This year’s graduation marked the end of a particularly fruitful year for the Department of Music graduating class, current students, and alumni.
2012 Graduates and Current Students
Two PhD graduates from the class of 2012, Elizabeth Hoover and James H. Moore, have been appointed to academic posts: Moore was appointed Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Jazz Ensemble, Chair of the Department of Music in West Virginia Wesleyan College and Hoover was appointed Lecturer in Musicology at The University of Miami Department of Music, Oxford Ohio.
Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships were awarded to current graduate students Da Lin (ethnomusicology) and Jeremy Woodward (composition/theory). The Mellon fellowship includes tuition for two semesters along with a stipend.
Brandon Masterman (who received his MA degree this spring) won the best student paper award at the Greater New York American Musicological Society chapter meeting for his paper "'This Is How They Do Not Like It': Queer Abjection in Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts." Masterman will be attending New York University in the fall to pursue his PhD in performance studies.
Aaron Brooks, in the PhD program for composition and theory, received the first Dead Elf Music Award for an outstanding composition by a University of Pittsburgh graduate student. Brooks’ winning composition is a string quartet titled Two Rhythmic Studies, a work in two movements he originally composed for a reading session with JACK Quartet.
Ethnomusicology graduate students Kaitlyn Myers and Stephen Hager both won awards for Outstanding Presenter during Pitt’s Grad Expo 2012. Myers won for her paper “‘You must be quiet so that we can hear’: Ballads and Memory in an Irish Traditional Session” and Hager won for “Wacongo Dance Company: The Ethics and Aesthetics of African Music and Dance Performance in Pittsburgh.”
Other awards to graduate students and their recipients are:
K. Leroy Irvis Fellow – 1yr. Ashley Humphrey Provost Humanities Alec MacIntyre A&S Fellowship Sara Guglas - 2 terms John Bagnato – 1 term Ramteen Sazegari – 1 term |
Undergraduates
The Department awarded a variety of scholarships to several highly motivated undergraduates to assist them in their music studies. Congratulations to all scholarship recipients!
Anita J. Curka Scholarship - $ 8,000 available (PA residents only) $2,500 - Natalie Rogers: Music (Voice and Heinz Chapel Choir) $2,500 - Hamid Campbell: Music/Physics (Jazz Piano and Carpathian Music Ensemble) $2,500 - Dylan Crossen: Music/Anthropology (Piano, Guitar, Trombone, and Gamelan) Mildred Posvar Scholarship - approx. $ 8,000 available $2,500 - Evelyn McCoy: Music/Spanish (Piano and Women's Choral Ensemble) $2,500 - Stephanie Mangold: Music/Psychology, Theatre Arts (Jazz Voice and Chamber Music) $2,500 - Eric Gratta: Music/Computer Science/Statistics (Cello and Orchestra) Alfred d’Auberge Scholarship - $1,000 available $500 - Forrest Guilfoile: Music/Biological Sciences (Jazz Guitar and Men’s Glee Club) $500 - Jonathan Heins: Music/Philosophy/Computer Science (Trombone and Carpathian Music Ensemble). Honors College, Study Abroad in Mongolia Fall 2011 Gerlowski Scholarship - $ 400 available $400 - Jennifer Hess Freshman Violinist, Music Minor Gluck Scholarship - $1,400 available $700 - Jamison, Harry: Music/Math/Physics (Piano and Chamber Music) $700 - Andrew Head: Music/Computer Science (Piano, Orchestra, and Chamber Music) |
Alumni
Several Department of Music alumni also received appointments and awards this year.
Nick Emmanuel (BA 2011) has been accepted into the graduate program at University of Buffalo as a Presidential Fellow. He will be pursuing a PhD in historical musicology and continuing his piano studies.
Oyebade Dosunmu (PhD 2011) was appointed Visiting Assistant Professor of Music in the Department of Music, Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Dosunmu was part-time faculty member at the music department this year teaching courses in African music.
David Gerard Matthews (PhD 2011, comp/theory) was recently awarded an Artist Opportunity Grant from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council to study the onde Martenot in Montreal with ondist Geneviève Grenier. Matthews will have daily lessons during his immersion course and hopes to include the ondes Martenot in future compositions
Philip Thompson (PhD 2002, comp/theory) received a two-week fellowship with the John Duffy Composers Institute at the Virginia Arts Festival. As part of the fellowship, scenes from his one-act baroque-metal professional wrestling opera, The Final Battle for Love, will be performed.