CCM’s Music Theory and Musicology Society hosts student conference Sept. 11-12, 2020

The conference is designed to engage UC and non-UC students in the broad field of music scholarship

The Music Theory and Musicology Society (MTMS) at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) hosts its eighth biennial student conference on Sept. 11 and 12, 2020 (rescheduled from April 3-4). Entitled “Conversations in Music,” the conference is designed to engage both UC students and students from other institutions in the broad field of music scholarship.

The conference features keynote speakers Daniel Goldmark (Case Western Reserve University) and Jennifer Beavers (University of Texas at San Antonio). It will be held in conjunction with the long-running Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Thinking About Music Lecture Series at CCM.

The conference will include pre-recorded video presentations and live interactive sessions held virtually via Zoom. Please fill out the registration form below to receive emails with further information and links to access the presentation videos and Zoom platform.

Please note that the times listed in the schedule are in Eastern time zone.

Schedule

Friday, Sept. 11

2 p.m.

PIXAR’S MEMORIES: CONTEMPORARY CARTOON MUSIC SPEAKS TO THE PAST
Daniel Goldmark, Case Western Reserve University
The ever-increasing popularity of Hollywood animation, driven in part by the dominance of Pixar, has come about not just through technological advances or the breaking down of decades-old biases about cartoons being just for kids, but also through the emotionally nuanced storytelling deployed recently by studios. While practically all of Pixar’s features are overrun with issues of nostalgia, their more recent films—Inside Out, Finding Dory, Cars 3, Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4—do more than simply revel in the remembrance of times past (real or imagined): they also explore the creation of memory and the reasons why memories fade or endure. Sound and music have played key roles in the recollections and impressions of all these films. In this presentation, I look at trends in scoring and sound design in animation to show how the melodies of childhood—and adulthood—are being used to drive the stories of recent Hollywood animated features—and how these stories revolve around how our notions of the past speak to the present and guide our future.

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4:30 p.m.

MEET-AND-GREET “RECEPTION”

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5:30 p.m.

PRESENTER Q&A SESSION

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Saturday, Sept. 12

8-9:30 a.m.

CONFERENCE WORKSHOP
This year’s conference will include a workshop led by ethnomusicologist and CCM faculty member Scott Linford, PhD, inviting conference participants to engage in an interactive discussion focused on the application of sound studies in the areas of musicology, music theory and ethnomusicology.

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10 a.m.-2 p.m.

PRESENTER Q&A SESSIONS

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2 p.m.

The Music Theory and Musicology Society Conference Keynote
RAVEL’S SONIC ILLUSIONS
Jennifer Beavers, University of Texas at San Antonio
Ravel’s interwar compositions and transcriptions reveal a sophisticated engagement with timbre and orchestration. Of interest, is the way he uses timbre to connect and conceal passages in his music. In this talk, I look at the way he manipulates instrumental timbre to create sonic illusions that transform expectations, mark the form, and create meaning. I examine how he uses instrumental groupings to create distinct or blended auditory events. Using a sound-based analytical approach, I develop these descriptions of timbre and auditory scenes to interpret ways in which different timbre-spaces function. Through techniques such as timbral transformations, magical effects, and timbre and contour fusion, I examine the ways in which Ravel conjures sound objects in his music that are imaginary, transformative or illusory.

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Conference Registration

Register for the conference by filling out an online form.

CCM’s Music Theory and Musicology Society engages all interested members of the UC community to discuss issues relating to music theory and musicology. The MTMS regularly maintains forums for the purpose of discussing theoretical, historical and cultural topics in music. Past MTMS Conference programs are available online.

Please e­mail all inquiries to MTMS Executive Board Members Rebecca Schreiber, Jacy Pedersen, Hannah Blanchette and Kabelo Chirwa at ccm.mtms@gmail.com.

CCM Announces Kristy Swift as New Assistant Professor of Musicology

CCM Dean Stanley E. Romanstein has announced the addition of musicologist and organist Kristy Swift, PhD and DMA, to the college’s roster of distinguished faculty members. Swift’s appointment as Assistant Professor of Musicology – Educator begins on Aug. 15, 2020. A two-time alumna of CCM, Swift (DMA Organ, ’98; PhD Musicology, ’13) is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology – Educator.

Swift’s research interests include digital humanities, film music, historiography, identity and music, music history pedagogy, music of Cincinnati and opera. Her monograph Thinking About Music History: Textbooks and the Canon is forthcoming from Clemson University Press. She is a member of the CCM Cincinnati Sounds: Exploring a Musical City Through Digital Exhibits project team, which received the UC Strategic Collaborative Award.

Swift has presented her research at annual meetings of the American Musicological Society, Society for American Music, Music and the Moving Image and Music History Pedagogy Conferences. Her work has been published in the Journal of Music History Pedagogy, The Diapason and Music Research Forum. Swift has taught hybrid and traditional face-to-face courses in American opera, madness in opera, opera and disability, politics and opera, protest(ed) music, Copland, Handel, Verdi, Wagner, research and writing, and graduate and undergraduate music history surveys at CCM and at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

As soloist and accompanist, she has performed throughout the United States in venues ranging from local Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky sites to Carnegie Hall. She has also served as director of music and organist at churches in Ohio and Florida.

Swift earned a PhD in musicology and DMA in organ studying with Roberta Gary at CCM. She also received an MM in organ studying with William Bodine and BM in education from the University of Florida. She served on the organ committee at Newtown United Methodist Church in Cincinnati for the installation of the M. P. Rathke Opus 8 pipe organ.

“I am grateful to Musicology Search Committee Chair Jonathan Kregor and committee members Amy Beegle, Jenny Doctor, Scott Linford and Stephen Meyer for their collaborative effort on this successful search,” said Romanstein. “We look forward to welcoming Kristy Swift to her new position at CCM this fall.”

About CCM

Nationally ranked and internationally renowned, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) is a preeminent institution for the performing and media arts. The school’s educational roots date back to 1867, and a solid, visionary instruction has been at its core since that time.

CCM offers nine degree types (BA, BM, BFA, MFA, MM, MA, AD, DMA, PhD) in nearly 120 possible majors. The synergy created by housing CCM within a comprehensive public university gives the college its unique character and defines its objective: to educate and inspire the whole artist and scholar for positions on the world stage.

CCM’s world-class facilities provide a highly creative and multidisciplinary artistic environment. In 2017, the college completed a $15-million renovation of its major performance spaces, ensuring that CCM’s facilities remain state-of-the-art.

The school’s roster of eminent faculty regularly receives distinguished honors for creative and scholarly work, and its alumni have achieved notable success in the performing and media arts. Learn more at ccm.uc.edu

CCM Announces Megan Steigerwald Ille as New Assistant Professor of Musicology

CCM Dean Stanley E. Romanstein has announced the addition of musicologist Megan Steigerwald Ille, PhD, to the college’s roster of distinguished faculty members. Steigerwald Ille’s appointment as Assistant Professor of Musicology – Educator begins on Aug. 15, 2020.

Steigerwald Ille is a musicologist whose research and teaching considers the intersections of operatic, popular and digital cultures in the 21st century in the United States and Canada. Her book-in-progress, Opera for Everyone: Experimenting with American Opera in the Digital Age, explores changing modes of spectatorship and performer labor in contemporary opera in the US through an in-depth ethnographic study of the LA-based experimental opera company called The Industry.

She has articles forthcoming in the Journal of the Society of American Music and The Opera Quarterly. Since 2018 she has served as a Postdoctoral Fellow of Digital Cultures in the American Culture Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis.

Steigerwald Ille completed her PhD in Historical Musicology and a certificate in Ethnomusicology at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.

“I am grateful to Musicology Search Committee Chair Jonathan Kregor and committee members Amy Beegle, Jenny Doctor, Scott Linford and Stephen Meyer for their work finding CCM’s next great musicology professor,” said Romanstein. “We look forward to welcoming Megan Steigerwald Ille to the CCM family.”

About CCM

Nationally ranked and internationally renowned, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) is a preeminent institution for the performing and media arts. The school’s educational roots date back to 1867, and a solid, visionary instruction has been at its core since that time.

CCM offers nine degree types (BA, BM, BFA, MFA, MM, MA, AD, DMA, PhD) in nearly 120 possible majors. The synergy created by housing CCM within a comprehensive public university gives the college its unique character and defines its objective: to educate and inspire the whole artist and scholar for positions on the world stage.

CCM’s world-class facilities provide a highly creative and multidisciplinary artistic environment. In 2017, the college completed a $15-million renovation of its major performance spaces, ensuring that CCM’s facilities remain state-of-the-art.

The school’s roster of eminent faculty regularly receives distinguished honors for creative and scholarly work, and its alumni have achieved notable success in the performing and media arts. Learn more at ccm.uc.edu

CCM Announces Shelina Brown as New Assistant Professor of American Music

CCM Dean Stanley E. Romanstein has announced the addition of musicologist Shelina Brown to the college’s roster of distinguished faculty members. Brown’s appointment as Assistant Professor of American Music begins on Aug. 15, 2020.

Brown holds an MA and PhD from UCLA’s Department of Musicology. Her primary research project centers on experimental vocal practices and cultural resistance within underground music scenes. Brown’s dissertation project, “Yoko Ono’s Experimental Vocality as Matrixial Borderspace: Theorizing Yoko Ono’s Extended Vocal Technique and her Contributions to the Development of Underground and Popular Vocal Repertoires, 1968-Present,” focused on Yoko Ono’s extended vocal techniques of the late 1960s and early 1970s that came to influence a range of counter-hegemonic vocalists throughout the late 20th century.

Brown’s methodological approach draws upon contemporary feminist psychoanalytical theories, adapting these for the purpose of musical analysis of vocality and gendered subjectivization. In this vein, her theoretical approach to music studies aims to bring feminist psychoanalysis into dialogue with posthuman thought, queer studies and critical race theory.

A Canadian national raised in Kyoto, Japan, Brown also holds a Master’s in Comparative Literature specializing in modern Japanese literature. Prior to commencing studies in musicology, Shelina was employed as a sessional lecturer of modern Japanese literature at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Brown’s article “Scream from the Heart: Yoko Ono’s Rock ’n’ Roll Revolution” has been published in Sheila Whiteley’s compilation, Countercultures and Popular Music (Ashgate, 2014). She is currently preparing an article, “Of Insects and Interstices: Yoko Ono’s Experimental Short Film, Fly (1970) and the Synaesthetic Un-Mapping of the Abstract Female Nude,” which will be forthcoming in 2021. Brown has presented papers at annual meetings including SEM (Society for Ethnomusicology), IASPM (International Association for the Study of Popular Music), AAS (American Association for Asian Studies) and EMP (Experience Music Project).

A long-term participant in underground and independent music scenes, Brown has been active as a vocalist and instrumentalist in several new wave and garage rock bands over the past 10 years. She still maintains close ties to the Los Angeles underground, and looks forward to exploring music scenes across Ohio.

“I send my gratitude to our search committee comprised of Jonathan Kregor (chair), Stefan Fiol, Jeongwon Joe, Matthew Peattie and Shauna Steele for their work in finding CCM’s next great professor of American music,” said Romanstein. “We look forward to welcoming Shelina Brown this fall.”

About CCM

Nationally ranked and internationally renowned, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) is a preeminent institution for the performing and media arts. The school’s educational roots date back to 1867, and a solid, visionary instruction has been at its core since that time.

CCM offers nine degree types (BA, BM, BFA, MFA, MM, MA, AD, DMA, PhD) in nearly 120 possible majors. The synergy created by housing CCM within a comprehensive public university gives the college its unique character and defines its objective: to educate and inspire the whole artist and scholar for positions on the world stage.

CCM’s world-class facilities provide a highly creative and multidisciplinary artistic environment. In 2017, the college completed a $15-million renovation of its major performance spaces, ensuring that CCM’s facilities remain state-of-the-art.

The school’s roster of eminent faculty regularly receives distinguished honors for creative and scholarly work, and its alumni have achieved notable success in the performing and media arts. Learn more at ccm.uc.edu

CCM’s Thinking About Music Lecture Series Resumes on Friday, Jan. 26

Each semester, CCM welcomes distinguished experts for a series of free musical discussions and lectures. This spring, the Thinking About Music lecture series will present four free public talks, beginning with a presentation on cross-disciplinary  approaches to music and mobility by Harvard University Professor of Musicology Kate van Orden this Friday, Jan. 26.

Sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, these music theory and history discussions feature diverse topics presented by distinguished experts from all over the United States and are designed to engage participants’ imaginations and to consider music in new ways.

This semester’s lecturers also include Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music Professor Douglas Shadle (Feb. 9), Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Professor Kyle Adams (March 23) and Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University Professor Datta Ram Purohit (March 30).

Since its inception in 1997, the Thinking About Music Series has presented nearly 130 lectures and one symposium by guests from a number of different colleges, universities, schools of music, foundations, institutes, museums and publications.

The subjects of the lectures have covered historical musicology, music theory and ethnomusicology, along with the ancillary fields of organology, dance, music business and law, cognitive psychology, and the philosophy, theology and sociology of music.
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SPRING 2018 JOSEPH AND FRANCES JONES POETKER THINKING ABOUT MUSIC LECTURE SERIES

2:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 26
• The Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Thinking About Music Lecture Series •
SONGS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES: CROSS-DISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO MUSIC AND MOBILITY
Kate van Orden, Harvard University
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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2:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 9
• The Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Thinking About Music Lecture Series •
FINDING FLORENCE PRICE: ON ARCHIVES AND SPECTRAL LEGACIES
Douglas Shadle, Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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CANCELLED 2:30 p.m. Friday, March 2
• The Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Thinking About Music Lecture Series •
ANTHOLOGIZING ROCK AND ROLL: RHINO RECORDS AND THE REPACKAGING OF ROCK HISTORY
Daniel Goldmark, Case Western Reserve University
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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2:30 p.m. Friday, March 23
• The Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Thinking About Music Lecture Series •
HOW DID CHROMATICISM BECOME AN ‘-ISM’?
Kyle Adams, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music
Exploring theories of chromaticism from classical antiquity through the early eighteenth century.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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2:30 p.m. Friday, March 30
• The Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Thinking About Music Lecture Series •
FOLK MUSICIANS AND THE TRADITIONAL THEATER OF UTTARAKHAND, INDIA
Datta Ram Purohit, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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Event Information
Unless otherwise indicated, all Thinking About Music lectures take place in the Baur Room of CCM’s Corbett Center for the Performing Arts, which is located on the campus of the University of Cincinnati.

These events are free and open to the public. All event dates and programs are subject to change. Visit ccm.uc.edu for the most current event information.

Parking and Directions
Parking is available in the CCM Garage (located at the base of Corry Boulevard off Jefferson Avenue) and additional garages throughout the UC campus. Please visit uc.edu/parking for more information on parking rates.

For detailed maps and directions, please visit uc.edu/visitors. Additional parking is available off-campus at the U Square complex on Calhoun Street and other neighboring lots.

For directions to CCM Village, visit ccm.uc.edu/about/directions.
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CCM Season Presenting Sponsor: The Otto M. Budig Family Foundation

CCM’s Thinking About Music Series is sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, Ritter & Randolph, LLC, Corporate Counsel; along with support from Interim Dean mcclung’s Office, the Graduate Student Association and the Division of Composition, Musicology and Theory at CCM.

Apply Now to Study Musicology at CCM

Named “one of the continent’s major music schools” by the Toronto Star, CCM offers a comprehensive learning experience for students interested in pursuing careers in Musicology. Applications are now open to join CCM’s Fall 2018 class!

Musicology students at CCM work closely with internationally recognized musicology faculty. In addition, students engage with the rich and diverse CCM arts community, which includes composition, theory, performance, e-media, scenic design, dance and acting majors. Musicologists also pursue interdisciplinary research across campus.

CCM offers MM and PhD degrees, as well as a combined MM/PhD in Musicology. Graduate students are given ample opportunities to teach both lower and upper-level courses and develop pedagogical skills. Renowned scholars visit CCM regularly to teach, lecture and meet informally with students to discuss their research.

Students are eligible for generous four and six-year financial packages, and may receive summer support for comprehensive exam preparation. CCM also provides support opportunities for student research, conference attendance and dissertation completion.

Student Experience
CCM’s Musicology curriculum includes seminars in special topics, which reflect the research interests of faculty members. The Musicology Colloquium assists students in their professional development and offers students the opportunity to present their research and participate in scholarly discourse.

Founded in 1986, the Music Research Forum is a peer-reviewed journal edited and produced by CCM graduate students. In addition, CCM students organize and develop the biennial Music Theory and Musicology Society’s scholarly conference.

Applications and Additional Information
CCM is now accepting applications for Fall 2018. Learn more at ccm.uc.edu/apply.

For more information, please visit ccm.uc.edu/music/cmt or contact CCM Admissions at 513-556-9478 or email ccmadmis@uc.edu.

CCM’s Thinking About Music Lecture Series Resumes On Friday, Jan. 27

Each semester, CCM welcomes distinguished experts for a series of free Friday afternoon musical discussions. This spring, the Thinking About Music lecture series will present four free public talks, beginning with a presentation on Arnold Schoenberg and the 1913 Scandal Concert by Vanderbilt University Professor of Musicology Joy H. Calico on Friday, Jan. 27.

Schoenberg caricature originally published in ‘Die Zeit’ on April 6, 1913.

Sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, these music theory and history discussions feature diverse topics presented by distinguished experts from all over the United States and are designed to engage participants’ imaginations and to consider music in new ways.

This semester’s guest lecturers also include University of Kentucky Professor Donna Kwon (Feb. 10), Case Western Reserve University Professor Francesca Brittan (March 3) and Bowling Green State University Professor Per Broman (April 7). See the listings below for more information on this semester’s presentation topics.

Since its inception in 1997, the Thinking About Music Series has presented over 130 lectures and one symposium by guests from a number of different colleges, universities, schools of music, foundations, institutes, museums and publications.

The subjects of the lectures have covered historical musicology, music theory and ethnomusicology, along with the ancillary fields of organology, dance, music business and law, cognitive psychology, and the philosophy, theology and sociology of music.
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2017 SPRING JOSEPH AND FRANCES JONES POETKER THINKING ABOUT MUSIC LECTURE SERIES

2:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG AND THE 1913 SCANDAL CONCERT
Joy H. Calico, Vanderbilt University
On March 31 of 1913, Arnold Schoenberg conducted a concert in the Great Hall of Vienna’s Musikverein, which became known as the city’s most notorious scandal concert. The event was broken up by a melee, charges were filed and the subsequent court proceedings were reported in the press. This lecture analyzes the ways in which both the scandal and Schoenberg’s response to it sit at the nexus of fin-de-siècle anxieties about Central European concert life, the anti-noise movement and emerging copyright law.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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2:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10
STEPPING IN THE MADANG: SITE-SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE IN KOREAN DRUMMING AND DANCE
Donna Kwon, University of Kentucky
In Korean folk expressive culture, the outdoor village courtyard or madang is often conceived in opposition to the concert stage or mudae. In this presentation, Donna Kwon will discuss how the madang became central to the promotion of site-specific Korean drumming and dance. She will first discuss how this contributes to the expressive ecology of a place-based tradition in shamanist ritual forms of Korean drumming or p’ungmul. Then she will explore how the madang and site-specific performance concepts are applied by contemporary ch’angjak yeonhui groups. These groups consist of performers who are trained in Korean drumming and other traditional performing arts but who combine them into new works.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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2:30 p.m. Friday, March 3
ELECTRIC BATON: SOUND, SCIENCE AND THE BIRTH OF THE PODIUM CONDUCTOR
Francesca Brittan, Case Western Reserve University
Hector Berlioz, among the first of the modern conductors, was a larger-than-life figure, at once magisterial, quasi-magical and military. Among the formative moments of his conducting career was a concert given at the height of the Exposition universelle (Paris, 1855), which established him as a musical leader of formidable power. Here he relied on a new wedding of music and technology — an “electric baton” — to wield the massive forces under his command. This talk examines the nature of his device and, more broadly, the ways in which telegraphy and electricity (both artificial and nervous) emerged as central to romantic notions of conducting.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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2:30 p.m. Friday, Apr. 7
BERGMAN’S MUSIC(IANS): MIRROR AND MEANING
Per Broman, Bowling Green State University
Ingmar Bergman’s love of classical music, especially that of J.S. Bach, is well known and is exhibited frequently in his films. Many films also feature musicians. In this presentation, Broman will analyze the role of these characters — who they are, what they do, how they behave and what they talk about — and argue that they are essential for understanding Bergman’s aesthetics.
Location: Baur Room
Admission: FREE
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Event Information
Unless otherwise indicated, all Thinking About Music lectures take place on Fridays at 2:30 p.m. in the Baur Room of CCM’s Corbett Center for the Performing Arts, which is located on the campus of the University of Cincinnati.

These events are free and open to the public. All event dates and programs are subject to change. Visit ccm.uc.edu for the most current event information.

Parking and Directions
Parking is available in the CCM Garage (located at the base of Corry Boulevard off Jefferson Avenue) and additional garages throughout the UC campus. Please visit uc.edu/parking for more information on parking rates.

For detailed maps and directions, please visit uc.edu/visitors. Additional parking is available off-campus at the U Square complex on Calhoun Street and other neighboring lots.

For directions to CCM Village, visit ccm.uc.edu/about/directions.
___________________

CCM Season Presenting Sponsor and Musical Theatre Program Sponsor: The Otto M. Budig Family Foundation

CCM’s Thinking About Music Series is sponsored by the Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Fund of the Cambridge Charitable Foundation, Ritter & Randolph, LLC, Corporate Counsel; along with support from Interim Dean mcclung’s Office, the Graduate Student Association and the Division of Composition, Musicology and Theory at CCM.

 

 

CCM Welcomes Video Game Composer Chance Thomas for Public Lecture and Master Class on Feb. 18

CCM’s Division of Composition, Musicology and Theory hosts award winning video game composer, educator and entrepreneur Chance Thomas for a one-time-only event next week.

Thomas will present a public lecture on “Composing Music for Games: The Art, Tech and Commerce of Video Game Scoring” from 3:30 – 4:30 p.m., which will be followed by a master class from 4:30 – 6 p.m., on Wednesday, Feb. 18, in room 3240 of the Corbett Center for the Performing Arts. These events are free and open to the general public.

This special guest lecture will offer students an extraordinary opportunity to learn vital music design principles, revolutionary adaptive scoring techniques and powerful entrepreneurial strategies from one of the game industry’s most innovative and successful composers.

How does music change seamlessly to follow the action in popular online multiplayer video games like Defense of the Ancients 2? What is the single most powerful piece of technology available to video game composers today? What should every composer take into every single business pitch? Come and discover answers to all of these questions and many more as Thomas delves into the complex and fascinating world of music scoring for games!

CCM alumni are already making names for themselves in this dynamic field. After working on the major motion picture Star Trek: Into Darkness, alumnus Michael John Mollo (MM Composition, 2005) found himself working on his very first interactive score for a video game: Strider HD. Read more about his experiences in the video game industry here.

About Chance Thomas
Chance Thomas is an American composer, educator and entrepreneur. He helps students and professionals navigate the intersection of music scoring, technology and business.

His music has underscored blockbuster commercial success and critical acclaim, including an Oscar, an Emmy and billions of dollars in video game and film sales worldwide. Just last year, more than four million people bought Thomas’ original music score for Defense of the Ancients 2 (otherwise known as DOTA 2) as part of the T14 compendium.

Thomas’ top video game credits include DOTA 2, Lord of the Rings Online, James Cameron’s Avatar, Heroes of Might and Magic, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Peter Jackson’s King Kong and many more.

His music can be heard on hit television shows like Pawn Stars, The Bachelorette and America’s Most Wanted. His movie scores include an Academy Award-winner, Columbia Pictures’ delightful animated short film, The ChubbChubbs!

Thomas is a director of the Game Audio Network Guild and serves on several advisory boards. His business interests range across studios, publishing and audio services, successfully supporting an active composing career spanning more than 20 years.

For complete credits, awards and music samples, please visit www.chancethomas.com.

CCM Professor Jonathan Kregor Explores Program Music In New Book

CCM Associate Professor of Music Jonathan Kregor.

This spring, Cambridge University Press will publish Program Music, a new book by CCM Associate Professor of Music Jonathan Kregor. The book is the first English-language publication in over a generation to deal exclusively with program music, a repertoire frequently heard but only rarely written about.

Kregor explains, “As musicians and scholars, we want to know how, and to what extent, music has meaning. Historically, program music has offered answers, but while it is behind some of the most familiar repertoire of the classical music canon, its definition remains hazy and its practices are numerous.”

Program music was one of the most flexible and contentious novelties of the long 19th century, covering a diverse range that included the overtures of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, the literary music of Berlioz and Schumann, Liszt’s symphonic poems, the tone poems of Strauss and Sibelius, and compositions by groups of composers in Russia, Bohemia, the United States and France.

Kregor explores program music’s ideas and repertoire within the book, discussing both well-known and less familiar pieces by an array of 19th and 20th century composers. Setting program music in the context of the intellectual debates of the period, he presents the criticism of writers like A. B. Marx and Hanslick to reveal program music’s growth, dissemination, and reception.

“I wanted to try to present the various ways in which composers have created programmatic works, how audiences have responded to them, and how the debates about music and meaning that lie at the heart of program music continue to challenge us today,” Kregor says.

Designed to be an accessible introduction to the topic of program music, the book features numerous illustrations and music examples and provides detailed case studies of battle music, Shakespeare settings and Goethe’s Faust.

Learn more about Kregor’s Program Music by visiting www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/music/nineteenth-century-music/program-music.

About Jonathan Kregor
Jonathan Kregor, PhD, is a musicologist specializing in 19th century music. His research interests include aesthetics, Franz Liszt, musical reproduction, music and memory, virtuosity and gender, and art song.

He has published articles and reviews in The Journal of Musicology, The Musical Quarterly, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Journal of the American Liszt Society and Notes; and has given papers at numerous national and international conferences. He is a recipient of fellowships from the German Historical Institute and the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik.

Kregor is the author of Liszt as Transcriber (Cambridge University Press, 2010), which won the Alan Walker Book Award from the American Liszt Society, and the aforementioned Program Music (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He has edited volumes of C.P.E. Bach’s keyboard music (Packard Humanities Institute) and Clara Schumann’s unpublished arrangements for solo piano (A-R Editions), and has co-edited Liszt et le France. Since 2012 he has been editor of the Journal of the American Liszt Society.

CCM Faculty Honored During UC’s 2013 Faculty Award Ceremony

The University of Cincinnati has announced its 2013 All-University Faculty Award Winners and we are delighted to report that this year’s honorees include three CCM faculty members! Congratulations to Douglas Knehans, bruce d. mcclung and Miguel A. Roig-Francolí.

Learn more about their respective awards below: