Every year, the Music Department graduates a number of promising and accomplished music majors from the College. We are very excited to celebrate the achievements of Leo Mehring-Keller, who received the 2026 Leonard B. Meyer Prize for Musical Excellence, as well as Willow Zhu, who received the 2026 Olga and Paul Menn Prize for Composition.
Leo Mehring-Keller, 2026 Leonard B. Meyer Prize for Musical Excellence
Abstract:
"Finding Solace in Modernist Complexity: Pentatonicism in the Slow Movements of Mahler's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies" analyzes Gustav Mahler's use of pentatonic motives and harmonies in the Adagietto and Andante moderato of his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, respectively, to posit that these moments provide simple, hopeful, and sincere meanings amid Mahler's otherwise overwhelming complexity and irony. Drawing on rotational form, the hermeneutics of the pentatonic scale in the Romantic period, and the acoustic properties of the pentatonic set class, the thesis's musical analysis suggests that it is reasonable to associate Mahler's use of pentatonicism with simplicity. The second half engages with Theodor W. Adorno's idea of the banal in Mahler and a number of texts from the modernist literary canon to propose that the seemingly banal simplicity of pentatonicism is how Mahler attempted to sincerely address the modernist experience of abandonment and loss.
About Leo Mehring-Keller:
Leo Mehring-Keller is an honors graduate from the University of Chicago with a dual B.A. in Music and Philosophy. He plays oboe and piano and was a member of the University Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra, and Middle East Music Ensemble during his time in the College. He also studied composition with Augusta Read Thomas, writing pieces for the New Music Ensemble and ~Nois Quartet. Leo's interest in Mahler and the relationship between music theory and aesthetics more broadly will continue as he pursues a PhD in music theory after graduation, while serving as a research assistant for Professor Thomas Christensen's Thinking Music: Global Sources for the History of Music Theory anthology.
Willow Zhu, Olga and Paul Menn Prize for Composition
Abstract:
“Lessons That I Learned in College” is a composition project focused on popular music songwriting. I wrote and recorded eight songs to culminate an album about the lessons I have learned in college. These songs are about the interactions, memories, self-reflections, and fall-ins and fall-outs that ultimately helped me discover myself. This album explores the metamorphosing facets of identity; who I am when it’s just me in the room, who I am with my friends, who I am with strangers, and ultimately who I am in this world.
About Willow Zhu:
Willow Zhu is an honors graduate of the University of Chicago, earning her Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Music, and a minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. She grew up playing classical piano and viola and has been writing popular music since the age of 12. She spent eight years writing country pop music in Nashville, Tennessee, and continued to make trips during her school vacations in college. She has released one EP and six singles as a singer songwriter. After graduation, Willow is moving New York City to start her career in consulting.