Last semester, ethnomusicologist Trevor Harvey played a critical role in coordinating Esteban and the Children of the Sun, a multimedia performance envisioned and composed by former Director of Jazz Studies at Iowa, John Rapson, who passed away in July 2021.

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.

When 1400 fourth graders arrived at the UI School of Music for an orchestra concert in October, they met an ensemble with whom they had already been introduced. That introduction was made by PhD student Megan Small and UI music librarian Katie Buehner, who produced two short videos specially tailored for the program and its fourth-grade audience.

This Thursday, October 29, from 12:30-1:45, students in Trevor Harvey‘s first-year seminar course, Iowa City Live: Local Music Cultures, will be holding their final class meeting at Public Space One (120 N. Dubuque St.), where they will be presenting their own contributions to Iowa City’s live music culture.

Trevor Harvey (ethnomusicology), Jennifer Iverson (music theory), and Nathan Platte (musicology) and their families collaborated to host the first annual Front Porch Music Festival on Saturday June 20, 2015. The festival encouraged residents of the Longfellow neighborhood in Iowa City to play music together on their front porches.

Take a look at this short article and vid about the laptop orchestra that the students in the composition program have created.