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May 16, 2025
A bequest from composer and longtime former UW professor Diane Thome will provide enduring support for doctoral students at the University of Washington.
The professor emerita’s creation of two endowments—the Diane Thome Composition Fellowship in Music and the Diane Thome Composition Fellowship in DXARTS—will provide support for outstanding doctoral composition students at the UW for years to come.
“Diane Thome was a longtime beloved colleague, and we are delighted that her bequest to support... Read more
May 16, 2025
Winners of divisional concerto competitions held at the School of Music this academic year perform with the UW Symphony on June 6 at Meany Hall. Kaisho Barnhill, marimba; Flora Cummings, viola; and Sandy Huang, piano join the orchestra in a program featuring their winning concerto excerpts.
Cummings, an undergraduate viola student of Melia Watras double majoring in Viola Performance and Wildlife Conservation, performs the first movement of York Bowen's Viola Concerto in C minor, Op. 25.... Read more
May 15, 2025
As Professor Timothy Salzman wraps up a 38-year career as director of bands at the University of Washington, he is reflecting on his years as head of the graduate wind conducting program at the University and looking ahead to what comes after retirement—family time, and plenty of it. Recalling a career of many milestone achievements, Professor Salzman notes that his former graduate students have gone on to land positions at 73 universities and colleges throughout the United States. Now, in... Read more
May 6, 2025
Hearing Philadelphia, a program created by recently appointed School of Music assistant professor William Dougherty, is helping Philadelphians affected by gun violence to heal through music. Learn more in this feature by Sandra Jones from NPR's WHYY News:
When William “Bill” Dougherty is not teaching at the University of Washington in Seattle, he is raising awareness about gun violence.
Dougherty is part of Hearing... Read more
May 5, 2025
From Fifteen Questions
The 18 short pieces on Watras's “Almond Tree Duos” are pure, poignant, powerful in their immediacy. The emotional range is wide and the techniques diverse - but hope is always the overarching sensation.
... Read more
May 2, 2025
By Melia Watras for The Strad
To gain our personal understanding of the world around us, we look for meaning and connection. Like images in a dream, inspiration comes from many places. My new album, The almond tree duos, owes much of its existence to its ties to literature, visual art and music. ... Read more
May 1, 2025
Ethnomusicology interim chair John-Carlos Perea lends insights in this article exploring how two local radio shows, "Indigenous Jazz" on Daybreak Star Radio and "Sounds of Survivance" on 90.3 KEXP, are joining the efforts to illuminate and celebrate the genius of Indigenous jazz. ... Read more
April 24, 2025
Étoile, an eight-episode spoof of the world of ballet dancers by creator Amy Sherman Palladino (airing on Prime Video), centers around an elaborately choreographed PR stunt in which rival ballet companies in New York City and Paris swap their leading dancers in the hopes of getting more young people to go to the ballet.
The show's premise raises echoes of the historic exchanges of dancers between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a focus of... Read more
April 8, 2025
by Lauren Kirschman, UW News
Jessica Bissett Perea (Dena’ina) had never heard powwow singing before attending an Indigenous music conference in Toronto in 2008.
She was born north of Anchorage, Alaska, where powwows just started appearing in the last 25 years. At the conference, she was drawn to the singing voice of John-Carlos Perea(Mescalero Apache, Irish, Chicano, German). The... Read more