News

Trombonist and composer Brian Martin ’19MM has been honored with a Student Music Award from DownBeat Magazine. A student in the Jazz Composition and Arranging graduate program from 2017-19, Martin won the award for Outstanding Arrangement for Studio Orchestra (Graduate College category) for his arrangement of George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm.” 

Associate Professor of Music Education Lisa Lehmberg has been selected by the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at UMass as a recipient of a TIDE Ambassador (Teaching for Inclusiveness, Diversity and Equity) faculty fellowship for 2020-21.

The Department of Music and Dance has met the challenges of remote instruction head-on through a mixture of imagination, technology, and enthusiasm. For example, Associate Professor of Piano Gilles Vonsattel has been providing students with his perspective on works they are studying, like this overview of Bach’s Concerto in G minor, along with video recordings like this one of him performing the piece.

To wrap up a most unique academic year, the Department of Music & Dance held its annual Convocation on April 27, via Zoom videoconference, to honor its music scholarship award winners and graduates. The event featured moving pre-recorded musical performances by students, alumni and faculty, and the announcement of scholarship award recipients.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tasso and Music Symposium takes place via Zoom video conference during the April 17-19 weekend (9:30am-12:30pm each day). Over a dozen music historians and literary scholars from North America and Europe present papers on the musical legacy of 16th-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso.

When Ryan Hollander ’17 (Vocal Jazz Performance) saw many of his favorite artists presenting live streamed performances during the COVID-19 pandemic, it struck a chord. The result is COVID-Stock, a rolling series of performances organized by Hollander featuring the talents of over 40 alumni of the UMass Amherst Music and Dance Department.