Daniel Godsil (PhD, composition, ‘21) is now in a tenure-track position teaching in the Department of Music at Columbia College (Sonora, CA), which is located in California’s Sierra Mountains. As an instructor, he teaches music theory and musicianship as well as piano, guitar, chorus, orchestra, and other ensembles. Born and raised in central Illinois, Godsil holds an MFA in music composition from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where he studied with John Fitz Rogers, John Mallia, and Jonathan Bailey Holland. He also holds a BM in music composition from Webster University.

Godsil was the winner of the 2019 League of Composers/ISCM Steven R. Gerber prize (for Cosmographia) and the 2017 Earplay Donald Aird Composition Competition (for his quartet Aeropittura). His music has been played by Spektral Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Talujon Percussion, Daedalus Quartet, Lydian String Quartet, Empyrean Ensemble, Metropolitan Orchestra of Saint Louis, UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, University Symphony Orchestra at California State University Fullerton, Knox-Galesburg Symphony, Secret String Quartet, and the Nova Singers, among many others. Recent film scores include the PBS documentary Boxcar People, Man Ray’s 1926 silent film Emak-Bakia and the feature film H.G. Wells’s The First Men in the Moon.

Godsil was a finalist in the 2018 Lake George Music Festival chamber composition competition, as well as the 2014 and 2019 Red Note New Music Festival Composition Competitions. His choral works are published by Alliance Music Publishing and NoteNova Publishing, and his chamber and orchestral music is published by BabelScores in Paris.

Stephen S. Hudson (B.A. ‘12) is starting a tenure-track position in musicology at Occidental College in Southern California. He received his PhD in music theory and cognition from Northwestern University. 

Hudson is an emerging expert in metal music, focusing on the embodied experience of musical structure by fans and musicians. He is currently writing a book titled Black Amps Tear the Sky: The Impact of Heaviness in Metal Music, which theorizes heaviness as a network of metaphors and physical practices that fans use to navigate musical structure and create their own experiences of physical impact. His research on form and meter in metal music appears in recent or forthcoming publications in Music Theory Online, Music Theory Spectrum, and Metal Music Studies, and he has forthcoming or published reviews in Journal of Music Theory, Intégral, and Metal Music Studies.

Hudson has presented his research nationally and internationally at meetings of the Society for Music Theory, American Musicological Society, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, the Rhythm Perception and Production Workshop, the Project Network for the Study of Progressive Rock, and the International Society of Metal Music Studies, as well as several regional conferences. He is an advocate for increasing the inclusivity and accessibility of music theory pedagogy by teaching popular music of all styles, including an article in progress “Inclusive Keyboard Pedagogy” as well as his recent/upcoming conference paper “Decentering White Music Theory with Jazz Theory and Drake: Extension-Related Chords in R&B.” He is also an avid Baroque cellist, and his dissertation developed culturally situated, genre-specific theories of embodied rhythm and meter cognition for various metal, Baroque, and Classical music styles.