Music

Alumna Aida Shirazi (Ph.D., composition, ‘21) is participating in “Rage, Rhythm, Renaissance: Performances of/in the Ongoing Iranian Revolution,” a panel discussion, at NYU Tisch School of the Arts on Nov. 21. The event begins at 7 p.m. (ET) and will be available as a Zoom Webinar.  

Professor Laurie San Martin, music department chair, and alumnus Josiah Catalan (Ph.D., music, ‘21) will have compositions performed at the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State University on Nov. 9. Their works were commissioned and will be performed by Earplay, a Bay area-based chamber ensemble. 

Professor Laurie San Martin, music department chair, has received a commission from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University. San Martin’s commission will be for Ensemble Ari, a group of Korean American musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Out of more than 200 applicants, San Martin’s commission was among those given to 13 composers who will write works for the specific ensembles and musicians.    

Obituary written and picture provided by Robert D. Morris (Eastman School of Music) and published by the Society for Music Theory.

Wayne Slawson, computer music pioneer, composer, and music theorist, died at 89 on August 6, 2022.

Jeremy Borum (B.A. music ‘01) recently orchestrated a rock opera titled The Witches Seed by composer Stewart Copeland, which received its first performance in an abandoned rock quarry in Italy this summer. Copeland began his career as the drummer for the British rock band The Police, and now enjoys a career composing for concert, film, and the video game industry. Borum and Copeland have collaborated on many projects over the years.

Ph.D.

British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE) recognizes outstanding scholarship in ethnomusicology written in English. BFE has given a Special Commendation to Professor Juan Diego Díaz for his book Africanness in Action: Essentialism and Musical Imaginations of Africa in Brazil (Oxford UP, 2021) in its 2022 book prize competition.

UC Davis alumnus Cesar Favila (B.A. music, ‘06)—now assistant professor of musicology at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music—has been given the Susan McClary and Robert Walser Fellowship in Music Studies from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

Professor of Music, emeritus, Christopher Reynolds has been elected a member of the Musicology and Art History section of the Academia Europaea (Academy of Europe). The purpose of the Academy of Europe—an academy of sciences and humanities—is for the advancement and propagation of excellence in scholarship ”for the public benefit and for the advancement of the education of the public of all ages.”

The fellowship will support Díaz’s research of four communities in Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria, which were formed by the descendants of emancipated Africans who resettled from Brazil to West Africa during the 19th century.