Music Department names fellows, award winners

The Department of Music has announced its 2005-06 fellowship and award winners. Graduate and undergraduate students will receive a total of $225,000 for award and fellowship programs.

The Oscar S. Schafer Award 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 lifelong love of music.” This year’s recipients are William Bares, Natalie Kirschstein, Jonathan Kregor, and Matthias Roeder. In addition to the Schafer Award, Bares, Kirschstein, and Kregor each received a Richard F. French Prize Fellowship. With the award, Bares will conduct fieldwork at several European jazz festivals in northern Europe; Kirschstein plans to attend and present a paper at two ethnomusicology conferences in England; and Kregor will read papers at conferences in England and conduct research on Liszt in the British Library. Roeder received a Nino and Lea Pirotta Graduate Research Fund Award to support dissertation research in Leipzig, Germany.

Other French Award winners include Emily Abrams, who will conduct research on the U.S. Information Agency and Aaron Copland in archives housed in Arkansas, Maryland, and in the Copland Collection at the Library of Congress; Ryan Banagale, to pursue archival research in the United States on “yellowface” minstrelsy and Spanish language; Brigid Cohen, who will conduct dissertation research at the Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland; Ellen Exner, who will undertake language study in Berlin and Dresden and conduct research on the courts of Frederick the Great and the Saxon Electors; Marc Gidal, for preliminary dissertation fieldwork on music used in Umbanda rituals in southern Brazil; Mary Greitzer, to pursue dissertation work; Robert Hasegawa, to pursue dissertation work; Drew Massey, to study the John Kirkpatrick papers housed at Yale University; Alexandra Reale, for German language study at the Goethe-Institut in Berlin, and to examine Schreker materials in Berlin and at Yale; and Anna Zayaruzny, for German language study at the Goethe-Institut in Berlin, and to view manuscripts housed in Milan, Italy; Cambridge, England; London; and Paris.

Recipients of John Knowles Paine Fellowships include Aaron Berkowitz, who will attend a fortepiano workshop in Belgium and conduct dissertation research in the United States; Corinna Campbell, to conduct preliminary dissertation fieldwork in Suriname and French Guyana; Jean Francois Charles, to participate in the Royaumont composition workshop in France and work with musicians in Strasbourg, France; Peter Gilbert, to attend the composition workshop in Darmstadt, Germany; Chris Honett, to finish dissertation work; Jose Luis Hurtado, to participate in the Royaumont composition workshop in France, and to attend the premiere of his piece “Tenue” in Oaxaca, Mexico; Katherine Lee, for Japanese language study at Naganuma Language Institute in Tokyo; Sarah Morelli, to conduct fieldwork on Kathak dance in San Francisco; Karola Obermueller, to travel to Switzerland to rehearse with musicians playing one of her works, and to participate in the Acanthes Festival (France) and the composition workshop in Darmstadt; Andrew Robbie, to complete and rehearse a new work for the Sydney, Australia, new music ensemble Halcyon; Dominique Schafer, to participate in the composition workshop in Darmstadt; Ben Steege, for Czech language study in Prague and to conduct dissertation research in Brno, Czech Republic; Bert Van Herck, to attend the premiere of his work in Reims, France, and to attend the Acanthes and Darmstadt composition workshops; and Nicholas Vines, to participate in the premiere of his opera “The Hive” in North Melbourne, Australia.

Other award winners include Richard Giarusso, who received a Harry and Marjorie Ann Slim Memorial Fund Award for a full-year of dissertation research and writing; Evan MacCarthy, who received a Morrill Graduate Fellowship to support dissertation research in archives and libraries in Florence and Modena in Italy, and Berlin; Hillary Zipper, who received a Ferdinand Gordon & Elizabeth Hunter Morrill Graduate Fellowship to study the music, archives, and language of Nono, Scelsi, and Sciarrino in Italy; and Jesse Rodi, who received a Pirotta Graduate Research Fund award to examine manuscript sources in London and Paris.

University Composition Prizes were awarded to Derrick Wang ’07, who received the John Green Fellowship. Established by friends and family of the late John Green ’28 in support of excellence in musical composition, the fellowship is awarded annually to an undergraduate or graduate student composer. Additionally, the George Arthur Knight Prize was awarded to graduate student Lei Liang for his work “Serashi Fragments,” and Elizabeth Lim ’08 received the Hugh F. MacColl Prize for her composition “The Dream.” Other graduate student award recipients include Hillary Zipper, who received the Adelbert Sprague Prize for her composition “the blueberries of Mars”; Bert Van Herck, who received the Francis Boott Prize for his composition “Six Chansons sur des texts de Maurice Maetterlinck”; and Karola Obermueller, who received a Bohemians Prize for her work “but one adagio smile still lingers.”

Undergraduate John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowship recipients include Stephanie Lai ’06, who will visit Mozart-related sites and hear concerts of the composer’s work in Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague, and conduct research on the Elgar Cello Concerto; Annelisa Pederson ’06, who will travel to Zambia to conduct ethnographic research and implement a summer music program for children, teens, and adults in the Meheba Refugee Settlement; David Richmond ’06, for oboe study with George Sakakeeny and to work with orchestral bassoonists in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland, Ore.; and Emily Zazulia ’06, to conduct research at the Paris Bibliotheque Nationale.

Recipients of Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Fellowships include music students Ellen Exner (GSAS Summer Language and Pre-Dissertation Fellowship); Mathew Clayton and Karola Obermueller (GSAS Term Time Fellowship); and Christopher Honett, Natalie Kirschstein, Jonathan Kregor, and Nicholas Vines (GSAS Finishing Fellowship).

In addition to Department of Music awards, music graduate student William Bares received a fellowship from the Center for European Studies, and graduate student Jesse Rodin received an Alvin H. Johnson American Music Society 50 Dissertation Fellowship.

Derek Bok Distinguished Teaching Awards for this past fall were given to music graduate students William Bares, Aaron Berkowitz, Davide Ceriani, Natalie Kirschstein, Zoe Lang, Lei Liang, Robert Merfeld, and Tolga Yayalar.

The 2006 Levenson Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize were awarded to Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music and professor of African and African American studies.