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Winter 2021 Faculty Notes

Submitted by Joanne De Pue on March 3, 2021 - 1:44pm
  • Professor Giselle Wyers. Photo: Danielle Barnum.
    Professor Giselle Wyers. Photo: Danielle Barnum.

Honors, accolades, research highlights and other news from the School of Music faculty.

Patricia Shehan Campbell, Music Education/Ethnomusicology

Music Education Professor Patricia Shehan Campbell has been active (virtually) at recent academic conferences. She delivered a series of four keynote presentations on World Music Pedagogy for the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) in February. Following on her books (Teaching Music Globally, Oxford, 2004) and Music, Education and Diversity (2018, Teachers College Press), and the seven-book series she edited on World Music Pedagogy (Routledge, 2018-2021), she is helping to foster a movement in music education that is grounded in aspects of musical and cultural diversity policy and practice in schools and university programs. She will deliver the keynote address for the 12th annual conference of the Pan African Society for Musical Arts Education in July. Dawing artist musicians, composers, music scholars and educators from across the African continent, the conference will have as its core theme “Equity, Diversity, and Access in Musical Arts Education.”  

 David Alexander Rahbee, Orchestral Activities

 The UW’s Director of Orchestral Activities was awarded first prize for conducting in The American Prize national non-profit awards in the arts and was awarded second prize for Orchestral Programming, for his work with the UW Symphony. He has placed among the winners for orchestral programming for each of the seasons since his arrival at the UW in 2013. The UW Symphony under his direction tied for third place in the category of Orchestral Performance. Recently, Dr. Rahbee was a guest speaker, together with affiliate professor and former Seattle Symphony Music Director Ludovic Morlot, for an online seminar as part of the modified online summer session of the Pierre Monteux School and Music Festival discussing the partnership they cultivated between the UW and Seattle Symphony. Dr. Rahbee’s presentations on the nine Beethoven symphonies as part of “A Deeper Orchestral Learning in the Time of Covid,” which were the main focus of the UW Symphony during the online spring quarter 2020, garnered enough interest to prompt invitations for appearances via Zoom from several college orchestra programs such as the Sonoma State University Orchestra, the Irvine Valley College Symphony Orchestra, the Chapman University Symphony Orchestra, and the Ball State University Symphony Orchestra. Along with his colleague David Oertel, Dr. Rahbee is putting the finishing touches on “Daniels’ Orchestral Music, Sixth Edition,” slated for release in 2022. The Daniels is the gold standard among conductors, music programmers, orchestra librarians, and other music professionals researching orchestral programs.

Melia Watras, Viola

Violist/composer Melia Watras’s new video, "William Wilson," was recently premiered by King FM Seattle’s Second Inversion. The video features Michael Jinsoo Lim, performing on voice and violin, and Michelle Smith-Lewis, videography. "William Wilson" is a track from Watras’s latest album, "Firefly Songs." Watras was interviewed by David Osenberg for his radio program, “Cadenza," on WWFM The Classical Network. Among other things, the two discussed her new album, what first drew Watras to the viola, and her work as a violist/composer. The program airs on March 11, 2021.

Giselle Wyers, Choral Conducting

The UW’s head of choral conducting was interviewed recently for an article in the Feb 2021 issue of Choral Journal, edited by James Meaders. The article, “The Pedagogy of Programming for the Choral  Ensemble,” includes  interviews with various American conductors and their various approaches and philosophies of programming music for choral concerts. Her composition "May Our Eyes Remain Open," a response to random gun violence, was published by Music Spoke, an online vetted publishing house. She is collaborating with Consortio, an organization that fosters new music commissions, as well as the Greater Seattle Choral Consortium, to create a composition celebrating the eventual return to live choral performance. Plans are for a public premiere by a group of choruses at the Greater Seattle Choral Consortium’s next live festival. In early April, she conducts the Nevada All-State Mixed choir in a virtual festival, with the choir singing her composition “To a Friend,” published Santa Barbara Music Publications. Dr. Wyers was recently invited to serve on the Advisory Panel for the new choral docuseries “Choral Singing in America: Nurturing the American Soul.” 

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