Jeremy Mikush, a Ph.D. candidate in the Musicology Department, has been in France since early June practicing his French and doing research in Paris for an article and for his dissertation–thanks to two HASoM SOF grants!

Also, in August, he’ll be performing his own songs as well as those of other composers with biographic and artistic works that speak to queer experience at the second installation of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History in the SoHo district of NYC (http://www.queermuseum.com/home/), giving a lecture-recital on non-traditional sexuality in musical cultures of the not-so-recent history.

All of this will be happening while he is continuing to balance work on his dissertation and his increasing collaboration with theater and performance artists in SF. In October, he will very likely perform with Original SF Cockette member Rumi Missabu in NYC with a hand-picked ensemble, in connection with retrospectives at Lincoln Center as Cockettes material is archived at the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library. A very busy summer and early fall indeed!

Thanks, Jeremy–it looks like a fun summer!

“I’m a sixth year in the Musicology department, finishing up my dissertation (Susan McClary is my chair) and applying for jobs this year. This summer I got a CEES grant to spend a month in Paris doing archival research at several departments of the Bibliothèque Nationale in support of my dissertation, which is on Berlioz and the “fantastic” authors of 19th century France (Gautier and Nodier, primarily).

In July I’m also playing at a 3-day music festival in Anacortes, Washington, with my band (”Lloyd and Michael”). I also just found out that my article on Symphonie Fantastique is being published in the journal 19th-century Music in early 2011, and I’ll be presenting a section of it at the AMS conference in Indianapolis this fall. I’m excited and nervous about all of these things!”

Congratulations, Marianna–it sounds like you’re going to have a great summer!

Steeped in folk music from birth, she was the youngest child of John A. Lomax and Bess Bauman Brown. Born Jan. 21, 1921, in Austin, Texas, she was home-schooled by her mother, who also taught her to play piano. Her father and her brother, Alan Lomax, collected seminal field recordings of traditional songs that had been sung by cowboys, prisoners and slaves. After her mother died in 1931, the family moved to Washington, D.C., and Hawes assisted her father’s pioneering research compiling the folk song archive at the Library of Congress.

In 1952 Bess and her husband, an artist, moved to California and settled with their children in Topanga Canyon, immersing themselves in the bohemian community anchored by actor Will Geer. Besides performing in coffeehouses and at music festivals, Hawes taught guitar, banjo, mandolin and folk singing through UCLA Extension courses, at the Idyllwild Arts Summer Program and, starting in 1963, at San Fernando Valley State College. Bess taught at Idyllwild Arts from 1958 through the mid 1960s.

Baritone Doug Carpenter, a UCLA 2009 MM graduate in Voice Performance, is starring as Lancelot in the musical “Camelot” at the famed Pasadena Playhouse in January. Please see the flyer below:

“On September 25 at Schoenberg Hall, the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and the Confucius Institute hosted the opening concert of a United States tour by the Shanghai Jiaotong University Symphony Orchestra. Shanghai Jiaotong University is one of China’s great scientific research institutions, and its orchestra has a long and honored tradition in China and abroad. The hall was packed for this free concert, led by one of China’s most revered conductors, Cao Peng, and the program was a fascinating mix of classical symphonic showpieces and arrangements of Chinese traditional folk and classical music. The students in the orchestra – none of whom are music majors – played with great skill and energy (especially given that they had just arrived in the U.S. the day before and had spent most of their concert day touring Universal Studios!) The president of the university, a former violinist in the orchestra, spoke proudly to the audience before the concert, and it was my pleasure to present Maestro Cao Peng with a Certificate of Artistic Achievement from our school.

The president and others from the university expressed their strong interest in inviting UCLA Philharmonia to perform in Shanghai. Nothing would please me more!

We have just learned that Professor Olivia Bloech has been awarded an ACLS Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship, which will fund a year’s leave and enable her to write her second book, The Politics of Memory in French Baroque Opera. Research for the book will take her to archives in Paris, Marseilles, Bordeaux, and Nantes, and she is looking forward (as who would not) to getting started with her upcoming trip to Paris in May!

FEBRUARY 23-MUSEUM OF MAKING MUSIC
Italian Recital with Kevin Fitz-Gerald in CARLSBAD, CALIFORNIA

February 23: Violin in America Panel Discussion
At 2 PM, join two world-renowned instrument makers and a leading entrepreneur-turned-advocate for violin education in a whirlwind tour of the past, present, and future of violin and bow making. Guided by the founder and publisher of Strings Magazine, this expert panel leads you through the instrument’s birth in the Italian Renaissance, its arrival in the New World, and the recent advances in technology that are reshaping the craft of violin and bow making. Tickets are $10 for the general public; $7 for students and Free for Museum Members.

February 23: Violin in America Opening Reception
The special exhibition “The Violin in America: Old World Tradition, New World Sound” explores the transplanting of European violin making traditions to American soil. The Opening Reception for this exhibition takes place on February 23 and features the talented Anne Akiko Meyers and The Hutchins Consort. Reservation are required. Tickets are $30; Members can purchase tickets for $20.

FEBRUARY 25th-COLBURN SCHOOL OF PERFORMING ARTS, LOS ANGELES, CA.
MASTERCLASS FROM 2-4 PM

FEBRUARY 26-CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY, ORANGE COUNTY, CA.
MASTERCLASS FROM 2-4 PM

FEBRUARY 28-MARCH 2, PACIFIC SYMPHONY WITH CARL ST.CLAIR
ORANGE COUNTY, CA.
MENDELSSOHN CONCERTO
http://pacificsymphony.entericorp.com/show_details.php?shid=123