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Student and Alumni Updates for Spring Quarter 2012

Submitted by Humanities Web Project on April 10, 2012 - 12:00am
Wendy Moy
Wendy Moy

Graduate Conducting student Wendy Moy was among eight conducting fellows nationwide selected by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute (WMI) to participate in February in the Transient Glory Symposium, part of WMI’s newly established Carnegie Hall Choral Institute. Designed for choral teachers, the Institute offers annually a series of workshops and concerts, each aimed at introducing participants to different approaches to preparing and conducting music for chorus. For the symposium, the conducting fellows, joined by eight associates and 60 auditors, explored recently-composed works for young voices by composers Derek Bermel, John Corigliano, Douglas J. Cuomo, David Del Tredici, Paquito D’Rivera, Michael Gordon, Bright Sheng, and Joan Tower. Moy worked with composer David Del Tredici on his “Four Heartfelt Anthems” and with conductor Philip Brunelle on issues related to preparing and conducting modern choral works.

Kim Cannady, doctoral student in Ethnomusicology, has been awarded The Graduate School Boeing International Fellowship for the 2012-13 academic year. The fellowship pays for three full months of research or study abroad. The support will enable Cannady to continue her research into issues of cultural heritage and musical contact within the North Atlantic locations of Denmark, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland. Currently studying in Iceland for the 2011-2012 academic year on a Fulbright Fellowship, Cannady will focus research supported by this fellowship on examining large-scale music festivals this summer in the Faroe Islands. "The summer months are an exciting time in the islands musically," she writes from Iceland, "with a handfull of large-scale music festivals and vibrant ongoing concert schedules aimed both towards the local population as well as the increasing flow of tourists to the islands. Ólavsøka, the Faroese national festival, will take place at the end of July, during which people from all over the islands will converge in the capital city, Tórshavn, for singing and traditional chain-dancing and other forms of communal celebration."

Michiko Urita, doctoral student in Ethnomusicology, has been selected to receive The Graduate School Chester A. Fritz Fellowship for the 2012-13 academic year. The fellowship will enable Urita to conduct ethnographic field research at Ise Grand Shrine in Ise, Japan during fall quarter 2012. Her research topic is Shinto and gagaku tradition of Ise Grand Shrine, and she plans to produce a study titled "Religion, Rice, and Music: a Proposed Study of the Importance of Rice and Sacred Music in Shinto Rituals at Ise Grand Shrine."

Yigit Kolat, a doctoral student in Composition at UW who studies with Joël-François Durand, received the second place prize in the Seventh Annual Concours International de Composition Henri Dutilleux. No first prize award was given. The jury consisted of many notable composers, including Henri Dutilleux, Michael Jarrell, and Magnus Lindberg, among others.

The Washington Music Educators Association (WMEA) has named alumnus Ward Brannman (’85 BA, Music Ed; BM), music teacher at Kamiakin Junior High, its 2012 WMEA Middle School/Junior High Music Educator of the year. Brannman has been the Director of Bands at Kamiakin Junior High School since 1986. While at the UW, he studied trumpet and jazz studies with Roy Cummings and conducting under Vilem Sokol. At Kamiakin Junior High, Brannman directs five concert bands and the school's Jazz Ensemble and Stage Band.

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