Graduate Jazz Student Wins Competition
UNT graduate jazz piano student, Tomás Jonsson, WON The 2023 Jacksonville (Florida) Jazz Festival Piano Competition.
UNT graduate jazz piano student, Tomás Jonsson, WON The 2023 Jacksonville (Florida) Jazz Festival Piano Competition.
Penned by UNT Assistant Professor of Music History, Beth Snyder, the Winter 2023 edition of Music & Politics has published An Impulse to Transfigure and Render New'--The Anglo-Austrian Music Society in Wartime and Early Post-war Britain.
Matthew Dexter, bass-baritone, received the 2022-2023 Presser Award. Considered the most prestigious undergraduate award in music at UNT, the Presser Foundation Undergraduate Scholar award is presented annually to a student, at the conclusion of his or her junior year, who has shown extraordinary musical and academic accomplishments. The winner is nominated and selected by the UNT music faculty and receives the award from the Presser Foundation, which awards annual scholarships, grants and funds for furthering music education and music in America. The organization was founded in 1916 by Theodore Presser, music publisher and philanthropist.
The Journal of the American Musicological Society published Songs of the New World and the Breath of the Planet at the Orbis Spike, 1610: Toward a Decolonial Musicology of the Anthropocene by Andrew J. Chung, UNT Assistant Professor of Music Theory.
Marques L.A. Garrett joins us as Associate Professor of Choral Activities in the Division of Ensembles and Conducting. He earned a PhD in Music Education in Choral Conducting at Florida State University, the MM from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a BA from Hampton University. As a highly sought-after composer, his largest work to date, "Dreamland: Tulsa 1921" was a collaboration with librettist Sandra Seaton commissioned by Dallas, Texas based Turtle Creek Chorale telling the story of the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His research areas include vocal music of Black composers, non-idiomatic choral music of Black composers, the choral music of R. Nathaniel Dett, Negro spirituals and choral conducting/rehearsal techniques. He is the editor/compiler of "The Oxford Handbook of Choral Music by Black Composers" published by Oxford University Press. Dr. Garrett comes to Denton from the Glenn Korff School of Music at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln.
UNT Assistant Professor of Music Education, Erika J. Knapp, along with colleagues, published Moving beyond data collection: Fostering community engagement in community music schools in the International Journal of Music Education.
Kourtney Strade-Austin (PhD ‘22, Performing Arts Health) has accepts the position of Assistant Professor of Voice/Choir at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Associate Professor of Music History, Rebecca Geoffroy-Schwinden, has received, in a rare occurrence, TWO nationally competitive awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities. An NEH Summer Stipend will support her research for a project entitled “Stories of Music, Luxury, and Loss in the Age of Revolutions (1760s–1820s).” The second award is the NEH-Hagley Fellowship on Business, Culture, and Society allowing Dr. Geoffroy-Schwinden to carry out eight months of archival research at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. This research will culminate in a book about the musical and sonic world of the du Pont women's community from the French Revolution to the American Civil War.
University of North Texas Associate Professor of Cello, Horacio Contreras, with fellow Reveron Piano Trio’s, Simón Gollo and Ana María Otamendi, have released Iberoamérica: Trios by Villa-Lobos, Turina, and Ponce. Released by Ibs Classical. Photo: Natali Herrera-Pacheco.
Lindsay Pope (DMA ‘19) won the position of Assistant Professor of Choral Activities at the University of Massachusetts. She won the American Choral Directors Association Julius Herford Dissertation Prize and has been serving UMASS as interim DCA.
UNT Professor of Music Theory, David Bard-Schwarz, has a published chapter titled, “Modes of Understanding Disruption in the First Movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony,” in the book Ästhetische Normativität in der Musik. Edited by Tobias Janz and Jens Gerrit Papenburg, the publisher is Verlag Vittorio Klostermann edit the book.
The Houston Symphony and UNT seven-time GRAMMY-nominated One O'Clock Lab Band performed the Alan Baylock composed six-movement "Soundscapes for Solo Saxophones, Jazz Ensemble, and Orchestra." At Houston’s Jones Hall.
Giant Boykin is a UNT alumnus, having earned his master's degree in interdisciplinary and jazz studies in Spring 2022. Prior to his master's degree, Giant earned a bachelor's degree in music performance from the University of Texas at Tyler. See more of his story.
Manhattan Concert Productions (MCP) presents the UNT Professor of Choral Studies, Allen Hightower, conducting "Requiem" by John Rutter. The festival chorus performs with the New York City Chamber Orchestra and soloists as part of MCP’s Masterwork Series.
Michael Crawford becomes Lecturer in Music Education along with additional teaching duties in the Percussion Area starting Fall 2023. In May 2021, Michael graduated from @UNT with his PhD in Music Education.
As part of the 150th anniversary of Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas, the temple collaborated with AURORA in producing “Light Years - An Innovative Art and Technology Experience.” The Temple commission by David Stout, UNT Professor of Composition Studies, is titled “In Their Arms We Hold the Sky,” a panoramic film and music work.
The Houston Symphony Chorus director and UNT Professor of Choral Studies, Allen Hightower, shown being acknowledged by Itzhak Perlman at the conclusion of the Houston Symphony performance of “Requiem” by Mozart recently conducted by Perlman at Jones Hall for the Performing Arts in Houston.
Katherine Carothers McBain is joining our faculty as Senior Lecturer of Horn in the Division of Instrumental Studies. She earned a BA in Music from the University of Houston, MA from the University of Texas at Tyler, and both the MM and DMA from Eastman School of Music. She has held teaching positions at Stephen F. Austin State University, University of Texas at Tyler and Tyler Junior College and performs with the Texarkana Symphony and Longview Symphony.
Tamar Sella joins us as Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology in the Division of Music History, Theory and Ethnomusicology. Her current research is “an ethnographic study of contemporary Mizrahi performance and cultural memory that seeks to illuminate the ways in which ongoing Jewish diasporic formations reframe colonial and racial logics in Israel/Palestine.” She holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD from Harvard University. She comes to us from Rice University where she is the Samuel W. and Goldye Marian Spain Postdoctoral Fellow.
Bokyung Byun is joining our faculty as Assistant Professor of Guitar in the Division of Instrumental Studies. Dr. Byun made history as the first female winner of the JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition and has won numerous other awards, including the 2021 Guitar Foundation of America International Concert Artist Competition and a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant. As a sought-after artist, Dr. Byun is frequently invited to perform and give masterclasses for orchestras, festivals, and guitar societies. She earned the BM and MM degrees from the Juilliard School and the DMA from the University of Southern California. She currently serves on the faculty of California State University Fullerton.
The 2023 Presser Foundation Graduate Award winner is Colin Stokes. He is a UNT College of Music PhD student in the Division of Composition Studies. His proposal was titled “Otherness Together, a collaborative intermedia piece exploring issues of racial identity, transnationality, and otherness.” The piece will be created in collaboration with United Arab Emirates-born Palestinian visual artist Qais Assali. According to the Presser Foundation, "The program is designed to encourage and support, in a special way, the advanced education and career of truly exceptional graduate music students who have the potential to make a distinguished contribution to the field of music."
Wind Studies doctoral conducting associate Amy Woody to receive the UNT Faculty Senate’s Outstanding Teaching Fellows/Teaching Assistants Award for the 2022-23 academic year.
Assistant Professor of Jazz Piano, Dave Meder, releases “New American Hymnal.” The recording features fellow UNT faculty member Philip Dizack on trumpet. Meder describes the project “think of it as a "book of worship" for our American "civic religion."
For 16 consecutive years, the NAMM Foundation has awarded the @UNT hometown school district of Denton ISD “Best Communities for Music Education.”
Vocal DMA student and incoming MBA student in music business, Cherisse Williams, is the recipient of the 2023 Eagle Award: CommUNiTy Activist for an Individual. The award honors a student who “demonstrates a significant and exceptional commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion within the UNT community.” Annually, UNT Student Activities collaborates with the Center for Leadership and Service and Multicultural Center in recognizing students, organizations and advisors. Photo: Lauren Salazar.