At age 33, Sean Shepherd, the Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow of the Cleveland Orchestra, writes masterfully for orchestra employing rich colors and rhythmic complexity. He visits the May 14th Composition Seminar. Learn more
Wanderlust
In India, College students find the artistic roots of a modern nation. Ethnomusicologist Kaley Mason blends seminars with field trips to see performances, films, and visual art. Read more.
Follow the Music
The University of Chicago Presents has named Amy Iwano to the role of executive director, effective April 2. Iwano comes to UChicago after 18 years as executive director of the Chicago Chamber Musicians. More.
Amy Iwano to take helm of University of Chicago Presents
University of Chicago resident ensemble eighth blackbird rarely is described the same way twice. But according to the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, one term bears repeating: Grammy winners. More.
Ensemble-in-residence eighth blackbird earns third Grammy
The Department of Music Visiting Committee Colloquium Series brings leaders from across the fields of music theory, history, composition, and ethnomusicology to present their work to faculty and graduate students. More
"There is really no substitute for this kind of real-time interaction..."
Rigor, Creativity, Innovation
Positioned at the heart of a world-renowned academic institution, the Department of Music offers graduate degrees in Composition, Ethnomusicology, and Music History and Theory. The Department also offers an undergraduate Bachelor of Arts degree in Music. Complementing them is a lively performance program that involves undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students.
Latest News and Announcements
Department of Music mourns loss of honorary alumnus
Michel Huglo, recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from this University under sponsorship by the Department of Music, died this past weekend.
Alumna Hedy Law accepts tenure-track position at the University of British Columbia
Hedy Law has just accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Music at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Hedy earned her PhD at the University of Chicago in Music History and Theory (2007) after gaining a Master's degree at Oxford.
Claudio Vellutini wins Jan LaRue Travel Grant from the AMS
Claudio Vellutini is the winner of the Jan LaRue Travel Grant from the American Musicological Society, to work in Vienna on his dissertation "Cultural Engineering: Italian Opera in Restoration Vienna."
Major AMS Fellowships go to Department students
Two of the Department of Music's graduate students have captured major year-long fellowships from the American Musicological Society, as announced today on the AMS website: Mike Figueroa, winner of a Howard Mayer Brown Award, and Mary Channen Caldwell, winner of an Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Fellowship.
Francisco Castillo Trigueros receives honorable mention in ASCAP Composer Awards
For the second year in a row, Francisco Castillo Trigueros has received an honorable mention in the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.
Mariusz Kozak accepts postdoctoral position at Jacobs School of Music
Mariusz Kozak has been offered and accepted a 2-year postdoctoral position in the Music Theory Department at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music.
Members of Department elected to AAAS
Two members of the Department of Music, Martha Feldman, Mabel Greene Myers Professor of Music and the Humanities and Chair, and Augusta Read Thomas, University Professor, have just been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
New Metcalf Fellowship announced at "The Rossini Factory"
The Center for Italian Opera Studies (also known as CIAO) at the University of Chicago announces its inaugural Metcalf Fellow for the 2012-2013 academic year: Hannah McGinty, currently a third-year music major in the College.
Stefan Love appointed Music Theory Lecturer
Stefan Love has accepted an appointment as full-time Lecturer in Music Theory in the Department of Music, starting on July 1, 2012. Stefan earned his PhD in Music Theory in 2011 at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, with a dissertation on "Phrase Rhythm in Jazz." He is a jazz pianist who also wrote a BA thesis on jazz at Brown University (AB 2006).
Andrew Evans McManus wins First Prize in Chamber Music from the NYYS's First Music composition awards
Composition graduate student Andrew Evans McManus has won First Prize in Chamber Music from the New York Youth Symphony's First Music composition awards. These are designed to celebrate the NYYS's 50th anniversary during the 2012-13 season. As a result, Andrew's piece will be performed on April 30, 2013 in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall.
Daniel Callahan appointed Mellon Instructor and Postodctoral Fellow
For two years, between fall 2012 and spring 2014, we will be joined in Music by Mellon Instructor and Postdoctoral Fellow Daniel Callahan. Daniel is receiving his PhD this spring at Columbia University in New York, where he has written an exciting doctoral thesis called "The Dancer from the Music: Men, Modern Dance, and Choreomusicalities on the U.S. Stage, 1910-2010," combining work in dance, film, music, and gesture that functions at the disciplinary interstices of musicology, cinema and media studies, theater and performance studies, and gender studies and utilizes such methods as choreographies, sound reconstruction for dance film, archival work, and oral histories, to name a few.
Anthony Cheung appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago
Anthony Cheung has just accepted our offer of appointment as Assistant Professor of Music. Anthony has a BA with honors from Harvard in Music and History (Comparative East Asian), a PhD with distinction from Columbia (2010), and has been a Harvard Society of Fellows Junior Fellow since 2009. He is a pianist of considerable accomplishment.
Pacifica Quartet appointed Quartet in Residence at Jacobs School of Music
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music announced last week that the Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet, one of the leading chamber music ensembles worldwide, has been appointed as its quartet-in-residence. Pacifica's residency at the University of Chicago will continue alongside their Indiana appointment, including their work with Contempo, Music students, and their Artist-in-Residence series, presented by the University of Chicago Presents.
Two Department of Music students win prestigious teaching fellowships
Department of Music graduate students Mary Channen Caldwell and Martha Sprigge have both won prestigious 2012-13 Stuart Tave Teaching Fellowships in the College. Mary's is awarded to teach "Singing Songs: Music, Poetry, and Pop Culture, circa 1000-1500." Martha's is awarded to teach "Music, War, and Trauma in the 20th Century."
Melvin L. Butler appointed fellow at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and visiting assistant professor
Professor Melvin Butler has received an appointment for his leave year of 2012-13 as a Fellow at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Visiting Assistant Professor (spring term). He will join an interdisciplinary community of scholars there, working on the study and practice of sacred music, worship, and related arts.
Alumna Erika Honisch accepts Assistant Professorship at the University of Missouri-Kansas City
Erika Honisch has accepted a full-time tenure-track job assistant professorship at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Honisch (Ph.D., '11) is a seventeenth-century scholar extraordinaire and great friend to the Department.
Alumnus R. Benjamin Sutherland joins Howard Sandroff at computer music opening
Alumnus R. Benjamin Sutherland (A.M. ’97, Ph.D. ’01) joined composer Howard Sandroff to inaugurate the Regenstein Library’s new exhibition, The Music of Howard Sandroff and the Computer Music Studio, with a performance of “Improv for Computer and Sound Sculpture."
news.uchicago.edu | Contempo dedicates concert to composer Sofia Gubaidulina
Pacifica Quartet, eighth blackbird to perform works of first composer to receive UChicago honorary degree.
Composition student Andrew McManus wins honorable mention in 4x4 Competition
Composition graduate student Andrew McManus has received an honorable mention from the judges in the inaugural year of the "4x4 Competition." His orchestral work "Concerto of Deliverance" will be performed this afternoon by the Oklahoma Symphony as one of the finalists.
Regenstein launches exhibition on electronic and computer music
Next Tuesday, February 21 at 12:15, the Regenstein will host a performance of a new work conceived for one of Howard Sandroff's Sound Sculptures with computer, by himself and our alum Ben Sutherland.
It's alive! Department launches new website
New aspects of the site include rotating features that highlight news, departmental achievements, and upcoming performances; a news feed; a new calendar; and the capacity for departmental audio and video postings.
tableau.uchicago.edu | Crossover music
Whether the setting is a medieval abbey or a Broadway stage, “I have always had a very strong sense that music exists in spaces,” says Anne Robertson, the Claire Dux Swift Distinguished Service Professor in Music. Her scholarship on the liturgical and secular music of the Middle Ages explores these spaces deeply, showing how politics, theology, art, and architecture shaped music, especially in medieval France.
arts.uchicago.edu | X marks the spot for jazz innovation, exploration at UChicago
In a universe of jazz quartets and quintets, sextets and septets, you might assume a band calling itself an “X-tet” has an undefined number of members. And in the case of the University of Chicago’s Jazz X-tet, that surface definition applies.
Lise Waxer Prize awarded to recent PhD Luis-Manuel Garcia
Recent PhD Luis-Manuel Garcia was just awarded the Lise Waxer Prize, which recognizes “the most distinguished student paper in the ethnomusicology of popular music” (awarded by the Popular Music Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology).
Mexican choreographer Claudia Lavista joins Department as Mellon Resident Artist
In 2011-12, the Music Department is tremendously excited to welcome Mexican choreographer Claudia Lavista as Mellon Resident Artist in conjunction with the new Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry.
Legendary composer Sofia Gubaidulina awarded honorary Doctorate
In June of 2011 the Department was deeply honored and tremendously excited to be able to sponsor the first honorary doctorate ever given to a composer or indeed any creative artist.
Eminent composer Augusta Read Thomas appointed University Professor
At this writing our new University Professor of Composition, Augusta Read Thomas, has just had the world premiere of her University of Chicago-commissioned violin duo double helix played to immense acclaim at the dedication ceremony of the new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library. What an honor for us!
Seth Brodsky appointed Assistant Professor of Music
Assistant Professor Seth Brodsky comes to us after five years of teaching at Yale. Brodsky is especially interested in how contemporary composers fantasize and shepherd their affiliations with the musical past, both consciously and unconsciously, work that his taken him into new kinds of psychoanalytic studies, and for new reasons.
Visiting Committee brings leading scholars to the Department
This year we are proud to host a number of visitors to the Department, including composer Jan Radzynski, musicologist Emilio Ros-Fábregas, music theorists Jan Philipp Sprick and Martin Eybl, and ethnomusicologist Svanibor Pettan.
Will White, AB 2005, takes post as Assistant Conductor of Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
Will has just won a major conducting audition, and has been offered a position as Assistant Conductor of the Cincinatti Symphony Orchestra and Conductor of the Cincinatti Symphony Youth Orchestra. He will be moving to Cincinnati over the summer, and will begin his position with the CSYO next fall.
Post-doc Paul Steinbeck to be assistant professor at Syracuse University
Paul Steinbeck accepts tenure-track position at Syracuse University, where he’ll be an assistant professor of musicology in the Department of African American Studies.
An impromptu reunion for Howard Sandroff and former students
A concert in honor of John Eaton’s 75th Birthday brought together a host of University of Chicago alumni composers and their instructor Howard Sandroff for an impromptu reunion in March of 2010.
2012 Annual Cathy Heifetz Memorial Concerts
University Symphony Orchestra and combined choirs
Music by Poulenc, Augusta Read Thomas, and Debussy's La Mer
Saturday, May 26 | 8 PM
Sunday, May 27 | 3 PM
Mandel Hall, 1131 E. 57th Street
Free Admission. More
