactions among people. Most importantly the book aims to answer the question of why people make music in a given society at specific times. The book, which is accompanied by an audio CD of representative kayagŭm repertoires, offers unique perspective on music and society in contemporary Korea, which will be of importance to students of Ethnomusicology, Korean music, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies as well as Korean studies.

Contemporary Kayagŭm Music in Korea received a four-star review in the the March 2009 issue of world music periodical Songlines. Keith Howard praises many aspects of the book saying,

“…this book, supplemented by an excellent CD (the author is the performer on several tracks), gives us the needed insight. On the whole, this is easily accessible, well illustrated (with some rare photographs) and sensibly constructed…”

(more…)

Doctoral candidate James Ogburn and Federico Garcia (PhD 2006) will have compositions performed by the American Composers Orchestra at the ACO/Penn Reading Sessions and Lab in Philadelphia on April 16-17. Both Ogburn and Garcia are founding members of Alia Musica Pittsburgh, for which Garcia serves as Artistic Director, and each has amassed significant professional and scholarly achievements in recent years and months. (more…)

114 Music Building, free

This workshop for graduate students in music will offer suggestions on how to prepare for a teaching position in academia from the perspective of a junior faculty member. The workshop will be structured to accommodate participant interests but will focus on topics such as course development, lesson planning, developing your political life on campus, connecting with your local community, and how to maintain a research profile.  I will introduce some helpful resources and also share my own experiences at two different small liberal arts colleges (though much of the information will also apply to positions at research universities).  The workshop aims to highlight resources and strategies while providing an opportunity to discuss the balance of teaching, service, and scholarship in academia.

Lei Ouyang Bryant (PhD & MA Ethnomusicology, University of Pittsburgh) is an Assistant Professor of Music at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Interests include the Chinese Cultural Revolution, transnational and transracial adoption, music video games, memory, race, identity, and popular culture. She has taught courses on music and culture of East Asia and Asian America at the University of Pittsburgh, Macalester College, and Skidmore College. She has published articles in The China Review and Asian Music.