Honors, appointments, presentations, and accolades set the tone for recent news and updates from UW Music students and alumni.
School of Music students Elise Kim, flute, and Logan Esterling, oboe, won the festival-wide concerto competition at the Sewanee Summer Music Festival in Tennessee last summer. They were selected from 200 students after successfully passing through three rounds of adjudication. Both appeared as soloists with the Sewanee Festival Orchestra at the festival’s end, Kim performing Mozart’s Concerto in G Major, Op. 313, and Esterling performing Vaughn Williams’s Oboe Concerto. Other UW students and alumni attending the festival included Miao Liu (MM flute), Laura Colmenares (BM flute ’16), Mo Yan (BM clarinet), and Alec Duggan (’14, BA Cello). Duggan, a DMA student at West Virginia University, was a finalist in the concerto competition.
In news from the keyboard program, former UW students of Professor Robin McCabe are securing successful placement in professional positions throughout the United States and abroad:
Jeremy Samolesky (MM, Piano Performance) is a tenured professor at Auburn University; Amy Grinsteiner (DMA Piano Performance) is a tenured professor at St. Benedict and St. John’s University in St. Cloud, Minnesota; Alastair Edmonstone (DMA Piano Performance) is on the faculty of the University of California, San Bernardino; David Wolff (B.M, Piano) is conductor and artistic director of the Carolina Symphony and The Orchestra 2100, serving Washington, D.C.; Wendy Yamashita (DMA Piano) is on the faculty of the University of Hawaii at Manoa; Monica Yoon (DMA Piano) is on the faculties of Dong-a University, Kyungsung University, Dongiu University, and the Busan Arts High School in Busan, South Korea. She recently performed Mozart’s Concerto No. 27, K. 595 with an orchestra in Busan. David Servias (’10 DMA Piano) is on the faculty of Oregon State University; Jane Hsieh (DMA Piano) is working in the Collaborative Piano area at the University of Arkansas, and is Music Director of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Fayetteville; Matt Goodrich (DMA Piano) is on the faculty of Oregon State University and is Music Director of the Ashland Theater Festival; and Dainius Vaicekonis (DMA Piano) is a tenured professor at Seattle Pacific University.
Choral conducting alumni are on the go with a number of alums reporting good news in recent weeks.
Heather MacLaughlin Garbes (’08 DMA Choral Conducting) was recently named a delegate for the 2017 Finnish Expatriate Parliament (Ulkosuomalaisparlamentti) as a representative for UW, focusing on culture and education. MacLaughlin Garbes conducts the Finnish Choral Society of Seattle and plays in the cantle (national Finnish stringed instrument) ensemble. She also conducts the Baltic women's vocal ensemble, the Mägi Ensemble, who has recently been invited to the Latvian National Song Festival as a featured performance ensemble for their Sacred Music concerts. The Mägi Ensemble will also release their second CD "Musica Baltica" this fall. MacLaughlin Garbes is the program chair for the 2017 College Music Society International Conference in Australia as well as the musicology division chair for the 2018 Baltic Studies (AABS) conference at Stanford University. She is currently an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Scandinavian studies at the UW.
Choral conducting alumnus Brad Pierson, now on the faculty of the University of Toledo Department of Music, was published in a recent issue of the American Choral Director’s Association Choral Journal. His article, “A Song for Every Choir: Hugo Distler’s Mörike-Chorliederbuch, Op. 19,” appears in the August 2017 issue of the journal.
Brian Winnie (’14 Choral Conducting) has joined the editorial board of the Voice and Speech Review Journal. Winnie serves as Director of Choral Activities & Voice as well as Chair of the Music Department at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas.
Mark Montemayor (’06 PhD Music Ed) was recently named the Performing and Visual Arts Scholar of the Year by the University of Northern Colorado, where he is head of the Music Education program. Along with teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in music education, he also supervises student teachers and serves as a research consultant for the Center for Integrated Arts Education. His research and clinical interests include topics such as teacher effectiveness, mentoring student teachers, musical modeling and student self-evaluation, and adolescent experience in music pedagogy settings.
Recent Music Education graduate John Aguilar has accepted a position at the newly opened Robert Eagle Staff Middle School in the Seattle School District, where he serves as band director and design leadership team member, teaching multiple sections of band, jazz band, percussion ensemble/drumline, and marching band.
Music Education graduate students Giuliana Conti, Yuki Kono, and Will Coppola were among presenters at the 25th Anniversary meeting of CDIME: Cultural Diversity in Music Education in Kathmandu, Nepal, last spring. Also presenting or leading sessions were graduate student Chris Mena, and Music Ed alums Karen Howard, Chee Hoo Lum, and Amanda Soto.