Musical Networks and Ecologies UNC-KCL Joint Graduate Music Conference Department of Music University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 26–28 August 2016

All conference events will be held in Person Hall, 181 E. Cameron Avenue, Chapel Hill, unless otherwise noted.

Friday, August 26

1:30pm – 1:35 Opening Remarks and Welcome

1:35pm – 2:15 Opening Panel: Dr. Annegret Fauser (Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor, UNC) Dr. David García (Associate Professor, UNC) Dr. Jocelyn Neal (Professor, UNC) Dr. Phil Vandermeer (Music Librarian, Adjunct Associate Professor, UNC)

2:15pm – 3:15 Discussion of Pre-Circulated Readings

3:15pm – 3:30 Break

3:30pm – 4:30 Networks of Activism: Pan-Africanism in America Dr. Michael Figueroa, chair Sarah Tomlinson (Graduate Student, UNC), “Nina Simone's Movements Around New York City, 1958-1963: Pan-Africanist Collaboration, Music Making, and Ideology”

Alexander Marsden (Graduate Student, UNC), “Max Roach and the Institute of Pan-African Culture, 1972-3: Jazz, Activism, and the University”

6:00pm Dinner at Spanky’s (confirmed conference participants only, please), 101 E. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill

Saturday, August 27

9:00am – 10:00 Meet for breakfast at Rise (all welcome), 310 E. Main Street, Carrboro Please plan for around 30 minutes to reach campus by foot!

10:30am – 12:00 Communities of Music: Professional and Personal Networks Dr. Tim Carter, chair A. Kori Hill (Graduate Student, UNC), “White, Douglass, Cook: The Role of Networks in Nineteenth Century African-American Classical Music Education” H. Meg Orita (Graduate Student, UNC), “Gender in U.S. New Music: Education, Socialization, and Career Trajectory” Hannah Templeton (Graduate Student, KCL), “Exploring the Mozart Family's Musical Networks: London 1764-65”

12pm – 2:15 Lunch Break

2:15pm – 3:15 Keynote: “A New Orleans Radio Almanac: Networks of the Jazz Revival” Dr. Andy Fry (Senior Lecturer, KCL) Dr. David García, moderator

3:15pm – 3:30 Break

3:30pm – 5:00 Performance and Practice: Actors, Networks, and Agency Dr. Mark Katz, chair Georgie Pope (Graduate Student, KCL), “Staging the Sattra: The Impact of Classicisation on the Performing Arts of an Assamese Monastery” Joseph Bolger (Graduate Student, KCL), “Assuming the Worst: Performance Practice Researchers on ‘Singers Today…’” David VanderHamm (Graduate Student, UNC), “The Other End of the Cable: Guitar Amplifiers, Instrumentality, and Sonic Ecology”

6:00 pm Meet for dinner at Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe (all welcome), 431 E. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill

8:00pm Meet for drinks at Steel String Brewery (all welcome), 106 S. Greensboro Street, Carrboro

Sunday, August 28

9:30am – 10:00 Bagels and Coffee at Person Hall

10:00am – 11:30 Music and Place: Networks of Migration, Travel, and Exchange Dr. Phil Vandermeer, chair Jamie Blake (Graduate Student, UNC), “Serge Koussevitzky: Identity, Allegiance and Cultural Responsibility in the Wake of the Russian Diaspora” Michele Segretario (Graduate Student, UNC), “Fisherman’s Feast in Boston’s North End” Lawrence Davies (Graduate Student, KCL), “Encounter and Exchange on the Chicago Blues Scene, 1957-60”

11:30am – 12:00pm Closing Session and Final Remarks

After the close of the conference, we invite you to organize lunch on your own and to meet for ice cream at 2:00pm at Maple View Farm, 6900 Rocky Ridge Rd, Hillsborough 27278. All are welcome to attend; we kindly ask that those with cars offer transportation to others!

Abstracts

Friday Afternoon: “Networks of Activism: Pan-Africanism in America”

“Nina Simone's Movements Around New York City, 1958-1963: Pan-Africanist Collaboration, Music Making, and Ideology” Sarah Tomlinson

Popular and scholarly discourse on activist, pianist, and singer-songwriter Nina Simone tends to focus on her lyrical content, which has led to the broad understanding of her 1963 song “Mississippi Goddam” as her first engagement with musical protest. In this paper, I examine Simone’s personal connections, artistic networks, and musical activities from 1958-1963 to argue that she was resisting racism and engaging with black consciousness even before she wrote “Mississippi Goddam.” In particular, I analyze New York City as a local music scene where Simone’s connections with jazz musicians, folk musicians, and prominent members of the black intelligentsia influenced her musical activities politically and artistically.

Simone moved to New York City in 1959 to seize economic opportunity as her first commercial hit “I Loves You, Porgy” swept her up in success. During these early years of her career, her New York-based friendships and collaborations with American poet Langston Hughes, Nigerian drummer Michael Olatunji, and South African singer Miriam Makeba contributed to the development of Simone’s Pan-Africanist ideology and geographically extended beyond New York. I interpret Simone’s collaborations with these artists as well as her tour to Lagos, Nigeria with the America Society of African Culture (AMSAC) in 1961 as musical manifestations of Pan- Africanism. Furthermore, the AMSAC tour had clear political and ethical motivations that Simone echoed in her own rhetoric. Simone expressed a holistic view of Africa, which impacted her understanding of self and heritage as well as encouraged her participation in Pan-Africanist politics. By analyzing her networks in and extended from the New York City scene from 1958- 1963, this paper expands the current understanding of Simone as an activist musician. Furthermore, as scholarship on musical protest and musical activism becomes increasingly prominent, this paper demonstrates the importance and value of interpreting political engagement from multiple vantage points.

“Max Roach and the Institute of Pan-African Culture, 1972-3: Jazz, Activism, and the University” Alexander Marsden

In 1972, Max Roach was recruited by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He taught classes in the history and performance of jazz, and in the first of his 22 years on the music faculty at Amherst, he served on the organizing committee for the Institute of Pan-African Culture. This short-lived organization of black artists and scholars, housed in the W.E.B DuBois Department of Afro-American studies, aimed to establish a space within the university infrastructure for the promotion of black arts and black consciousness, and for the development of anti-colonial educational programs. In this paper, I focus on this little-known moment in Roach’s career, considering it in the light of his activism in the 1960s, and in the context of the changing relationship between jazz and the academy in the 1970s.

The expansion of jazz education in American universities in the 1970s is a contentious issue in jazz historiography. According to contemporary writers who view the intervening four decades of jazz history as a decline, jazz education’s formalization in the academy has calcified it, sapping its creativity and its potential as a medium for the expression of vital political critique. The reasons offered for jazz’s move into university curricula usually involve the legitimization of the genre, and a search for financial security.

I argue that Roach’s work in the Institute of Pan-African Culture suggest that the motivations for politically-engaged African-American jazz musicians teaching in universities in this period were more complex. In the eyes of Roach and his colleagues, the university did not simply offer prestige and stability, but a means through which the aims of their anti-racist, Pan-Africanist activist work of the 1960s could be furthered.

Saturday Morning: “Communities of Music: Professional and Personal Networks”

“White, Douglass, Cook: The Role of Networks in Nineteenth Century African- American Classical Music Education” A. Kori Hill

Classical music education in African American communities contains an extensive and nuanced history that reveals an active and tightly connected network of performers, institutions, composers, and educators. Due to legal segregation in the United States, many important and influential nineteenth and twentieth century African American musicians operated within close proximity to each other via collaborations, commissions, and private instruction, creating networks that connected many African American classical music communities throughout the United States. One such example of the intimate reality of these networks is the educational history of the violinist, composer, and teacher Clarence Cameron White (1880-1960). Heralded as the best African American violinist of his time, his early education brought him into direct contact with two other important and influential African American classical violinists and educational institutions: Will Marion Cook, Joseph Douglass, Oberlin College, and Howard University. This paper will position White’s studies from 1892-1901 within the context of the necessity of black classical music networks during the late nineteenth century to sustain the performance, composition, and study of classical music in these communities, in addition to the importance of African American role models for young classical music students during this time. Without these networks of performers, teachers, and schools, sustaining classical music performance and education would have been even more difficult due to the lack of access to many formal music institutions, private studios, and mainstream performances spaces. This critical analysis of White’s musical studies will contribute to a much needed exploration of instrumental education and performance within nineteenth century African American communities, the educational lineages that were created within those spaces, and their contribution to sustaining creative and influential African American classical music communities that flourish to this day.

“Gender in U.S. New Music: Education, Socialization, and Career Trajectory” H. Meg Orita

The aggregate of female New Music artists that includes Pamela Z, Augusta Reid Thomas, Meredith Monk, and their generational peers represent a set of exceptional women that surmounted structural social obstacles in their career trajectories. Their existence as “established” artists is not necessarily indicative of any particular lack of gendered inequity in their field, but of careers that succeeded despite obstacles. The role of gender in the careers of “established” New Music artists has been examined to some extent, but the very idea of an “established” artist indicates a success over the obstacles that compose the barrier between being a known versus an unknown entity in one’s field. Further, the “established” artist’s account of his or her prior experiences is relayed in retrospect, informed by current successes and presently advantageous position. Ultimately, the reported experiences of New Music artists establishing careers in the late twentieth-century are no longer representative of the terrain faced by the emerging New Music artist in the present day.

By investigating the experiences of artists in the process of establishing their professional careers, this paper studies a demographic that has not yet been socially curated for those whose experiences may prove exceptions to the barriers in their field. Based on interviews and ethnographic work with Chicago-area New Music artists, this paper considers how emerging artists in U.S. New Music experience the influence of gender on social and economic aspects of their musical careers including mentorship, collaboration, education, and networking. This interview-based investigation of gender’s influence on emerging New Music artists provides insight into an understudied social experience that manifests in the career trajectories, networks, and ultimate professional successes of New Music artists. On a larger scale, this paper illuminates how gender influences the relationships of artists with other members of their fields in creative contexts.

“Exploring the Mozart Family's Musical Networks: London 1764-65” Hannah Templeton

In April 1764, the Mozart family arrived in London as part of their European tour. Existing accounts of the family's visit focus overwhelmingly on the musical activities of Wolfgang Mozart. Source engagement is limited to the young composer's compositions, music-related passages of his father Leopold's letters, and newspaper advertisements for the family's concerts. Scholars have used these sources to construct a narrative of declining success: while the Mozarts’ initially entertained the royal family, by the end of their stay they were performing in bawdy taverns.

However, these accounts largely ignore key documentary sources, and eschew fully contextualizing the Mozarts’ visit within London's concert life. While music in many continental centers revolved around court-controlled patronage, in London private patronage thrived. The city provided unrivalled opportunities for individual impresarios organizing both public concerts and more intimate social gatherings. Consequently, musicians newly arrived from the continent had to establish themselves as successful professionals, through their encounters with new people, institutions, and performance cultures. The Mozarts became part of this thriving, competitive environment.

In this paper, I use Leopold's Reisenotizen (“travel notes”) and letters to better understand the Mozarts’ establishment on the professional scene. These sources list more than a hundred London contacts, often accompanied by an address and/or occupation, allowing us to reconstruct several distinct, pre-existing networks that Leopold engaged with. Understanding Leopold as an entrepreneur, I challenge existing narratives of the family's success. Leopold fully grasped the complexities of London concert life and “networked” accordingly. Rather than pursuing opportunities in order of prestige or financial gain, his travel notes suggest that he exploited a variety of opportunities as they arose, embracing the fluidity of London's musical life.

Keynote

“A New Orleans Radio Almanac: Networks of the Jazz Revival” Dr. Andy Fry

The roots of 1940s jazz revivalism are typically located among fanatical collectors, passionate critics and independent record producers. Positioned, like early bebop, on the margins of a swing economy, New Orleans jazz was as fragile as its aging players: or so the story goes. Too often overlooked are the radio broadcasts that spread the word—and the music—to a large audience, both nationally and internationally. From Orson Welles’ Radio Almanac to Rudi Blesh’s This Is Jazz, broadcasts championed the music and musicians, while erecting around them a shield of authenticity. Among the more unexpected listeners were service personnel at home and abroad, via Armed Forces Radio, and children in classrooms, by means of the long-running Standard Schools Broadcasts. Clips, sometimes whole episodes, of all these shows survive.

While scholars have, in recent years, taken increasing interest in film as a carrier of jazz meaning, broadcasting has received less attention. In the particular case of the New Orleans revival, preserved recordings reveal an important mediating role: not only as the medium of transmission but also as a powerful intermediary between musicians and listeners. As well as featuring little- known performances by musicians as celebrated as Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, and Sidney Bechet, the shows wrapped them in a wool of words. For its supporters on radio, New Orleans jazz, unlike commercial swing, was an authentic Art with roots deeply embedded in African America. All the same, veteran players added recent popular songs to their repertories, and young white musicians to their bands, sometimes tying their effusive spokesmen in knots. My talk explores—with plentiful recorded examples—the parameters and paradoxes of this New Orleans Radio Almanac as it broadcast to the world.

Saturday Afternoon: “Performance and Practice: Actors, Networks, and Agency”

“Staging the Sattra: The Impact of Classicisation on the Performing Arts of an Assamese Monastery” Georgie Pope

Indian classical dances are frequently characterized as ancient practices, maintained in devotional contexts until modern practitioners bring them to the proscenium stage, and to broader audiences. Over the past decade, historians Walker, Soneji and Schofield have challenged such constructions, which obscure processes of translation, domination and appropriation, as well as a multiplicity of influences and performance contexts. In this paper, I tell the story of India’s most recently recognized classical dance form - Sattriya - based on the dances cultivated in the sattras (monasteries) of northeast India, which were officially recognized as ‘Classical’ by the Indian Government in the year 2000. Dominant narratives characterize Assam’s monks as devotional traditionalists; isolated keepers of an un-changing 500 year tradition, yet the lived reality is somewhat different. The monks of Uttar Kamalabari Sattra, a monastery in Northeast India, are dynamic and networked creative agents who have made use of, and driven the changing status of their dance form by engaging with national and international performance platforms. Through close analysis of secondary literature, and the author's ethnographic research over five years of tour managing and learning dance with these monastic performers, this contributes a grounded ethnography to the scholarship on genre labels and systems of classification in a South Asian context.

“Assuming the Worst: Performance Practice Researchers on ‘Singers Today…’” Joseph Bolger

“…today’s “one size fits all” operatic voice is, more often than not, hated by early music fans. I believe that there is extensive, inarticulate, subterranean discontent with this tremendous debasement of classical singing by the professionals.”1

This quotation is characteristic of performance practice researchers who see their work as an opportunity to “correct” the “uninformed” practices of today’s early music singers. This paper suggests that the assumptions underpinning such attitudes result from aspects of the ecology of performance practice research communities. It further proposes that the tone in which they are frequently articulated makes truly collaborative networks of singers and researchers an impossibility.

Statistical data describing the performance choices endorsed by researchers is used to observe the remarkable consistency of their style prescriptions for music from Machaut to Mendelssohn. I suggest that the charge of “one size fits all” might equally be applied to performance practice research. I explore possible reasons for this consistency, proposing that selective reading of sources and the insularity of performance practice communities cause researchers to cling to a vision of good singing that validates their own ideals and practices.

I conclude by suggesting that the rhetoric in which appeals for more “informed” singing are couched is counterproductive, alienating the very community this research proposes to benefit. I suggest that a more collaborative approach would be beneficial, with researchers and singers working together to explore how early music might be sung most persuasively. In this way the hermeneutic potential of historical sources might be thickened and both early music singing and performance practice research enriched.

“The Other End of the Cable: Guitar Amplifiers, Instrumentality, and Sonic Ecology” David VanderHamm

In the pages of Guitar Player magazine, a maker of amplifiers and effects pedals proudly advertises its products with the tagline, “Everything at the other end of your guitar cable.” This slogan plays on a common distinction between “the instrument itself” and everything else, which is commonly referred to as “gear.” Making use of interviews and specialist publications, I challenge the simple

1 Richard Bethell, 'Vocal Vibrato in Early Muisc', in Singing music from 1500 to 1900: style, technique, knowledge, assertion, experiment, ed. by John Potter and Jonathan Wainwright (University of York: 2009).

distinction between guitar and gear, ultimately granting the amplifier full instrumental agency within the complex network of technologies that comprises the electric guitar. I focus on the role of amplification primarily within live jazz performance, precisely because the technology is often perceived in these contexts as an invisible and inaudible mediator of sound. Ethnography of Chicago jazz guitarists reveals the ways that these musicians constantly interact with their amplifiers as part of an embodied listening/musicking practice that informs improvisation on both micro and macro levels. I further utilize the concept of sonic ecology to describe the way that amplifiers subsequently interact with and transform their physical, social, and musical environments. Drawing on science and technology studies, organology, and performance ethnography, I argue that to play an electric guitar—even when the amplifier is not used to radically alter its timbre—is also to play an amplifier. The amplifier does more than amplify; it defines the instrument’s relationship to the sonic space of the venue, the musical and social dynamic of the ensemble, and the embodied improvisational practice of guitarists themselves.

Sunday Morning: “Music and Place: Networks of Migration, Travel, and Exchange”

“Serge Koussevitzky: Identity, Allegiance and Cultural Responsibility in the Wake of the Russian Diaspora” Jamie Blake

In the wake of the 1917 Revolution, many Russian musicians were displaced—either voluntarily or forcibly—and resettled in cultural centers around the world. As a diasporic network unfolded, global representations of Russian music and culture took new shapes, guided by both exiled musicians and their counterparts who remained in Russia. Many of these musicians became arbiters of Russian culture, saddled with the privilege and burden of cultural ownership.

Amid this movement, conductor Serge Koussevitzky and his wife Natalie left Moscow for Paris and eventually Boston, where he would remain as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the remainder of his career. Owing to his status, artistic influence, transatlantic mobility, and diverse musical and cultural pursuits, Koussevitzky stood at a crucial position in a network of Russian musicians and artists within and outside of Russia. His connections are both theoretical (in the sense of shared experience) and literal (as evidenced by his many letters, writings, and interviews).

Despite the excitement with which Boston received him, Koussevitzky grappled for most of his life with issues of allegiance, identity, and cultural responsibility. These struggles became evident in Koussevitzky’s letters, speeches, and writings, as well as in the endeavors he chose—or refused—to undertake. Koussevitzky’s negotiation of the tensions surrounding his curation of Russian music, his burgeoning role in the development of the American orchestra, and his visible role in shifting global politics shed light on the pressures, opportunities, and responsibilities confronting the displaced Russian musician. Furthermore, in investigating the relationship between Koussevitzky and his work in the United States, the mutually informative influences between Koussevitzky and Boston provide a deeper understanding of the relevance of places, present and past, in the context of diasporic displacement.

“Fisherman’s Feast in Boston North-End” Michele Segretario

This paper shows the results of a field research conducted among the Italian-American community during the Fisherman’s Feast, an annual religious feast that takes place every summer in Boston North-End since 1910 and is based on a tradition that goes back to the 16th century in Sciacca (Sicily-IT).

Southern Italian immigration to the US reached its first peak at the end of 19th century. Between 1880 and 1915, four million Italians arrived in the United States, driven by poverty and social hardship; 70% of this migration came from Southern Italy. As a result of this process, vital cultural forms developed transnationally, outside canonic boundaries of national space. The Fisherman’s Feast is an example of this, since it refers to devotion to Madonna del Soccorso (Our Lady of Help), that even today is celebrated by Sciacca’s fishermen. The Fisherman’s Feast—as transfiguration of an ancient religious practice—assumes a character of interface, place of border and contact in which exchange of knowledge occurs.

This study aims to contextualize this Southern Italian culture’s practice within new geographies, both cultural and sonic, investigating the symbolic transformations occurred and the role of music in defining cultural hybridizations and new places of cultural identity related to the country of origin. As well as the sonic relationship between the Italian-American community in Boston North-End and the new spaces in which the Madonna del Soccorso has taken its new residency.

“Encounter and Exchange on the Chicago Blues Scene, 1957-60” Lawrence Davies

In the late 1950s, a number of British, French, and Belgian blues enthusiasts visited the United States. Gravitating to Chicago, visitors such as Bruynoghe (1957-58), Demêtre and Chauvard (1959), Adins (1959-60), and Oliver (1960) sought to obtain discographical and biographical information about blues musicians, while immersing themselves the live blues scene. These visitors' motivations have attracted little academic scrutiny, as they are assumed to be the same as those found during the jazz “revival” of the 1940s and the folk “revival” of the 1960s, when white enthusiasts sought to discover, document, and preserve what they heard to be a unique, exotic, and disappearing musical culture (Hamilton 2008; O'Connell 2015).

Alternatively, these encounters can be understood in the context of increasing transatlantic musical exchange during the 1950s, when both African American and British blues musicians first began to travel internationally in significant numbers. Drawing on the notion of fieldwork as “visiting” (Titon 2004), I show how hosts on both sides of the Atlantic absorbed their visitors into existing networks of musical and social interaction. As such, accounts of these interactions provide rich insight into the ecological nuances of the Chicago blues scene, such as musicians' musical, social, and financial concerns. Moreover, they complicate the division between “insider” and “outsider” common to existing representations of African American culture at this time (e.g. Ramsey, Smith et al 1939; Blesh 1943), evoking moments of interracial affinity and asserting the conciliatory power of blues music in a way that is surprising – even unique – for this period (cf. Jones 1963).

Presenters

Jamie Blake is a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is broadly interested in American music and musical practices of the twentieth century, as well as Russian music and Russian-American artistic relationships. Prior to her work at UNC, Jamie earned a Bachelor of Music from Boston University, a Master of Music in conducting from Brigham Young University, and worked as a music educator.

Joseph Bolger is a countertenor and musicology Ph.D student at King’s College London. As a singer Joseph has worked for companies including Opera North, New Chamber Opera, Music Theatre Wales, Opera Settecento and Armonico Consort. His voice-lute ensemble ‘Duo Seraphim’ made their debut at the 2015 Brighton Early Music Festival and have appeared for both City Music Society and Lake District Summer Music Festival this year. His Ph.D research examines the often problematic relationship between the ideals of performance practice researchers and those of today’s singers, seeking to propose ways in which each might better collaborate with the other. Joseph obtained a degree in music from Pembroke College Oxford before studying singing at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. He is a Senior Lecturer in Classical Voice at Leeds College of Music.

Lawrence Davies is a PhD student researching the reception and performance of blues music in Britain before 1960. As well as tracking the genre's transatlantic dissemination through live performance, recordings, and radio, his research examines how the blues was interpreted through transnational jazz and folk 'revival' movements, fueling questions of national, social, and racial identity. Lawrence has contributed the entry on 'British Blues' for the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World (forthcoming), and blogs about his research at allthirteenkeys.com. From Jan-May 2016 he was a British Research Council Fellow at the Library of Congress. In 2017, he will embark on an Edison Fellowship at the British Library to research the intertwined histories of classical, jazz, and 'dance band' music on record and radio in interwar Britain. Future plans include research on networks of creative labour in blues music, and the radio career of folklorist Alan Lomax.

A. Kori Hill is a second-year M.A./Ph.D. student in musicology at UNC at Chapel Hill. Her research interests focus on classical music performance and composition in 19th and 20th century African American communities, recital programming and pedagogical methods of African American classical violinists of the late 19th century, and music as racial and cultural signifiers in the United States. Her master’s thesis, “Clarence Cameron White: Violin Performance and Pedagogy in the African American Community,” addressed the education, performing career, and pedagogical methods of the African American violinist, Clarence Cameron White within the context of music as a tool for cultural and racial identity and expression. Kori holds a Master of Music in music history and violin performance from West Virginia University (’15) and a Bachelor of Music in violin performance from Miami University (’08).

Alexander Marsden is a second-year graduate student in the musicology programme at UNC-Chapel Hill. He has undergraduate and Master’s degrees in music studies from the University of Cambridge. His diverse interests include musical humanitarianism, the analysis of hip-hop and grime, and modernism in contemporary popular music criticism.

H. Meg Orita Originally from Princeton, NJ, H. Meg Orita holds a Bachelor of Music degree, summa cum laude with program honors, in Voice & Opera Performance with a Minor in Musicology from Northwestern University's Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music. Her research interests include issues of voice, body, authorship, and performance in twentieth-century avant-gardes and the intersections of twenty first-century popular music and body/beauty expectations in media such as YouTube, social media, and television. A Co-Organizer of the UNC-Duke Experimental Music Study Group, Meg is also a vocalist whose performance projects focus on the interpretation of early and new musics. Meg is also involved in projects with the National Eating Disorders Association and Embody Carolina, and runs a blog dedicated to body-positive musicology.

Georgie Pope is currently undertaking a PhD in ethnomusicology at King's College, London. Her research focuses on the performance practices cultivated in Assam's Neo-Vaishnavite monasteries, in relation to nationalism, touring and tourism. She is also the founder-director of Sound Travels, a tour and production company which works to connect music-lovers, promoters, travellers and Indophiles with the musical riches of India, particularly Assam, West Bengal and Rajasthan. A harpist and occasionally a dancer, Georgie also holds an MA in anthropology from SOAS, University of London and a BA in English Literature and Art History from Leeds University.

Michele Segretario is a second-year graduate student in Musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research project about cultural mobility, Traveling Sounds, examines the Southern Italian diaspora through the study of sound migrations related to religion, everyday working practices, and entertainment as they are now reproduced in some areas of the United States. Michele is also working on a survey about the relationship between nostalgia, place, and techno music. His interests include popular music, conflict theories, and media studies. He completed his BA (Music Disciplines) and MA (Musicology) at the Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy).

Hannah Templeton has just completed the final year of her PhD in Historical Musicology at King's College London, funded by the AHRC. Her current research focuses on the Mozart family's fifteen- month stay in London from 1764-1765. She is supervised by Prof Cliff Eisen. Hannah was awarded the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies President's Prize for her paper at the 2016 annual conference. She is contributing an entry to Simon Keefe's forthcoming Mozart in Context (2017). Hannah is also the online music reviews editor for the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the events coordinator for the Royal Musical Association Music and Philosophy Study Group.

Sarah Tomlinson is a third-year graduate student in musicology at UNC Chapel Hill. Sarah recently completed her master’s thesis, “’And I want you to walk down freedom’s road’: Rethinking Resistance in the Music of Nina Simone,” which examines the ways that activist, pianist, and singer-songwriter Nina Simone resisted racism and engaged with black consciousness before she composed her first explicitly political protest song in 1963. In addition to her interests in popular music and critical race theory, Sarah’s master’s thesis work also stems from her broad interests in feminism(s), identity politics, and American music. Her dissertation is on the ideological history and current practice of classical music programming for children’s audiences in the United States. She situates her study of classical music in children’s lives within feminist methodologies and critical examinations of elitism and ageism. In 2014, Sarah graduated from Michigan State University with a B.M. in Music Education and a B.A. in Music.

David VanderHamm is a PhD candidate in musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who holds degrees in guitar performance from the University of Denver and in musicology from UNC. His dissertation on the social construction of virtuosity in the age of electronic media uses case studies from early country music radio, the American performances of Ravi Shankar, and guitarists with disabilities to describe how understandings of the laboring subject are articulated within discourses and displays of skill. His research has been supported by fellowships from the Berea College Appalachian Sound Archives and the UNC Graduate School.

Contact Information

Kori Hill [email protected] 513-324-0488

Alex Marsden [email protected] 984-364-0204