Category: In the News

The Harvard Gazette: “Instruments of Change”

Several members from the Department of Music, including Professor Charrise Barron and Devon Gates (’23), recently sat down with Dylan Goodman from The Harvard Gazette to discuss their experiences as women in music. Excerpt: When she is not singing or playing the keys, Barron is researching and teaching courses surrounding ethnomusicology — the study of…

The Washington Post: “Vijay Iyer Wants to be Heard Loud and Clear”

Professor Vijay Iyer was recently interviewed by The Washington Post, where he discussed his latest release with collaborators Linda May Han Oh and Tyshawn Sorey, “Compassion”. EXCERPT— As enchanted staircases go, the entry to the Village Vanguard is tough to beat. Duck down the steps and you’re walking into one of the most storied rooms in American…

Professor Vijay Iyer reflects on his Grammy-nominated trio’s ‘mystical’ start

“It was like the music came from nowhere and revealed itself to us” Earlier this month, Professor Vijay Iyer was interviewed by the Harvard Gazette regarding his GRAMMY-nominated album Love in Exile. Vijay Iyer remembers the moment when his trio’s Grammy-nominated song was born in a New York recording studio. It started as a repeating…

The Fromm Music Foundation Announces 2023 Commission Recipients, Prize Winners, and Project Grant Recipients

The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University is pleased to announce the 2023 commission and project grant recipients. Each year, the Fromm Music Foundation accepts applications for commissions of new music, and awards commissions to fourteen American composers. The Fromm Music Foundation commissions represent one of the ways that the foundation strives to support the…

Professor Alejandro L. Madrid receives Humboldt Research Award

Alejandro L. Madrid, the Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music, has been awarded a Humboldt Research Award honoring his research and academic achievement. Professor Madrid is only the fifth musicologist to receive this award. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation grants Humboldt Research Awards to internationally recognized researchers of all disciplines in recognition of their academic…

Elaine Fitz Gibbon: Music as Theater

How avant-garde performance redefines music’s possibilities Music Department graduate student Elaine Fitz Gibbon was recently featured on the Harvard Griffin GSAS website for her research on experimental music theater composition and performance. What the practitioners of [Musiktheater] began to argue is that the rituals of concert music are socially constructed. They . . . allow…

Fifteen Questions: Vijay Iyer on Cognition, Temporality, and Musical Community

Professional musician and Harvard professor of the arts Vijay Iyer recently sat down with Fifteen Minutes to chat about his career, his teaching philosophy, and the neuroscience of music. Excerpt: Iyer: “I’ve been very fortunate to, for the last 30-something years, to have been mentored by really visionary and generous Black musicians. And prior to that…

Clayton Stephenson Wins Grand Prize of Inaugural Nina Simone Piano Competition

The Harvard Music Department is thrilled to announce that pianist and recent Harvard/NEC dual-degree graduate Clayton Stephenson ’23, won the Grand Prize of the inaugural Nina Simone Piano Competition in Cincinnati, Ohio, after a masterful final-round performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor. The 23-year-old virtuoso competed with two other talented pianists in the finals, performing…