School of Music faculty report recent career milestones, new appointments, artistic achievements, publications, and other notable accomplishments.
Michael Brockman, Saxophone
Artist-in-residence Michael Brockman (saxophone) is celebrating his 30th year as the Artistic Director of the award-winning Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra (SRJO) with a season of concerts at Seattle's Benaroya Hall. Season performances include Duke Ellington's "Far East Suite" (Nov. 9 and 10), a tribute to Ray Charles (March 1 and 2), an SRJO Founders Concert (April 12 and 13), and a season finale with special guest Branford Marsalis. Brockman founded the group in 1995 with friend and cohort Clarence Acox. In other news, Brockman performed with Seattle Symphony for its opening night on Sept. 15, as well as the orchestra's "Cirque Noir" concerts in October. In February of 2024, he played jazz alto and soprano sax for the entire run of Seattle Opera's production of "Malcolm X" (lauded by the work's composer, Anthony Davis, as the opera's best-ever rendition). A live studio recording and video of Brockton's newest composition, "Malcolmesque" for jazz quintet can be viewed at KNKX.org/studiosessions.
Joël-François Durand, Composition
The UW faculty composer (and School of Music director) traveled to Vienna, Austria for a performance of his third string quartet, Quatuor à cordes no. 3, performed by the Mivos Quartet at Vienna's vibrant art space the Reaktor. Mivos premiered the work at the UW's Meany Hall in March 2024.
Shannon Dudley, Ethnomusicology
Chair of the UW’s Ethnomusicology program was instrumental in the success of the Seattle Participatory Arts Network conference, a four-day gathering of students, artists, scholars and educators focused on participatory practices that encourage people of diverse skills and abilities to engage creatively. A collaboration between UW and community arts groups, the symposium, held in November 2024, was instigated and organized by Dudley and Monica Rojas-Stewart (assistant professor, UW Dance), with support from the UW’s Simpson Center for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.
John-Carlos Perea, Ethnomusicology
John-Carlos Perea (Ethnomusicology, American Indian Studies adjunct) and Jessica Bissett Perea (American Indian Studies, Music History adjunct) hosted an October visit from Dr. Joseph Keola Donaghy, Associate Professor of Music at the University of Hawai‘I, Maui College. Dr. Donaghy met with Music and American Indian Studies classes and gave the first THEME lecture of the 2024-25 academic year titled: "Mele on the Mauna: Perpetuating Genealogies of Hawaiian Musical Activism on Maunakea."
Perea is a UW American Indian and Indigenous Studies (AIIS) Scholar for the 2024-25 academic year and gave the first talk in the AIIS Scholar speaker series, “The Intertribal Music and Spiritual Cultures of Pepper’s Pow Wow." The series and fellowship are hosted and funded by the UW Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies. He also was invited by the University of North Texas Music Library and University of North Texas Native American Student Association to participate in the First Chair Chat series on the topic of “Contemporary Indigenous Music in North America” with drummer Joseph Sioui and vocalist Julia Keefe.
Perea recently shared word of the passing of collaborator and friend Gary Stroutsos, a Seattle flutist and member of the Öngtupqa Trio, which Stroutsos formed with Hopi singer Clark Tenakhongva and percussionist Matt Nelson. The trio performed at the University of Washington in April 2024 as part of a three-day residency organized by Perea and adjunct professor Jessica Bissett Perea. Read the obituary in the Seattle Times.
Ted Poor, Jazz Studies
The Jazz Studies associate professor (and School of Music associate director) has been on the go with numerous performance engagements, including with the Andrew Bird Trio, which wrapped up a three-week U.S. tour in August with two nights at the Hollywood Bowl, playing selections from their new record Sunday Morning Put-On.
In other recent news, Poor:
- Spent a week in Los Angeles collaborating with legendary producer Mitchell Froom (Crowded House, Paul McCartney, Los Lobos) and engineer David Boucher (Disney/Pixar, Randy Newman, Andrew Bird) to complete an album of experimental pop songs with singer, song-writer, and poet Shungudzo Kuyimba. The record, which is co-written and co-produced by Shungudzo and Poor, will be released in 2025 and was supported in part by the UW's Jones Large Grant program.
- Performed debut concerts with Cunningham Bird at the Bumbershoot and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festivals. Cunningham Bird is a new collaboration between Grammy award winning singer/song-writer Madison Cunningham and Andrew Bird covering the 1970s album Buckingham Nicks.
- Performed with the Andrew Bird Trio in Parma, Italy, the London Jazz Festival, and the Ravinia Festival in Chicago.
- Completed a live recording of a new solo work for drum set at The Bell Choir Sessions, a new in-studio concert series in Los Angeles.
David Alexander Rahbee, Orchestral Activities
Associate Professor David A. Rahbee was guest conductor at the Bar Harbor Music Festival in Maine this past July, leading performances of Copland's Appalachian Spring with Nimbus Dance, and a program of works by Mozart, Michael Haydn, Grieg, Atterberg, Gershwin and Jessie Montgomery with the Bar Harbor Music Festival Orchestra.
Frederick Reece, Music History
Music History professor Frederick Reece and his research on musical forgeries are cited extensively in "The Lost Haydn Sonatas," Episode Three of a five-episode series, Classical Deceptions, by journalist Phil Hebblethwaite on the BBC Radio 3 program "The Essay.”
"Radio 3 echoes from the family Hi-Fi in some of my earliest memories of childhood, a gateway to a larger cultural world I could scarcely imagine,” Reece shared recently on social media. "So, I'm rather touched to have my research featured there now. Hear the episode here.
Stephen Rumph, Music History
Chair of the Music History program was a presenter at a recent conference devoted to Gabriel Fauré held in Paris at the Opéra Comique, Conservatoire and Académie Française. Professor Rumph also was recently appointed Adjunct Professor in Cinema and Media Studies at the UW.
Francisco Luis Reyes, Music Education
An article co-written by Assistant Professor Francisco Luis Reyes appeared in the October 2024 issue of the Research Studies in Music Education journal. This publication is a renowned internationally peer-reviewed journal that fosters discussion in a wide range of topics in music education. Dr. Reyes’ article, "Analysis of music teacher education programs in Puerto Rico," sheds light on the state of pre-service teacher training in the Caribbean country by analyzing the curricular content of the programs that offer degrees in Music Education in Puerto Rico.
Dr. Reyes also recorded a vodcast for the journal that can be found on the article or on the vodcast index for the Research Studies in Music Education journal. View the article here.
Anne Searcy, Music History
Assistant professor Anne Searcy was among School of Music faculty and alumni presenting at the recent American Musicological Society Conference in Chicago. Her presentation was titled, "Philip Glass’s Dance and the Institutionalization of Minimalism." Other School of Music alumni and faculty presenting included Megan Francisco ('20 PhD, Music History), "Life Has a Melody: Musical Predestination in Battlestar Galactica," and Gabriel Solis, "A Music Historian on the Histories of Chicago and Futurities."
Melia Watras, Strings
Professor Melia Watras was awarded the Maurice W. Riley Award by the American Viola Society, for her distinguished contributions to the viola as a performer, composer, teacher and leader. She was presented the award at the 2024 AVS Festival, held at the Colburn School in Los Angeles. AVS also commissioned a work from Watras, for viola ensemble. Her composition Fantasies in alto clef received its world premiere at the festival. Watras was the AVS Artist-in-Residence for May and June, 2024.
Watras’s composition Sphere was part of celebrated artist, industrial and architectural designer Ron Arad’s installation, The Quartet, at the Royal Academy Exhibition Summer 2024, in London. Watras was part of a musical creative team that included Atar Arad, Steven Isserlis, Igor Polesitsky, David Waterman, Helena Winkelman and Tabea Zimmermann, each of whom was asked to contribute a musical composition or improvisation as a response to music fragments discovered in the Jewish Ghetto in Florence, Italy. The resulting recordings were then incorporated into Ron Arad’s multimedia work in which two violins, a viola and a cello, with no instrumentalists present, play music through the vibrations of the instruments.
Watras's album, Play/Write, which features music written by her, Leilehua Lanzilotti and Frances White, was reviewed by Textura and LA Opus. Another of Melia’s compositions, Sarabanda, was recently released on the album, Partita Party, by SBOV Music.
Bonnie Whiting, Percussion
Bonnie Whiting, Chair of Percussion Studies, recently took on the position of Co-Artistic Director of Seattle Modern Orchestra, the Pacific Northwest's only large ensemble solely dedicated to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. She joins alum Julia Tai (DMA, orchestral conducting) in curating adventurous programs; this season includes partnerships with SIFF, Earshot Jazz, and an extension of the group's annual residency at UW.
This summer, Whiting enjoyed performances at Lincoln Center's Summer for the City Festival (on-stage percussionist with Jonathan Berger's chamber opera The Ritual of Breath is the Rite to Resist, previewed in the NYT), at New York's Performance Spaces for the 21st Century (the east coast premiere of Wang Lu's new solo work for vocalizing percussionist), and at the Kennedy Center (a new concerto collaboration with composer Jonathan Bingam and renowned children's author Mo Willems, in four performance with the National Symphony Orchestra for their family pops series.)