D.M.A. Program
Where new sounds and ideas are brought to life.
The Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) program is highly competitive, admitting only one new student each year to study with performers on the professorial faculty. Started in 1985 by Professor Emeritus Malcolm Bilson as a doctoral program in 18th-century Performance Practice with an illustrious history of graduates, the program now embraces performance practices of all ages. More about the program requirements may be found here .
The D.M.A. performers who focus on performance practice issues work with some of the most acclaimed musicologists and ensembles, and have collaborated with the students in Cornell’s highly esteemed composition department, with countless works premiered and honored with acclaim as a result.. Alumni have been participants at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and the Lucerne Festival Academy, and have gone on to pursue adventurous careers.
Alumni
Past and present participants in the D.M.A. program
Andrew Zhou : andrew-zhou.com
Dissertation: Godlike Recompense?: Lives, Bodies, and Erasures in the Piano Etudes of Hans Abrahamsen, Unsuk Chin, and Pascal Dusapin
David Friend: davidfriendpiano.net
Dissertation: Fingers Glittering Above the Keyboard: The Keyboard Works and Hybrid Creative Practices of Tristan Perich.
Shin Hwang: click for bio
Dissertation: Reconstructing Clara Schumann’s Pedagogy: Illumination through Understanding
Ryan MacEvoy McCullough: ryanmmccullough.com
Dissertation [in progress]: Towards a “Paradise Garden”: Aesthetics, Performance Practice and Organology in Jonathan Harvey’s Bird Concerto with Pianosong
Richard Valitutto: richardvalitutto.net
Thomas Feng: thomasfengmusic.com
Watch
Listen to and view selected highlights from past performances, festivals, and projects by the D.M.A. participants.
Festivals and programs by D.M.A. performers
These are only a sample of the projects created by performers in the D.M.A. program. Click on the images for links to the full programs of these selected festivals from the archive, where available.
Out of Order
A week-long festival with guest artists JACK Quartet and friends centered on the music of the maverick German composer Walter Zimmermann. Curated by Andrew Zhou.
Ithaca Sounding
Homegrown composers David Borden, Julius Eastman, Sarah Hennies, Ann Silsbee are given pride of place in this festival curated by Richard Valitutto
Environs Messiaen
Birdsongs and Cornell form the perfect coupling in this festival that featured guests Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich. With performances at the Lab of Ornithology by Xak Bjerken, Ryan MacEvoy McCullough, David Friend, Mari Kawamura, and Andrew Zhou, the festival centered on a complete performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux, his nearly four-hour long love letter to the creatures he called “God’s musicians.” Curated by Ryan MacEvoy McCullough
Tristan Perich residency
A weekend featuring the electroacoustic “one bit” music of Tristan Perich, whose oeuvre has been described as “an austere meeting of electronic and organic.” Curated by David Friend.
Stockhausen’s MANTRA
Ryan McCullough and Andrew Zhou formed HereNowHear in 2015 to perform Stockhausen’s Mantra, an epic work for two pianos, percussion, and electronics. The duo, which made the electronic components themselves, has gone on to perform the work countless times along with commissions from composers Christopher Stark, Loren Loiacono, and John Liberatore, the last garnering funding from the Fromm Foundation. More information can be found at herenowhear.com.