Faculty News

Detail of panel one in the lobby of Old Cabell Hall
The Student's Progress by Lincoln Perry

Ayn Balija has completed her first year of outreach through the Boyd Tinsley Foundation.  She teaches 20 string students at Buford Middle School within the  Charlottesville Public School System.  This summer, Ayn Balija will be performing and teaching Violin/Viola at Belvoir Terrace in Lenox, MA.  Belvoir Terrace is an arts camp in the Berkshires.

Lindsay Reigel and Melanie Leinbach, students of Pamela Beasley, represented UVA well at the Virginia NATS auditions Feb. 29-Mar. 1 in Blacksburg. Lindsay was invited to sing before the entire group in a Master Class with internationally known tenor Paul Sperry and she sang beautifully then and in her category. Congrats are also in order to Melanie, who placed second in the state in her category and advances to regional competition!  Both students were accompanied by Karen Dalton.

In the first quarter of 2008, Matthew Burtner’s compositions have received over 25 live performances in places such as Fairbanks, Hamburg, Hanover, Irvine, Miami, New York City, Oberlin, Portland, San Francisco, Toronto and elsewhere. His "Endprint" for saxophone ensemble won the 2008 Canadian OPUS Prize for “Concert of the Year” for a performance by the Quasar Saxophone Ensemble. He composed music for the snowboard movie Thanks Brain and is currently working on another Think Thank film, Stacked Footy. Other compositional highlights of 2008 include "SXueAk" for squeaky toys and computer, and a major commission for the German Ensemble Integrales for “(dis)Sensus”. He performs regularly with his fusion duo Metasax & DRUMthings and programs software for his network orchestra, MICE.

Melvin Butler presented a paper entitled “Contested Boundaries: Negotiating Music, Ritual, and Identity in Haiti and Jamaica” at the Zora Neale Hurston Festival in Eatonville, Florida on February 1, 2008. From June 17-22, he will be performing at the Village Vanguard in NYC with drummer Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band. The group's recent recording, Season of Changes, is scheduled to be released by Verve Records on May 6.

In March, Ted Coffey performed “Swinge” for voice, percussion, saxophones and live electronics with Matthew Burtner & Friends at Monkey Town in NYC.  In April, he will present a work for tape, “Never Ate So Many Stars”, at the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival. Next year Coffey will attend residencies at Oberlin, California College of the Arts, Mills College and Korean National University of Arts in Seoul, working on several projects including a commission for the Princeton Laptop Orchestra ['PLOrk'] for performance with So Percussion and Matmos.

Scott DeVeaux is spending the spring semester putting the finishing touches on Jazz.  The book, which should be ready in early 2009, will be found in college classrooms across the country. DeVeaux is also presenting some new thoughts on jazz history for the American Studies department at Princeton University.  He proposes using the concept of 'fusion' much more broadly, positioning all of jazz in relation to popular music, dance, and culture.

In December 2007, I-Jen Fang presented a clinic and two performances with her mallet percussion duo, "iMallet" at Leechburg Junior High and Senior High School in Pennsylvania.  The duo presented a recital on December 8th in the Great Hall at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and a concert in Charlottesville on April 7th at Live Arts Theater.  On March 20th, 2008, I-Jen performed with Tim Adams (principal timpanist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and I-Jen's former teacher) at Mr. Rogers' 80th Birthday Celebration at Children's Museum of Pittsburgh.  I-Jen and Tim were former guests on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: Noisy and Quiet episode.

Bruce Holsinger’s most recent book, Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror, appeared late in 2007 from Prickly Paradigm, an imprint of the University of Chicago Press.  He has presented work from his book in progress on medieval liturgy and vernacularity in talks at Harvard, Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.  He spends most of his time these days, however, answering e-mail.

In January 2008, Nancy Garlick, clarinet instructor, performed the Copland Clarinet Concerto in the inaugural concert of the Chamber Orchestra of Charlottesville in Old Cabell Hall. In February she performed at the new Sidney Harman Shakespeare Theater in Washington D.C. with The Brandywine Trio, which includes emeriti music faculty, Dwight Purvis, horn and Content Sablinsky, piano. The group will repeat the program for the Wednesday Music Club of Charlottesville on April 2nd at First Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville. On May 18th, Garlick will perform on clarinet and recorder for the Culpeper Music Society with The Wild Geese Trio, which includes well-known Charlottesville musicians, Susan Black, violin and Linda Blondel, piano.

Robert Jospé’s newly completed book Learn To Groove for drum set and hand drums is available for lessons and for his hand drumming class, Learn To Groove.   Robert is currently teaching drum lessons to economically challenged students at the Music Resource Center in Charlottesville through an Upton Foundation grant.   In 2007-08 Robert Jospé and Kevin Davis presented the World Beat Workshop in over forty public schools in Virginia, at the Ethical Culture Fieldston Works School in NYC and in Old Cabell Hall for UVA’s Alternative Spring Break. This summer they will present programs at the Children’s Theatre-in-the-Woods Performances for the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts.  Jospé’s Inner Rhythm quintet opened for Natalie Cole at the 10th annual Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Festival and performed across the state. In April Inner Rhythm will perform five outreach concerts for high schools.

CUSO principal trombonist and UVA faculty member Steve Kellner recently conducted the Dominion Brass in a program featuring the music of Gabreli, Bach, Verdi, Wagner, and Bernstein along with some of his own music for brass.  The Dominion Brass, of which Kellner is music director, is a professional brass ensemble made up of players from the Washington, DC metro area. Over the UVA spring break Steve played euphonium with the National Symphony Orchestra in three performances of Richard Strauss' Ein Heldenleben, under the baton of Manfred Honeck, music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.  Steve was also a soloist in March with the CUSO in two performances of Frank Martin's Concerto for Seven Winds. Upcoming performances included a solo recital at Catholic University on May 6 featuring concertos by Wagenseil, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Grondahl.

There is a small group of Ghanaian Jews living in Sefwi Wiawso, Western Ghana, and Associate Professor Michelle Kisliuk went to visit the community in order to begin to understand how this group of recently converted Jews chooses to practice, and what role music has in both their everyday lives and their Jewish lives. Kisliuk, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, has studied the traditional music of the Ewe people of Eastern Ghana since 1978, and has researched and published on the music, dance, and daily lives of BaAka in the Central African rainforest, as well as on urban popular music in Africa. But this trip to Sefwi Wiawso was her first visit to Jewish Africans, and marks the beginning of a possible long term project with the music and identity of African and African American Jews. She presented her preliminary research at two conferences this Fall, at the annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Columbus Ohio, and at the Performance Studies International conference in New York City.

During 2007 Fred Maus presented on popular music and AIDS, music in the lives of survivors of sexual abuse, the music aesthetics of  Kendall Walton, and methods of studying popular music, at conferences in Athens GA, Boston, Seattle, Montreal, Mexico City, York UK, Zurich, Syracuse NY, and Baltimore.  Recently he gave lecture at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, Peabody Conservatory, and Westminster Choir College.  New publications include an essay on Michael Stipe and, in French, a survey of gender studies in musicology; forthcoming, essays on the gender politics of Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony, on AIDS and the music of the Pet Shop Boys, and on REM.  He is editing a collection of essays on music and trauma.

Edmund Najera had his choral composition "Psalm 149 " premiered by the Calvary Presbyterian Church, Indiana Pennsylvania, in November of 2007. It was commissioned on the occasion of the church's 200th anniversary. Another choral work which was written for the 40th anniversary of the Gregg Smith singers was recently released under the Living Artist label. It will subsequently be a spear-head publication for the new Gregg Smith Singers Legacy Series. His setting of St. Francis of Asissi "Prayer" will be premiered in April in New York City.

Michael Puri, Assistant Professor of Music Theory, is using his Sesquicentennial Fellowship to write a book that develops notions of memory, sublimation, and desire to situate the music of Maurice Ravel within the cultural ferment of his time. Fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and UVa (VPRGS) have provided additional support to this project, which has taken him to Austin, Paris, and New York. During this period of research, he has remained professionally active, presenting a paper and chairing a panel on Early French Modernism last fall at the national meeting of the American Musicological Society, whose journal recently featured his essay on Ravel's dandyism.

In December 2007, Ibby Roberts won a national search to continue in her position as Lecturer in Bassoon at UVA and principal bassoonist of the Charlottesville and University Symphony Orchestra. A month later, she was selected through a national audition as the Principal Bassoonist of the Roanoke Symphony, a position she will hold concurrently with her post at UVA.

Joel Rubin, Director of Music Performance, directs the UVA Klezmer Ensemble, which has become a fixture on the Central Virginia music scene. Rubin’s recent concerts include Symphony Space and John Zorn’s The Stone in New York. With the additional support of Jewish Studies, he organized a three-day residency with violinist Alicia Svigals in Dec. 2007. His recent recording “Midnight Prayer” was selected by Jewish Week as one of the 8 best recordings of 2007. He has chapters appearing in Early Twentieth-Century Brass Idioms and “I Will Sing and Make Music”: Jewish Music and Musicians Throughout the Ages, and recently published reviews in Journal of the American Musicological Society, Yearbook for Traditional Music, and Journal of the Society for American Music.

Violinist David Sariti was featured in "Music from Monticello", a concert of music from Jefferson's collection, held at the Rotunda in February.  He is currently working on a recording to be released by Monticello.  In addition, he was a featured recitalist at James Madison University in October, with harpsichordist Brad Lehman.

This season, Judith Shatin, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor, has received a McKim Fund commission from the Library of Congress and a Virginia Commission for the Arts Composer Fellowship. Also, View from Mt. Nebo, won the Jezic Ensemble competition for a new piano trio. Her music has been performed internationally, including the Moscow Autumn Festvial, St. Petersburg Soundway Festival, and at the Beijing Conservatory. Venues in the US include the Miami Botanical Gardens (For the Birds) and the Bass Museum in Miami (Chai Variations on Eliahu HaNavi),  and her music been on tour with noted sax player Michael Straus (Grito del Corazon). A number of her choral works are published by EC Schirmer, including “The Jabberwocky”, commissioned by the Virginia Glee Club. Shatin also has completed Rotunda, a collaboration with filmmaker Robert Arnold based on images, interviews, and sounds of, the Rotunda. In demand as a master teacher, Shatin has held the BMI residency at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.

Having conducted sold-out performances of Orff's Carmina Burana with the University Singers and Charlottesville and University Symphony Orchestra in fall 2007, Michael Slon is currently overseeing the University Singers 50th Anniversary Gala, and the world premiere of a commissioned piece from Stephen Paulus.  In summer 2008, he will conduct one of the first regional productions of Adam Guettel's The Light in the Piazza for Heritage Repertory Theatre, and continue work on a Leonard Bernstein project at the Library of Congress.

Kate Tamarkin inaugurated a new chamber orchestra called The Chamber Orchestra of Charlottesville in January 2008. This fully professional group features the principal players of the Charlottesville and University Symphony Orchestra.  In addition to speaking at the Noon Notes series, Tamarkin was an instructor at the  Jefferson Institute for Lifelong Learning giving a lecture entitled, "From My Side of the Podium". She was a featured speaker at Westminster-Canterbury, and at the UVa Women's Leadership Panel.  Kate Tamakin and Michael Slon lectured on the Linden Leadership Series at Congregation Beth Israel where they gave a joint presentation entitled "Leonard Bernstein: The Man and His Faith(s)".

Paul Walker and the members of the Zephyrus Medieval Quartet performed the Machaut Mass at the University of South Carolina on January 17. For a week this summer (July 28-August 3) Zephyrus will serve as choir-in-residence at Durham Cathedral in England, where they will sing daily services. Prof. Walker's article "'Fugue' as a Genre Designation in the Early Seventeenth Century" appeared in vol. 28 (2006) of the Schütz Jahrbuch, and his review of Joseph Kerman's book The Art of Fugue appeared in vol. 88/3 (August 2007) edition of Music & Letters.

Richard Will has won a Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars from the American Council of Learned Societies.  He will spend academic year 2009-10 at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina working on a book, Mozart Live: Performance, Media, and Reinvention in Classical Music.

Ian Zook, hornist and recent addition to the performance faculty, has recently performed concerts at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and on live radio broadcasts with the Philadelphia Orchestra.  In April he will join the Philadelphia Orchestra horn section to perform excerpts from Wagner's Gotterdammerung.  During the upcoming summer months, Ian will be visiting California for the first time to perform at the Napa Valley Music Festival with the UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra.  This will be followed by a residency in Switzerland with the VFCO, in concerts that will feature artists such as Joshua Bell, Mischa Maiskey, and Barbara Bonney.