School of Music students and alumni report recent academic appointments, publications, promotions, and other achievements in their work at the University of Washington and around the world.
Leann Conley-Holcom ('17 DMA Choral Conducting) was appointed Director of Choral and Vocal Activities at Seattle University beginning in September 2018. She heads the voice program, conducts four choral ensembles, and teaches conducting and group voice. She continues to be active as a professional singer, with recent engagements including performances by the GRAMMY-award-winning True Concord Voices and Orchestra in Tucson, and Bach Ensemble Helmuth Rilling, which recently presented concerts of Bach's Christmas Oratorio in Sindelfingen and Schwabisch-Gmund, Germany.
Ryan Ellis ('17 DMA, Choral Conducting) recently published "Shaping Words: From Speech to Song, Linguistic Principles and Rhythmic Expressivity in Choral Performance" in the Voice and Speech Review Journal.
Following his recent success co-directing Mountainside Baroque's Inaugural Music in the Mountains summer festival in Western Maryland this past June, choral conducting alumnus Ryan Mullaney ('18 DMA Choral Conducting) served on the faculty of Whitworth University last fall as Lecturer in Choral Music, leading the University's annual Christmas festival concert, conducting the Whitworth Choir and Men's Chorus, and teaching a senior seminar in choral methods. He currently serves as Interim Choral Director in the McIntyre Department of Music at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Piano students of Robin McCabe report recent appointments and achievements. DMA alumnus Alastair Edmonstone is Director of Collaborative Piano and Music Director of Opera Theater at University of California San Bernardino. Current DMA candidate Gabriel Manalac has been appointed Applied Piano Faculty Instructor at Whatcom County Community College. DMA candidate Li-Cheng Hung has been named a Teaching Artist/Pianist in the Programs and Partnerships Department for Seattle Opera. DMA student Nicholas Tagab has been appointed staff accompanist and vocal coach for the choral department at North Creek High School in North Creek, Washington.
Lyric tenor William Brooke (’15 DMA Vocal Performance) traveled to Tokyo, Japan to perform in the beautiful Persimmon Concert Hall in September 2018. He was the concluding artist to perform in a benefit concert in which he presented solo works from the verismo period, as well as contemporary music by American composers.
Graduate students of Music Education and Ethnomusicology, along with one professor, collaborated on a chapter, “Teaching and Learning Improvisation: Culture-Specific Cases of a Cross-Cultural Musical Act” for a book affiliated with the University of Washington. Edited by Guro Gravem Johansen of Norway, the chapter’s authors are J. Mike Kohfeld, Will Coppola, Solmaz Shakerifad, and Patricia Shehan Campbell.
In other news from the Music Education program, Giuliana Conti, Ph.D. student of Music Education, has begun her term as elected president of the UW Senate of Graduate and Professional Students. Juliana Cantarelli Vita presented on Brazilian traditional music at the national meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Visiting scholars to the Music Education program in Autumn 2018 included Bo Wah Leung, founder of the Cantonese Opera Research Institute, Hong Kong; Pablo Liebana-Marin, University of Valencia (Spain); Tanaka Takako, Kyoto University of Education (Japan); Yuki Kono, Tobiate award winner for doctoral study abroad (Japan). Winter 2019 visitors include Gareth Dylan Smith (London and New York City), author of I Drum, Therefore I Am and Punk Pedagogies, and Peter Whiteman (Institute for Education, the Humanities, and the Social Sciences, Singapore), author of Musical Childhoods of Asia and the Pacific.