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Daniel Grimminger, a doctoral candidate in historical musicology, will give three papers in spring of 2007. In March he will give a paper during the joint meeting of the Society for American Music and Music Library Association titled “Pennsylvania Dutch Music and the Transformation of German Culture.” Grimminger will present his paper “Faithful to the End: Pennsylvania Tune Books and German Ethnic Identity in Kirche and Singschule” during the Forum on Music and Christian Scholarship at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music (also in March). In May of 2007 he will participate in the International Congress on Medieval Studies, giving a paper titled “Quintilian Redivivus?: Bach’s use of dispositio in the Sacred Cantatas.” That paper explores the ancient rhetorical ordering in Bach's cantatas.

On December 2, Pianist Blair McMillen performed Eric Moe’s Hey Mr. Drum Machine Man for piano and boom box for a concert with the Da Capo Chamber Players at Tribecca Performing Arts Center. Yass Hakoshima, a celebrated mime artist, performed with Da Capo in a concert of works by Joan Tower, George Crumb, and Su Lian Tan. Blair McMillen is a driving force in New York’s New Music scene and performs Moe’s music on a regular basis.

Bach and Baroque explores the French Baroque

This fall, audience members for the Bach and Baroque Ensemble will have the opportunity to compare the world of J.S. Bach with that of the French Court when Professor Don Franklin leads the group on its first foray into music of the French baroque. The ensemble will perform Henry Du Mont’s Magnificat and and a trio sonata by Marin Marais. Du Mont was raised and educated in Maastricht, but it was in Paris where he truly made his mark, first as organist at the church of Saint Paul and eventually, composer at the court of Versailles. Du Mont’s Magnificat is from a collection of motets composed in 1686 for the court of Louis XIV. Marais was a student of Lully and famous for his operatic and instrumental compositions.

The German baroque will be well represented with J.S. Bach’s Cantata No. 131 and two works by Bach’s predecessor as cantor at Leipzig, Johannes Kuhnau: the cantata Gott sei mir gnädig (God be gracious to me) and motet Tristis est anima mea (My soul is sorrowful). Franz Tunder’s motet O Jesu dulcissime for bass and violins will feature soloist Sumner Thompson, a regular with the Bach and Baroque Ensemble and a rising star in the world of early music performance. He has been hailed as “the real thing” by The Cleveland Plain Dealer and praised for his “elegant style” by The Boston Globe.

Led by Pitt Professor of music Don Franklin, the critically acclaimed series brings together leading baroque performance specialists from Oberlin, Indiana University (Bloomington), Boston, New York, and Pittsburgh for readings that transform current research into musical practice. The concert takes place at Heinz Chapel on Sunday, November 12 at 3 p.m. General admission is $12, Student and senior admission is $8. Pitt students are admitted free with Pitt I.D.

Two compositions by Eric Moe will premiere in New York during November. The critically acclaimed New York New Music Ensemble will perform Moe's composition Superhero on November 6 at Merkin Concert Hall. The NYNME commissioned Moe as part of their 30th anniversary celebration A Thirty Year Passion for the New 1976–2006. The second premiere, an Emily Dickinson setting titled She Goes Her Spacious Way, was commissioned by mezzo-soprano Mary Nessinger and pianist Jeanne Golan. The duo will present the work in a private performance at the National Arts Club, NYC on Tuesday, November 7, then to the public at Vassar College on Saturday, November 18. She Goes Her Spacious Way is part of Nessinger and Golan's Shadow Cycle series, wherein they commission composers to write a song that parallels one in a famous older cycle. Moe's contribution shadows Alban Berg's Sommertage from the Sieben Frühe Lieder.

Ethnomusicology graduate student J. S. Kofi Gbolonyo is among international music scholars, educators, and performers who have been invited by MENC (the National Association for Music Education) and the University of Tennessee School of Music to present at the National Symposium on Multicultural Music. The symposium takes place from October 11-14 at the University of Tennessee Conference Center in Knoxville. Gbolonyo will present two sections on African music and dance education, a workshop on African children’s games and songs, and an African music and dance performance with the Tennessee Children’s Dance Ensemble. His first section is entitled “Teaching West African Children's Games and Songs: An African Participatory Approach” and his second section is entitled “The Concept ‘Music’ as Defined in Ghana: A Traditional African Approach to Teaching Music and Dance in Western Classrooms."

Graduate students in historical musicology Nathan Bowers and Joanna Smolko gave papers at the fall meeting of the Allegheny Chapter of the American Musicological Society. Bowers’ talk was entitled

“‘The best friend of the hostess is the Victrola’: an Early Marketing Strategy for Music Machines.” Smolko’s talk was titled “Zion’s Walls: Copland’s Transformation of an Old American Song.” The meeting took place on Saturday, October 7 at the Creative Arts Center of West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Assistant professor of composition Amy Williams recently completed a one-month residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center on Lake Como, Italy. While there, she composed First Lines for the Italian duo of Andrea Ceccomori (flute) and Emanuele Arciuli (piano). She is also one of just five local artists selected to receive an Artist Opportunity Grant from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council. She will use the funding to partially finance a tour of Argentina with her piano duo in November 2006. This tour will include the South American premiere of her piece Abstracted Art I and II.

Jessica Freeman directed the World Premiere of Godwin Sadoh's Ose Baba (Thank You, Father) for SATB with Piano Accompaniment, at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Fayetteville, New York, on Sunday, July 9, 2006.

Andrew Weintraub will conduct research in Indonesia during 2006–07
under the auspices of a Fulbright Senior Scholars Award. More

Wu Man gave the New York premiere of Eric Moe’s The Sun Beats the Mountain Like
a Drum for pipa (a lute-like Chinese instrument) and electroacoustics on April
6 at Zankel Hall Carnegie Hall. Allann Kozinn of the New York times wrote that Moe “gave
Ms. Wu pipa lines that had the spirit of a freewheeling rock improvisation.” The
program included collaborations between Wu Man and traditional musicians from Uganda,
Ukraine, and the Appalachian region of the United States.

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra will hold a reading session for student composers from Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne, and the University of Pittsburgh. Pitt doctoral candidate Michael Stephens' Oakland Overture was selected by the PSO for this year’s session which will take place March 4 at Heinz Hall from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PSO resident conductor Daniel Meyer will lead the readings. The experience will also include a dialogue amongst the three composers, Maestro Meyer, PSO composer of the year Jennifer Higdon, and the members of the PSO.

For admission to the PSO student composer readings, please call 412-624-4125. The Department has a limited number of free tickets available for the event.

Michael Stephens (b. 1967) holds a B.M. in music education and an MA in music composition from Kent State University. He has studied composition with Thomas Janson, Frank Wiley, and P.Q. Phan. Oakland Overture was written for Roger Zahab and the University of Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra who premiered the work in November 2004.