Among our graduate degree recipients before 2004 are the
composers Eric Sawyer, Martha Horst, and Anne Guzzo; and
musicologists Donna M. DiGrazia, Carol Hess, Don Meyer, John
Palmer, Matthew Daines, Suzanne Jubenville, Mark Brill, and Paul
Christiansen.
In summer 2017, Jonathan Spatola-Knoll took up residence at the
Salzburg Festival as an awardee of the Vienna Philharmonic’s
Ansbacher Fellowship for Young Conductors. He holds a master’s
degree in conducting from UC Davis, where he has acted as the
assistant conductor for both the symphony orchestra and chorus,
and will soon complete his doctorate. He has also served on the
faculty at Whitman College as director of orchestras.
Hendel Almétus received a Ph.D. in composition from UC Davis in
2012. He was born in Haiti where he began his musical training at
the age of 12. He earned a bachelor’s in music composition from
the Houston Baptist University and an master’s in composition
from the Eastman School of Music.
Gabriel José Bolaños (b. 1984 Bogotá, Colombia)
is a Nicaraguan-American composer of solo, chamber, orchestral
and electronic music. He holds a PhD in composition from UC Davis
and a BA from Columbia University. His principal composition
teachers include Mika Pelo, Pablo Ortiz, Laurie San martin,
Fabien Lévy and Sebastian Currier, and he studied orchestration
with Tristan Murail. He likes to write music that explores
unusual timbres and structures, and is interested in
computer-assisted-composition, auditory perception and
linguistics.
Chris Castro graduated in 2018 with a doctoral degree in
composition from UC Davis. He holds a bachelor’s degree in
composition and double bass from the Juilliard School.
Composer and Chinese flutist Yu-Hsin Chang is currently a Ph.D.
candidate in music composition and theory at UC Davis.
She received her previous degrees (MFA, BFA) from Taiwan.
Her works include solo, chamber, and orchestral pieces for
both Western and Chinese music instruments, and have been
performed by soprano Tony Arnold, the Empyrean Ensemble, the
Daedalus Quartet, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Chai Found
Music Workshop, and the Little Giant Chinese Chamber Orchestra.
Luis Chavez graduated with a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology in 2018
from UC Davis. He holds the bachelor’s and master’s degrees
in music from California State University, East Bay.
He currently lectures at Sacramento State University.
An alumnus of the Juilliard School, William David Cooper has
enjoyed a diverse career as composer, conductor, and
keyboardist.His music has been championed by Augustin Hadelich,
the Juilliard Orchestra, Trio 180, the JACK Quartet, and the
Lysander Trio, and has been performed at the Radio France
Festival and the Wellesley Composers Conference. He has
recently been commissioned by Soli Deo Gloria, and is currently
writing Hagar and Ishmael, a two-act opera, that will
premiere with members of the Indianapolis Symphony
Orchestra. In addition to positions on faculty at Purdue
David Dennen is assistant professor of Applied English at Chihlee
University of Technology in Taipei, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D.
in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Davis. He
received his bachelor’s from the Evergreen State College in
Olympia, WA, where he concentrated on ethnomusicology, cultural
studies, and performance.
Anthony (Tony) Dumas is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the
State University of New York, The College at Brockport where he
teaches courses in both the Department of Theatre and Music
Studies and the Delta College Program. Previously, Dr. Dumas has
taught at UC Davis, Woodland Community College, St. Lawrence
University, and SUNY Potsdam.
MusicologyPh.D. Musicology, University of California, DavisChristina Acosta
Carol A. Hess has published books and articles on the music of
Spain and the Americas. Her work has been funded by the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the Spanish Ministry of Culture,
and the New York Public Library, among other entities. She
received the Society for American Music’s Irving Lowens Article
Award, and her book Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain,
1898–1936 (University of Chicago Press, 2001) won the
ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award and the American Musicological Society’s
Robert M. Stevenson Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in Iberian
Music, in addition to other prizes.
Ben Irwin holds master’s degrees in composition and clarinet
performance from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a
bachelor’s degree in music from Carleton College in Northfield,
Minnesota.
Sarah Lappas received her Ph.D. in 2013 in Ethnomusicology with
research interests in African American and African popular music,
music and violence, multispatial criminalization, indexicality,
and musico-racial signification.
Sarah Messbauer has been a graduate student at UC Davis since the
fall of 2011. She graduated from Muhlenberg College in the
spring of 2011, receiving a Bachelor’s degree with honors in
anthropology and music. While at Muhlenberg, she received
the Louise M. Cafouros Award for distinguished scholarship in the
field of anthropology, as well as the Class of 1969 Award for
Promising Work in the Field of Music.
David Möschler is an award-winning San Francisco Bay Area-based
musical director and conductor. He has music-directed over one
hundred musical theater, opera, and theater productions, and
conducted over eightypieces for orchestra, including over two
dozen first performances.
Garrett Rigsby is a conductor based in Kansas City, Missouri. He
is currently the Assistant Conductor of the Conservatory
Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra at the University of
Missouri–Kansas City’s Conservatory of Music and Dance. He has
conducted fully staged productions with the UMKC Opera Theatre.
He recently was the Barbara K. Jackson Fellow in Conducting at
the University of California, Davis where he served as the
Assistant Conductor of the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra and UC
Davis University Chorus and Alumni Chorus.
