Composition and theory PhD student Nicolás Aguía’s artistic collaboration The American Poetry Choral Cabaret received its premiere performance in the summer of 2021 in Bogotá, Colombia. Aguía created the work, which he describes as a “drag oratorio-cabaret” with transdisciplinary artist Alfonso J. Venegas and received a grant for the premiere from the U.S. Embassy in Colombia.
Music theory and technology instructor Aaron Myers-Brooks (PhD 2014) has developed a reputation for explorations of microtonal electric guitar as virtuosic as they are innovative. Whether he’s playing his 17 tone-per-octave instrument on solo compositions or with one of his two metal bands, you can count on Myers-Brooks to take your conception of what music is in directions you would never anticipate.
Our guest for this episode of the Music at Pitt Podcast is composer/pianist Eric Moe, the University of Pittsburgh’s Andrew Mellon Professor of Music and co-director of Music on the Edge. He is a composer of what the New York Times calls "music of winning exuberance,” and as a pianist and keyboardist, has premiered and performed works by a wide variety of composers. His playing can be heard on the Koch, CRI, Mode, Albany, New World Records, and Innova labels.
Our guest for this episode of the Music at Pitt Podcast is composer, sound designer, and software developer Phil Lamperski. Phil graduated from Pitt in 2007 with a BA in Music and a BS in Psychology. He went on to earn an MA in Music from UC Santa Cruz and has since been busy working on interactive music, software involving algorithmic composition, and sound design for video games. He is currently a senior sound designer at Crystal Dynamics where one of his most recently released projects is the Marvel Avengers RPG for which Phil created combat music and warzone ambient systems.
Doctoral candidate and Fulbright Scholar Steven Moon had to cut his research year in Turkey short due to the pandemic, but he has still made significant progress in exploring the intersection of culture and medicine in that country. Moon is studying the role of music in Ottoman healing practices with specific interest in how this approach transcends mind/body dualisms.
Our guest for this episode of the Music at Pitt podcast is Devon Tipp. A PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh, Tipp’s music draws influence from his Japanese and Eastern European roots, his experiences as a jeweler and painter, and his studies of gagaku and hogaku in Japan and the US. He received his BMus from Montclair State University, where he studied composition and microtonal music with Dean Drummond, and shakuhachi with Elizabeth Brown. His music has been performed by microtonal specialists Kjell Tore Innervik, Veli Kujala and Tolgahan Çogulu.
