Music Department announces fellowships, award winners

Harvard’s Department of Music has announced its 2004-05 fellowship and award recipients. Close to $190,000 will go toward fellowship and award programs for the department’s graduate and undergraduate students.

Recipients of the Oscar S. Schafer Award – 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 lifelong love of music” – are Aaron Allen, Richard Giarusso, David Kaminsky, and Jesse Rodin. Giarusso and Rodin also received Nino and Lea Pirrotta Awards. Giarusso will conduct research at the Bruckner-Institut in Vienna on Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, while Rodin will conduct dissertation research in London and attend a conference on medieval and Renaissance music in Tours, France.

Other award winners are as follows:

William Bares received a Richard F. French Prize Fellowship for beginning dissertation fieldwork at jazz festivals in Montreux, Nice, the North Sea, and other smaller gatherings; Aaron Berkowitz received a John Knowles Paine Fellowship to study Indian music in Boston, piano in New York, and to participate in a fortepiano workshop at Cornell University; David Black received a Harry and Marjorie Ann Slim Memorial Fund award for research at St. Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; Matthew Clayton received a Richard F. French Prize Fellowship to conduct research in Philadelphia and New York on African-American drummers, and to take drum lessons; Brigid Cohen received a Harry and Marjorie Ann Slim Memorial Fund award to conduct interviews in New York with people who studied with Stefan Wolpe as part of her dissertation research; Ashley Fure received a John Knowles Paine Fellowship to participate in the Acanthes Festival and to attend the Lucerne Festival, conducted by Pierre Boulez; Robert Hasegawa received a Ferdinand Gordon and Elizabeth Hunter Morrill Graduate Fellowship to research Italian composer Giancinto Scelsi at the Fondazione Isabella Scelsi in Rome; Christopher Honett received a John Knowles Paine Fellowship to continue dissertation work on an original composition; José-Luis Hurtado received a John Knowles Paine Fellowship to attend the June in Buffalo Festival and to participate in master classes by Bryan Ferneyhough, Philippe Manoury, and Alvin Lucier; and David Kaminsky received a Richard F. French Prize Fellowship to support field research in Sweden and to continue research on two articles based on annual summer folk music events.

Natalie Kirschstein received a Richard F. French Prize Fellowship for research in the Library of Congress on murga, a Uruguayan musical tradition that is the focus of her dissertation; Jonathan Kregor received a Richard F. French Prize Fellowship for dissertation research in the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv in Weimar, Germany, and in the Sächsisches Staatarchiv in Leipzig; Lei Liang received a John Knowles Paine Fellowship to conduct research at the archives of China Recording Company and the Institute of Musical Research in Beijing, and to record a recent composition with Japanese flutist Masahiro Arita in Tokyo; John Z. McKay received a Ferdinand Gordon and Elizabeth Hunter Morrill Graduate Fellowship to study with the Vatican Latinist in Rome; Sarah Morelli received a Richard F. French Prize Fellowship to conduct research in the archive housed in the Chitresh Das Dance Company/Chandam School of Kathak Dance company offices in San Francisco; Karola Obermueller received a John Knowles Paine Fellowship to participate in a computer music course at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique, attend the Acanthes Festival, compose a piece for performance by “Orchestre national de Lorraine,” and attend the premiere of her opera “Dunkelrot” in Rheinsberg, Germany; Andrew Robbie received a Richard F. French Prize Fellowship to attend the June in Buffalo Festival and to attend the U.S. premiere of Ferneyhough’s recent opera “Shadowtime” at Lincoln Center; Adam Roberts received a John Knowles Paine Fellowship to attend the June in Buffalo Festival to take master classes and see the performance of his solo piano pieces “Populi Minuti”; Dominique Schaefer received a John Knowles Paine Fellowship to attend the Acanthes Festival and compose a piece for performance by “Orchestre national de Lorrain”; Benjamin Steege received a Richard F. French Prize Fellowship for dissertation research at the special collections in performing arts archives of the University of Maryland; David Sullivan received a Richard F. French Prize Fellowship to study German at the Goethe Institute in Berlin; Nicholas Vines received a John Knowles Paine Fellowship to support dissertation research on opera in the archives of Australian libraries and to attend workshops of his opera “The Hive” in Melbourne; Bettina Varwig received a Richard F. French Prize Fellowship to complete dissertation research on Heinrich Schütz at libraries in Berlin, Kassel, and Wolfenbüttel; and Du Yun received a Richard F. French Prize Fellowship to give a lecture and record part of her dissertation composition in Shanghai, and to travel to San Francisco to present a conference talk at the Association for the Asian Performance.

University Composition Prizes were given to Peter Gilbert, who received the John Green Fellowship. This award, established by friends and family of the late John Green ’28 in support of excellence in musical composition, is made annually to undergraduate or graduate composers.

The George Arthur Knight Prize was awarded to graduate student José-Luis Hurtado for his work “De relieve doble”; concentrator Derek Wang received the Hugh F. MacColl Prize for his composition “Playground”; graduate student Tolga Yayalar received the Adelbert Sprague Prize for his composition “sînthome”; graduate student Nicholas Vines received the Francis Boott Prize for his composition “Ave Generosa”; Karola Obermueller, a graduate student in composition, received a Bohemians Prize for “Shraeng.”

Undergraduates who received John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowships include Francesca Anderegg ’05, who will visit and study period orchestras in England; Joseph Fishman ’05, to pursue an M.Phil. in historical musicology at the University of Cambridge, studying Dmitri Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony as a musical response to the Holocaust; Anicia Timberlake ’05, to research the reception and treatment of modern international music in the German Democratic Republic; and Berenika Zakrzewski ’05, who will study at Oxford University, collaborate with Oxford composers, and conduct research at arts councils in Germany and France.

Recipients of Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Fellowships are John McKay and Karla Obermueller (GSAS Summer Pre-Dissertation Research Fellowship); David Black, Brigid Cohen, Christina Linklater, and Du Yun (GSAS Finishing Fellowship); and Marc Gidal and Cheryl Kaskowitz (Summer School Tuition Waiver).

In addition to Department of Music awards, the following music graduate students received other fellowships as noted: Matthias Roeder received a fellowship from the Center for European Studies; Petra Gelbart received a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship for research in the Czech Republic and Slovakia; and Benjamin Steege received an Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Dissertation Fellowship.