Visiting Assistant Professor Jeremy Podgursky

We would like to warmly welcome Visiting Assistant Professor Jeremy Podgursky to the Jacobs Composition Department. Podgursky’s music has been featured in venues and festivals in the United States, Europe, and Japan and has been performed by groups such as Alarm Will Sound, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Contemporaneous, Present Music, Square Peg Round Hole, and many others.

He has been awarded the Copland House Residency Award, ASCAP Nissim Prize Special Distinction, IU Jacobs School of Music Dean’s Prize, and Northridge Prize for Orchestra. Podgursky has also been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, Finale/American Composers Forum/Eighth Blackbird, Mizzou New Music Festival, American Composers Orchestra/Earshot, Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute, and National SCI/ASCAP Commissioning Competition.

Podgursky has taught composition, theory, and multimedia/electronic courses at the Jacobs School of Music and the University of Louisville, and he recently served as composer-in-residence for the Pike Falls New Music Festival in Jamaica, Vermont. He also toured the U.S. and Europe and released several recordings as singer/songwriter/guitarist for the critically acclaimed indie rock band The Pennies, whose music was featured on the series Shameless on the Showtime network.

Professor Emeritus Eugene O’Brien

We are delighted to have our distinguished Prof. Emeritus Eugene O’Brien this year in the absence of Prof. P. Q. Phan, who is on sabbatical. Prof. O’Brien has been a member of the faculty at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music since 1987, was chair of the Jacobs Composition Department from 1994 to 1999, and was the school’s executive associate dean from 1999 to 2016. He has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, fellowships, and commissions, and his music has been performed by many of the major orchestras and ensembles throughout the world, including the Cleveland Orchestra, Italian Radio (RAI) Orchestras of Rome and Turin, the Omaha Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony, and the Louisville Orchestra, among countless others. His contributions to the Jacobs School of Music are numerous and enduring, and we are deeply honored to have him with us.

Ben Taylor: Making Music During the Pandemic

In July 2020, Dr. Benjamin Taylor (DM ‘14) brought together his “dream team” of composers to work with middle and high school musicians in a virtual, summer music camp called Music Creators Academy. Students and faculty from around the world collaborated and created together culminating in a live concert on Zoom which featured the premiere of seven new works, including Dr. Taylor’s newest work, Legos Emit Gnarly Overtones for virtual, flex ensemble and audio track. You can watch a video recording of that work here. Additionally, Dr. Taylor’s recent output includes a self-produced hiphop/rap about the stresses of COVID, called 6 Feet 6 Degrees and flex ensemble works being used by educators across the country. Recently, the Barlow Endowment asked Dr. Taylor to serve on the Advisory Board for their prestigious organization, a role he will fill for the next five years. Current projects include a tuba concerto for Brigham Young University – Idaho faculty member, Matt Moore, which will be premiered and taken on tour in 2021.

David Vayo Performances, Projects and Retirement

David Vayo (MM ’82, BM ’80) has retired from Illinois Wesleyan University, where he taught composition, improvisation and contemporary music for 29 years and coordinated the school’s New Music Series. Vayo’s Songs of Ourselves, on poetry by Ohio’s first Poet Laureate, Amit Majmudar, was premiered at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA on October 27 by baritone James Martin, with an ensemble conducted by Robert Pound. Earlier that month, shakuhachi virtuoso Shawn Head and cellist Daron Kirsch performed Mirroring on three separate concerts in Houston, TX. Vayo’s Adult and Child for soprano, baritone, koto and harpsichord awaits the rescheduling of its COVID-delayed premiere in Tokyo, and he recently completed a four-movement symphony for the ZhongHua Chinese Orchestra of Taipei, Taiwan.

Patricia Wallinga Commissioned for COVID-19 Relief Project

Patricia Wallinga (BM, ’17) is one of 65 composers commissioned by composer Gabriela Lena Frank for her project #GLFCAMGigThruCovid19, an initiative to hire out-of-work performers to collaborate with alumni of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music to create new works for digital premiere. Wallinga was paired with fellow JSoM alumni Emily Reed and Jóhann Schram Reed, who will premiere her soprano/bass-baritone duet “Forever is composed of Nows” on Thursday, September 10.

Daniel Cueto wins Inaugural Composition Competition

Daniel Cueto (DM student) has won the Inaugural Composition Competition of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra of Indiana. His winning work “Río” will be performed by the orchestra in a live concert on June 6, 2021, where the prize will also be officially awarded. In addition, he recently won the Juventas New Music Ensemble’s Call for Scores with his chamber work “Kimsa Harawicha”, which features texts in the native Quechua language of Southern Peru. The work will be professionally recorded and streamed by the ensemble from Boston, MA (dates TBA).

Xinyuan Deng (new MM student) is Finalist for “Art Creation Award” International Orchestral Composition Competition

This month, Xinyuan Deng’s new orchestral work Memories was shortlisted one of six finalist works for the 1st Hangzhou Contemporary Music Festival “Art Creation Awards” International Orchestra Composition Competition. The work will be performed by the Zhejiang Symphony Orchestra at the final concert on September 27, 2020, and the first prize, second prize and third prize will be determined by then.

David Dzubay’s PHO released on CD

On August 21, 2020, the Grossman Ensemble releases its debut album, Fountain of Time, on its own imprint, CCCC Records. The recently formed Grossman Ensemble, founded by composer and director Augusta Read Thomas, is a supergroup of 13 Chicago-based contemporary music specialists, exclusively performing new works from leading and emerging composers at the CCCC. The ensemble engages in a unique workshopping process focusing on interaction between composers, musicians, and conductors. To date, the CCCC has commissioned 36 composers for the Grossman Ensemble, and Fountain of Time features five premiere performances from the ensemble’s first two seasons, including Shulamit Ran’s Grand Rounds, Anthony Cheung’s Double Allegories, David Dzubay’s PHO, Tonia Ko’s Simple Fuel, and David Clay Mettens’ stain, bloom, moon, rain. Dzubay’s PHO is about Potentially Hazardous Objects, not delicious soup, and he conducted the entire Grossman Ensemble concert that PHO was premiered on in 2019.

New Recordings and YouTube Scores by Prof. Don Freund

Don Freund recorded his latest and earliest piano pieces this summer for scrolling score YouTube videos: Piano Prelude 2019:Bach is Dead; Don Freund’s Early Piano Pieces. Also new on YouTube are Freund’s Pentecost and Departing Flights(performances by the IUNME).

Award, New Work and Performances for Prof. John Gibson

John Gibson placed second in the Chicago Composers’ Consortium Electro-Acoustic Music Competition and presented his audiovisual piece, edgewater, on the consortium’s February concert at Roosevelt University. His fixed-media piece, Almost an Island, appeared on the program of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) National Conference, hosted by the University of Virginia. The conference suddenly moved online in March. In April, Keith Kirchoff performed Blue Traces, for piano and electronics, on a Facebook Live concert, a fund-raising event to help musicians in the Boston area. Gibson collaborated with Prof. Margaret Dolinsky, of the IU Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture, and Design, on Sedimental Journey, an audiovisual piece based on photography of a local quarry. The piece will be shown in the exhibition, State of Nature: Picturing Indiana Biodiversity, currently open by appointment (until Nov. 18) at the Grunwald Gallery of Art on the IU campus. This semester Prof. Gibson will give a talk (virtually) as part of the Visiting Composers Series at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music and another at Universidad EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia.

The Outpost, with Score by Prof. Larry Groupé, Pemiered July 4th

Larry Groupé had his latest score for the film “The Outpost” premiere on July 4th. The movie was number one film in America for three straight weeks. It is a gripping real life tragic and heroic story of 50 American soldiers that were overrun by 500 Taliban. Besides writing the original score Larry also cowrote the end credit song. Here is a short “making of” video.

New Work by Professor Eugene O’Brien Commissioned by Fromm Foundation

Professor Emeritus Eugene O’Brien’s new “Elegy to the Spanish Republic” for nine players was commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard for the 21st Century Consort, the resident new music ensemble of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The premiere was scheduled for a concert in April 2020 but has been postponed until concerts resume in 2021.

New Work by Prof. Aaron Travers Commissioned by the Library of Congress

Aaron Travers was commissioned by the Library of Congress to compose a new work for solo piano as part of the Boccaccio Project. The resulting piece, Olcott Park, was premiered online by pianist and Grossman Ensemble member Daniel Pesca this past June on both Facebook and YouTube. In addition, Prof. Travers’ virtuosic organ work Exodus will be released on the Innova label as part of a 3-CD set of contemporary organ music entitled Organon Novus, performed by Randall Harlow on the Skinner organ at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. The release date is September 25, 2020.

New Work by Prof. Chi Wang presented at Multiple Conferences

Chi Wang’s composition Qin, for two custom made controllers, custom software, and Kyma, was selected for presentation at the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) 2020 Digital Conference at the University of Virginia in the spring semester and the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in England in the summer. She will give lectures and artist talks at the University of Oregon and Sichuan Conservatory of Music in China this academic year.