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Graduate Our Graduate Students
Pedro Aponte (Historical Musicology)
Ph.D. candidate Historical Musicology
Research in 20th-century Venezuelan Art Music with focus on Musical Nationalism and Form
prast7@pitt.edu |
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Benjamin Breuer (Historical Musicology)
ABD, PhD Candidate
Currently, BB contemplates how ideas borrowed from philosophy and the natural sciences (for example, biological evolution) enrich or limit the methodology of musicology. Besides he researches language-music interaction and music notation.
bbreuer@gmail.com |
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| Oyebade Dosunmu was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and received his undergraduate degree in music at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. His interests are diverse, ranging from Wagner to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Oye, as he is called by friends, wrote his masters thesis on the music of modern Yoruba theatre, using as his case study Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman. His current interests are in African popular music and other expressions of postcolonial culture in Africa and its Diaspora. He directs Elekoto, a vocal ensemble based in Pittsburgh, which performs the choral works of modern African composers. oad2@pitt.edu |
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Yuko Eguchi graduated from Bates College with a B.S. degree in 2003 majoring in music composition and minoring in economics. For her senior honors thesis she wrote an opera Anata no moto e (I will follow you to the end) which premiered on April 4th, 2003. Besides her honors title, she received Honor's the College Key Music Award at graduation. She is in her second year of work toward the M.A. in ethnomusicology, and will be writing her thesis on Hindu music and diaspora in Pittsburgh based on the fieldwork at the Sri Venkateswara Temple in Penn Hills. Her interests include Japanese traditional music (Gagaku, Nagauta) and folk music (Minyo, Hayashi) and gender issues. She enjoys playing piano and shamisen. Yuko is currently teaching Basic Musicianship Piano classes. She was awarded a Japan Iron and Steel Federation Mitsubishi Foundation Fellowship in 2005.
yue1@pitt.edu |
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Justice Stephen Kofi Gbolonyo, a Ghanaian Ewe, grew up in some of the remote villages in Ghana and Togo in west Africa. He is now a PhD candidate, the director of the University of Pittsburgh African Music and Dance Ensemble, and a Teaching Fellow. He holds a Professional Diploma in Music education from UCEW, Ghana (1997) and a BA with Honors in music and linguistics from the University of Ghana (2002) where he was the director of the University African Brass Ensemble and a production assistant in the School of Performing Arts. He received his MA in Ethnomusicology at the University of Pittsburgh (2005). His thesis “Want the History? Listen to the Music!” examines historical evidence in Ewe musical practices. His primary research is in historical, philosophical, and theoretical concepts of the musical practices of the Ewe and Fon of West Africa. He is now working on his dissertation, which focuses on indigenous knowledge and cultural values as expressed in Ewe musical practices. Kofi is a specialist and a clinician in African music, dance, Orff-Schulwerk, and multicultural music education. He is a member of SEM, MENC, and AOSA, and has presented scholarly papers and workshops at their meetings, and performed at international conferences in West Africa, Austria, Germany, Taiwan, and Canada, and in many states in the USA.
jsg5@pitt.edu |
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From Asheville, North Carolina, Matthew Gillespie has studied at University of North Carolina at Greensboro, East Carolina University, and currently is a teaching fellow at Pitt. He has composed primarily solo, chamber, and vocal music, which has been heard throughout the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. Recent scholarly interests include the music of Franz Liszt and Charles Ives. As a composer, he is currently engaged in trying to lighten up, just a little.
mdg27@pitt.edu |
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Stephen Greene (Historical Musicology)
holds degrees in choral conducting and music education from the University of Oklahoma and Westminster Choir College, and is currently a PhD Candidate in historical musicology at the University of Pittsburgh. He has worked in community music and public school music in the Washington-Baltimore area, and as a university instructor in Kyoto, Japan. His primary research interest is in the origin of contemporary perspectives on different styles of music in the United States, particularly art music. The dissertation he is currently writing examines the intersection of art music and society in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, and is titled, "'Good Music,' Radio, and Democracy: Charles Seeger's Theories on Music and Class in the United States."
srgst15@pitt.edu |
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Daniel Grimminger Obl.O.S.B. (Historical Musicology)
Eighteenth/Nineteenth Century American Music, Theological ideas in music, Current issues in Church Music, Lutheranism and the Chorale Tradition, Hymnology. He is doing dissertation research on Pennsylvania Dutch (Kirchenleute) tunebooks in relation to cultural assimilation.
grimminger@aol.com |
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Colter Harper completed his bachelors in jazz guitar performance at Duquesne University in 2000. He is currently pursuing his masters in ethnomusicology at the University of Pittsburgh where he focuses his research on African-American and West African music. In addition to his work as a musician in Pittsburgh, Colter has studied and performed in Ghana, focusing on the Gyil (West African xylophone) as well as West African guitar band music.
colterharper@hotmail.com |
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Ben Harris Ben Harris is in the first year of work towards a PhD in composition and theory. Originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, he earned a BA from the University of Oklahoma, and subsequently an MA from the State University of New York at Buffalo. A violinist by training, he has recently succumbed to the sweet dark tones of the viola and performs on that instrument now and again. A member of the Buffalo-based Open Music Ensemble, he is interested in open form and pictorial means of musical communication. His compositions experiment with eclectic combinations of instruments, and he has been working towards introducing a stronger narrative element in his music. A fan of newspaper comic strips, he likes to thinks about what an opera based on Mary Worth would be like.
bgh7@pitt.edu |
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Elizabeth Hoover is a first-year graduate student, in the historical musicology program. Although born in Pittsburgh, she grew up in Kettering, a suburb of Dayton, Ohio, amused by Kool-Aid commercials and McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, always equipped with a plastic My Little Pony lunchbox and a purple Trapper Keeper, and never able to pass an opportunity to play The Game of Life or “drive” the neighbors’ Hot Wheels car; indeed, interest in musicology most likely stemmed from endless summer days of listening to her Sony “boombox.” She received a Bachelor of Arts in Music at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio in the spring of 2006, where she studied oboe with Professor Andrea Ridilla. Elizabeth has played the oboe for eleven years, performing in many orchestras, chamber groups, and the group she holds most dear to her heart, the wind ensemble. Although her focus is in musicology, she continues to play the oboe in the University of Pittsburgh Orchestra. As both a musician and an artist, her interests in musicology unite two loves: music and the visual arts. She is very interested in iconography of music, and the relationship between music and the visual arts in the early and middle of the twentieth century. She remains a loyal fan of the Trapper Keeper.
hooverea@gmail.com |
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Currently a PhD Candidate and a Mellon Fellow, Iván Jiménez received a BA in Music from Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia in 2000. His deep interest in both music analysis and music simplicity has led him to integrate both of these aspects in a very particular approach to composition. His works, although minimalist in spirit, focus on an innovative way of generating pieces out of preexistent compositions. An especial emphasis on the works of Guillaume de Machaut is evident in both his analytical and compositional output. In his doctoral dissertation he will analyze the treatment of dissonance in pandiatonic music of Arvo Pärt and Henryk Mikolaj Górecki.
iej2@pitt.edu |
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Dorcinda Knauth (Ethnomusicology)
Received her MA on ethnographic study of tango in Pittsburgh. Currently working on a Ph.D. topic in Indonesian studies. She has just received a J. William Fulbright Grant to conduct research on Islamic music in Indonesia in the academic year 2006-2007.
saluna98@hotmail.com |
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Erica Kudisch is the resident opera enthusiast and Wagner fangirl at Pitt. She completed her own first opera,The Gravediggers, in early 2006, and Erica will be writing her second as her Masters composition. She graduated from Vassar College cum laude in May, 2006, with a BA in Music (Composition/Vocal Performance) and a minor in Japanese. Her thesis recital was a two-hour showcase of works she had written using texts, themes, and scenarios from video games. Erica intends to continue analyzing and applying video-game music as an academic pursuit.
erk22@pitt.edu |
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Kerrith Livengood is in her third year of the composition program, having completed her
MA in April of 2007, with her work "enchanted days" written for the IonSound Project. Originally from Springfield, Missouri, Kerrith got her start writing music at Truman State University when Dr. Warren Gooch told her that she had an "interesting mind" and let her take composition lessons. Currently her interests run along the lines of electroacoustic music and chamber music of increasingly large scope, particularly settings of the poetry of Stephen Crane. She is an active member of Alia Musica, an organization that promotes performance of new works by young Pittsburgh composers; and she is also the president of the Pitt chapter of the Society of Composers Inc. Both Kerrith and her husband Jonathan are devoted St. Louis Cardinals fan, and so is their cat Eric (or he would be, if he were smart enough to understand baseball).
kerrith22@hotmail.com |
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Da Lin (Ethnomusicology) graduated from Xi’an Conservatory of Music in China with a BA in musicology. She grew up with the strong influence of Western music, and discovered her great interest in Chinese traditional music after becoming an undergraduate. She plays piano and qin (seven-stringed zither). Da is currently focusing on several kinds of traditional operas which are popular among Han Chinese in central China.
dal63@pitt.edu |
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Shanna Lorenz (Ethnomusicology)
PhD Candidate
shlst19@hotmail.com |
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David Matthews (Composition)
Teaching Assistant
dgm4@pitt.edu |
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Erin Mulligan earned a BA in Music from Hartwick College (2000), and an MA in Ethnomusicology from UCLA (2003). For her masters thesis, she examined the connections between music and altered states of consciousness, beginning with Middle Eastern tarab music and extending the concepts to the discussion of the realm of BDSM (bondage, dominance/submission, sado/masochism). In her research at Pitt, she is still examining the use of music in the BDSM community, and spends a lot of time examining issues of sex, gender, performance, pain, and eroticism as they relate to music and musical events. In her spare time she can be found online, in local clubs, swimming, or trying to motivate herself to better her swordfighting and chain-maille making abilities.
erin.lea.m@gmail.com |
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Brandi Neal (Historical Musicology)
American Music (Black Religious and Hip Hop) Early Music (Renaissance Motets) and Interest in Bach Sacred Music. Awarded the Elizabeth Baranger Award for Excellence in Teaching 2006, Summer 2006 Foreign Language and Area Studies Graduate Fellowship.
beeaneal@hotmail.com |
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Mary Ober (Historical Musicology)
msb_ober@netscape.com |
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James Ogburn (b. 1974) grew up in the scenic Cascade Mountains of Washington State. A prolific composer and amateur pianist, James has studied composition with Dr. Mark Polishook, Dr. David Asplin, Woiciek Widlak, Dr. Eric Flesher, Roger Zahab, Dr. Amy Williams, and Dr. Eric Moe. After completing a B.M. in Composition and Theory at Central Washington University (2004), he moved to Pittsburgh, Pa where he received a Masters of Arts in Composition and Theory from the University of Pittsburgh (2006). Presently, his research interests are directed towards his dissertation topic: “Motivic Development and Perception of Time in Witold Lutoslawski's Third Symphony.” His works have been performed by the Central Washington University Orchestra, The Krakow Academy Quartet, and IonSound Project, among others. James currently lives in Wilkinsburg with his girlfriend, Laurie, and their two cats.
spatulasidekick@hotmail.com |
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| Ayo Ogunranti received a BA in Music (Composition & Performance) from Southampton University, UK in 2004 and is currently a Composition and Theory graduate student. He believes in both the traditional and the contemporary ‘experimental’ approaches to Western Classical Music. In his compositions, he experiments with the fusion of elements that define this musical culture with those that define African music. Ayo is a strong advocate of the aesthetics of postmodernism in composition. He plays the organ as a soloist and an accompanist. |
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Sr. Marie Agatha Ozah (Ethnomusicology) PhD Candidate Andrew W. Mellon Predoctoral Fellow 2005. Interests include discourses on gender and music, dance, cultural studies and church music (Gregorian Chant). She is currently writing her dissertation titled, “Égwú Àmàlà: Women in Traditional Performing Arts in Ogbaruland.”
mao41@pitt.edu |
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Carlos Pena (Ethnomusicology)
Jazz, Popular, and Latin American music. |
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| Second year historical musicologist Christopher Ruth received a BFA with honors in Music Composition from Carnegie Mellon University in 2004. Though still active in composition, Chris’s current research deals with many different subjects, taking advantage of the wide range of expertise found in the faculty of the department. Currently writing his MA Thesis on compositional heritage and imitation in Renaissance motets, his other research interests include the evolution of Banjo pedagogy and methods in 19th-century America, the body as virtuoso instrument in the films of Fred Astaire, and, chiefly, the large-scale dramatic works of Robert Schumann. The diverse, yet interconnected research environment is what Chris enjoys most about the Graduate Music Department at Pitt. “Where else can you research long forgotten motet composers one day, hear a performance of your latest composition the next, and top it all off by dancing the role of the magical monkey in an expertly directed Indonesian Gamelan concert?” Beyond this, however, he finds his main inspiration as a scholar in his fellow students, where strong friendships abound between all disciplines and levels of study, in and out of class. “The weekly music department soccer match is great way to keep your sanity.” Originally from Baltimore, Chris loves Pittsburgh, but remains wary of showing his Ravens pride so deep in Steeler country. |
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Laurie Sampsel (Historical Musicology)
PhD Candidate
sampsel@spot.colorado.edu |
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Joanna Hastings Smolko (Historical Musicology)
joh10@pitt.edu |
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Yoko Suzuki (Ethnomusicology)
yos8@pitt.edu |
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Jason Squinobal (Ethnomusicology)
Jazz, Oral Traditions, Improvisation Systems, Intercultural Studies
jjs75@pitt.edu |
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Nemesio Valle (Historical Musicology)
captain.nemo@verizon.net |
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Currently a graduate student in Historical Musicology Sean Twomey is particularly interested in music of the mid-20th Century. Sean graduated with a MM in saxophone performance from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins, and has a BA from Michigan State in music education. An active performer, Sean is a member of two big bands, has performed repeatedly with the Detroit and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras, and has premiered fifteen works for the saxophone. When not with his horn or in the music library, Sean can be found at the Renaissance & Baroque Society of Pittsburgh where he is jack of many trades. Participating in the program at Pitt is an effort to better understand the interwoven relationship between the act of music-making within the context of overarching social, political, economic and cultural trends.
srt12@pitt.edu |
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Stephanie Webster-Cheng (Ethnomusicology)
My dissertation research concerns the stylistic development of the narrative form Suzhou tanci during the 1950s through mid-1960s in China.
cheng995@suscom.net |
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Jane Welsh (Historical Musicology)
jbwlovesdogs@aol.com |
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Bryan Wright (historical musicology) earned his BA at the college of William and Mary in 2005 with a double major in music and religion. His undergraduate senior thesis, about a once-famous singer from his hometown, titled “Cile Turner’s Contribution to the Preservation and Development of African-American traditional Music” was winner of the Lowens Award for Student Research from the Capital Chapter of the AMS. Bryan is most interested in studying American popular music from before 1945 and in particular enjoys studying ragtime and early jazz styles. He is also interested in Medieval and Renaissance motets, Middle Eastern music, and Appalachian traditional music. A ragtime pianist himself, Bryan has released a CD titled Syncopated Musings and has performed at ragtime festivals across the country. In the summer of 2006, he was a featured performer at the JVC Jazz Festival in New York City. Bryan is owner of Rivermont Records, an independent label reissuing historic recordings. He also hosts a radio program of early 20th-century popular music from ragtime to big band called Soundstage. He is a member of the AMS.
bryan@claxtonola.com |
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| Having grown up in a family of musicians in Beijing, China, Shuo Zhang delved into both western and Chinese music since childhood. Although graduated from Peking University with a BS in Environmental Science, Shuo has been working through the path to his life-long goal: to know as much as possible about human music and language. His research interests include history and theory of Chinese music, musical communication in Asia, and the relationship between music and language. As a performer of the Chinese Huqin, Shuo has traveled to Thailand and Singapore to perform and study. shz16@pitt.edu |
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Browse
Colloquia
The department sponsors a Colloquium Series each semester, bringing in outstanding speakers in a wide variety of fields to supplement and enrich the curriculum.
Graduate Handbook
Students may find detailed information on course requirements, department regulations, degree requirements, and related material in the Graduate Handbook (PDF).
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