FACULTY ALUMNI STUDENT FACULTY NEWS Justin Benavidez, Assistant Professor of Tuba and Euphonium, recently served as editor for Flow Studies For Tuba, a method book through Mountain Peak Music. This book is designed to help develop air flow efficiency by playing musical phrases in a wide array of ranges, keys, and rhythms. The etudes offer musical ways to cultivate the important technical skill of breath control, focusing on phrasing and technique through a week-long regimen of exercises. Benavidez was the 2019 recipient of the University of Michigan Paul Boylan Alumni Award in recognition of outstanding accomplishments and significant contributions in the field of music.
Justin Benavidez (right)
Wanda Brister, Associate Professor of Voice, won Album of the Year for the Song and Chamber Music categories from the Light Music Society of the United Kingdom for her album Cabaret Songs of Madeliene Dring. Brister is on the Board of Directors for the International Alliance for Women in Music and has recently published a comprehensive biography on British composer Madeleine Dring (University of Liverpool Press).
NEWS Michael Buchler, Professor of Music Theory, was elected to be the next President of the Society for Music Theory, the world’s largest organization dedicated to music theory scholarship, and will take office in November 2021. He delivered the keynote addresses at the 2019 Music Theory Midwest Conference in Cincinnati and at the 2020 University of Arizona Graduate Student Music Conference in Tucson. He also published an article in Music Theory Spectrum and a book chapter in The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy. Jane Piper Clendinning, Professor of Music Theory, presented “Physical Geography of Musical Instruments: Gesture, Embodiment, Musical Memory, and Music Theory” at Music and Spatiality: The 13th Biennial International Conference on Music Theory and Analysis, in Belgrade, Serbia, on October 5, 2019. Geoffrey Deibel, Assistant Professor of Saxophone, released his sixth studio recording, Soul Searching, with his saxophone quartet, h2. The recording features works by Georg Friedrich Haas, Kerrith Livengood, and h2’s own Jeffrey Loeffert. In addition to the recording, Diebel gave a recital with the h2 quartet at the 2019 Music For All National Conference in Indianapolis. David Detweiler, Assistant Professor of Jazz Saxophone, and bassist Fumi Tomita celebrated the 100th anniversary of jazz icon Charlie Parker with thoroughly Parker-ian flair and resourcefulness on Celebrating Bird: A Tribute to Charlie Parker, released in September 2020 on Next Level Records. On the album, Detweiler and Tomita present an inspired set of contrafacts—new melodies,
composed upon familiar chord changes—of tunes in Parker’s repertoire. Diana Dumlavwalla, Assistant Professor of Piano Pedagogy, was elected to serve as President-Elect for the Florida State Music Teachers Association (FSMTA). As an affiliate of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA), this state organization provides professional support for nearly 800 music teachers and their students. It is one of the largest state affiliates of MTNA in the nation. After her two-year term as President-Elect, Dumlavwalla will move on to serve as President of FSMTA for two years and then finally president of the FSMTA foundation to complete a six-year commitment. Sarah Eyerly, Associate Professor of Musicology, has been awarded the Lester J. Cappon Award by the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture for her co-authored article and digital project, “Singing Box 331: Re-Sounding Eighteenth-Century Mohican Hymns from the Moravian Archives” (The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 4 (October 2019). Eyerly has also recently published Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2020). The accompanying companion website for the book can be found at moraviansoundscapes.music.fsu.edu. Lori Gooding, Assistant Professor of Music Therapy, has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship. She will partner with Universiti
2020 College of Music Alumni Magazine
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