Following her recent win at the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition and her Carnegie Hall debut, we interviewed Natalie Lewis about her competition experiences, her burgeoning opera career and her undergraduate time here at UMass.

When it comes to UMass Amherst’s Registered Student Organizations—better known as RSOs—there’s a little something for everyone. There’s 3D Printing Club, Competitive Bass Fishing, Belly Dancing Club, and now, thanks to Vocal Jazz and Jazz Lab Ensemble vocalist Héloïse Goncalves ‘23, there’s the university’s first-ever Songwriting and Production Club. 

Lisa (Cavanaugh) Linde '92 was recently inducted into the Massachusetts Instrumental and Choral Conductors Association (MICCA) Hall of Fame. Linde has been the instrumental music director at Newton South High School since 1998. Her selection to the MICCA Hall of Fame was based in part on her advocacy for gender equality in jazz, and her work as the founder of the nonprofit, jazzhers, an organization committed to helping young musicians who identify as female and nonbinary to become connected to and feel empowered within the jazz community.

Jess Larsen is a junior transfer student at UMass Amherst pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Piano Performance under the instruction of Gilles Vonsattel. She just released a new CD comprised of the complete first book of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Larsen released the CD to mark the ten-year anniversary of the first recording she made of Book One when she was only 10 years old.

Marianna Ritchey, assistant professor of music history in the Department of Music & Dance, discovered a deep interest in music as an undergraduate at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR. Ritchey currently focuses her research on young American composers in the contemporary capitalist landscape. With roots as an indie-rock musician, Ritchey approaches a diverse array of musical styles in her teaching and writing as culturally important and significant.