Alumni
The Royal Society of London performed Fanny Hensel's Easter Sonata, attributed to Hensel by Angela Mace Christian, on International Women's Day 2017.
Clara Yang (T '11) was granted a Fulbright Graduate Degree Grant to spend time in London, England pursuing a Masters in Music Leadership (MMus) at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Darren Mueller has been awarded the Wiley Housewright Dissertation Award by the Society for American Music for his Duke dissertation "At the Vanguard of Vinyl: A Cultural History of the Long-Playing Record in Jazz.”
Ivy Zhou auditioned in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions of the North Carolina District on January 21, 2017 and received an Encouragement Award.
Jean-Paul Montagnier's new book, The Polyphonic Mass in France, 1600-1780, will be released in May 2017 by Cambridge University Press.
Penka Kouneva (Ph.D. 1997) composed music for NASA's "Heroes and Legends" exhibit. The $30M multimedia exhibit focuses on American astronauts at the Kennedy Space Center.
Sara Womble is making her debut this spring with Boston Lyric Opera. She was be performing the role of Barbarina (and covering Susanna) in BLO's production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.
Candace Bailey (Ph.D. 1992) has received the Hampsong Fellowship in American Song for her project "Music in Charleston's Historic Homes." The Hampson Fellowship is awarded by the Society for American Music (SAM).
Carl Schimmel has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in the School of Music, Illinois State University.
Charles Youmans, Associate Professor of Music at Penn State, has recently published Mahler and Strauss: In Dialogue (Indiana University Press, 2016). The book "reconstructs the 24-year relationship between Mahler and Strauss" using a wealth of documentary material.
Dan Ruccia's chamber improvisation ensemble Cyanotype released its debut album "Two Silent Schnauzers" on Out and Gone Music on August 12.
David Kirkland Garner has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of South Carolina School of Music.
In March, Mallarme Chamber Players premiered his new work for violin and piano, "The Sky Was Good for Flying," performed by Nicholas DiEugenio and Mimi Solomon. The work was commissioned by DiEugenio and Solomon, who will perform it in additional concerts in New York and North Carolina.
Garner's article, "That Driving Sound: Use of Tempo in Traditional Cape Breton Fiddle Performanc" was also recently published in the MUSICultures Journal of the Canadian Society for Traditional Music (Vol. 42, no. 2, 2015).
Georgiary Bledsoe is Founder and Director of BUMP: The Triangle, a non-profit music education organization with a focus on music of the African Diaspora. BUMP was recently featured on My Carolina Talk.
Katharina Uhde has been awarded honorary membership in the Society of Musicology Ireland for "particularly notable contributions to furthering musicology in Ireland." She recently presented at two Irish musicology conferences: one this past September and one in October 2015. Uhde is Assistant Professor in Violin and Musicology at Valparaiso University, IN.
Soprano Marlissa Hudson returned to Duke on February 22, 2016 to present a workshop for undergraduates entitled “Where Your Passion Meets Your Purpose” - exploring unconventional paths to a career in music. She talked about harnessing social media and crowd sourcing as a viable alternative to more traditional career building methods in the arts.
Recently described by Opera News as "poetically compelling," "delectably stylish" and "technically refined," soprano Talya Lieberman is equally at home with operatic, art song, and musical theater repertoire. Starting in September 2016 she will be seen frequently on stage at Komische Oper Berlin, where she will be assuming the soprano position in the Opernstudio.
Thom has been accepted a position at Sonoma State University as Assistant Professor of Music.
An excellent article from Duke Magazine catches up with alumni composer George Lam (Ph.D. '11). George is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at York College, The City University of New York, as well as a co-artistic director of Rhymes With Opera.
Joy's new book, Arnold Schoenberg's 'A Survivor from Warsaw' in Postwar Europe, was released this month from the University of California Press. Calico is Assoc. Prof. of Musicology at the Blair School of Music, Vanderbilt University.
Kelley has been appointed Assistant Professor of Music at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.
Dr Ken Shifrin (Class of 1974) was President of the Wind Symphony while a student at Duke. A native of Washington, DC, he earned a Ph.D. in Musicology from Oxford University and is Principal Trombone (former) of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (England). From 2000-2004, he was a Research Scholar at the Czech Academy of Science.
Michael's paper, "Dissonant Harmony and 'Seed-Tones': Organic Coherence in the Piano Music of Dane Rudhyar," will be published in Music Theory Online in June.
Paul Leary (Ph.D. 2011) and pianist Thomas Rosenkranz were featured on WUNC 91.5 FM's "The State of Things" on March 6, discussing the premiere of Leary's piece, "Perfume," a tribute to the music of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana.
Since graduating from Duke, McStoots has performed around the world with such groups as Boston Lyric Opera, Pacific MusicWorks, Boston Camerata, Handel Choir of Baltimore, New Haven Symphony, Tragicomedia, and the Tanglewood Music Center.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters 2016 Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award in music composition was awarded to Chia-Yu Hsu.
In 2008 Hirsch received a publication contract through the University of Michigan Press for her book, Hitler's Jewish Orchestra: Musical Politics in the Berlin Jewish Culture League.
"Ever since I was a boy, classical music has made me weep uncontrollably. I hope The Composer Is Dead does the same for a new generation. It’s certainly either alarmingly original or originally alarming." - Lemony Snicket
Atlas and Boerner operate SoundPure, a high-end guitar and music gear boutique and recording studio in Durham, NC.