Alumni News — June
June 27, 2010
Julie Amisano (M.Mus., voice performance, 2005) issued a new CD, Green, in 2008. Three Norwegian songs by Agathe Grondahl on the CD were played over NPR on Feb. 2, 2009.
Whitney Ashe (B.Mus., composition, 2008) played some of his original works at Smalls Jazz Club in Manhattan over the Nov. 2729, 2009 weekend.Olympics tour to China, the Brooklyn College Chamber Choir sang Ashe's SATB a cappella "Nothing Gold Can Stay" (text by Robert Frost) in the Forbidden City Concert Hall of Beijing.
Nan Maro Babakhanian (M.Mus., voice performance, 2006) currently lives and teaches in Spain as director of the Project Canción Española. She gave birth to her first child, Ines Maro Burgos Babakhanian, on June 27, 2009.
Huascar Barradas (B.Mus., flute performance, 1988) has been having an incredibly successful career in Venezuela. He was one of the early teachers of internationally renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel when the latter was only 11. His chamber ensemble was in Manhattan for performances in May 2009. Barradas may be contacted via e-mail.
Joseph Bartolozzi (M.Mus., piano performance, 2001) earned his Ph.D. in composition from SUNY Stony Brook in 2009. In June 2009 he received the Distinguished Music Educators Award from Yale University. He teaches at Long Island City High School in New York, where he directs the band and is assistant choral director.
Romulo Benavides (candidate, M.Mus., violin performance) met Professor Hager in February 2009 and reported that he is a member of a string quartet, Sweet Plantain, based in Queens. The ensemble plays all kinds of repertory but particularly Latin jazz. According to the group's website, Sweet Plantain's performances include two in New York — one at Joe's Pub and another at St. Mark's in the Bowery.
Victor Bobetsky (B.A., 1977) is associate professor of music at Hunter College, where he directs the music-education program. In late 2008 his new book The Magic of Middle-School Musicals: Inspire Your Students to Learn, Grow and Succeed was published by Rowman and Littlefield for MENC.
Carlos Conde (B.Mus., 2004; M.Mus., voice, 2005) completed his DMA in voice performance in December 2008 at SUNY Stony Brook. In August 2010 he will become assistant professor of applied voice in a tenure-track position at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. He will teach graduate and undergraduate voice students, lyric diction, vocal literature, vocal pedagogy and voice research as well as opera theater and/or musical theater. Conde is especially excited about the position because Texas Tech also has satellite campuses in Seville, Spain, and Leipzig, Germany. He looks forward to exploring more Spanish vocal literature for those programs.
Sarah Corman (M.A., music education, 2009) released her first CD of her jazz vocals, Happy Little Tune, in 2009.
Samuel "Kojo" Enninful (M.Mus., composition, 1997) visited the conservatory in December 2009 and told us about his ongoing ministry for the Methodist Church in Ghana, where he and his wife have raised four children. In addition to his pastoral work, Enninful has taught music theory courses as a research fellow for the Center for Cultural and African Studies at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. He was here on sabbatical and doing mission work in the state of Delaware. He hopes to begin doctoral studies in composition soon in this country.
Victoria Freyberg (B.Mus., performance; M.Mus., 1979) completed 25 years of teaching piano for the Brooklyn College Preparatory Center for the Performing Arts in fall 2008. A special tribute to Freyberg was made by Prep Center students and faculty at a concert in December 2008. We were sorry to learn that her mother, Golda Shtelman, 82, died on June 10, 2009, after a long illness. Our condolences go out to her and her family.
Rieko Kawabata (M.Mus., violin, 2008) is part of New York's up-and-coming diverse chamber-music ensemble Opus Nine. On Sept. 24, 2009, she was part of their concert and performed in Dvorak's "American" String Quartet.
Masha Lankovsky (M.Mus., violin performance, 2003) now serves as director of the Classical Division at the Brooklyn-Queens Conservatory of Music in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Michael Lee (M.Mus., viola, 2007) is orchestra director at Farmingdale High School on Long Island, where he has taught since 2005. (He has worked in that school district since 2001.) He has taken two orchestras to the NYSSMA majors (where large ensembles get evaluated), and in 2008–M, the national music honors society. He is currently considering DMA programs for further performance studies.
David Leibowitz (B.S., oboe performance, 1980; M,A,, performance practice, 1983) became the orchestra director of the CCNY Orchestra in spring 2010, where he is now an adjunct lecturer. (It is the first orchestra that CCNY has had in about eight years.) He still conducts regular concerts with the New York Repertory Orchestra that he founded several years ago.
Jonathan Levin (M.Mus., piano, 2008) gave a solo piano recital on Nov. 19, 2009, at Calvary–St. George's in Manhattan. The concert was part of a series dedicated to sponsoring the annual Thanksgiving Day dinner for the homeless at that church.
Paul Licciardi (B.Mus., tuba, 2003; M.A., musicology, 2010) and his wife, Yuka, had a baby son, Ludovico, on Sept. 19, 2009. Congratulations to them!
Sarah Loveland (Advanced Certificate, 2008) became district-wide chairperson of music for the public schools in Westbury, N.Y., as of fall 2009. We are very proud of this accomplishment!
Gretchen Mundinger (M.Mus., voice, 2008) and Onder Adsay had a baby girl, Ayla Gwynn Mundinger-Adsay, on Oct. 30, 2009. Congratulations and best wishes to all three of them!! (Ayla's name is pronounced EYE-luh; it's Turkish for "moonlight.")
Thomas Nazziola's (M.Mus., composition, 2006) Another Spring for chorus and piano (text by Kenneth Rexroth) was given its New York premiere by Cantori New York on March 6, 2010. ASCAP Award winner Mark Shapiro conducted.
Sandra Pagano (M.Mus., voice performance, 2000) set up the Long Island School of the Arts in 2000childhood program.
Matthew Reichert (M.Mus., violin, 1997) successfully defended his dissertation "Carl Bergmann in New York: Conducting Activity 1852–1876" on May 21, 2010, at the CUNY Graduate Center. He will be receiving the DMA in Violin Performance this year (2010). Reichert is coordinator of strings at the Brooklyn College Preparatory Center for the Performing Arts.
Cesar Reyes (M.Mus., piano, 2006; M.A., musicology, 2009) presented a lecture-recital at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society on Nov. 13, 2009. Its title was: "Piano Masterworks of Mexican Nationalism."
Adelquis Salomon (M.Mus., trumpet, 2008) sent us this YouTube excerpt from his quintet's renditions of several Piazzola numbers in February 2010.
Elad Shniderman (M.Mus., composition, 2009) reports that his new sound-and-movement piece, Here, Hear, created with dancer Hank Hanstad, was performed on March 24, 2010, at the Wang Center at SUNY Stony Brook. The performance was part of that university's exciting Hybrid Geography event that groups together performances of interdisciplinary art and new media.
Allison Sniffin instrumentalist, singer, composer and member of Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble since 1996. She has performed The Polictics of Quiet, A Celebration Service, magic Frequencies, mercy, Turtle Dreams, Books of Days, and impermance. Sniffin has also engraved, prepared or orchestrated a number of Monk's works, including Possible Sky, Stringsongs and Night, and has edited a book of her piano music. She has received awards from Meet the Composer and the Concert Artists' Guild.
Yukiko Tanaka (M.Mus., piano, 2005) participated in a recital by Yoko Suzuki on Nov. 20, 2009, at the Frank and Camille Piano Salon in Manhattan. This recital was a tribute to Suzuki's teacher, the recently deceased Alicia de Larrocha. Tanaka participated in the performance of four-hand pieces by Frederic Mompou and Xavier Montsalvatge.
Erasmia Voukelatos (M.Mus., piano) continues as assistant director and accompanist for Cantigas, a Hoboken, N.J.-based women's choir directed by Joan Isaacs Litman.
Matthew Weissman (M.Mus., piano, 2006) will be finishing his performer diploma in piano performance at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in May 2010.
Back to Fermata — Spring 2010
