Honors, accolades, reviews, new appointments, research highlights, publications, and other news from the School of Music faculty.
Patricia Shehan Campbell, Music Education and Ethnomusicology
Patricia Shehan Campbell (Music Education and Ethnomusicology) was invited by the American Federation of Teachers to write on music education for American Educator (Spring 2022). The first article on music since 2007 to appear in this widely read journal, “Bonding through Music” offers evidence from research in cognition and ethnomusicology and cognitive that music is a birthright, that all children have musical capacity, and that the systematic musical education by certified teaching musicians results in artistic-expressive, cognitive, and social-emotional benefits for children and youth. Campbell’s publications are also appearing this spring in Orff Schulwerk Heute (“For the love of children: Music, enculturation, and education”) and The Orff Echo (“In search of music in American cultures”). Her edited series of seven books for Routledge on World Music Pedagogy (2018-2021) will be featured in courses this summer at the University of Hartford, Texas State University, St. Thomas University, West Virginia University, the University of Washington, and in a three-day webinar co-sponsored by Smithsonian Folkways.
Robin McCabe, Piano
Professor Robin McCabe, piano, has been appointed Artistic Advisor of the Beijing Royal School (BRS), a private school founded in 2003 including enrollments in K-12. BRS is the first international school in China to open a study-abroad arts program. It is now developing a middle and high school arts curriculum. Professor McCabe will be working in tandem with Arts faculty in Beijing, arranging faculty exchanges, visitations, residencies, and master classes, as well as providing on-site advice and tutorials to develop an intensive arts curriculum. Beijing Royal is the only AP School recognized by the American University Council.
In March, McCabe traveled to Hilton Head, S.C., to serve on the competition jury for the Hilton Head International Piano Competition. One of the leading international piano competitions in the United States, the competition events draw applicants, artists, and audience from countries the world over.
Professor McCabe and Professor Craig Sheppard were recently appointed to the Michiko Morita Miyamoto Professorship in Piano at the UW for the term 2021-24. Established by the extended family of the late, legendary Seattle-area piano instructor Michiko Miyamoto, the professorship supports the professors’ research and teaching activities, enabling them to provide performance opportunities for their students, bring guest artists to the UW for concerts and master classes, and advance their own artistry and research.
Timothy Salzman, Wind Conducting
Professor Salzman is contributing author to a soon-to-be-published book entitled Arnold Jacobs - Artistic and Pedagogical Legacies. Mr. Jacobs was tubist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for 44 years and is widely regarded as one of the foremost wind instrument pedagogues of the 20th century. Each of the 24 essay-contributing authors, all former students of Mr. Jacobs, are from major professional orchestras and leading music schools from throughout the word and include (among others) current and former (retired) members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra and L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Professor Salzman is the only wind ensemble conductor asked to contribute to the book.
In early February, Salzman initiated the first-ever Mid-Winter Band Directors Workshop, an opportunity for school music teachers to come to the UW campus for master classes and an opportunity to rehearse and conduct one of the four UW bands in concert. 18 school band directors from Puget Sound participated.
He also served as an adjudicator and master class presenter at the Music for All Western Region Concert Band Festival in Salt Lake City, Utah in early March, working with 22 school bands in performance and master class settings.
Melia Watras, viola
Faculty violist Melia Watras’s new album String Masks was released on Planet M Records on February 11, 2022. Featuring compositions by Watras, the album includes performances by Watras and her colleagues Charles Corey, Sheila Daniels, Jose Gonzales, Michael Jinsoo Lim, Rhonda J. Soikowski, Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir and Bonnie Whiting. Watras and her new album are the subjects of a January 2022 feature article/interview by Which Sinfonia. The digital classical music platform also premiered the video of the second movement (Crossing) of Watras’s String Masks (video by Michelle Smith-Lewis). The Arts Music Lounge described String Masks as “Impassioned” and “fascinating,” and Flotation Device on KBCS-FM has aired selections from the album on two of its programs.
Melia Watras’s recent composition The almond tree duos was given its world premiere on February 15, 2022 by Watras and violinists Tekla Cunningham, Rachel Lee Priday, Michael Jinsoo Lim. The work will be recorded for a future album.
Staff Notes
Katie Hollenbach, Admissions and Outreach
School of Music staff member Katie Hollenbach (who is a musicologist in addition to her role as director of admissions, recruitment, and outreach), recently signed a contract with Oxford University Press to publish her research on American popular music and youth in the 1940s. Tentatively titled, The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom, the book will examine the ways in which celebrity following, popular music culture, and fan productivity illuminate the lives of World War II-era female youth.