Faculty Notes TIMARA Technical Director and Lecturer Abby Aresty taught a workshop on multimodal interactive storytelling for 40 college students from around the world as part of a summer institute on humanitarian entrepreneurship at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. Percussion professor Michael Rosen was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in recognition of his contributions to the field.
Rosen
Musicology professor James O’Leary was awarded the John W. Kluge Fellowship to support a year of research at the Library of Congress. He will be there from February to December 2020 working on his next book, a history of the Federal Music Project.
Parkhurst
Jolly
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The International Society of Bassists honored Oberlin bass teacher Tracy Rowell with the 2019 Special Recognition Award of Young Bassist Ambassador for furthering the ISB’s mission to inspire, educate, and connect.
Chang
Visiting assistant professor Tiffany Chang ‘09, conductor of the Oberlin College Arts & Sciences Orchestra, was selected to participate in the Dallas Opera’s 2019 Linda and Mitch Hart Institute. The multifaceted program provides training and support for talented women conductors on the cusp of major international careers.
TIMARA professor Peter Swendsen ’99 attended the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage performance of Coldness and Lightness, his co-creation with dancer Ashley ThorndikeYoussef, incorporating sound, visual design, and movement that sends eight dancers through a tenuous landscape. Emeritus Professor of Ethnomusicology Roderic Knight published “Elisha Gray and the Musical Telegraph” in the spring 2019 edition of the Galpin Society Journal LXXII. Gray, an 1864 graduate of Oberlin College, invented the world’s first electric musical instrument—a small keyboard— in 1874 and taught at Oberlin from 1880 to 1900. Knight also mounted an exhibit on Gray in Oberlin’s Science Center. Jonathan Moyer served as visiting professor of organ at the Hochschule für Musik in Lübeck, Germany, during his spring 2019 sabbatical. In addition to concerts in Hannover, Bielefeld, Lübeck, Norden, and Alkmaar, he recorded on the 1637 Stellwagen organ in the church of St. Jakobi in Lübeck.
SCOTT SHAW, TANYA ROSEN-JONES ’97, DUSTIN FRANZ
New voice faculty member Katherine Jolly will release the album Preach Sister Preach in August. It features the soprano performing new works by Evan Williams, Katherine Bodor, and Evan Mack, whose titular song cycle was inspired by the energy of the first Women’s March and celebrates the voices of 10 powerful women, including Lucille Ball, Mae West, Tina Fey, Simone de Beauvoir, and Ellen DeGeneres. Jolly’s Oberlin career began in the summer of 2019.
Assistant Professor of Music Theory Bryan Parkhurst won the Emerging Scholar Award for 2018 from the Society for Music Theory. The honor was given for Parkhurst’s article “Making a Virtue of Necessity: Schenker and Kantian Teleology,” which was published in the April 2017 issue of the Journal for Music Theory. The review committee praised Parkhurst’s in-depth study of the theories of Heinrich Schenker as “a rigorous philosophical inquiry into the ideal of ‘musical science.’”
Tuba teacher Dennis Nulty is the featured soloist on the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s fifth recording of concertos by John Williams for Naxos Portara. Conductor Leonard Slatkin led the orchestra in the live performance, which was later released on February 8, 2019— the composer’s 87th birthday. Nulty has served as principal tuba of the Detroit Symphony since 2009.
Associate Professor of Music Theory Andrew Pau published the article “Common-Tone Tonality in Bizet’s Carmen” in the October 2018 issue of Music Theory Spectrum. It explores ways in which a harmonic analysis of Georges Bizet’s score can illuminate the work’s dramatic structure. A second article, “The Harmonic Theories of Jean-Adam Serre,” appeared in the March 2019 edition of Intégral. It argues for a reevaluation of the theories of Serre, a native of Geneva who published three essays on the principles of harmony in 1753.