Harvard University Department of Music

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Eileen Southern

Harvard Department of Music Announces Celebration of Eileen Southern and The Music of Black Americans

The Harvard University Department of Music, together with the Harvard Library and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, plans a series of events celebrating the life and legacy of groundbreaking music historian Eileen Southern. A webinar, Black Women and the American University: Eileen Southern’s Story, will take place on Monday, November 15, 2021, 4:00–5:00 p.m. via Zoom. Speakers include Naomi André, Professor of Arts and Ideas in the Humanities Program, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, and Women’s Studies, University of Michigan; Betty Hillmon, Founder/Director of the Boston City-Wide String Orchestra; and Tammy Kernodle, Professor of Musicology at Miami University of Ohio. Emcees will be Carol J. Oja and Braxton D. Shelley. The event will also feature the premiere of Light the Way Home: Eileen Southern’s Story, a documentary by Harvard College students Daniel Huang (’22) and Uzo Ngwu (’23) with music by Devon Gates (’23). Registration for the event is now open at this link.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Eileen Southern’s landmark work, The Music of Black Americans (W. W. Norton), a now-legendary text that represented an historic intervention into the European-dominated field of musicology and helped to launch the field of Black music studies. The book is a deeply researched survey of African American music that reveals an exceptionally open-minded attitude for its day, placing Black classical music alongside popular music, ragtime, jazz, and, in its third edition, hip hop.

In 1976, Southern (1920–2002) became the first African-American woman tenured in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and new research suggests that Southern may have been the first Black woman tenured across all units of Harvard. She was on the ground floor in developing the Afro-American Studies Department (now African and African American Studies), serving as the department’s second chair. She was also on the faculty of the Department of Music.

In addition to these many achievements, Southern also founded and edited The Black Perspective in Music (1973–1990), an academic journal that was produced from her home in St. Albans, Queens (New York City). Her husband Joseph Southern was its managing editor and publisher. The Black Perspective intervened in the field of musicology during an era when its signature publications were focused on European traditions.

November 15 also marks the launch of Eileen Southern and the Music of Black Americans, a digital exhibit highlighting moments from Southern’s life, scholarship, and teaching through archival documents and recorded oral history interviews. COVID restrictions permitting, a parallel exhibit will be held in Harvard’s Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library from January to April, 2022.

A second webinar, Black Music and the American University: Eileen Southern’s Story, will take place on Thursday, April 7, 2022, 4:00–5:00 p.m. A concert and collaboration with the Aeolians, an internationally acclaimed choir from Oakwood University, an historically Black institution in Alabama, is planned for that same April weekend. New works by Marques L. A. Garrett (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and Rosephanye Powell (Auburn University) will be premiered at the concert, which were commissioned by Harvard’s Department of Music in honor of Southern.

These events are part of Harvard/Radcliffe’s Eileen Southern Initiative. The project leadership team includes Katie Callam (Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard GSAS Fellowships & Writing Center), Andrew Clark (Director of Choral Activities and Senior Lecturer on Music at Harvard), Christina Linklater (Keeper of the Isham Memorial Library, Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library at Harvard), Carol J. Oja (William Powell Mason Professor of Music and American Studies at Harvard and Director of the Humanities Program at the Radcliffe Institute), and Braxton D. Shelley (Associate Professor of Music, of Sacred Music, and of Divinity, Yale University).

To learn more about the Eileen Southern Initiative, please visit the project website.

Fromm Foundation Announces 2020 Commissions

The Board of Directors of the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University is pleased to announce the names of fourteen composers selected to receive 2020 Fromm commissions. These commissions represent one of the principal ways that the Fromm Music Foundation seeks to strengthen composition and to bring contemporary concert music closer to the public. In addition to the commissioning fee, a subsidy is available for the ensemble performing the premiere of the commissioned work.

The composers who received commissions are Susan Botti, Mary Ellen Childs, Sivan Cohen Elias, Fred Lerdahl, Jessie Marino, Ali Puskulcu, Ellen Reid, Laura Schwendinger, Tyshawn Sorey, Juan Trigos, Ken Ueno, Max Vinetz, Samuel Yulsman, and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon.

The Fromm Foundation 2020 Ensemble Award went to the Brooklyn, NY-based S.E.M. Ensemble. MORE

Filmmaker and ethnomusicologist Richard Wolf explores the meaning of a river between countries

On opposite sides of the Oxus River border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan live two poet-singers who share a common language, faith, and family network, and yet remain separated by vicissitudes of the Great Game, the 19th-century conflict between the British Empire and Czarist Russia. Ethnomusicologist Richard Wolf has been contemplating the rupture that exists across this divide in “Two Poets and a River,” a film in progress about poet-singers Qurbonsho in Tajikistan and Daulatsho in Afghanistan.

Wolf, a professor in music and South Asian studies, has a longstanding curiosity about Central Asian people and music, but his research efforts began in earnest on a Fulbright Fellowship to Tajikistan in 2012.
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Fromm Foundation Awards 2019 Commissions

The Board of Directors of the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University is pleased to announce the names of fifteen composers selected to receive 2019 Fromm commissions. These commissions represent one of the principal ways that the Fromm Music Foundation seeks to strengthen composition and to bring contemporary concert music closer to the public. In addition to the commissioning fee, a subsidy is available for the ensemble performing the premiere of the commissioned work.

The composers who received commissions Ashkan Behzadi (Chicago, IL), Derek Bermel (Brooklyn, NY), Natacha Diels (San Diego, CA), Alec Hall (New York, NY), Sungji Hong (Denton, TX), Louis Karchin (Short Hills, NJ), Roscoe Mitchell (Fitchburg, WI), Mika Pelo (Berkeley, CA), Katharina Rosenberger (Los Angeles, CA), Mathew Rosenblum (Pittsburgh, PA), Peter Shin (Kansas City, MO), Christopher Trapani (Austin, TX), Lu Wang (Chicago, IL), Eric Wubbels (Astoria, NY), Wang Xi (Dallas, TX)
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Meredith Monk Appointed Fromm Visiting Lecturer on Music

“As [Monk] sang, there was a palpable sense of love and joy between her and the audience that spoke volumes. An antidote to the troubled times we live in.”—Financial Times
“[Monk] may loom even larger as the new century unfolds, and later generations will envy those who got to see her live.”—The New Yorker

Widely acclaimed composer, performer, singer and creator Meredith Monk announces her robust 2019–2020 season, which is set to include a host of performances, residencies and workshops, as well as the distinguished honor of Harvard University’s Fromm Visiting Lectureship. In this role, she and members of her Vocal Ensemble will teach two semester-long courses in the Harvard University Music Department this spring, one at the graduate level and one for undergraduates. At the end of the 2020 spring term, a public concert will be presented featuring student performers along with Monk and members of her Vocal Ensemble. MORE

Barbara Hannigan Gives 2019 Elson Lecture

On September 23, 5:15pm in John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, Barbara Hannigan’s Elson lecture “Equilibrium” will explore the Canadian conductor’s philosophy of mentoring young professionals. Hannigan is an artist at the forefront of her field, with colleagues such as Christoph Marthaler, Simon Rattle, Sasha Waltz, Kent Nagano, Vladimir Jurowski, and John Zorn. As a singer, conductor – or both simultaneously – Hannigan has given the world première performances of over 85 new creations. MORE

Composing Women: Lecture Performance

The Sydney Conservatorium Composing Women with Liza Lim and Professor Claire Chase present a lecture-performance on Wednesday, September 25, at 12:30pm in the Harvard ArtLab, 140 N. Harvard St. Allston

From an exploration of musical memories to a work that draws from the intricate patterns of stuttered speech, excerpts of four new works for solo flute will be presented in a lecture-performance format at Harvard’s newly opened ArtLab.

Sections from works by composers from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Composing Women program will be performed by students of virtuoso flutist and Harvard Professor of the Practice Claire Chase: Jessica Shand, Mai Nguyen, Jennifer Wang, and Taiga Ultan. Chase, a MacArthur Fellow, will join Australian genre-crossing composer Liza Lim to moderate a discussion with the composers, performers, and audience.

Everyone is welcome and lunch will be provided. MORE

Social Engagement Through Music

“Social Engagement Through Music: Histories, Economies, Communities” is a new, team-based, immersive course in which students collaborate with and provide professional support to musicians from Boston’s immigrant communities.The course also provides an intellectual framework for understanding the historical circumstances, economic and political realities, and community needs of these artists.

The course is the first of its kind, a collaboration with the Massachusetts Cultural Council (Maggie Holzberg, MCC folklorist, helped recommend the artists through MCC’s 2018 Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program), the Bok Center Learning Lab, the Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship, the Music Department’s faculty—Carol Oja, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, and Michael Uy—graduate students Matthew Leslie Santana and Caitlin Schmid, and the four brilliant musicians who have made Boston their home. MORE

PERLE NOIRE: MEDITATIONS FOR JOSÉPHINE MAY 3, ONE NIGHT ONLY AT OBERON, FREE

Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine brings together the astonishing talents of several of today’s most innovative artists. Conceived by director Peter Sellars and premiered at the Ojai Music Festival in June of 2016, Perle Noire is a collaboration with, soprano Julia Bullock, percussionist-composer Tyshawn Sorey, and poet Claudia Rankine, performed by Claire Chase (Professor of the Practice at Harvard) and International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). The evening spotlights Baker’s iconic songs re-composed by Sorey and sung by world renown soprano and activist Julia Bullock, who sees her work on the show not as an impersonation of Baker, but as a tribute. Tyshawn’s music, which includes composed as well as improvised pieces, is melancholic and mournful, and alludes to the racial struggles of both Baker’s time and our own. MORE

Mixing it up Musically: the Harvard/Berklee Dual Degree program

Two degrees, two colleges, two worlds: Adjusting to University life is a challenge for any entering student. But for a handful of students enrolled in Harvard College’s dual-degree program with Berklee College of Music, the challenges — and the joys — are twofold. “I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect,” says sophomore Jenny Baker, a singer-songwriter and sociology concentrator. She’s taking advantage of the program to dive deeply into her passions: not only music, but gender studies, social and political inequalities, and criminal justice reform. “I’m so excited about the chance to tap into Harvard’s resources, and Berklee’s too,” says Baker. “There’s such a different energy at both places.” The five-year program, launched in 2016, allows students to pursue a bachelor of arts (A.B.) degree at Harvard and a master of music (M.M.) or master of arts (M.A.) at Berklee at the same time. During their first three years, students pursue a degree in the concentration of their choice at Harvard and take private instruction at Berklee. At the end of their third year, students complete an audition and interview to confirm their readiness for the Berklee master’s program. The fourth year focuses on completing all Harvard requirements, and the fifth year on the requirements for the M.M. or M.A. READ ARTICLE

Yvette Janine Jackson Appointed to Faculty

Jackson, a composer of electroacoustic, chamber, and orchestral musics for concert, theatre, and installation, will join the Harvard Music Department as Assistant Professor inthe Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry program on July 1, 2019. Building on her experience as a theatrical sound designer, she blends various forms into her own aesthetic of narrative soundscape composition, radio opera, and improvisation. Her works often draw from history to examine relevant social issues.

Yvette is a recipient of San Francisco's Dean Goodman Choice Award for Sound Design and Theatre Bay Area’s Eric Landisman Fellowship. She was selected by the American Composers Orchestra to participate in the third Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute in conjunction with the The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University. Yvette studied music at the RD Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles, holds a B.A. in Music from Columbia University in the City of New York, and a Ph.D. in Music-Integrative Studies from the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on the history of production techniques and aesthetics which link radio drama and electroacoustic musics; multichannel composition; and immersion.

Past projects and collaborations include: ABC News Nightline, Altoids, American Composers Orchestra, Anthony Davis Improvisation Ensemble, Asian American Theater Company, Audiorama (Stockholm), Aura Codec, Aurora Theatre Company, California Audio Arts, Campo Santo, Chariot Videos, Conrad Prebys Music Center, Crowded Fire, Cultural Odyssey, David Molina, Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, Elektronmusikstudion (Stockholm EMS), Ellen Sabastian Chang, Erik Ian Walker, Erika Chong Shuch, Exit Theatre, Fridman Gallery, Golden Thread Productions, Grace Cathedral, Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, Intersection for the Arts, Joe Goode Performance Group, John Luther Adams, Magic Theatre, Mark Dresser Bass Ensemble, Marlo Thomas, Oakland Public Theater, Pagliacci's Fools, Phillip Kan Gotanda, Qualcomm Institute (Calit2) Recombinant Media Lab, Ray's Vast Basement, Salida Circus, San Diego Art Institute, Solano College Theatre, Space 4 Art, Strange Lights, Stuart Collection, Su-Chen Hung, Tiffany Ng, A Traveling Jewish Theatre, W. Kamau Bell, Wackoworld Music, Wa/So Collective with Ava Porter, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Youth Speaks, Zellerbach Hall.

Music Department Awards More Than $250,000 in Graduate, Undergraduate Fellowships

June 15, 2018: The Department's Oscar S. Schafer Prize is given to students “who have demonstrated unusual ability and enthusiasm in their teaching of introductory courses, which are designed to lead students to a growing and life-long love of music.” This 2018 recipients are GRACE EDGAR, ETHA WILLIAMS, and TAMAR SELLA.

Recipients of the Richard F. French Prize, John Knowles Paine Fellowships, Harry and Marjorie Ann Slim Memorial Fund Award, Ferndinand Gordon and Elizabeth Hunter Morrill Graduate Fellowships, Nino and Lea Pirotta Graduate Research Fun award, Davison Prizes, and University Composition Prizes can be found HERE.

Claire Chase, Esperanza Spalding Appointed to Harvard Music Faculty

July 24, 2017: We are pleased to announce that Claire Chase and Esperanza Spalding have joined the faculty of the Department of Music at Harvard University as Professors of the Practice, with appointments beginning July 2017. Spalding will teach a range of courses in songwriting, arranging, improvisation and performance, while also bringing her commitment to music as a voice for social justice. Chase will teach cross-disciplinary classes in ensemble performance, cultural production, and collaboration. Harvard's Professors of the Practice are reserved for instructors who have a national or international reputation as leaders in educational innovation.

Braxton D. Shelley Appointed to Harvard Music Faculty

April 5, 2017: We are pleased to report that Braxton Shelley will join the faculty of the Harvard University Department of Music in July, 2017. Shelley is completing his PhD in the History and Theory of Music at the University of Chicago; he is also finishing a Master of Divinity in the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. He earned a BA in Music and History from Duke University. His dissertation, "Sermons in Song: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination," develops an analytical paradigm for gospel music that braids together resources from cognitive theory, ritual theory, and homiletics with studies of repetition, form, rhythm and meter.

Recipient of the 2016 Paul A. Pisk Prize from the American Musicological Society, Braxton’s work has also won a Cathy Heifetz Memorial Award from the University of Chicago Department of Music and the 2016 Graduate Student Prize from the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music. His most recent articles,“‘Tuning Up’: Towards a Gospel Aesthetic,” in Exploring Christian Song, and “‘This Must Be The Single’: Valuing The Live Recording in Contemporary Gospel Performance,” in Living the Life I Sing, are forthcoming in 2017. He has presented his research at Northwestern University’s Music Theory and Cognition Workshop, Harvard University’s Graduate Music Forum, Music Theory Midwest and the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music.

Andris Nelsons to Speak at Harvard University

The Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director will participate in panel discussion Tuesday, April 11 at 6:30 pm with BSO Managing Director Mark Volpe and Artistic Administrator and Director of Tanglewood Anthony Fogg; other speakers include Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra conductor Federico Cortese and Professor of Music Anne Shreffler

Conductor Andris Nelsons, appointed in 2014 as the fifteenth Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), will participate in “A Conversation with Andris Nelsons,” a panel discussion at Harvard University on Tuesday, April 11 at 6:30 pm in John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, 3 Oxford St., Cambridge. Joining Nelsons will be BSO Managing Director Mark Volpe and Artistic Administrator and Director of Tanglewood Anthony Fogg, as well as Federico Cortese, Senior Lecturer on Music and Director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, and moderator Anne Shreffler, James Edweard Ditson Professor of Music at Harvard. The panelists will engage in a far-ranging discussion of the BSO’s history and legacy, while considering the future of the institution and its influence on the world’s musical stage, focusing on current goals and initiatives for the orchestra; developing new audiences for classical, modern and contemporary music; curatorial considerations in shaping a season’s repertoire; connecting with Boston's music and broader arts community; and other topics. Open to the public free of charge (tickets or RSVPs not required; seating is first-come, first- served), the event is sponsored by Harvard’s Department of Music and the Office for the Arts at Harvard’s Learning From Performers program.

Appointed at the start of the 2014-15 season, Andris Nelsons is the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Ray and Maria Stata Music Director, the fifteenth Music Director in the organization’s history. He was born in Riga in 1978 into a family of musicians, and began his career as a trumpeter in the Latvian National Opera Orchestra before studying conducting, becoming principal conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in Herford, Germany, from 2006 to 2009 and music director of the Latvian National Opera from 2003 to 2007. From 2008 to 2015, Nelsons was critically acclaimed as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He made his BSO debut at Carnegie Hall in March 2011, his Tanglewood debut in July 2012, and his first CD with the BSO—live recordings of Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2—was released in November 2014 on BSO Classics. In 2014-15, in collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon, he and the BSO initiated a multi-year recording project entitled “Shostakovich Under Stalin’s Shadow,” to include live performances of Shostakovich’s symphonies 5 through 10 and other works. Last summer, following his first season as the BSO’s music director, Mr. Nelsons’ contract was extended through the 2021-22 season. In 2017 he becomes Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, in which capacity he will also bring the BSO and GWO together for a unique multi-dimensional alliance. Nelsons also continues his collaborations with the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Philharmonia Orchestra, and is a regular guest at the Royal Opera House, Vienna State Opera, and Metropolitan Opera.

Music Department Announces New Curriculum

Our new curriculum, which will take effect in Fall 2017, opens up flexible pathways through our diverse course offerings while building on our traditional strengths. Our broad goal remains the same as before: we strive to create thinking musicians and musical thinkers. The concentration in Music exposes students to a wide variety of musical styles, sounds, and musical traditions in order to develop their critical understanding of music in diverse cultural and historical contexts.

Students choose pathways that best reflect their musical interests and aspirations. A jazz musician who wants to learn to play South Indian music, an orchestral musician who wants to learn jazz improvisation, a musical theater performer who wants to develop her interests in West African music – all these students and more can choose courses that reflect their interests and expand their horizons.

Our goal was to build flexibility into the curriculum, making it possible for students with diverse backgrounds and interests to flourish in the music concentration. We were eager to enable students to enroll in the courses currently required in the curriculum, but not to require them to follow a particular route. We created multiple entryways into the concentration that would allow students from different backgrounds and with diverse musical interests to join the concentration. And we aimed to shape a curriculum that would make it possible for our faculty to be creative and teach to their intellectual strengths.

Of the ten courses required for the concentration (12 for Honors), three are required: the concentration tutorials 97T Thinking about Music, 97L Critical Listening, and 98 Advanced Tutorial. The two concentration tutorials, Music 97T and Music 97L, can be imagined as offering a macrocosm and microcosm of the musical world. Where Music 97T tackles broad questions pertaining to music and its place in human existence, Music 97L focuses the lens on a more detailed level of engagement with music. Both emphasize critical listening skills, which are a pivotal contribution that engagement with music makes to the humanities. Music 98 (optional for joint concentrators), emphasizes skills that students wish to develop with the view to a senior thesis or “capstone project.”

Students are free to choose the rest from a wide range of introductory and advanced courses in music theory, analysis, composition, historical musicology, and ethnomusicology, in addition to many courses that incorporate or focus on musical performance. These courses reflect the specialties of our academic faculty: eighteenth-century material culture, diaspora studies and migration, opera, jazz, music and politics, early music, musical theater, music and media, country music, improvisation, hip hop, musics from around the world, history of the book, film, American and European modernism, music and cognition, music and ecology, new music of the 21st-century, and cross-cultural composition. Students are encouraged to participate (with credit) in faculty-led ensembles in orchestra, chorus, jazz, and dance. Whereas in the past, only 2 or 3 electives were possible, the new curriculum allows for much greater choice.

What’s driving this change?

The musical world around us has changed, and students bring with them a broader range of interests and skills than in generations past. Moreover, the rigorous division into history/theory around which the old curriculum was built was a particular challenge for the many hybrid and interdisciplinary courses that we teach. Some performance classes, for example, blend history, analysis, and performance practice, focusing on music from around the world as well as music of Western canon. The new curriculum recognizes the value of courses like this, and makes space for courses media and technology, music and science, popular music, film music, music and disability, and much else.

Is it true that reading music is no longer required?

No. The majority of courses we offer do require knowledge of musical notation. The first-year theory sequence (Music 51) will still be a pre-requisite for most advanced courses in music theory and music history. Some courses deal with music that is not traditionally notated, and students are expected to learn about how that music is transmitted and received in the context of that tradition. Beyond that, we expect our students to understand that reading music can mean understanding many types of notation, including (for example) lute tablatures, shape notes, or sargam notation. To this end, we’ve increased the number of theory courses that count for the concentration. Those students who come to Harvard with some theory training and who wish to pursue composition, conducting, or graduate study will be able to take the advanced theory sequence in Western music we have always offered and will be encouraged to do so. And now, students with various musical backgrounds will be able to gain fluency in Western notation while at Harvard and still become music concentrators.

How does the student chart a path?
Individual advising is crucial. We put in place a robust advising team that helps students devise (and revise) a study plan to pave a path through the concentration. We expect that in many cases this will not be that different from the old curriculum. But the critical part is that it can look radically different.

More undergraduate curriculum information here.

Yo-Yo Ma Delivers Elson Lecture: Culture, Connection, & Citizenship in a Time of Change

The Harvard Department of Music’s Louis C. Elson Lecture will be delivered this spring by cellist Yo-Yo Ma. “A Conversation with Yo-Yo Ma: Culture, Connection, and Citizenship in a Time of Change” features Ma and members of the Silk Road Ensemble Wu Tong and Cristina Pato in a lecture/presentation beginning at 5:00pm on Wednesday, March 22 in John Knowles Paine Concert Hall on the Harvard University campus. The lecture is free and open to the public; no tickets are required. Seating will be available on a first-come, first-seated basis.

Ma draws inspiration from a wide circle of collaborators, creating programs with such wide-ranging artists as Daniel Barenboim and Mark Morris, Michael Tilson Thomas and Wu Tong. In 1998, Mr. Ma established Silkroad, a nonprofit organization that seeks to create meaningful change at the intersections of the arts, education and business. Under his artistic direction, Silkroad develops new music, cultural partnerships, education programs, and cross-disciplinary collaborations. His most recent release, “Sing Me Home,” recorded with the Silk Road Ensemble, was released in April 2016 as the companion album to the documentary film The Music of Strangers. Both the film and the CD snared Grammy nominations this year, and the CD won for Best World Music Album at the Grammy ceremony in February. John Knowles Paine Concert Hall is located at 3 Oxford Street on the Harvard campus; it is a short walk from the Harvard Square Red Line T stop and is wheelchair-accessible. Info at music.fas.harvard | musicdpt@fas.harvard.edu | 617495-2791.

Songs Found in Dream: Talea Ensemble perform World Premiere, New Music in Free Fromm Players at Harvard Concerts March 3, 4 at Paine Hall

“…the stage often resembled the site of an athletic event, host to a blindingly high notes-per-measure quotient, fast tempos and a number of special effects. It was a demanding musical gauntlet.” —Musical America

On Friday, March 3 and Saturday, March 4 at 8:00pm, the Fromm Players at Harvard assemble one of the nation’s foremost new music groups, TALEA ENSEMBLE, for two free concerts, “Songs Found in Dream,” in John Knowles Paine Concert Hall on the Harvard University campus. The Friday program features George Lewis’s Mnemosis, Gerard Grisey’s Talea and James Dillon’s New York Triptych. On Saturday, hear Brian Ferneyhough’s Incipits, Rand Steiger’s A Menacing Plume, Liza Lim’s Songs found in dream, and the world premiere of Hans Tutschku’s codification – memory.

The concerts, curated by Hans Tutschku, showcase, almost exclusively, music written for Talea by some of the world's leading composers. In addition, the concerts feature music, particularly Liza Lim's work, that is at the heart of the Talea's mission of presenting innovative musical experiences and establishing creative communal environments for audiences.

“Hopes and dreams have forever been sources of inspiration for artists of all genres,” says Tutschku. “When Alex Lipowski, the artistic director of Talea Ensemble, and myself first discussed an overarching theme and possible compositions for this year’s Fromm Players at Harvard concerts, we had not anticipated how poignant the subject would be in our current social and political situation: dreams and hopes not as an escape from reality but as inspiring spaces to celebrate uniqueness, individuality and vision.

All these composers have pushed our understanding of music further over the past decades and provided us with inspiring and question-filled sonic landscapes to be ‘traveled’ by curious ears and minds. I wish us all two inspiring nights of coming together to share songs of a special kind.”

Both concerts are free and open to the public. No tickets are required; first come, first seated. Free parking is available at the Broadway Garage, corner of Felton and Broadway Streets in Cambridge (a five minute walk from Paine Hall). John Knowles Paine Concert Hall is located directly behind the Science Center at 3 Oxford Street; the Hall is wheelchair accessible. http://music.fas.harvard.edu | 617-495-2791 | musicdpt@fas.harvard.edu

Photo: Steve Sherman

Nicholas McGegan conducts “Baroque Music from the Jewish Ghetto” at Paine Hall, Nov. 17 at 4pm

Nicholas McGegan — long hailed as “one of the finest baroque conductors of his generation” (London Independent) and “an expert in 18th-century style” (The New Yorker) — is recognized for his probing and revelatory explorations of music of all periods. On Thursday, November 17, he conducts Sherezade Panthaki, soprano, Yale Voxtet, and the Philharmonia Baroque Chamber Players in Italian Baroque Music from the Jewish Ghetto. The Music of Salamone Rossi , with commentary by Francesco Spagnolo.

McGegan is the Christoph Wolff Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Harvard University Department of Music. The concert is free and open to all. John Knowles Paine Concert Hall is located at 3 Oxford Street, Cambridge. The Hall is wheelchair accessible, and is a short walk from the Harvard Square T station.

McGegan is music director of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and also Principal Guest Conductor of the Pasadena Symphony. He established the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Philharmonia Chorale as one of the world’s leading period-performance ensembles, with notable appearances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the London Proms, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the International Handel Festival, Göttingen.

PBO’s 2016/17 season includes a fully-staged production of Rameau’s La temple de la gloire, Handel’s oratorio Joshua, and programs with guest soloists Robert Levin (fortepiano) and Isabelle Faust (violin). In addition, McGegan and PBO revive Scarlatti’s La Gloria di Primavera at Tanglewood and appear at Yale’s Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Throughout his career, McGegan has defined an approach to period style that sets the current standard: intelligent, infused with joy, and never dogmatic. Under his leadership Philharmonia Baroque continues to expand its repertoire into the Romantic Era and beyond. Calling the group’s recent recording of the Brahms Serenades “a truly treasurable disc,” James R. Oestreich in The New York Times made special note of the performance’s “energy and spirit.” The recording, said Voix des Arts, offers “evidence that ‘period’ instruments are in no way inhibited in terms of tonal amplitude and beauty. These are … exceptionally beautifully played performances.”

His 16/17 appearances include the Los Angeles Philharmonic (his 20th anniversary at the Hollywood Bowl); Pasadena Symphony for two programs; Baltimore, St. Louis, and Toronto Symphonies; Calgary Philharmonic; Handel and Haydn Society; Aspen Music Festeival; and the Cleveland Orchestra/Blossom Music Festival. He also conducts the all-Mozart semi-final round of the 2017 Van Cliburn Piano Competition. Overseas, McGegan appears with Cappella Savaria at the Esterhazay Palace in Fertod, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and the Royal Northern Sinfonia.

His discography of more than 100 releases includes the world premiere recording of Handel’s Susanna, which garnered both a Gramophone Award and a GRAMMY® nomination, and recent issues of that composer’s Solomon, Samson and Acis and Galatea (the little-known version adapted by Felix Mendelssohn). Under its own label, Philharmonia Baroque Productions (PBP), Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra has released more than half a dozen acclaimed archival recordings in addition to the Brahms Serenades; Beethoven’s Symphonies 4 and 7, Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été and selected Handel arias with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson; Haydn Symphonies No. 88, 101 and 104 (nominated for a GRAMMY® Award); Haydn Symphonies 57, 67, and 68; Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and other concerti with Elizabeth Blumenstock as violin soloist; Handel’s Atalanta with soprano Dominique Labelle in the title role; and Teseo with Labelle singing the role of Medea. His latest release features the first-ever recording of the newly rediscovered 300-year-old work La Gloria di Primavera by Alessandro Scarlatti, recorded live at the U.S. premiere.

McGegan was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for 2010 “for services to music overseas.” Most recently, he was invited to join the board of Early Music America. His awards also include the Halle Handel Prize; an honorary professorship at Georg-August University, Göttingen; the Order of Merit of the State of Lower Saxony (Germany); and the Medal of Honour of the City of Göttingen.

Interested undergraduates will be able to learn about the program, ask questions of Harvard and Berklee officials, and hear performances by students currently enrolled in both colleges.

Chase Morrin, a Harvard graduate now enrolled in a masters program at Berklee, will perform on piano with Berklee students Isaac Levien, bass; Lesley Mok, drums; Nzinga Banks, alto, and Vasileios Kostas, lute, led by George Garzone, Professor, woodwinds.

Harvard's Jonah Philion '18 has put together a jazz group made up of members of the band, Composure, plus new members, who will play originals for this event.

There will be a formal signing of the agreement between Harvard and Berklee by Berklee President Roger Brown, Berklee Provost Larry Simpson, and Harvard Dean of the Arts and Sciences Robin Kelsey. Harvard Music Department Chair Suzannah Clark will host.

Designed for exceptional musicians interested in a diverse range of artistic careers as well as a liberal arts education, the dual degree will allow the two institutions to offer the best of their individual strengths. Driven by student demand for more opportunities and flexibility, the program allows accepted undergraduates to complete Harvard’s liberal arts curriculum while pursuing an advanced degree in music.

Harvard, Berklee announce new dual degree program

July 5, 2016:

Harvard College and Berklee College of Music have formalized a partnership to offer a new five-year dual degree that will enable students to earn a Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) at Harvard and a Master of Music (M.M.) or a Master of Arts (M.A.) at Berklee starting in fall 2017. Students may begin applying to the program July 5, 2016 (Berklee) and early August, 2016 (Harvard).

“Berklee’s programs have steadily gained prestige and power, turning the school into a formidable cutting-edge incubator for the newest waves of performance and composition,” said Carol J. Oja, chair of Harvard’s music department. “Institutionally, the partnership represents an understanding of the arts and art-making in the 21st century, especially the growing impact of technology and the realities of a globalizing arts landscape.”

The new program fits with the Harvard Music Department’s strong interests in jazz and world musics. Director of Jazz Bands Thomas Everett brought jazz to Harvard in the 1970s. The Department’s ethnomusicology offerings (1991), appointment of the Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music (2001), course offerings in jazz (2009), and the recent faculty appointments of musicians Vijay Iyer (2014) and Yosvany Terry (2015) have all expanded the offerings.

“The Berklee collaboration will build on our strengths and respond to a shifting world,” adds Oja.

Berklee’s master’s programs—in scoring for film, television, and video games; music production, technology, and innovation; global entertainment and music business; music therapy; and contemporary performance—cover areas not currently available at Harvard. Berklee offers four master’s programs at its campus in Valencia, Spain, and two at its main campus in Boston.

Students will pursue the A.B. curriculum at Harvard and take private lessons and other preparatory courses at Berklee during the first three years of the program. Students are also required to participate in ensembles at either institution, and pass instrumental proficiency exams at Berklee. Preparatory coursework at Berklee may be completed during fall and spring semesters, as well as during summer sessions in Boston, Valencia, or at Berklee Online. In the fourth year, students will complete all Harvard’s A.B. requirements, including a senior thesis if desired. In year five, students complete their selected master's program at Berklee.

To get into the program, students must be accepted to both Harvard and Berklee independently, as well as complete an audition and interview with Berklee. Harvard undergraduates may also apply to the program during the fall of their freshman year.

Modeled after Harvard’s successful joint degree with New England Conservatory, the Harvard-Berklee partnership will be mutually beneficial, expanding opportunities for students while enriching the communities of both institutions.

"Joshua Redman, Yo-Yo Ma, Aaron Goldberg, Tom Morello and a number of other highly accomplished musicians have studied at Harvard,” said Berklee President Roger Brown. "Imagine the possibilities when a world-leading Harvard undergraduate education can be augmented by private lessons, ensembles, and music classes in jazz, production, film scoring and more at Berklee.”

"Both schools are chock full of amazing teachers and academic/musical resources," says renowned jazz pianist Aaron Goldberg, who received a B.A. in 1996 from Harvard (concentrating in Mind Brain Behavior) and played with Berklee musicians throughout his time at Harvard. "For me personally, the challenge of balancing academic pursuits with music during college was a very welcome challenge: I was super-excited to play the piano after reading and writing and taking notes all day. The same was also true in reverse: after spending every summer playing music single-mindedly, I was moved to return to Harvard in the fall and begin to read and write seriously again."

In addition to Harvard’s generous financial aid program, annual awards are available to support Berklee master’s students with demonstrated financial need who are pursuing the joint degree through the Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser Endowed Scholarship Fund, established by Berklee Presidential Advisory Council member Paul Buttenwieser and his wife, Katie. “Music has always been a great passion of ours, so Katie and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be part of this exciting new alliance and support the next generation of artists who will mold the future of music and the music industry.”

A celebratory open house for the Harvard/Berklee dual degree will be held at 4pm on October 13 at Harvard's Holden Chapel.

ijay Iyer’s music can be jubilant and dramatic, but Iyer is not. He tends to stand slightly farther from someone he is speaking with than people usually do. Seated, he sometimes leans back from an engagement, as if the extra room allowed him more time to reach a judgment. His gaze is examining, and he occasionally looks at people askance, which makes him appear skeptical. In conversation, he seems cautious but precise and quietly determined. He stands with his feet spread and his knees locked, like someone in the military. He has a round, handsome face and a sharp nose. His expression is not fixed, but it doesn’t vary a lot. People usually take him for an accountant, he says. MORE

[Making music that matters. November 12, 2015 Harvard Gazette; Colleen Walsh, Harvard Staff Writer]

Don’t ever tell Angélique Kidjo what she can’t do. It’s a waste of time, and always has been.

From an early age, the Benin-born singer and activist planned to be an R&B performer like James Brown. She remembers crying “Why are you crushing my dreams?” when her mother told her she could never be just like the Godfather of Soul.

But that didn’t stop her. As she grew older, Kidjo realized she couldn’t resemble Brown physically, but it didn’t matter. Resembling him musically, she realized, was what was truly important to her. And so she did. MORE

Sir John Eliot Gardiner Residency at Harvard Begins in February

Conductor John Eliot Gardiner has been appointed the Harvard Music Department’s inaugural Christoph Wolff Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Music Department, supported by the Christoph Wolff Fund for Music. Gardiner—an English conductor, early music expert, and Bach biographer—will participate in a series of events February 2-8, 2015: a public conversation with Vijay Iyer, an open rehearsal with Harvard choral groups, and an informal rehearsal with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra and pianist Robert Levin.

Gardiner is one of the fathers of the period-instrument movement and the founder of some of its most iconic ensembles — the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists, and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. He has recorded over 250 albums with these and other musical ensembles. Gardiner has served as chief conductor of the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra and has appeared as guest conductor with such major orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Vienna Philharmonic.

Gardiner is a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. He received Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance (1994) and Best Opera Recording (1999).

In celebration of Professor Christoph Wolff's distinguished contributions to academic and musical life at Harvard University, his students, friends, and colleagues have established The Christoph Wolff Fund for Music. We are delighted to be welcoming our first distinguished guest, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, through the support of this endowment.

Unmasking Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in American Popular Culture

The Harvard Music Department announces a new library exhibit, Unmasking Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in American Popular Culture, examining the painful racist history and complex legacy of blackface performance in American culture. The exhibit will be on display January 26 through May 8, 2015 on the second floor of the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library. Included in the exhibit are images, sheet music, songsters, and other minstrel show artifacts from the Harvard Theater Collection, which houses one of the most important collections of 19th century minstrelsy materials in the world.

An opening symposium will launch the exhibit on January 26, 2015 at 4:30 PM in the Spalding Room of the Music Library. Carol J. Oja, William Powell Mason Professor of Music and Samuel Parler, Ph.D. Candidate in Music, will offer introductory remarks, followed by a keynote address from Louis Chude-Sokei, Associate Professor of English at the University of Washington and author of The Last “Darky”: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2006). The symposium will conclude with a performance by Rhiannon Giddens, banjoist and singer of the Grammy Award-winning folk trio The Carolina Chocolate Drops. Both the symposium and exhibit are free and open to the public.

The exhibit is curated by students from the seminar “Blackface Minstrelsy in 19th Century America,” taught by Oja and Parler during the fall semester. The artifacts of 19th-century minstrelsy include materials with toxic racial images and powerful, culturally ingrained musical texts. The historical impact of both the images and the music has been huge, and the goal of this project has been to engage students in a conversation about this important aspect of American racial history. The materials displayed document minstrelsy’s wide geographic and chronological span. Topics include the careers of composer-performers Thomas Dartmouth Rice (of European-American heritage) and James Bland (of African-American heritage); minstrel performance in America’s western frontier; black perspectives on blackface; and minstrelsy’s legacy in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The exhibit is supported by grants from the Elson Family Arts Initiative Fund and the Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities.

Herbie Hancock on the Ethics of Jazz

Jazzman Herbie Hancock trumpets the wisdom of Miles, the import of breaking rules [Harvard Gazette 2.5.14]

“The Wisdom of Miles” was the title of Herbie Hancock’s first lecture in the series of talks he will give over the next two months as the 2014 Norton Professor of Poetry. “Being asked to teach a series of lectures was, I felt, a great opportunity for me to express myself in a way other than through moving my fingers,” he said.

You could hear the packed house inside Sanders Theatre hold its collective breath as jazz pianist Herbie Hancock slid onto the bench and gently settled his hands on the Steinway to pluck a few chords that he picked up from trumpeter Miles Davis. They were harmonic ideas, he said yesterday, that opened his mind to new creative possibilities and would go on to shape his illustrious, six-decade career as a performer and composer.

“The Wisdom of Miles” was the title of Hancock’s first lecture in the series of talks he will give over the next two months as the 2014 Norton Professor of Poetry. Hancock laid out his vision for the series and spoke of some of the early practical advice (start your own publishing company) and creative insights (learn to listen) that Davis imparted to the then-artistically struggling young musician.

Established in 1925, the title of Charles Eliot Norton Professor in Poetry at Harvard has been held by giants in literature, fine arts, and music, including T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Charles Eames, Igor Stravinsky, and Leonard Bernstein.

Hancock’s appointment marks the first time that jazz will be the subject of the Norton lectures, and the first time an African-American has been named a Norton Professor, said Homi Bhabha, the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities and director of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, which sponsors the post. MORE

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Harvard University Department of Music: Archived Articles

Utopian Listening Conference: Luigi Nono (2016)
Iyer Curates Creative Music Convergences (2016)
Music Department Awards 331,00 in grants, fellowships (2016)
Terry Appointed Director of Jazz Ensembles (2015)
Fromm Players concert, Voces de America Latina features ICE (2015)
Laurie Anderson delivers Elson Lecture (2015)
Rehding Receives Dent Award (2015)
Jason Robert Brown Named AIR (2014)
Future Bright for Recent Alums (2013)
Celebrating Paine! (2012)
Sounding China (2012)
Undergraduate Composer Interview: Zachary Sheets '13

Luigi Nono

March, 2016: Utopian Listening Conference: Luigi Nono

Utopian Listening brought together scholars, sound engineers, composers, and musicians to engage with the practical and aesthetic challenges of performing Luigi Nono's works with live electronics, considered within their historical and political contexts as well as their contemporary ramifications and potentialities. The conference took place March 23-26, 2016 on the Tufts University campus, and was a joint effort of Harvard and Tufts Universities.

Four Days of Luigi Nono, David Allen, New York Times

Fresh hearings for an avant-garde master, Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe

Utopian Listening website

Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith

Creative Music Convergences: Improvisation, Creativity Highlight Fromm Players Concerts April 7, 8, 2016

Two evenings of concerts by composer/performers including Wadada Leo Smith, Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman Octet, Tyshawn Sorey Double Trio, more

CAMBRIDGE, MA: On Thursday, April 7 and Friday, April 8, the Fromm Concerts at Harvard assemble some of the finest musicians in creative music for a series of free concerts, “Creative Music Convergences,” in John Knowles Paine Concert Hall on the Harvard University campus.

The Thursday lineup features 7:30 pm performances by Wadada Leo Smith and Vijay Iyer (whose album A cosmic rhythm with every stroke releases March 25) and Nicole Mitchell with Tomeka Reid and Mike Reed. At 9:00pm Okkyung Lee and the Steve Lehman Octet take the stage.

On Friday at 7:30 pm, hear Craig Taborn and Wadada Leo Smith with Ikue Mori. The 9:00 show features Courtney Bryan and the Tyshawn Sorey Double Trio.

“These are musicians who just go up there and create,” says Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts Vijay Iyer, who curated the 2016 Fromm concerts. “Every night is different, every time is different, and each has its own integrity and power.

"Improvisation really builds something. It’s not contra to composition; it’s another way of putting music together.”

The musicians in this year’s Fromm concerts span generations, geography, and style. What they share is that they are part of the creative music community. “What we call creative music, experimental music that involves improvisation, has an astonishingly diverse range of expression,” says Iyer. “Tyshawn Sorey plays the Village Vanguard but studied with Stockhausen; Steve Lehman is one of the transforming figures of 21st century jazz; Ikue Mori plays solo cello with a rock band [the legendary DNA], Craig Taborn is the most admired keyboardist of my generation.

“They’re all here,” says Iyer, “because they’re innovative and unique.”

All four concerts are free and open to the public. No tickets are required; first come, first seated. Free parking is available at the Broadway Garage, corner of Felton and Broadway Streets in Cambridge (a five minute walk from Paine Hall). Paine Hall is located directly behind the Science Center at 3 Oxford Street; the Hall is wheelchair accessible.

Graduate Student Awards

The Department’s OSCAR S. SCHAFER PRIZE is given to students “who have demonstrated unusual ability and enthusiasm in their teaching of introductory courses, which are designed to lead students to a growing and life-long love of music.” This year’s recipients are Manuela Meier, Emerson Morgan, Marek Poliks, Steffi Probst, and Caitlin Schmid.

RICHARD F. FRENCH PRIZE FELLOWSHIPSwere awarded to the following students in support of their scholarly work:
Ian Copeland to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Malawi and Chichewa language study
Ruijing Huang to conduct dissertation research at Harvard libraries
Krystal Klingenberg to conduct dissertation research in Kampala, Uganda
Panayotis League to conduct fieldwork in Lesvos
Laurie Lee to conduct fieldwork at a Buddhist monastery in South Korea
Matthew Leslie Santana for travel to Miami and Havana for fieldwork and festival attendance
Felipe Nuñez for travel to Sao Paulo and Montevideo to take musicology classes, conduct archival research, attend a conference, and for Portuguese language study
William O’Hara to support dissertation writing
Sam Parler to support dissertation research
Sarah Politz for travel to France and Benin for follow up research and interviews, and language study
Frederick Reece to support dissertation writing
Jeff Williams for intensive German language study in Freiburg
JOHN KNOWLES PAINE FELLOWSHIPS were awarded to the following students in support of their scholarly and artistic work:
James Bean for an IRCAM residency and to attend a performance at Valencia Performance Academy and Festival in Spain
Sivan Cohen-Elias to attend a performance of her compositions and to collaborate on projects in Germany and Austria
Justin Hoke to travel to Germany and Australia for composition collaboration and performance
Clara Iannotta for intensive German language study in Stuttgart and to attend the Darmstadt summer course
Timothy McCormack to support travel to New Hampshire, Spain, and Australia for festival attendance and composition collaboration
Manuela Meier to attend the Darmstadt summer course
John Pax to attend the Darmstadt summer course and the sketch workshop with ELISION Ensemble, and for intensive German study at Goethe Institute
Marek Poliks for travel to Germany, England, Denmark, Minnesota, and California for composition collaboration, performance and instrument development
Stefan Prins for travel to Berlin, Luzern, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Zurich, and the Darmstadt summer course for composition performance and collaboration
Adi Snir for travel to Israel for rehearsals and concerts, to attend the at Darmstadt summer course, and to participate in Tzlil Meudcan Festival
Rajna Swaminathan to conduct fieldwork and for Karnatik vocal study in Chennai, India
Christopher Swithinbank to attend the Darmstadt summer course, for travel to Berlin for composition collaboration and to Osaka for a composition premiere.

THE HARRY AND MARJORIE ANN SLIM MEMORIAL FUND
Hayley Fenn to conduct archival research in Europe, puppetry and theatrical fieldwork, and German language study in Berlin. Fenn also received a Pirrota fellowship to support this work.
Monica Hershberger to support dissertation writing
Max Murray for travel to Wyoming to record footage for a music/theater project and to Vancouver for collaboration
Tamar Sella for travel to New York, Newark, and Washington, DC to conduct archival research and fieldwork, and to support vocal lessons
Natasha Roule to support dissertation writing
Michael Uy for travel to Tarrytown, New York City, and Washington, DC for dissertation fact checking
FERDINAND GORDON & ELIZABETH HUNTER MORRILL Graduate Fellowships were awarded to the following students:
Will Bennett to conduct intensive language program in Italy
John Dilworth to conduct intensive language program in Italy
Emerson Morgan to support dissertation writing
Henry Stoll to conduct archival research in London and for intensive Italian language study. Stoll also received a French Prize fellowship.
Daniel Walden to conduct archival research at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze

THE NINO AND LEA PIROTTA GRADUATE RESEARCH FUND was awarded to:
Katie Callam to conduct archival research at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and The Robert W. Wodruff library in Atlanta
Diane Oliva to conduct archival research in Lisbon
Steffi Probst to conduct archival research in Berlin

Many graduate students were additionally honored for their scholarship. Ian Copeland and Diane Oliva received a GSAS pre-dissertation award. Matthew Leslie Santana received a fellowship from David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies; Daniel Walden will be a graduate fellow at Villa I Tatti; the Kennedy, Knox, Sheldon Fellowship was awarded to Tamar Sella; and Michael Kushell received a Reischauer Instutite Fellowship.

Undergraduate Awards

The John Knowles Paine Fellowships
Kapena Baptista (Joint - Anthropology) to study Portuguese guitar and fado music in Lisbon, Portugal
Joshua Bean (Joint - East Asian Studies) for travel to China and Taiwan to study music and the culture
Amir Bitran (Music Secondary) to attend the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Italy
Henry Burnham (Music) for intensive German study at the Goethe Institut in preparation for graduate study in music theory
Joshuah Campbell (Joint - Romance Languages) to attend jazz festivals in Europe, and to collaborate
Eric Corcoran (Joint – English) for travel to Seoul to research K-Pop music
Sumire Hirotsuru (Music) for travel to Japan to study Japanese folk music and Kabuki
Dylan MarcAurele (Music) to research composition and orchestration with Alex Lacamoire and Brian Lowdermilk in New York
Scott Peters (Music) Scott to network with musicians and industry professionals in Nashville
Sam Pottash (Music) to attend Electronic Dance Music Conference and Expo to record interviews with artists and professionals

Davison Prizes
Audrey Chen (NEC, Molecular and Cellular Biology) to attend the Piatigorsky Cello Festival and the Taos Scholl of Music Chamber Music Festival
Auburn Lee (Music) to attend the Bowdoin Summer Composition Festival
Alexander Scolnick-Brower (NEC, English) to Attend the Festival dei Due Mondi at Spoleto, Italy as Assistant Conductor
Sam Wu (Joint - East Asian Studies) to attend New Music On the Point and European-American Musical Alliance. Wu also received an OFA Artist Development Fellowship and an EAMA Merit Award.

University Composition Prizes

John Green Fellowship (for demonstrated talent and promise as a composer)
Phillip Golub ’16 Sam Wu ‘17

Bohemians Prize
Adi Snir, Straight Portrait, for 2 violas
Christopher Swithinbank, union-seam, for 4 performers

George Arthur Knight Prize
Marek Poliks, tress i, for string quartet
Trevor Bača, Akasha, for string quartet

F. MacColl Prize
Michael Cheng ’19, Eka, for string quartet

Adelbert Sprague Prize
Manuela Meier, emergent properties #1, for ensemble

Francis Boott Prize
Clara Iannotta, Sotto voce stuff, for 26 voices and objects

Blodgett Composition Competition
Sivan Elias-Cohen

Yosvany Terry Appointed Director of Jazz Ensembles

The Harvard University Music Department is delighted to announce Grammy Award-nominated saxophonist, percussionist, composer and educator Terry will assume the newly conceived post on July 1, 2015. In this joint position of the Department of Music and the Office for the Arts at Harvard, Terry will oversee the OFA's Jazz Program consisting of two student big bands, and teach one foundational course in theory and improvisation (or a related topic) per semester in the Department of Music.

Since his arrival in New York in 1999, Cuban saxophonist/percussionist/composer Yosvany Terry has been making a difference in contemporary music. His innovative work, a unique confluence of Cuban roots music and jazz, “has helped redefine Latin jazz as a complex new idiom” (The New York Times).

Terry is an internationally acclaimed Cuban musician, American composer, saxophonist, percussionist, bandleader, educator and cultural bearer of the Afro-Cuban tradition. Born into a musical family in Camaguey, Cuba, he went on to classical music training in Havana at the prestigious National School of Arts (ENA) and Amadeo Roldan Conservatory. After graduating, Terry worked with major figures in every realm of Cuban music including pianists Chucho Valdes, Frank Emilio, and the celebrated nueva trova singer/guitarist Silvio Rodriguez.

From his earliest days in New York, he has been welcomed by the jazz and contemporary music community, playing with Branford Marsalis, Rufus Reid, Dave Douglas, Steve Coleman, Roy Hargrove, Henry Threadgill, Avishai Cohen, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Taj Mahal and Eddie Palmieri Afro-Caribbean Sextet. Terry’s latest release, the GRAMMY Award-nominated New Throned King (5Passion, 2014), features music based on Arará cantos and rhythms and has been called the “musical culmination of his spiritual exploration” (All About Jazz). His previous album, Today’s Opinion (Criss Cross, 2012), was selected as one of the Top 10 Albums of the Year by The New York Times’ Nate Chinen.

In 2015, Terry was named a recipient of the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award. He has received recent commissions by the Yerba Buena Garden Festival (Noches de Parranda for 12-piece ensemble with the support of The MAP Fund), the French-American Jazz Exchange (Ancestral Memories with pianist Baptiste Trotignon and support from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation), and the Harlem Stage (the score for the opera Makandal). Terry received a grant from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and New York State Music Fund to create Afro-Cuban Roots: Yedégbé, a suite of Arará music. His latest project, The Bohemian Trio, is a genre-defying contemporary music ensemble based in New York recently released its first album.

Rehding Receives 2015 Dent Award

June, 2014: Alexander Rehding was named the Dent Medal recipient for 2015 by the Royal Musical Association. The RMA writes: "Professor Rehding’s two monographs, Hugo Riemann and the Birth of Modern Musical Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Music and Monumentality (Oxford University Press, 2009) along with the edited volumes Music Theory and Natural Order (with Suzannah Clark; CUP, 2001) and The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Riemannian Music Theory (with Ed Gollin; OUP, 2011) have established Professor Rehding as a leading force in the aesthetics, philosophy and theory of music.

His work has broadened almost immeasurably our understanding of how music was perceived in various eras and particularly in the nineteenth century. He has led a number of imaginative projects including the exhibition, ‘Sounding China in Enlightenment Europe’ and many distinguished articles ranging from ancient Egyptian music to enharmonicism in Rameau and Rousseau.

[Making music that matters. November 12, 2015 Harvard Gazette; Colleen Walsh, Harvard Staff Writer]

Don’t ever tell Angélique Kidjo what she can’t do. It’s a waste of time, and always has been.

Fromm Players concert, Voces de America Latina features ICE

Voces de America Latina is a window on today’s vibrant new-music scene throughout the Americas. The composers represented here hail from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, and Spain. Some made their careers in the United States or Europe. Others had significant artistic experiences abroad, then returned home. Together they form a multigenerational, multinational Latina/o network that extends beyond stylistic boundaries. With astounding flexibility and resourcefulness, they cross all sorts of borders with abandon.

Friday and Saturday’s programs include four works never heard before in Boston, and one US Premiere.

Cuban composer Leo Brouwer wrote the film score for Like Water for Chocolate; his Parabola, inspired by the artist Paul Klee, is programmed for Saturday’s concert. Fellow Cuban composer, Grammy-nominated Tania León, famously collaborates with artists outside her genre (writers Margaret Atwood and Derek Wolcott, theater director Julie Taymor). León has pieces on both Friday’s and Saturday’s program, and she co-curated “Voces” with Music Department Chair Carol J. Oja. On Thursday, April 16 at 4pm in Farkas Hall Studio (10-12 Holyoke Street, Cambridge), the OFA hosts a public interview of León by Alejandro Madrid. Tania León is the Eileen Southern Distinguished Visitor, Harvard Music Department.

Also on the “Voces” programs are works by five Mexican composers—Julio Estrada, Marisol Jimenez, Gabriela Ortiz, Hilda Paredes, and Carlos Iturralde—and Brazilian composers Marcos Balter and Felipe Lara. From Argentina, Pulitzer prize-winning Mario Davidovsky’s Divertimento for 8, Ambiguous Symmetries will have its Bostonpremiere.

Both concerts are free and open to everyone. There are no tickets required. Free parking is offered in the Broadway Garage, corner of Felton and Broadway in Cambridge. John Knowles Paine Hall is in the Music Building at Harvard University, and is located directly behind the Science Center (1 Oxford Street, Cambridge). The hall is wheelchair accessible (elevator), and is a short walk from the Harvard Square Red Line stop. Information: www.music.fas.harvard.edu 617-495-2791.

Laurie Anderson delivers Elson Lecture

Photo by Jon Chase, Harvard News Office.

For more than four decades, Laurie Anderson’s music and performance art have delighted and often mystified — so much so that even NASA took notice, offering her a gig as its first artist in residence.

The collaboration with NASA spawned “The End of the Moon,” a sprawling violin concert interwoven with narrative fragments, including the blooper about Anderson hanging up on the NASA representative who’d phoned, out of the blue, to offer her the position. MORE

Sir John Eliot Gardiner Residency at Harvard Begins in February

John Eliot Gardiner

2015: Conductor John Eliot Gardiner has been appointed the Harvard Music Department’s inaugural Christoph Wolff Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Music Department, supported by the Christoph Wolff Fund for Music. Gardiner—an English conductor, early music expert, and Bach biographer—will participate in a series of events February 2-8, 2015: a public conversation with Vijay Iyer, an open rehearsal with Harvard choral groups, and an informal rehearsal with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra and pianist Robert Levin.

Unmasking Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in American Popular Culture

Rhianna Giddens

Herbie Hancock on the Ethics of Jazz

Jason Robert Brown Named Artist in Residence

Alexander Rehding

The Harvard Department of Music and the Office for the Arts at Harvard are pleased to announce the appointment of Jason Robert Brown as Blodgett Artist-in-Residence during the spring of 2014. A celebrated American composer, Brown has been hailed as “one of Broadway’s smartest and most sophisticated songwriters since Stephen Sondheim” (Philadelphia Inquirer). He is known best as the award-winning composer and lyricist of the musical The Last 5 Years, and the Tony-award winning composer of Parade.

As an artist-in-residence at Harvard, Brown will participate in Professor Carol Oja’s seminar, “American Musical Theater,” as well as give master classes and workshops for Harvard students though the Office for the Arts Learning From Performers program. In addition, Brown’s music will be showcased in a concert/cabaret performance at the American Repertory Theater’s Oberon theater on March 27, 2014.

The New York Times refers to Brown as “a leading member of a new generation of composers who embody high hopes for the American musical.” The Last 5 Years was cited as one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best of 2001 and won Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics, and has been adapted for the screen by Brown and director Richard LaGravenese. Brown won a 1999 Tony Award for his score to Parade, a musical written with Alfred Uhry and directed by Harold Prince, which subsequently won both the Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best New Musical. Brown is the winner of the 2002 Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics and the 1996 Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Foundation Award for Musical Theatre.

Additionally, Brown was conductor and orchestrator for Yoko Ono’s musical, New York Rock, at the WPA Theatre (on Capitol Records), and he orchestrated Andrew Lippa’s john and jen, Off-Broadway at Lamb’s Theatre. He has conducted and created arrangements and orchestrations for Liza Minnelli, John Pizzarelli, Tovah Feldshuh, and Laurie Beechman, and his songs, including the cabaret standard “Stars and the Moon,” have been performed and recorded by Audra McDonald, Betty Buckley, Karen Akers, Renée Fleming, Philip Quast, Jon Hendricks, and many others. Brown’s new Broadway musical The Bridges of Madison County, with a book by Marsha Norman based on Robert James Waller’s novel, opens next January, directed by Bartlett Sher and starring Kelli O’Hara.

The Blodgett Artist-in-Residence program of the Department of Music is made possible through a gift from Mr. and Mrs. John W. Blodgett, Jr. The program provides for visiting artists to lecture and perform in a variety of musical disciplines. Recent appointments have been Koo Nimo (Ghanaian music), Sir Harrison Birtwistle (composer), Neba Solo (Malian balafon musician), and jazz pioneer Geri Allen.

The Learning From Performers program of the Office for the Arts at Harvard (OFA) brings to Harvard professional artists in all disciplines who interact with students in a range of educational forums, many open to the public. Through this and other programs and services, the OFA supports student engagement in the arts and integrates the arts into University life.

Future Bright for Recent Alums: Recent graduates in music talk about their careers in and outside of the arts

Kathleen Stetson '08, Founder, Trill

“According to the latest findings from a national survey of more than 33,000 arts alumni, arts graduates, including those who studied music performance, are likely to find jobs after graduation and use their education and training in their occupation.”—majoringinmusic.com

According to a recent Strategic National Arts Alumni Project survey of more than 33,000 arts alumni, skills developed as arts majors are “applicable for any vocation and often provides opportunities for arts majors to be major contributors in any environment.” A large percentage of undergraduates with a music degree are successfully employed both in and outside the arts.

The Music Department’s alumni experience seems to square with this, as recent graduates report working in the arts, journalism, science, education and health, and cite their music concentration as a source of skills applicable to their professional lives. We asked some of our recent alumni weigh in on how their music concentration helps shape their careers. (Read the full interviews)

Forrest O’Connor ’10, co-founder, Concert Window

I co-founded and run a national live concert webcasting network. I actually met my co-founder, Dan Gurney, in a class I counted toward my concentration, so perhaps my job wouldn’t exist had I not chosen to study music! But the truth is that music pervades my job. Dan and I started Concert Window because we love music and wanted to create a new revenue stream for the industry. As an undergraduate, I learned how different people value different types of music, and that has helped us figure out how to present webcasts to the public, why some webcasts work and others don’t, and all the implications of making a musical event in one place immediately accessible to anyone in the world with an Internet connection.

Aram Demirjian ’08, Assistant Conductor, KSO

My primary responsibilities with the Kansas City Symphony are conducting the Pops, Family, Education and Outreach concerts, and covering all Classical Series concerts. My extracurricular activities at Harvard, particularly conducting BachSoc, were the best imaginable hands-on preparation for life as a professional conductor. My training in the Harvard Music Department prepared me for becoming a conductor better than I could have ever predicted as an undergrad, especially the theory classes. It sounds cliché, but all of that work—playing and analyzing Bach chorale upon Bach chorale, endless form and harmony exercises, and ear training practice—really pays off.

Ben Eisler ’08, Health Producer, CBS News

I oversee health coverage for CBS This Morning, a national news show. Music taught me how to listen to melodies, but also to sources, colleagues, and supervisors. Its tensions and structures have made me a better story teller. Its elements of performance have improved my ability to engage people. And perhaps most importantly, it has heightened my sensitivity to the human condition. It has in many ways made me who I am today.

Kathleen Stetson '08, Founder, Trill

I'm enrolled in the MIT Sloan School of Management MBA program to explore the possibility of starting my own business, one that combines music and technology, called Trill. Trill is a web and mobile platform for live show discovery designed to get more people to more shows – to make it easier for audiences to find performances that interest them. Today’s audiences are omnivorous in their tastes. Trill will list everything that happens on a stage, from hip hop to opera to jazz, to give the performing arts just as much exposure as the popular arts.

Emily Richmond Pollock ’06, Assistant Professor, MIT

The first two years I was at Harvard, I pursued a joint concentration in music and social anthropology, but I came to be more and more interested in the history of Western music and especially in the history of opera, and I eventually decided to finish my degree in the music department alone. Sophomore tutorial in particular was a transformative experience for me, because it was in that course that I discovered all the wonderful music that I had never heard growing up as an oboist in orchestras. Harvard’s curriculum was phenomenal preparation for pursuing a PhD in music history. [Now] I teach music courses to undergraduates at MIT, including a music history survey, a symphonic repertoire course, and a course on opera. As a teacher and writer, not a day goes by that I don’t use the concepts and strategies I learned during my time in Harvard’s music department.

Lara Hirner ’05 Speech Language Pathologist

I work as a speech language pathologist in an adult acute care hospital (Massachusetts General Hospital). My career as a musician is what guided me to the field of speech pathology. I wanted to find a career that would wed my knowledge and training in voice with my interests in providing care. I also feel that my training in ethnomusicology and analysis of identity has helped foster another skill I use daily: cultural sensitivity and the value of difference, diversity, and belief systems when helping to facilitate health care decision making.

In addition to my work as a speech therapist, I continue to perform as a singer in a limited capacity. One of my favorite long-standing performance opportunities is my work as the soprano soloist for the New York City Ballet’s production of the West Side Story Suites. My performance career post-graduation was largely facilitated through connections I made at Harvard.

Berenika Zakrzewski ’05

Pianist, Arts Administration

I am a concert pianist and the music department at Harvard offered me the capacity to grow as a musician and scholar. I joined my music concentration with Government, as I wanted to see my place as an artist and musician in a context beyond myself. Music is a great connector of people and it functions as a conduit for social and economic progress in various fields.

Renovation of the music building this past year has resulted in new, state-of-the-art practice rooms, upgraded classrooms, and modernized heating and cooling of John Knowles Paine Concert Hall. In celebration, the Music Department is hosting a performance of a recently-premiered work by its founder and Portland, Maine native, John Knowles Paine. The manuscript score of Paine's String Quartet in D Major, Op. 5 (1855), was made available to the Portland String Quartet by Houghton Library, and was premiered by the quartet in 2011. Also on the program is Quartet No.1 by Harvard composer and former Music Department chair, Walter Piston.

"We are convinced that this work should become recognized as an important part of America's music history,"writes Julia Adams, violist of the Portland String Quartet. "For complex part writing, beautiful melodic content and a mastery of classical forms, this work demonstrates why a young lad of 16 from Portland, Maine, was to become through his dedicated career at Harvard 'the dean of American music."'

Paine Hall was the subject of a recent booklet by the late Professor Reinhold Brinkmann, and was named for Harvard's first music professor, who chaired the new department from1871 when music was established as an academic study through his death in 1906. The concert hall has a long and storied history, but has never seen the performance of a work by its namesake until now.

The public is invited to the concert and to a reception immediately afterwards in the Taft Lounge.

About the Portland String Quartet

Coming together from musical training at Curtis, Eastman, Indiana, Juilliard and Oberlin, the Portland String Quartet has played an important role in the artistic renaissance of the City of Portland and the State of Maine, championing Maine and American composers both nationally and internationally. Their recordings span the repertoire from Bach to living composers. Of particular note are the complete string quartets and piano quintets of George Whitefield Chadwick, Ernest Bloch and Walter Piston for which they have received “Best Recording of the Year” commendations from The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Concert tours throughout Europe, Latin America and Japan, in addition to music river cruises to Europe’s major cultural destinations are international highlights of their career. Annual String Quartet Workshops for professionally aspiring young students and adult amateur players attract students from all over Maine and New England and as far away as Russia, Japan, Israel, and many countries in Latin America. Since l976 the Portland String Quartet has worked extensively with two generations of musicians from Venezuela’s internationally renowned Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra.

About John Knowles Paine

Besides receiving a solid training in music theory and musicianship in his native Portland, Maine, Paine had become a formidable organ virtuoso. His performances of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach were held in especially high regard; more and more, the professional critics recognized Paine’s extraordinary musicianship. In 1861, immediately after his return from the obligatory studies in Europe (in the mid-nineteenth century still primarily in Germany) Paine accepted the prestigious position as the organist at Boston’s Old West Church; the job included teaching organ, piano, and music theory (composition). Harvard reacted promptly and offered Paine the position of “teacher of sacred music.” Once he was associated with Harvard as an instructor in 1862, Paine’s goal was to establish the study of music as a full-fledged University department. This did not happen without opposition among the faculty, the loudest from Professor Francis Parkman, a well-known historian who, in meetings of the Corporation, used to proclaim: “musica delenda est” (music must be destroyed).

Against all adverse circumstances, Paine succeeded, establishing a music curriculum, courses for credit, and advocating for the position of music within the University, as well as a constant need for space. John Knowles Paine was not able to experience the fulfilment of his professional dreams: the Music Building, which would have been the capstone of his work at and for Harvard, was finally realized in 1914, eight years after his death in 1906. Paine had discussed the project with the inner circle of the Department so intensely and in such detail that it is safe to say the 1914 building in fact still realized his ideas.

Transmission/Transformation: Sounding China in Enlightenment Europe

Sounding China logo

All eyes are turned towards China, as it continuously grows in global importance. This phenomenon may have a contemporary ring to it, but the eighteenth century was equally enthralled by the Middle Kingdom. Everything about the distant empire was fascinating to the western world, including its music. Fanny Peabody Professor of Music Alexander Rehding, in conjunction with graduate students Peter McMurray and Meredith Schweig and the students in Music 220, “History of Music Theory,” have developed a library exhibit that retraces the voyage of this music from Qing-dynasty China to the urban salons, drawing rooms, and coffee houses of Enlightenment Europe.

The exhibit, Transmission/Transformation: Sounding China in Enlightenment Europe, opens in the Loeb Music Library February 1, 2012.

Much of the knowledge the eighteenth century had about Chinese culture was owed to Jesuit missionaries in the Far East, who wrote extensively about their encounter with this foreign world, and whose reports were eagerly studied by European Enlightenment philosophers and music scholars mesmerized by anything Chinese. To some, China represented an opportunity for critical reflection on Western society, and to others China represented a radically different societal order. Scholars incorporated missionary accounts—often in highly imaginative variants—into their own published works on musical evolution and knowledge, while Enlightenment composers began transcribing melodies and harmonizing them to make them “more palatable” to the European ear. The eighteenth-century public’s curiosity about China ensured that many bourgeois homes would own such musical arrangements. The operatic stage, too, eagerly took up the idea of China as a colorful backdrop for exotic extravaganzas.

“The whole idea for the course grew out of a score [Acting Loeb Librarian] Sarah Adams showed me a couple of years ago,” says Rehding. “It was a English arrangement from 1796 of a song transcribed in China. It became clear to me that this apparently insignificant piece of music encapsulated the whole story of the transmission of Chinese music into Europe: from the— faulty— transcription of a popular Chinese tune to its setting in a manner that could be easily sung in a bourgeois parlor. In many ways, these simple arrangements were the precursor of the radio and the CD player: they provided simple musical entertainment at home, but in this case with an additional educational and exotic flavor.”

The class gathered material for the exhibition throughout the fall semester. In addition to the usual seminar settings, they visited many of the ongoing exhibitions at Harvard and spoke to numerous curators and experts.

“This course covers such a vast terrain,” says Rehding, “that it is quite impossible to be expert in all areas. We have made great use of Harvard’s extraordinary resources and its amazing library and museum staff.”

Schweig adds, “We’ve reached out to musicians, scholars and instrument makers from Taipei and Shanghai as well, which has helped make this a very transnational experience.”

To enhance the visual experience of the exhibit the class worked on digital augmentation—audio files of music, documentation, film files—for some of the pieces.

“The trouble with musical exhibitions,” says Schweig, “is that you really want to hear the music. In an exhibition setting this is not an easy task to accomplish. So we had to think about alternatives.”

“The Loeb library was eager to help,” adds McMurray. “They bought a number of ipads that visitors will be able to use to access the digital augmentation.”

McMurray and Schweig, two advanced graduate students in ethnomusicology, have been instrumental in developing this innovative course as part of the expanded PITF (Presidential Information Technology Fellowship) program, that now also includes Museum (MITF) and Library (LITF) variants—precisely the kinds of expertise needed for this project. In the course of planning the class and the exhibition that is its final product, the digital component of the exhibition took on an increasingly weighty part. Schweig has a background in Asian Studies and museology, and McMurray is an old hand in digital media.

“These two are the perfect collaborators,” enthuses Rehding. “I would not have been able to launch this ambitious project without them.”

Everybody involved agrees that the project has been a huge learning experience. “One thought that is always at the back of my mind,” says Rehding, “is how relevant some of these ideas are. Sure, the details have changed—sometimes drastically so—but China still occupies the central place in western imagination that it’s held since the Enlightenment.”

Exhibit open through April 30, 2012. Supported by the Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities, the Department of Music, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Harvard University.

Interview: Zach Sheets '13

Zach Sheets

January 2013: Zachary Sheets is a joint concentrator with Romance Languages and Literatures. He is currently working on his senior thesis as well as a solo cello piece for Alan Toda-Ambaras, and has plans in the works with a contemporary music ensemble in Vermont and a wind quintet in Montreal. Sheets is a former president of the Harvard Composers Association, and a member of the HRO and Dunster House Opera Orchestra. He was awarded an Artist Development Fellowship from the Office for the Arts for summer 2012 study at the highSCORE Contemporary Music Festival, where he had a performance of his“What is on the End of a Feather” by the Quartetto Indaco, and at the Mozarteum Summer Academy with the French composer Pascal Dusapin.

Talk a bit about your thesis and how you combined your concentrations? My thesis is a one-act opera, based on French and Francophone retellings of the myth of Medea. In a way, it is as much an “opera” as it is a song cycle with spoken dialogue interpolated; the interesting thing is the language divide. I took up a more classical idea of aria and recitative and applied it to the dialogue and songs, so I’ve chosen to have the dialogues spoken in English translation (my own), while the songs stay in their original French. The three versions I’m working with are by Pierre Corneille, a 17th century French playwright; Jean Anouilh, who wrote during and shortly after WWII; and Max Rouquette, a writer of French-Occitan descent who died in 2005. Paradoxically, it is the anachronism of combining the three texts that has elucidated precisely what is so timeless about Medea’s character.

Did you intend to concentrate in both areas when you came to Harvard or have you developed these interests over your time here? I knew that I was going to study music in one way or another, as music is what I want to do with my life. French literature had always been an interest of mine, and I was fortunate enough to take two years of courses in literature at Dartmouth College while I was in high school (my hometown in Vermont bordered Hanover, NH). When it came time to declare a major, I had already taken so many courses in both that a joint concentration made the most sense. I also had the idea of a song-cycle or small-scale opera in mind as a possible senior thesis.

Has the undergraduate composition scene changed during your time here? It has changed immeasurably. I joined the Harvard Composers Association as a freshman. Every meeting was different; sometimes twenty people showed up—one with a piano arrangement of ‘Happy Birthday,’ another with a dodecophonic composition for large orchestra—sometimes it was just a handful of people. We began to organize collaborations between student composers and student performers once a semester, and developed weekly masterclass-style meetings with our advisor, Edgar Barroso, who really helped us blossom into what we are today. We were very fortunate to receive funding from the Music Department and the OFA, and in March of 2012 put on a concert with the Juventas New Music Ensemble in Paine Hall. It was a huge success, I think, and the new board, led by Lydia Brindamour and Aviva Hakanoglu, has arranged to bring in the Callithumpian Consort for a concert of our work this February, which is tremendously exciting!

When do you compose? Do you have a regimen, or are you deadline-driven? I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently. Amnon Wolman, with whom I had the great privilege to work in the fall, talks a lot about the idea of composition as a skill that should be practiced daily, as an instrument. This is not necessarily how I work, but, in a way I’m never not working on something. Roger Reynolds, whom I also worked with, said that when we have a project we’re always thinking about it to some degree. A composer is never really divorced from thinking about sound or creation in one way or another. As nice as this sounds, real life gets in the way sometimes! Projects often require a big push toward their deadlines, especially since it’s important to be so exact and detailed in one’s notation. This takes time, so the piece better be intellectually and creatively squared away well in advance of when it needs to be sent to a player.

Do you write for specific musicians you know? Very often, yes. While I’ve been at Harvard, I’ve had the opportunity to work with the Bach Society Chamber Orchestra, the Brattle Street Chamber Players, the Harvard University Flute Ensemble, and a number of “pick-up” groups who have assembled to play my pieces at Harvard Composers Association Concerts. Many of these have been done with the specific players in mind.

You won the Bach Soc’s composition competition in 2010, then again in 2012—do you see a difference in your work over those two years? My music has evolved exponentially. That’s the thing about being exposed to such a diverse and stimulating place like Harvard (not to mention having teachers like Chaya, Roger, or Amnon!): you grow and change and think so tremendously quickly. My first Bach Soc piece was an orchestration of a piece I wrote when I was 17 (a nice jazzy thing for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano), and my second piece was written for Professor Cortese’s orchestration class. It’s interesting for me to think about the trajectory from one to the other to now.

Who do you write for? Who inspires you? I see beautiful things all the time: in nature, in literature, in other art, in philosophy, in whatever. Turning any of these compelling thoughts into music is a little bit different every time, and it’s rarely important that the inspirations are identifiable in the music. Generative principles are funny things—the most fragile and ineffable we deal with as artists. In terms of who I write for, I think Bernard Rands, a former faculty member here, has a beautiful answer to that question: “I never think, in a sense, about writing for an audience, because I don’t know who they are. I only assume that like me, they’re human, they have all the frailties of humanity; they have aspirations, they have disappointments, they have nostalgic memories of when they heard one piece or another, but collectively we don’t know who they are. They are as many people as are in that hall, and they will hear the piece that many times, all differently from each other.”

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN
Zach Sheets:
Gathers no moss
What Is one the End of a Feather

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Harvard Department of Music in the News

Harvard Department of Music Announces Celebration of Eileen Southern and The Music of Black Americans

Fromm Foundation Announces 2020 Commissions

Filmmaker and ethnomusicologist Richard Wolf explores the meaning of a river between countries

Fromm Foundation Awards 2019 Commissions

Meredith Monk Appointed Fromm Visiting Lecturer on Music

Barbara Hannigan Gives 2019 Elson Lecture

Composing Women: Lecture Performance

Social Engagement Through Music

PERLE NOIRE: MEDITATIONS FOR JOSÉPHINE MAY 3, ONE NIGHT ONLY AT OBERON, FREE

Mixing it up Musically: the Harvard/Berklee Dual Degree program

Yvette Janine Jackson Appointed to Faculty

Music Department Awards More Than $250,000 in Graduate, Undergraduate Fellowships

Claire Chase, Esperanza Spalding Appointed to Harvard Music Faculty

Braxton D. Shelley Appointed to Harvard Music Faculty

Andris Nelsons to Speak at Harvard University

Music Department Announces New Curriculum

Yo-Yo Ma Delivers Elson Lecture: Culture, Connection, & Citizenship in a Time of Change

Songs Found in Dream: Talea Ensemble perform World Premiere, New Music in Free Fromm Players at Harvard Concerts March 3, 4 at Paine Hall

Nicholas McGegan conducts “Baroque Music from the Jewish Ghetto” at Paine Hall, Nov. 17 at 4pm

Harvard, Berklee Celebrate with Musical Open House

Harvard, Berklee announce new dual degree program

Vijay Iyer Profile

Angélique Kidjo delivers 2015 Elson Lecture

Sir John Eliot Gardiner Residency at Harvard Begins in February

Unmasking Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in American Popular Culture

Herbie Hancock on the Ethics of Jazz

Harvard University Department of Music: Archived Articles

March, 2016: Utopian Listening Conference: Luigi Nono

Creative Music Convergences: Improvisation, Creativity Highlight Fromm Players Concerts April 7, 8, 2016

Harvard Music Department Awards Over $331,000 in Fellowships, Prizes

Yosvany Terry Appointed Director of Jazz Ensembles

Rehding Receives 2015 Dent Award

Angélique Kidjo delivers 2015 Elson Lecture

Fromm Players concert, Voces de America Latina features ICE

Laurie Anderson delivers Elson Lecture

Photo by Jon Chase, Harvard News Office.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner Residency at Harvard Begins in February

Unmasking Jim Crow: Blackface Minstrelsy in American Popular Culture

Herbie Hancock on the Ethics of Jazz

Jason Robert Brown Named Artist in Residence

Future Bright for Recent Alums: Recent graduates in music talk about their careers in and outside of the arts

Kathleen Stetson '08, Founder, Trill

Forrest O’Connor ’10, co-founder, Concert Window

Aram Demirjian ’08, Assistant Conductor, KSO

Ben Eisler ’08, Health Producer, CBS News

Kathleen Stetson '08, Founder, Trill

Emily Richmond Pollock ’06, Assistant Professor, MIT

Lara Hirner ’05 Speech Language Pathologist

Berenika Zakrzewski ’05

Celebrating Paine!

About the Portland String Quartet

About John Knowles Paine

Transmission/Transformation: Sounding China in Enlightenment Europe

Interview: Zach Sheets '13

Harvard Department of Music Newsletters

Harvard University Department of Music

3 Oxford Street Cambridge, MA 02138 p: 617.495.2791 f: 617.496.8081 e: musicdpt@fas.harvard.edu

©2015 President and Fellows of Harvard College. Website by Christine Southworth and Steve Robertson. Harvard University Digital Accessibility Policy

Quick Links

Practice Room Hours

3 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
p: 617.495.2791
f: 617.496.8081
e: musicdpt@fas.harvard.edu

©2015 President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Website by Christine Southworth and Steve Robertson.
Harvard University Digital Accessibility Policy