Blair School Of Music

By Jenna Somers A trans-institutional team from the LIVE Initiative at Vanderbilt University has progressed to the final round of the National Science Foundation’s Visionary Interdisciplinary Teams Advancing Learning (VITAL) Prize Challenge for designing BeatBlox, a music-based framework for teaching computer science. The team, Code to Joy,… Read More

Blair School of Music is well represented in the nominations for the 66th GRAMMY Awards, with a total of five selections announced between faculty Edgar Meyer and Dashon Burton, and alumnus William Brittelle. Read More

Lauded musician, composer, and educator Wadada Leo Smith will be at Vanderbilt University for a weeklong residency November 28 – December 1, which will include two musical performances and a special forum interview event. Read More

Blair School of Music is well represented in the nominations for the 66th GRAMMY Awards, with a total of five selections announced on November 10. Read More

To kick off LGBTQI+ History Month, the Blair School of Music faculty presents a concert of works written by and for composer and author Ned Rorem. Known for both his breadth of output for both vocal and instrumental forces, Rorem entered gay icon status through the publication of his diaries over forty years, beginning in 1966. In addition to a selection of works by Rorem, a new work by Blair composer Russell Platt—writing in honor of Rorem—will be performed. Read More

Raheleh Filsoofi has been awarded a Tennessee Art Commission Grant for her project, “The Resonance of the Lands: Finding Identity and Place in Tennessee Through Clay, Music, and Community.” The program involves mapping and extracting clay from various locations across the city to create 25 clay instruments, taking inspiration from the traditional Middle Eastern clay darbuka. Read More

Bobbe Gorin “Beegie” Long Adair, renowned pianist and bandleader and retired adjunct lecturer in jazz improvisation at Blair School of Music, died Jan. 23 in Franklin, Tenn. Read More

Kingston Ho, a third-year student in violin performance and medicine, health and society, has been selected to compete in the annual Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy. Read More

Blair School of Music faculty news from spring and summer 2021 Read More

Mary Biddlecombe, artistic director of the Blair Children’s Chorus, has been appointed director of Blair Academy at Vanderbilt, the precollege and adult program of the Blair School of Music. Read More

Vanderbilt Blair creates Curso Virtual de Dirección de Banda, a remote learning program for music directors in Latin America that covers instrument pedagogy, conducting techniques and other topics in band direction. Read More

Vanderbilt Blair School of Music, which offered online-only streamed concerts for most of the 2020–21 academic year, hosted two outdoor in-person performances on Wilson Lawn in April, including a production of Benjamin Britten's 'Albert Herring' by Vanderbilt Opera Theatre. Read More

Vanderbilt’s partnership with the recently opened National Museum of African American Music promises the potential of community-building discussions involving music, race, history and storytelling. Read More

Last November, alumnus Gene Back’s growing list of accomplishments caught the attention of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. The organization, which promotes the art of motion pictures on both sides of the Atlantic, selected him as a Breakthrough Talent. Read More

A compilation of recent awards, events and research in Vanderbilt's arts community. Read More

Photo by Joe Howell by John Pitcher It’s the end of an era at Blair. Mark Wait, the Martha Rivers Ingram Dean and professor of music, retired June 30. Blair was a relatively small institution when Wait took the helm in 1993. It had 19 full-time faculty who taught and… Read More

Kirsten Agresta Copely, adjunct associate professor of harp, released Around The Sun, an all-original new age harp album in January. It takes listeners on a journey through a 365-day cycle from “Daybreak” to “Winter’s Bone” with introspective melodies and ambient soundscapes. This marks her third solo album and first as… Read More

Undergraduate competition winners Max Randal, a rising senior piano performance major and computer science minor, was named the Tennessee Music Teachers Association Young Artist Collegiate Competition state winner in November 2019. Kaila Geisinger, a rising senior harp performance major, took second prize representing the Southeastern Region in the Advanced Division… Read More

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to upend lives in countless ways, members of the Vanderbilt community have shown remarkable resilience in the face of the crisis. Read More

Senior Sarah Clements sings—accompanied by sophomore Calendula Cheng at the keyboards—during the dress rehearsal for January’s concert A Humming Under My Feet. Photo by Joe Howell Many women encounter glass ceilings during their careers. For women composers, those ceilings are seemingly laminated and bulletproof. That’s especially true for women who… Read More