The duo Red Vespa, consisting of musicology professor Marian Wilson Kimber and pianist Natalie Landowski of Western Illinois University will return to the concert stage this week to present a recital of musical readings by American women composers. Red Vespa will also premiere a new work created for them by Portland composer and University of Iowa alumna Lisa Neher, Upon a Broken World. 

Sarah Suhadolnik’s work with colleague Monica Hershberger is featured in the new, open-access collection Sounding Together: Collaborative Perspectives on U.S. Music in the 21st Century (eds. Charles Hiroshi Garrett and Carol Oja).

Marian Wilson Kimber’s “Hymnody, Dance and the Sacred in the Illustrated Song” has recently appeared in the volume Musicology and Dance: Historical and Critical Perspectives published by Cambridge University Press. Wilson Kimber has also recently joined a team of musicologists writing for the Women’s Song Forum, a new blog devoted to women’s songs and women’s voices.

Using media to share research is not new here. Trevor Harvey’s podcast, Ethnomusicology Today, has been doing just that since 2015. Since then, more students and faculty are exploring different formats to study and share work on a range of musical topics. Here are some recent highlights: Jon Eldridge II, Nathan Platte, Anastasia Scholze.

In bidding 2020 adieu, we take a moment to celebrate a smattering of the work we’ve shared during a very unusual fall term: Christine Getz, Cody Norling, Anabel Maler, and Nathan Platte.

Written in 2011 and recorded this year by Ligament—Anika Kildegaard (voice) and Will Yager (bass)—University of Iowa Assistant Professor Jean-François Charles’s “Benedictus” is a fitting song to listen to at a time when we are nearing the midnight of the year, to say nothing of midnight on the Doomsday Clock, which has been on the verge of twelve o’clock for so long that crisis seems to be a permanent state of affairs.

The Fall meeting of the Midwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society took place virtually during the last weekend of September. Planning, managing, and hosting the conference brought together colleagues from across many Midwest institutions.

During the summer of 2020, Cody Norling served as an intern with Hancher Auditorium. The partnership was supported through the Humanities for the Public Good program hosted by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. Cody shared reflections on the collaboration at last week’s Obermann showcase.

This past spring, Ph.D. student Alexis Tuttle sat down with Dr. Anabel Maler to learn more about her and her work as a music theorist. Here are Lexy’s highlights from that conversation. 

Earlier this season, Arthur Scoleri successfully defended their musicology master’s thesis, “‘Thus He is Mine’: Reconciling Queerness and English Musical Tradition in Britten’s Canticle I.”