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Brass + percussion
Ryan Gardner
Professor of Trumpet
Gardner was elected vice president/president-elect of the International Trumpet Guild (ITG). An active member of the organization, he presented and performed in the 2020 and 2021 conferences. Gardner is published in both the National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors and ITG journals, and also presented for the Jazz Trumpet Festival in Brazil. His performance schedule includes national solo performances, recording projects and performances with the Colorado Symphony and the Colorado Music Festival.
Posted 2023
Michael Thornton
Professor of Horn
Thornton holds principal horn appointments with both the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Colorado Symphony. His accomplishments as an orchestral performer include regular guest performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Toronto Symphony and many others. Additionally, he has two solo recordings and over 20 orchestral recordings, and he has done studio sessions in Los Angeles. Thornton spends summers performing and teaching at the Colorado College Summer Music Festival and Boston University Tanglewood Institute.
Posted 2023
Composition
Carter Pann
Professor of Music Composition
Pann released a new live recording (Soundset Recordings) on Spotify, iTunes and Apple Music—featuring the University of Colorado Boulder and Arizona State University Symphony orchestras—titled “The Narrows” (Soprano Saxophone Concerto, The Dutch Stonewall, Second Symphony, The Narrows). Performers include Chris Creviston, sax soloist; Alexandra Nguyen and Margaret McDonald, piano soloists; and Gary Lewis and Jeffery Meyer, conductors.
Posted 2023
Pann’s new album—“New Stories” (2023)—features a compilation of composers who studied at the University of Michigan and who’ve worked with Joseph Lulloff, professor of saxophone at the Michigan State University College of Music. Pann’s 25-minute Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano is the album’s largest work, juxtaposing Romantic and modern idioms, and Renaissance and Baroque forms.
Posted 2023
Annika Socolofsky
Assistant Professor of Composition
In July 2023, Socolofsky's choral and percussion work "dust to dusk" was released on TorQ Percussion Quartet and the Elora Singer's new album "To the Ground from the Sky" on RedShift Records, Vancouver. The album features all new commissions by Carmen Braden, Melody McKiver, and Paul Frehner. In June 2023, Socolofsky released her debut solo record "Don't say a word" on New Amsterdam Records, New York City. The album features her original compositions, feminist rager-lullabies for the new queer era, with herself as vocalist and accompanied by international new music ensemble Latitude 49.
Posted 2023
In October 2022, Socolofsky and Nico Muhly released a new album of vocal works “Hymns for Private Use” for Shara Nova and Akropolis Reed Quintet on Bright Shiny Things Records, New York City. On Socolofsky’s composition, "so much more," Akropolis is joined by seven small business owners from four states whose personal stories of community and sacrifice are woven together on a spoken word track, sourced from over seven hours of interviews conducted in 2020. The album debuted at #8 on the Billboard Traditional Classical Charts.
Posted 2023
In September 2021, Socolofsky was awarded the Gaudeamus International Composers Award during the final concert by Black Page Orchestra of Gaudeamus 2021 in TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Posted 2023
Jazz studies
Hugh Ragin
Lecturer, Jazz Studies
In Dean Birkenkamp’s book—“The Many Worlds of David Amram: Renaissance Man of American Music” (2024)—Ragin contributed the essay “Now is the Time as Creative Manifestation of Consciousness” (Chapter 22).
Music education
James Austin
Professor of Music Education
Austin co-authored an article with Margaret Berg that was published in the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education. He also wrote three columns for the Journal of Music Teacher Education in his final year as editor, and made research and panel presentations at the National Association for Music Education’s Research and Teacher Education Virtual Conference in February 2021.
Posted 2023
Margaret Berg
Associate Dean for Graduate Studies + Professor of Music Education
Berg co-authored an article with alumna and Westminster High School band teacher Megan Lewin (’18) that includes core reflection applications for in-service music teachers. The article—“Stress-Reduction Strategies for Music Teachers”—was published in the September 2023 Music Educators Journal. Berg also has a chapter titled “Fostering care through core reflection” in the new Oxford Handbook of Care in Music Education, edited by K. Hendricks.
Posted 2023
Kelly Parkes
Associate Professor of Music Education
Parkes has a book under contract with Taylor and Francis publishers—“The Applied Studio Model in Higher Education: Critical Opportunities and Perspectives”—to be published in summer 2024.
Posted 2023
David Rickels
Associate Professor Music Education
Rickels served a two-year term (2020-2022) as national chair of the Society for Music Teacher Education, part of the National Association for Music Education.
Posted 2023
Music theory
Yonatan Malin
Associate Professor of Music Theory
Malin published a chapter in “The Songs of Fanny Hensel,” edited by Stephen Rodgers (Oxford University Press, 2021). He has also presented the following webinars: for the CU Boulder Program in Jewish Studies (“Klezmer Music as Jewish Discourse”), for CU on the Weekend (“Reflections on Musical Time”) and in a series of talks on Jewish music (“New Research on Klezmer Idioms”). As well, he is part of a team that was awarded a Digital Humanities Grant of $50,000 to create an accessible archive of klezmer music—i.e.,Jewish instrumental music from Eastern Europe.
Posted 2023
Keith Waters
Professor of Music Theory
Waters signed a contract with Oxford University Press for a jazz improvisation book, to be co-authored with Brian Levy (of New England Conservatory). This will be Waters’ sixth book, and third book with Oxford University Press.
Posted 2023
Musicology
Rebecca Maloy
Professor of Musicology and Director of the Center for Medieval + Early Modern Studies in the College of Arts + Sciences
Maloy was a recipient of the 2021-2022 Distinguished Research Lectureship, among the highest honors bestowed by the faculty upon a faculty member at CU Boulder. Additionally, Maloy is a newly designated Distinguished Professor, the highest honor bestowed upon faculty across the system’s four campuses. Maloy is only the third to bear that title in the College of Music.
Posted 2023
Robert Shay
Professor of Musicology
Shay joined the CU Boulder College of Music faculty after serving as the dean for six-and-one-half years. In addition to returning to teaching in spring 2021, Shay took on a project for the Provost's Office, co-leading a campus-wide conversation on the topic of a common curriculum for all CU Boulder undergraduates.
Posted 2023
Shay’s new critical edition of the opera “Dido and Aeneas” (April 2023) is only the fourth new critical edition of “Dido” from a major publisher since the work first appeared in print in the 19th century. For Bärenreiter—one of the world’s great music publishers—this is their first foray into Purcell. Shay has committed to a second large editorial project for the publisher, Purcell's “King Arthur.”
Posted 2023
Piano + keyboard
Andrew Cooperstock
Professor of Piano
In honor of Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday, Cooperstock commissioned a new suite from “A Little Night Music,” released by Bridge Records in fall 2021. The same year, Cooperstock gave online performances in Minnesota, Colorado, Texas and South Carolina; served as judge for Music Teachers National Association and SONUS international composition competition; was featured on the Frances Clark Center’s Piano Stories on Stage series; and presented a poster on George Walker at the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy. Cooperstock serves as president-elect of the Colorado State Music Teachers Association and program director of the Saarburg (Germany) International Music Festival and School.
Posted 2023
Strings
Nicolò Spera
Associate Professor of Classical Guitar
In 2021, the Anglo-Spanish label Contrastes Records released Spera’s recording (on both six-string and 10-string guitar) focused on the passacaglia form. The recording includes lesser-known works for solo guitar, Alexandre Tansman’s and Franz Burkhart’s passacaglia, as well as two masterpieces in the history of music: Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's Passacaglia and Johann Sebastian Bach's Ciaccona from Violin Partita BWV 1004. Placed at the midpoint of the recording is one of the most significant and original contributions to 20th-century literature for solo guitar: Benjamin Britten's “Nocturnal after John Dowland,” Op. 70, which culminates in a dramatic passacaglia.
Posted 2023
Voice + opera + musical theatre
Jennifer DeDominici
Lecturer, Voice
DeDominici was Carrie Pipperidge in “Carousel” with Central City Opera, sang Candlelight Concerts with harpist Jenna Hunt and gave a musical theatre concert for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in summer 2021. Between fall 2020 and spring 2021, she performed on Jeremy Reger’s faculty recital at CU Boulder and on several Live from Packard Hall productions, including one featuring her in Robert Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und Leben.”. She participated in a virtual reading of “Pipeline,” performed a radio play for the Fine Arts Center and was featured in holiday cabarets for the Fine Arts Center and Opera Theatre of the Rockies.
Posted 2023
Woodwinds
Peter Cooper
Teaching Professor, Oboe
Cooper performed as soloist with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra (CSO) in the Mozart Oboe Concerto and played on numerous CSO chamber music concerts. He recorded all 40 Barret Progressive Etudes with oboist Jillian Camwell, released on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and other platforms. He continues teaching at the Rocky Ridge Music Center in the summer where he has been on the faculty since 2011. Additionally, he was interviewed on the “Double Reed Dish” and “Reed Talk” podcasts, and featured on Rocky Mountain PBS’ “Tuning out the Pandemic” program.
Posted 2023
Daniel Silver
Professor of Clarinet
Silver continues his decades-long association with Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan, teaching online lessons and performing as part of the Adult Band Camp and Chamber Music Program this past summer. He has also delivered master classes and taught individual lessons at the Rocky Music Festival for both the main festival and the Young Artist Program.
Posted 2023