Through My Ears Podcast

Through My Ears

Department of Music launches new podcast focused on work of professors

The UC Santa Barbara Department of Music launched its firstever podcast, Through My Ears, in April 2020. With the podcast, graduate students are given the opportunity to sit down with their professors and ask them questions about their background, expertise, and current work in the field of music. The aim of this podcast is to highlight the diverse range of musical thought within the department, and bring awareness to its many programs. Ethnomusicology, theory, performance, and more are discussed, as listeners uncover the different motivations, aspirations, and values their teachers hold with regards to music.

The first episode stars the Chair of the Department of Music, Robert Koenig, and is hosted by Eugenia Siegel Conte, a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology. They discuss Robert’s childhood in the “cold, harsh winters” of Saskatchewan, Canada, recording at the famous Skywalker Sound studio in Marin County, and what surprises him most working as a collaborative pianist.

Derek Katz, Associate Professor of Musicology, is the guest speaker in the second episode, hosted by Timothy Bausch, a PhD candidate in Theory. They discuss how the field of musicology is changing, advocacy and public engagement, and Katz’s current research on Ellen Stone, the first female to ever be included in a brass section of a symphonic body not composed exclusively of women. As Katz puts it, “…having a 20-year-old woman playing a brass instrument at the front of a section in a major symphony orchestra… was literally national news.”

Derek Katz

Bausch also hosts the third episode, which features Associate Professor of Musicology Stefanie Tcharos. They discuss her teaching philosophy, how music plays a role in what precedes historical transformations, and her taste in modern music, including how she’s been “totally obsessed with Lizzo.”

Stefanie Tcharos

Through My Ears is produced by Connor Long, Operations Manager and Technical Specialist, and the Department of Music. Intro and outro music was recorded at the Kerr Hall Sound Studio, performed by music major Kaitlin Webster-Zuber.

Listen now on Spotify (open.spotify.com/show/3i6C5a4x4S4BFemOJnzMbc), Anchor (anchor.fm/ucsb-music), and Apple Podcasts (podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/through-my-ears/id1500319911?uo=4). More episodes will be released later this academic year.

Connor Long