When Joy Yamaguchi graduates from the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Music next week with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree (violin performance + Music Theory Certificate), the work she started here will continue well beyond her official stint as a student.

“I’m looking forward to further developing the projects I started through my research here at ���������� Boulder,” says Yamaguchi. “Completing this degree has helped me realize my strength and solidify my focus as a multifaceted artist.”

Yamaguchi came to ���������� Boulder as a doctoral student with credentials as an accomplished teacher, performer and entrepreneur. She started playing violin at age 8 (she describes her musical roots as being a “Suzuki violin kid”), and went on to earn a bachelor’s in music from the University of Minnesota and a master’s from Florida State University.

Our College of Music offered Yamaguchi opportunities to expand her already refined approach as a musician, educator and artist. Thanks in part to the mentorship of top-notch faculty and the availability of top-tier academic resources, Yamaguchi has deepened her connection to music—and to the history of the art form.

Her time at ���������� Boulder saw Yamaguchi researching and creating a new edition of two violin sonatas by Nobu Kōda, a Japanese composer of the Meiji era whose works were historically excluded from the classical canon, due in part to the fact that she was a woman. 

The DMA program also offered Yamaguchi the chance to create a new curriculum for beginning string students. This curriculum, which focuses on teaching music theory through composition and improvisation, wasn’t just theoretical: Yamaguchi had the chance to put the system into practice with students at El Sistema Colorado.

In addition, Yamaguchi—who’s also the inaugural recipient of the András Szentkirályi Memorial Scholarship—found opportunities to present her research, insights and innovations to an audience beyond our campus. In 2023, she presented during the National American String Teachers Association’s annual conference, specifically detailing research that drew connections between bell hooks’ pedagogical framework and music education.

All of these accomplishments align with the mission that Yamaguchi had in mind when she decided to pursue her doctoral work at ���������� Boulder. “I was looking for a program that would allow me to gain hands-on teaching experience and explore my interdisciplinary research interests,” she says.

“I was very fortunate to have a graduate teaching assistantship throughout my degree,” she adds, explaining that the assistantship allowed her to interact firsthand with students, and to learn the ins and outs of the academic world. “I taught lessons to undergraduate and graduate students, assisted with music theory courses and grew my understanding of the inner workings of academia.”

All of this valuable experience is set to pay off in very practical ways. This spring, for example, Yamaguchi will head directly from Boulder to Wisconsin where she’ll manage this year’s Blackbird Creative Lab, a prestigious musical immersion event hosted by Grammy Award-winning musicians—surely only the first of many ways that she’ll carry what she learned at our College of Music into the wider world.

“The DMA challenged me in ways that were expected and unexpected,” she concludes. “Throughout, I’ve been very grateful for the community of teachers and colleagues who have supported me. The relationships I’ve formed at ���������� will continue.”

Congratulations, Joy—and to all our fantastic 2024 graduates!

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Photo credit: Rosen-Jones Photography

The University of Colorado Boulder College of Music is thrilled to announce that Assistant Professor of Music Theory Leah Frederick will join the College of Music this fall.

“Although we’re sad that Steve Bruns is retiring, we’re very excited to have Leah Frederick join the music theory area,” says Professor of Music Theory Keith Waters, who chaired the search committee. “Leah has taught in some of the highest-ranking music programs including those at Indiana University, Oberlin College and Conservatory and—most recently—the University of Michigan.” 

At Oberlin, Frederick was involved in the redesign and launch of its new undergraduate music theory curriculum. While at Indiana University, she served as editor of the Indiana Theory Review and was awarded the Wennerstrom AI Fellowship for outstanding teaching.

Continues Waters, “Along with tremendous teaching expertise, she’s a practicing violist and a rising star in the music theory world. She will be a tremendous asset across the College of Music—including our Master of Music program in music theory where our graduates have gone on to join the faculties and teach at the Eastman School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music, Harvard University, Wake Forest University and elsewhere.”

“I’m delighted to join the theory faculty at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Music,” says Frederick, who specializes in mathematical approaches to music theory.

“One of the reasons that I was drawn to the field of music theory is the fact that it offers us so many different ways to think about and engage with music. I believe that music is an ideal medium through which students can embrace curiosity and learn to effectively communicate their own perspectives and ideas—skills that are essential to the College of Music’s mission to develop universal musicians.

“I look forward to growing with and learning from the ���������� Boulder College of Music community in pursuit of this goal.”

Frederick earned a PhD in music theory from Indiana University as well as a BS in mathematics and a BMA in viola performance from Pennsylvania State University. Her scholarship examines ways in which musical objects can be represented with mathematical structures—particularly the interpretive nature of this mapping. Her current project uses transformational theory to study relationships between patterns in instrumental spaces (i.e., the layout of notes on an instrument) and the corresponding pitch relationships they produce.

Frederick’s recently published work employs geometric and transformational techniques to examine the properties of diatonic versus chromatic musical space. Her writing on voice leading in mod-7 space appears in the Journal of Music Theory and Music Theory Spectrum; her dissertation on this topic was awarded the Society for Music Theory’s 2020 SMT-40 Dissertation Fellowship and Indiana University’s 2018-20 Dean’s Dissertation Prize. A related conference paper received Music Theory Midwest’s 2018 Arthur J. Komar Award.

Frederick currently serves as co-chair of the Society for Music Theory’s Mathematics of Music Interest Group, on the Executive Board for the Society for Mathematics and Computation in Music and on the Editorial Board for Music Theory Online. 

Welcome!

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“I was so taken by the harmonies and I started looking at scores. I didn’t realize then that my career would become centered on Fauré.”

Pursuing a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, Caballero’s graduate dissertation was on Fauré. From there, his love and admiration for the Frenchman’s music continued to grow. He’s since written books about Fauré and edited critical editions of the composer’s two piano quintets for “The Complete Works of Gabriel Fauré.” Yes, he’s also published studies on ballet music of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, and social continuities in French music from the 18^th to the 20^th centuries. But one composer remains close to his heart and his academic pursuits. Particularly these days. ​

This year marks a milestone for Caballero who—along with his academic partner Stephen Rumph, professor of music history at the University of Washington—will co-host the in Boulder, Feb. 27-March 3. comprising this major, global gathering of ���������� Boulder faculty and student musicians alongside panelists from France, Canada, Israel, Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States are free and open to the public although  is appreciated from those who plan to attend the conference. 

Before enumerating the impressive number of papers to be presented, concerts to be held and new works to be premiered, Caballero shares how the whole project began. “I visited Stephen in Seattle in the summer of 2021,” he recalls. The two men had worked together previously, co-editing “Fauré Studies” for Cambridge University Press. “We were strolling on the beach—talking about how 2024 was the 100^th anniversary of Fauré’s death—and Stephen said, ‘Why don’t we do a festival?’ That’s how it all started.” 

In retrospect, Caballero points out, Rumph’s casual suggestion proved advantageous. Getting the ball rolling, and planning and sending out all the invitations and calls for papers so early, resulted in strong interest and a healthy number of acceptances.

There was much to do in the months that followed: Grants to write and submit, campus facilities to secure and—here’s a surprise—composers to commission. “The [including on Feb. 27] will offer a kaleidoscopic experience, not just a look back,” Caballero explains. In addition to chamber music by Fauré in diverse instrumentations, the festival will feature works by his contemporaries—like Maurice Ravel, Mel Bonis and Cécile Chaminade—as well as nine new commissions by both professional composers and students.

“It was Stephen’s idea to connect these new works to the legacy of Fauré, but in the composers’ own style,” says Caballero, who further notes that will be presented as part of the festival, including one of his own—“The Smith’s Harmonic Forge: Voice-Leading in the First Movement of Fauré’s Second Piano Quartet.” 

Caballero is optimistic that the Fauré Centennial ​Festival will continue to raise appreciation of Fauré’s music. For him, the attraction is singular: “My academic career is fueled by the beauty of his music.” 

The Fauré Centennial ​Festival—held on campus at the Imig Music Building and Macky Auditorium, and at Boulder’s First Congregational Church—is supported by the Dr. C. W. Bixler Family Foundation, the ���������� Boulder College of Music, the Center for Humanities & the Arts and the Research & Innovation Office. 

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Photo: Bruns and Crumb at a recording session of “Metamorphoses, Book II” at Swarthmore College in 2021.

Writing music can be a lonely occupation—very private, very demanding. So it’s no surprise that most composers come across as intimidating individuals. Not so with an affable gentleman like George Crumb, although you’d never expect it from listening to his complex, often transcendent music.

“My mom connected with him,” recalls ���������� Boulder College of Music Associate Professor of Music Theory Steven Bruns, who will retire in May. “She always said George seemed like a nice fellow from down the street.” Anyone who spent some time with the late composer (including this writer) walked away amazed at how instantly likable he was. Yet, as Bruns is well aware, when Crumb died on Feb. 6, 2022, at age 92, the world lost one of its most brilliant and influential music makers.

Bruns and Crumb each served as faculty members at the College of Music—Crumb, from 1959 to 1964 and Bruns from 1987 to his pending retirement. But they shared more than that: A close, long-lasting professional relationship and a deep friendship that began in 1992. “I first met George in Prague, where I was lecturing on his music at a week-long Crumb Festival,” Bruns recounts, “I wrote my dissertation on Mahler and later published an article that traced the many connections between his music and Crumb’s. George wrote to express his delight with my perspective.

“That whole experience changed my life. I continued to write about Crumb’s music and eventually became his archivist.”

In fact, the professor’s work continued to involve more than organizing Crumb’s papers and manuscripts. “I’ve had access to an amazing amount of material,” Bruns says. “I was able to scan so much—his sketches, his letters, photographs, almost everything.” He’s still working on this massive project and there’s more: Bridge Records, the label run by Crumb’s devoted friends David and Becky Starobin, recently released —Bruns was a key participant, attending recording sessions and writing liner notes. 

You’d think that digging through Crumb’s library of papers and collaborating with the Starobins on the Bridge recordings would keep the professor busy enough in his upcoming retirement. Well, guess again. Bruns has also been involved in a film project about the late composer.

“The film is built around a concert that was held in May 2022 of Crumb’s ‘Ancient Voices of Children’ [1970], three months after George died,” explains Bruns. Among the performers at this program by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York were soprano Tony Arnold, pianist Gilbert Kalish and percussionist Daniel Druckman. “That performance is the point of departure for a one-hour documentary that will include various interviews,” adds Bruns. “I’m one of the talking heads.” Directed by Tristan Cook, “” will have its world premiere at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, in late March.

The point of the film—and the theme of his continuing post-academic labors on behalf of the late composer—is simple: “I want to tell people who he was, to keep his music alive.”

That goal may sound puzzling, knowing how brilliant a composer Crumb was, knowing the praise his works consistently received, the well-attended performances in concert halls around the world and the awards he won—the Pulitzer Prize in 1968 and a Grammy in 2001, among many other honors. But that’s no guarantee of a permanent place in the consciousness of a fickle public. 

“George was extremely self-critical and very humble. He never engaged in catty talk about his composer colleagues,” adds Bruns. In other words, he kept a low profile and was hardly the self-marketing sort. So, what does the future hold for his music now that he’s gone? Where does one look for Crumb’s works and what role will Bruns play in that search?

“I’ll do all I can to invite new listeners into the sound world of George Crumb,” Bruns replies. He’s working on a book about the composer, hoping to educate a wider audience about the impact of the man’s music. Meanwhile, the collected compositions are not gathering dust, he reports. “There are at least a half-dozen works that are solidly in the repertoire. In addition to regular concert performances, there are multiple recordings of nearly every composition. For example, more than 20 pianists have released recordings of ‘Makrokosmos, Volumes I & II’ [1972 and 1973]. A good starter piece is ‘Vox Balaenae’ [‘Voice of the Whale’], Crumb’s dream-like trio for flute, cello and piano.” 

Those who experience Crumb’s music are in for an amazing surprise, Bruns promises. “Every piece creates a powerful connection with an audience.”

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Not one to mince words, College of Music alumnus gets right to the point: “I want music to have a purpose,” he says. But finding his purpose didn’t come right away. 

Fixmer earned a bachelor’s degree in music education in 2010 and went straight into teaching. Which was fine. Still, he admits, “I’d been composing my whole life. I was always noodling on some sort of piece.

“Five years ago, my mom showed my wife [alumna Sarah Off] and me a song I’d written many years ago. I guess I’ve always been a composer.”

But first things first: With an undergrad diploma from ���������� Boulder in hand, he spent a decade teaching in small Colorado towns such as Hotchkiss and Rifle, also serving as a counselor at the YMCA of the Rockies. Along the way, he earned a master’s in music education from Indiana University. Truth be told, Fixmer got his biggest kick out of time spent in Hotchkiss, population 875.

“I put together a little 8^th-grade jazz band,” he reminisces, somehow managing to keep a straight face as he listed the instrumentation: “We had two tubas, a bass clarinet and drums. I played piano and there were some other instruments. But the best part was, they played my compositions.”

Are we starting to see a pattern here? Fixmer, 35, recalls that, yes, while pursuing his degree at our College of Music, he studied composition and theory with noted Professor of Composition Carter Pann. Even as he pursued his graduate degree in music education and found work in the classroom, life as a composer continued to beckon. “I was always going through textbooks on composing,” says Fixmer, exemplifying the college’s universal musician mission. “I wanted to expand my vocabulary.”

And so it came to pass, in a big and meaningful way. Fixmer not only found life as a composer, but he found a way of writing music with a purpose. “I’m not sure I’d ever want to write a piece of absolute music,” he admits, referring to a composition that is simply a collection of melodies with no storyline or subtext. Instead, Fixmer creates for a reason.

Consider his Violin Concerto, premiered by the Greeley Philharmonic in September 2022—in partnership with the Greeley Family House and other homelessness assistance organizations to increase support for the unhoused. This work has such an extraordinary backstory that it deserves a movie treatment. Off performed the premiere on an instrument once owned by Terri Sternberg—an accomplished musician who had fallen on hard times, became homeless and died in 2013. Learning her story propelled Fixmer to create a heartfelt concerto that generated critical raves, a radio broadcast on and eventually helped bring attention to the cause of homelessness as far away as London and Paris.  

His deep concern about people goes beyond writing a thoughtful piece of music, he stresses. “In Greeley, I’m on a homelessness task force. That’s part of my desire in identifying topics to write about—ones that focus on human connections.” 

Those connections now include some of Fixmer’s neighbors in Northern Colorado. Recently, another of his orchestral works was premiered by the Greeley Philharmonic where he now serves as composer-in-residence and where he’s created an impactful education outreach program. His “”—commissioned by the Greeley Philharmonic and the Weld Community Foundation—was unveiled in October at the Union Colony Civic Center. “It’s for the people of Weld County,” he says, “to describe the experience of living here, of what brings people to this county.”

There’s not enough space to cover all that the JW Pepper Editor’s Choice Award recipient has to offer. No space to discuss his children’s Spanish-language opera, “Clara y los Cuarto Caminos” (“Clara and the Four Ways”). Nor to get around to his side career in a guitar-fiddle duo with his wife, appearing at folk festivals playing bluegrass and traditional foot-tapping Irish tunes. No time to write about a commissioned work aimed at increasing interest in mental illness. 

Once again, Fixmer—with recent commissions and premieres under his belt from UC Health, Opera Guanajuato and the Crested Butte Music Festival, among others—doesn’t mince words. “I don’t want to be typecast,” he says.

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In a collaboration among the ���������� Boulder College of Music and Program in Jewish Studies—as well as the Boulder Jewish Film Festival, Boulder Jewish Community Center and Congregation Har HaShem—renowned klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and celebrated silent film pianist Donald Sosin will present a “cine-concert” as part of a three-day residency, Nov. 7-9. 

A “cine-concert” is a unique experience where a silent film comes to life with live music, all composed and performed by Svigals and Sosin. —“The Man Without A World”—will be held Thursday, Nov. 9, at 6:30 p.m. at the Dairy Arts Center. 

The residency includes two additional public events:

• Tuesday, Nov. 7, 7:30 p.m.: Community klezmer workshop with Svigals at Congregation Har HaShem.
• Wednesday, Nov. 8, 7:30 p.m.: will present Svigals and Sosin on a program including two of Svigals’ works arranged by composition alumnus Max Wolpert, and featuring an ensemble of ���������� Boulder string players directed by graduate student Enion Pelta-Tiller … and more.

As part of their residency, Svigals and Sosin will further present lectures, demonstrations and workshops for our string studios and composition seminar, and the Music in Jewish Cultures and Musical Styles & Ideas courses.

Svigals is returning to Boulder following several previous visits, including a 2017 screening of the silent film “The Yellow Ticket” with live music composed and performed by herself and pianist Marily Lerner; and the 2019 Archive Transformed residency, which included performances with Associate Professor of Music Theory Yonatan Malin and jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer, led by the late Professor of History and Jewish Studies David Shneer.

Violinist/composer Svigals is the world’s leading klezmer fiddler and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics. She has performed with and written for violinist Itzhak Perlman and has worked with the Kronos Quartet, playwrights Tony Kushner and Eve Ensler, poet Allen Ginsburg, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Debbie Friedman and Chava Albershteyn. Her newest CD—“Beregovski Suite: Klezmer Reimagined” with jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer—is an original take on long-lost Jewish music from Ukraine.

Pianist/composer Sosin received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Denver Silent Film Festival and the Best Original Film Score award from the 2022 Mystic Film Festival. He has performed his scores for silent films—often with his wife, singer/percussionist Joanna Seaton—at Lincoln Center, MoMA, BAM and the National Gallery; and at major film festivals in New York, San Francisco, Telluride, Hollywood, Yorkshire, Pordenone, Bologna, Shanghai, Bangkok, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow and Jecheon, South Korea … as well as many college campuses. Sosin has worked with Alexander Payne, Isabella Rossellini, Dick Hyman, Jonathan Tunick, Comden and Green, Martin Charnin, Mitch Leigh and Cy Coleman, and has played for Mikhael Baryshnikov, Mary Travers, Marni Nixon, Howie Mandel, Geula Gill and others. 

Supported by the Roser Visiting Artist Program and the Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts.

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College of Music Professor of Music Theory Daphne Leong.

We all know about rhythm in music: Just count to four. Accent the second and fourth beats, bob your head in time and shake those shoulders. If it’s in three beats, start waltzing. Simple, right? Well, guess again. Do you know about asymmetrical meters, ametric music, polymeter, metric modulation, timeline notation and feathered notes?

When it comes to 20^th- and 21^st-century music, Professor of Music Theory Daphne Leong—along with her colleagues in the world of rhythm in music performance and scholarship—engages in intense research and endless experimentation which brought her to Montreal’s McGill University for a recent residency. In the midst of it, she served as director of a three-day conference in September, “.”

Leong introduces Miles Okazaki—guitarist and composer, Princeton University—at last month’s “Rhythm in Music since 1900” conference, Schulich School of Music, McGill University.

“It was all about rhythm in concept and practice,” says Leong. “We brought in performers from different genres—jazz, rock, shakuhachi (a traditional Japanese flute). We had a fantastic lecture-recital on how to understand and perform rhythm in Iannis Xenakis’ music. It was a collaboration among performance, scholarship and pedagogy.” While at McGill, she held the title of Distinguished Visiting Professor and Schulich Dean’s Chair in Music. Leong has served on our faculty at the ���������� Boulder College of Music since 2000. 

McGill percussionists perform Xenakis’ “Peaux.”

A native of Saskatchewan, where she earned an undergraduate degree in piano performance, Leong continued her studies at the Eastman School of Music before arriving in Boulder. Growing up in Canada proved helpful, incidentally, since the start of her McGill residency in January kicked off with record snowfall. No biggie for her.

Good thing she was able to get around in all that nasty weather, since Leong says she was kept very busy in Montreal. Besides planning and directing all the activities of the heavily attended international conference, she also managed to teach a graduate seminar and collaborate with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT), a hi-tech facility located on the McGill campus. “I designed a pilot experiment for them that involves performers,” she says. 

Leong shares about the wide-ranging subject covered in the September conference at McGill, beginning by voicing a seemingly simple question: “How do we understand rhythm?” She follows up her question with another: “Do we play rhythm exactly as written?” Of course, there’s more to it than that. “All composers are open to interpretation,” she reminds us, also referencing some of the rhythmically inventive “old-school” composers of the last century: György Ligeti, Conlon Nancarrow, Steve Reich and others. She further mentions the new generation of music makers of the current century—ones who are moving beyond the boundaries pushed by those earlier pioneers—, giving special attention to fellow Saskatchewanian Nicole Lizée, a featured participant in the McGill conference.

Now back in Boulder, Leong isn’t done traveling. In early December, she’s off to California to join Takács Quartet members in a Bartók symposium, presented in conjunction with the quartet’s complete Bartók series at San Jose State. “This won’t be held just with academics in attendance,” she stresses. “Members of the public will be there, too, providing their impressions.”

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“I’ve been involved in the AMRC for as long as I’ve been at the College of Music,” Okigbo says. In the past—as an AMRC Faculty Affiliate and Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) on the AMRC’s Soundscapes of the People grant—he has participated in outreach activities and research opportunities, and he continues to serve on the AMRC Advisory Board as well as the editorial committee for the AMRC journal, Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal.

This year, Okigbo has stepped in to lead the AMRC’s events and research projects while is underway. Susan Thomas, the AMRC’s former director, is now with the Butler School of Music in Austin, Texas; she continues her involvement in the Soundscapes of the People project as a faculty affiliate.

“My goal at this point in time is to make sure that the center maintains the things we are doing,” Okigbo says. “I want to make sure the programming that we have in place is well executed.” 

Coming up in October, the AMRC will host a pair of concerts titled “Song of Pueblo.” These concerts highlight the AMRC’s Soundscapes of the People study that’s documenting the history of Pueblo, Colorado, by researching its musical past and collecting oral testimonies.

Check out the full story.

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Planning for such an intense on-the-road course began “a few years ago,” says Shay. “Before we left, we had three class sessions, sort of as a crash course. I wanted to get the basics in place.” Once in Vienna, everything changed. “By actually being there, you’re seeing these things we’re talking about,” Shay adds. “There’s an immediacy. I can see how rapidly students can internalize information.”

Since nine of the 10 young travelers had never visited Europe, one wondered about the impact of visiting the great Austrian city. “We talked as a group afterward,” recalls Shay, “and I got a general sense of their response to the trip—I think I whetted their appetite for more learning and for more travel.”

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Congratulations to —the College of Music’s Outstanding Graduating Senior this spring—who will graduate with a BM in classical guitar performance, a BA in journalism, and a business minor with a Music Entrepreneurship Certificate and a Music Theory Certificate, exemplifying the College of Music’s universal musician mission. Each semester, outstanding students are selected based on academic merit, a strong record of musicianship, and a record of service and leadership. As part of this award, Fincher will be recognized and deliver a speech at the College of Music commencement ceremony on May 11.

“I’m so grateful and honored to have been selected for this award,” says Fincher. “I’ve had such an incredible experience here at the College of Music over the past five years and it means so much to receive this recognition at graduation.” 

Fincher has also been named Outstanding Graduate of the ���������� Boulder College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI). 

As a student, Fincher was involved with several student groups, including as a writer and editor at the , and as a member of the College of Music’s Diverse Musicians’ Alliance (DiMA).

“DiMA has been one of my favorite experiences over the past five years,” says Fincher. “It’s been wonderful to be part of such a supportive, diverse community. I’m Japanese-American and a really important part of my identity is advocating for marginalized, BIPOC composers and musicians—that’s something I’m really passionate about.”

Fincher also notes DiMA’s Persevering Legacy project as being particularly inspiring. The project elevates the stories of women composers, aligning classical music with social activism. “The Persevering Legacy events had a really big impact on me, inspiring me to seek out diverse composers and champion their works which has become a really important mission for me as a musician,” she shares. 

“For my senior recital, I’m programming three female composers—that’s more than half of my program and that’s something I know I wouldn’t have been aware of or really advocated for unless I’d been a part of DiMA.” 

Fincher felt especially supported and inspired by faculty from across campus—taking classes at the College of Music, CMCI and the Leeds School of Business. 

“I’m grateful to all the wonderful faculty members I’ve studied with during my time at ���������� Boulder,” she says. “In particular, I wanted to thank my thesis advisor, Professor Chang, for all of his support this past year, Professor Nytch with the Entrepreneurship Center for Music [ECM]—and all of those incredible entrepreneurship opportunities—and my guitar teacher Professor Spera, of course. He’s been so encouraging over the past five years, it’s been incredible.”

To incoming freshmen, Fincher says she highly recommends the Music Entrepreneurship Certificate. “The College of Music is such a wonderful resource and we learn so much about music here,” she says. “The ECM adds to that by offering important practical skills that we’ll need in the real world beyond the classroom.”

After graduation, Fincher is headed to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she’ll pursue a master’s degree in classical guitar performance under René Izquierdo. “He’s a legend in the guitar world, so I’m really looking forward to studying with him,” she says.

Congratulations to Fincher and all of the College of Music’s 2022-23 outstanding students, selected by faculty vote:

Outstanding Graduating Senior—Izzy Fincher, classical guitar performance
Outstanding Junior—Ben Golden, music education—instrumental (trumpet)
Outstanding Sophomore—Anna Kallinikos, trumpet performance
Outstanding Freshman—Chloe Ehrmantraut, viola performance

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