Vanderbilt Blair School Of Music

Blair alumna Krystal Grant Folkestad uses her musical skills to serve multiple audiences while focusing on how life affects art and art influences activism.  Read More

Blair Wilson, BA’74, whose family has deep ties to Vanderbilt University and its Blair School of Music, has endowed the Mark Wait Piano Scholarship to support students studying piano performance at the Blair School. The merit-based scholarship is named in honor of Dean Emeritus Mark Wait, who led Blair from 1993 to 2020.    Read More

When Jennifer Janes arrived at Vanderbilt Blair School of Music in 1998, she had two career paths in mind—veterinary medicine and teaching piano at the college level. Her abiding interest in horses and veterinary medicine eventually won out. Today, Dr. Janes is an associate professor of veterinary anatomic pathology at the University of Kentucky Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. Read More

The Vanderbilt Blair School of Music has secured $5 million in funding for the pilot phase of a comprehensive scholarship, the Blair Community Scholars Program, which will recruit highly talented students from underrepresented and vulnerable backgrounds. Read More

Vanderbilt students who are part of the inaugural Vanderbilt Choral Scholars program spent a week in cathedrals in the United Kingdom to better understand the community impact of church music in Europe.    Read More

Blair School Dean Lorenzo F. Candelaria sees opportunities to revolutionize the experience of classical music in ways that cultivate new and diverse audiences for the art form. In some cases, it means taking the music to unexpected places.  Read More

The Vanderbilt University Symphony Orchestra and Vanderbilt's collegiate choirs will host a musical tribute to remember those who’ve suffered a loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. The concert will be on April 10 at 2 p.m. at the Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Arts at Vanderbilt Blair School of Music.  Read More

Vanderbilt Blair's Eunoia String Quartet, coached by Carolyn Huebl, professor of violin, won the 2022 Music Teachers National Association Chamber Music String competition. They and another Blair student ensemble, the Arsevi Trio, competed as two of only seven national finalists. 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

Associate professor of percussion at Blair School of Music Ji Hye Jung describes how her teaching is informed by her perspective as an international faculty member. Read More

The Martha Rivers Ingram Dean’s Chair, endowed in 2005 to support the position of the dean at the Blair School of Music, has been renamed the Mark Wait Dean’s Chair to honor the former dean and professor of music, who was at Blair from 1993 to 2020. Read More

The Vanderbilt University Orchestra, conducted by Robin Fountain, and Vanderbilt Treble Choir, directed by Mary Biddlecombe, present Gustav Holst’s "The Planets," in conjunction with astronomer and visual artist José Francisco Salgado and KV 265 Science Through Art, at 8 p.m. Sept. 25 at the Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Arts at Vanderbilt 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

Alumna Alyssa Weinberg, cofounder of new music and contemporary dance collective Duende, creates new forms of expression as a composer inspired by artists in other disciplines. She also has written music for some of the country’s premier chamber ensembles, including Eighth Blackbird, So Percussion and Aizuri Quartet. 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

The Valere Potter Chair and Professor of Violin leverages her vast experience to guide extraordinary talent. 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

"Vanderbilt Virtuosi," an album of works composed and performed by faculty and alumni of Vanderbilt Blair School of Music and spearheaded by Molly Barth, was released on the Blue Griffin label in February. Read More

Associate Professor of Musicology Douglas Shadle's latest book explores how Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony raised new questions in classical music about the place of African American music within the broader musical culture of the United States. Read More

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the entire Vanderbilt community to change its routines. But because of the live-performance nature of music schools, the Blair School has implemented numerous precautions to ensure that faculty and students remain safe—all while maintaining a semblance of the highly personalized instruction for which Blair is known. Read More