Music faculty members garner prizes

Faculty members in the University’s Department of Music received several prestigious awards during 2007.

In December, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers named Howard Sandroff, Senior Lecturer in Music, one of the recipients of the 2007-2008 ASCAPLUS Awards in the Concert Music Division. Sandroff received the honor for his catalog of original compositions. The ASCAP also honored Philip Gossett, the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor in Music, for Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera.

In November 2007, the British Academy awarded Philip Bohlman its Derek Allen Prize for Musicology. The award was given to Bohlman, the Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities and Music, for his book, The Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History.

In October, at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Gossett received the Otto Kinkeldey Award for best monograph by a senior scholar for his Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera. Ellen Hargis, a soprano, who is a member of the Newberry Consort, ensemble-in-residence at the University, received a Grammy nomination for her recording of Lully’s Thésée, a 17th-century French opera.

Martha Feldman, Professor in Music, received the Ruth A. Solie Award for the best multi-author collection of essays, The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, which she co-authored with Bonnie Gordon of the University of Virginia.

Anne Walters Robertson, the Claire Dux Swift Distinguished Service Professor in Music, received the H. Colin Slim Award for “The Savior, the Woman, and the Head of the Dragon in the Caput Masses and Motet,” which was honored as the best article by a senior scholar.

The latest recording by the University’s resident ensemble eighth blackbird, which is titled strange imaginary animals and includes the piece “Friction Systems,” written by graduate student David Gordon, has been nominated for a Grammy Award.