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.
Born and raised in central Illinois, Daniel
Godsil (b. 1982) is a composer of chamber, orchestral,
vocal, electronic, and film music, currently pursuing his
PhD in composition and theory at the University of
California, Davis. He 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.
Andressa Gonçalves Vidigal is a Ph.D. student in musicology at
the University of California, Davis. She is Brazilian and grew up
in the city of Maringá, Paraná. She holds a bachelor’s degree in
music from Universidade Estadual de Maringá and a
master’sfrom University of California, Davis. Her
current studies are funded by the Brazilian agency CAPES
(Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel);
from whom she received the esteemed Doutorado Pleno (Full
Doctoral) Scholarship.
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.
Gillian Irwin has been a student of ethnomusicology at UC Davis
since Fall 2014. Before coming to Davis, she studied music and
English at Muhlenberg College (Allentown, PA) and served as a
Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. At
Davis, Gillian specializes in Indonesian music with interests in
educational and cultural policy, national identity formation, and
the relationship of the region to the nation of Indonesia.
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 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.
Jonathan Minnick graduated in 2022 as a musicology PhD
student at UC Davis. Jonathan also graduated with a
bachelor of music in trombone performance from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016. At UNC, he
performed in many ensembles across the campus while also focusing
on musicological studies, leading to an honors thesis exploring
Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. This thesis explores the
Alpine Symphony in terms of its historical origins, cultural
influences, symphonic characteristics, and extensive tone
painting.
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 eighty pieces for orchestra, including over two
dozen first performances.
D.M.A., University of Missouri–Kansas City ConservatoryM.A., University of California, Davis (2016)B.M., University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music
Dr. Garrett Rigsby has been fortunate to have held an eclectic
career as an educator and conductor, leading bands, orchestras,
operas, choirs, and cutting-edge new music ensembles, among
others. He currently serves as the Director of the UC Davis
Marching Band at the University of California, Davis. He also
directs the University Campus Band in the Music Department during
Winter and Spring Quarters. Prior to his appointment at UC Davis,
Dr. Rigsby served as an Assistant Conductor at the UMKC
Conservatory in Kansas City, MO.
David A. Roby was born and raised in Orlando, Florida. He started
studying piano at age five and has since become a
professional recording multi-instrumentalist. He is self-taught
on mandolin, tenor banjo, fiddle, trumpet, guitar, bass,
accordion, tin whistle, and bodhrán. David Roby is a member of
the recording project Dance the Bridge with long-time
friend Damon Gentry. Dance the Bridge has recorded
two EPs and one full-length
LP, which is also available at iTunes.
Davin Rosenberg grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and is a
PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at University of California,
Davis. His research focuses on flamenco in the Americas wherein
he explores musicking in the social (re)creation of space and
sense of place; groove and performance temporalities;
intersensory modalities, and transnational musicocultural flows
and interrelationships.
The music of Garrett Ian Shatzer (b. 1980) has been performed by
such musicians as the Mobius Trio, Erato and Finisterra
Piano Trios, GRAMMY-award winning countertenor Ian Howell,
EOS Duo, Lyris Quartet, Meridian Arts, Empyrean, Luna Nova
and Citywater Ensembles, violinist Rolf Schulte, cellist
David Russell, and pianist Geoffrey Burleson in such venues
as the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.) and the Teatro
Colón (Buenos Aires). His current commissions include a
choral work to be premiered in St.
Born and raised in Tehran, Iran, Aida Shirazi’s
music is described as “well-made” and “affecting” by The New
Yorker. She holds her B.A. in classical piano from Tehran
University of Art (Iran), and her B.M. in music composition and
theory from Bilkent University (Turkey). She studied santoor
(traditional Iranian dulcimer) with Parissa Khosravi Samani.
Previous positions include Visiting Assistant Professor of Music
(Orchestra and Musicology), Alma College, Alma, MI 2018-2020;
Visiting Instructor of Music (Orchestra and Music History),
Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA 2017.
Alexander Stalarow received his Ph.D. in Musicology in 2017. His
dissertation, Listening to a Liberated Paris: Pierre
Schaeffer Experiments with Radio, was funded by awards
including a Chateaubriand Fellowship from the French
government, a Bilinski Dissertation Fellowship, and an Alvin
H. Johnson AMS 50 Fellowship. Alex currently lectures at the San
Francisco Conservatory of Music and University of the
Pacific.
Ryan Suleiman was born to Lebanese and Mid-Western parents in
California. His music engages with dreaming, the natural world,
and the understated beauty of everyday life. His one-act chamber
opera, Moon, Bride, Dogs, was described by the San
Francisco Chronicle as “a gem” with “an aesthetic that is at once
so strange and so accessible.” While his artistic interests vary,
he seeks ways of conveying the simultaneity of beauty and dread
that characterizes our times.
B.M. Performance (flute), UC Santa BarbaraM.A. Musicology, Pennsylvania State University
Claire Thompson is a doctoral candidate in musicology at UC
Davis. She has a B.M. in performance (flute) from UC Santa
Barbara, and a master’s degree in musicology from Pennsylvania
State University. Her research interests include music aesthetics
and the cultural and political aspects of opera and operetta. Her
dissertation explores the creation, dissemination, and reception
of nineteenth-century Italian operas based on the works of Sir
Walter Scott. She is a recipient of the Hubert H. and Barbara P.
