uky.eduCurrent Graduate Students in Musicology
David Bubsey
David Bubsey is presently a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at the University of Kentucky, and an adjunct faculty member at East Tennessee State University. He holds the M.M. in Trombone Performance from Butler University (1980), and the B.M.E. from The Ohio State University (1975). He is presently principal trombonist of the Johnson City Symphony Orchestra and the Appalachian Brass Orchestra (formally, the Tennessee Brass). His prior performance experience includes The United States Army Field Band in Washington, D.C. from 1981 to 1989. As a member of the premier United States Army Field Band he was associate principal trombonist of the concert band and the trombonist with the brass quintet. He also was a sub with the U.S. Army Jazz Ambassadors. In 2001, he was named to the faculty at East Tennessee State University where his duties include applied trombone, trombone choir, introduction to music, and history of jazz. He has also recently proposed a new music course for the ETSU curriculum entitled History of African-American Music. In 2003 he returned to graduate school at the University of Kentucky to begin work on his Ph.D.
David’s scholarly interests include the music of the 20th-Century, particularly the life and works of Luciano Berio. His dissertation in progress is entitled “Luciano Berio: The American Decade.” He is often called upon by publishers of music textbooks to review proposed new educational materials, and most recently was a contributor to Jazz by Gary Giddins and Scott Deveaux published by W.W. Norton, Inc. in 2009. This contribution included the writing of practice quizzes with listening examples for the W.W. Norton online study space site.
Jacob Cook
Jacob Cook, originally from Elizabethton, Tennessee, received his Bachelor of Music in voice performance and Bachelor of Business Administration in Accountancy from East Tennessee State University in 2004. Currently, he is working on concurrent Masters Degrees in voice performance and musicology. His musicological interests include French opéra-comique as it relates to other theatrical genres in Paris from the late 18th century into the 19th century, historic theatre design, and the works of Wagner. He is planning a thesis and performance project on opéra-comique.
Dennis Davis
Dennis Davis is the Assistant Professor of Guitar and Music Technology at Eastern Kentucky University. He holds a B.M. (Guitar Performance) and a B.S. (Accounting) from the University of Kentucky and a Master of Music degree (Guitar Performance) from the University of Louisville. He is currently a doctoral candidate in musicology at U.K. Professor Davis performs numerous solo and chamber recitals throughout the region and performs regularly with the EKU Faculty Jazz Quintet and The Kentucky Jazz Repertoire Orchestra. He is also a member of the review panel for Soundboard magazine.
His forthcoming dissertation, entitled Humor, Structure, and Methodology in Selected Works by Peter Schickele, examines Schickele’s life, influences, and select works. The research illuminates Schickele’s direct and indirect audience preparation, tripartite personae, and strategies for music humor. The methodology classifies humor as a structural device with layers similar to those found in Schenkerian analyses. The findings offer a new paradigm for understanding Schickele’s humor and extend the research of Rosanna Dalmonte, Tammy Ravas, and David Huron.
Angela Hammond
A native of Decatur, Alabama, Ms. Hammond holds a Bachelor’s of Music Therapy degree from Loyola University New Orleans and a Master of Arts degree in Music from Jacksonville State University, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology at the University of Kentucky. Ms. Hammond has occupational experience in music therapy working with adult psychiatric populations, and has been a private instructor of saxophone and clarinet. She has taught general music for grades K-9 in the Alabama Public School System, and has been an adjunct instructor of music for the John C. Calhoun Community College and Blue Grass Community and Technical College. Since 1999 she has taught undergraduate music courses at the University of Kentucky.
Ms. Hammond’s research interests include the expression of race in American musics and popular culture; music in nineteenth century New Orleans; early jazz music and musicians in New Orleans with regard to race, ethnicity, and geography; and, Haitian folk music. Ms. Hammond has presented her research at meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. Her dissertation in progress is titled “Color Me Country: Whiteness and Commercial Country Music” (see abstract) and should be completed in 2007. Her interests outside of academia include raising her two children, gardening, home canning and brewing, home improvement, antiques, record collecting, and cinema.
Greta Hicks
Greta Hicks holds a B.A. degree in music from Transylvania University, and has completed the coursework for the M.A. in musicology at U.K.
Jeffrey Jones
Jeffrey Daniel Jones, currently pursuing his doctorate, is moving into musicology as a discipline after twenty years employment in the hi-tech realm. His interest in the musical corpus is broad; in the classical realm he has special interest in the Baroque and Modern eras, in jazz he is very interested in swing era performers, and in rock he is most drawn to the older, weirder acts. Recently, he has been seated on the board of Musica Toscana, a group devoted to the preparation of scholarly/performance editions of works from the Ricasoli collection, now housed at the University of Louisville. He is currently working on the transcriptions of the works for a volume of eighteenth-century Italian arias from that collection. His M.A. thesis, in progress, is a catalog and study of another collection in the Louisville library, that of the early nineteenth-century Italian musician Giuseppe Lapi.
Kevin Kehrberg
Kevin Kehrberg holds a B.A. in Music from Bethel College (Kansas) and received an M.A. in Musicology from the University of Kentucky with a thesis entitled “Original Gospel Quartet Music Recorded by Bill Monroe.” His research interests involve popular forms of American music, including sacred music, traditional and vernacular music, and jazz, as well as English popular song of the 18th century. He is currently completing a dissertation on the music of Albert E. Brumley, the most influential American gospel song composer of the twentieth century (see abstract).
Kevin has presented papers both nationally and internationally at various meetings including the Society for American Music, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, the International Country Music Conference, and the American Musicological Society (South-Central Chapter). His writings have appeared in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, The Bulletin of the Society for American Music, The Newsletter of the Society of American Archivists’ Performing Arts Roundtable, and Moonshiner Bluegrass Journal.
Kevin has been the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including an Appalachian Music Fellowship from Berea College, the James S. Brown Award for Research on Appalachia, a Longyear Dissertation Year Fellowship, and the University of Kentucky Association of Emeriti Faculty’s Endowed Doctoral Fellowship Award. From the University of Kentucky Graduate School, Kevin has received a Presidential Fellowship and, most recently, a Dissertation Year Fellowship for the 2009-2010 academic year. An active bassist, Kevin has performed widely in the United States, Canada, and Japan and appears on several recordings. He is currently an adjunct faculty instructor of Jazz Bass at Morehead State University (Morehead, KY) and Transylvania University (Lexington, KY).
César Leal
César Leal was born in Bogotá (Colombia). Currently he is ABD in the Ph.D. program. His interest in both research on and performance of contemporary music has led him to work as the Music Director of the LACNM (Latin American Center of New Music) for the last two years. He has participated in the Contemporary Music Festival in Nanterre Conservatoire (France) in January 2006, and was a finalist in the Second International Conducting Workshop of the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra in August 2006. César was also invited to the International Contemporary Music Festival of Lima (Perú) in November 2006. He produced the CD Project “Lexico Series,” a compendium of contemporary pieces by representative composers from Latin America. In 2009, César participated in the International festival of Electroacoustic music En Tiempo Real: Nuevos Espacios Sonoros, in which he conducted and presented a paper on contemporary Electroacoustic opera. He has a B.M. in performance from Javeriana University in Bogotá and an M.M. in Instrumental Conducting from Florida International University.
Melinda Lio
Melinda Lio is a Lexington native who is working on her masters in musicology with an emphasis in ethnomusicology. She graduated from UK with a B.A. in piano but also enjoys playing the pipa, er-hu, violin, and organ. She has performed with Dr. Han’s Chinese Ensemble and Community Gamelan, and Dr. Kwon’s Korean Percussion Ensemble. She is interested in pedagogy, and the combination of visuals with musical practices. Ideally, her further studies will include traveling and good food.
Christopher Little
Christopher Little is a native of Princeton, New Jersey but spent half of his childhood in Sarasota, Florida and the other half in Springfield, Missouri. Having earned a B.M. in clarinet performance from Missouri State University, Christopher is currently pursuing both the M.M. degree in clarinet performance and the M.A. degree in musicology at the University of Kentucky. His areas of interest include the so-called "English musical renaissance" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and Russian music of the Nationalist and Soviet eras.
Yawen Ludden
Yawen Ludden, a native of Shanghai, China, is pursuing a Ph.D. in Musicology. She holds a B.A. degree from Shanghai Normal University and an M.A. in Music from Campbellsville University in Kentucky. She is interested in Chinese, American, and Western opera in general and its influence on society. Her research focuses on the evolution and transformation of Beijing opera and its interrelationship with Chinese society, economy, and politics. She has presented her research at major national and international conferences such as the American Musicological Society (AMS), the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research (CHIME). She has been invited as guest lecturer at Shanghai Conservatory and Shanghai Normal University. She has also been invited as a distinguished guest to participate in the Shanghai Spring International Music Festival and the Shanghai International Accordion Festival.
Alicia Massie-Legg
Alicia R. Massie-Legg is a second-year musicology student. She holds a masters degree in music history and a masters degree in vocal performance with an emphasis in vocal pedagogy from Ohio University/Athens. Before joining the musicology program at U.K., she taught voice at University of Tennessee/Knoxville for two years and voice and vocal pedagogy at Maryville College, Tennessee for four years. She also has taught private voice for 15 years. She has extensive experience as lead singer for two jazz bands and as singer/songwriter for JAM 513, a contemporary Christian band which was active for three years in Tennessee. Alicia lives in Maryville, Tennessee with her husband, Bob, and her two daughters, Dagan and Bradley.
Jennifer King Matthews
Jennifer has been appointed Music Librarian at Oklahoma City University. She has a B.M. in violin performance from Ball State University, and two masters degrees from the University of Kentucky: the M.A. in Musicology, with a thesis entitled “A Fantasia of Sound: A Study of the Musical Editing and Animation in Walt Disney’s 1940 Film,” and the Master of Library Science. She has completed coursework and exams for the Ph.D., and is planning to write a dissertation on the film music of Randy Newman.
Dean McCleese
Dean McCleese is a master's student in musicology at the University of Kentucky. His research focus as a musicologist is on the organ and more specifically, the theatre pipe organ. His organ interests also extend into the realm of the concert artist, specifically the legendary Virgil Fox. Outside of music his hobbies are model railroading and railfanning. He holds a bachelor of music degree in tuba performance from Ohio University and a Master of Music degree in this same area from U.K.
John McCluskey
John McCluskey, a Tennessee native, holds a bachelor's degree in Music Education from Lee University, which is located in the south-east corner of his home state. This is his first year at UK, where he is pursing his MA in Musicology. John's passion for music history covers many bases, from Orlando Gibbons to David Bowie to John Coltrane, the unifying element being the social interaction between music and its surrounding culture. He is presently a TA for MUS 302, where he is further investing in his love for education. John's instrument is the saxophone, which he continues to hold close to his heart, though he does enjoy piano and attempting the flute.
Hayward Mickens
Hayward Mickens is a graduate of Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Balitmore, Maryland. He received his B.M. in piano performance in 1976 and M.M. in piano performance in 1983. He has taught at Fisk University in Nashville Tennessee, Voorhees College, Denmark, South Carolina, Tennessee State University, and the University of the Virgin Islands (St. Thomas Campus). Hayward was also a public school educator for six years in St Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and served as organist/choirmaster of historic Frederick Evangelical Lutheran Church in St. Thomas. He is currently on the faculty of Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky, and is organist of Second Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky. Hayward is a long standing student of Musicology at the University of Kentucky.
Larry Nelson
Larry Nelson, a doctoral student in musicology, is assistant professor of Saxophone, Jazz Studies, and Music History at Eastern Kentucky University. He teaches applied lessons, directs the E.K.U. Jazz Ensemble as well as the E.K.U. Saxophone ensembles, and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in symphonic literature, American popular music, jazz improvisation, and music appreciation.
Larry holds the M.M. in Saxophone performance, and is an active performer on both saxophone and bass. He is a member of the E.K.U. Faculty Jazz Quintet, the Osland Saxophone Quartet, the Kentucky Jazz Repertory Orchestra, the Dimartino-Osland Jazz Orchestra, and appears frequently with the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also performed with Ray Charles, Manhattan Transfer, the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, Lou Rawls, the Jimmy Dorsey orchestra, Ben Vereen, and many others artists of note. He is beginning work on a dissertation on the social construction of the jam session in jazz.
Ann Niren
Ann Glazer Niren, a Ph.D. candidate in musicology, is conducting research for her dissertation, titled “The Influence of Solomon Braslavsky and Congregation Mishkan Tefila on Leonard Bernstein” (see abstract). Additional research interests include the music of George Crumb and Terry Riley. Ms. Niren’s article on pianist and radio personality Marian McPartland appears in the just released Musicians and Composers of the Twentieth Century (Salem Press, 2009).
In addition to her studies, Ms. Niren teaches the four music history courses for music majors at Indiana University Southeast where she has been employed since 1988. In 1998, she was the recipient of an I.U. Southeast Teaching Excellence Recognition Award and in 2005, she won the IUS Distinguished Teaching Award for part-time faculty. She also serves as the music director for Temple Shalom in Louisville. Ms. Niren received her Bachelor of Music degree in composition with a piano concentration from Indiana University and her Master of Music degree in theory from Northwestern University.
Nikos Pappas
Nikos Pappas (B.M. in Viola Performance, Ohio University; M.M. in Music History, Ohio University), a Ph.D. candidate originally from Columbus Ohio, has a wide range of musical interests both as a performer and as a scholar. He is working on his dissertation, “Patterns in the Sacred Musical Culture of the American South and West (1760-1860).” He has presented papers at several conferences including the International Council of Traditional Music, the Society for American Music, Music of the South Symposium at the University of Mississippi, Dynamic Legacies Symposium at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the Society for Ethnomusicology both at the national convention and at the Southeastern and Caribbean Regional Chapter Meeting, with several book reviews published in American Music, the Journal of the Society for American Music, and The Hymn. He has also contributed articles for the new edition of Amerigrove. He has also received scholarly awards including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Dissertation Year Fellowship from the American Musicological Society, Reese Fellowship for American Bibliography and the History of the Book in the Americas from the Bibliographic Society of America, the Dena Epstein Award for Archival and Library Research in American Music from the Music Library Association, and the Reese Fellowship for Research in American Bibliography from the American Antiquarian Society.
While at Ohio University, Pappas created the Appalachian Digital Sound Archive, a series of archival, commercial, and home recordings of Ohio Appalachian traditional musicians; and provided the musical score to a PBS documentary “Opening the Door West: The Ohio Company” produced by Shelburne Films. Currently, his activities include work with Early Music New York, an essay and recording relating to concert music in the Early-Nationalist Era Bluegrass Region of Kentucky in a volume from the Bale Boone Symposium to be published by the University Press of Kentucky, and a Lincoln Bicentennial Project involving the Kentucky Humanities Council and the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra. He is also the 2009 recipient of the Rey Longyear Dissertation Fellowship.
Pappas is also active as an old-time fiddle player, performing with The Red State Ramblers (the official string band of the University of Kentucky) with fellow musicologist Kevin Kehrberg, and has won fiddle awards at the Ed Haley Fiddle Festival, Appalachian String Band Music Festival, Uncle Dave Macon Days, Seedtime on the Cumberland, and the Morehead Old Time Fiddlers Convention. His research interests include American sacred music, band music, keyboard music, and orchestral music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, old-time and early country music, 18th-century British theater music, and psychedelic rock and pop of the 1960s. (see abstract).
Marshal Pinto
Marshal Gaioso Pinto was born in in Ceres, Goiás, Brazil and began his musical studies at the age of nine. He has a Bachelor’s degree in clarinet (Federal University of Goiás) and a Masters degree in musicology (University of São Paulo), and has studied with Estércio Cunha (composition), Régis Duprat (musicology), and Emílio de César and Aylton Escobar (conducting). Marshal Gaioso Pinto was Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Symphonic Orchestra of Goiânia and the Chamber Orchestra of Goiânia, and Assistant Conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Goiás. He is the editor of Danças Para Banda (2006), and Da Missa ao Divino Espírito Santo ao Credo de São José do Tocantins (2004), collections of unpublished 18th- and 19th-century music from the state of Goiás, as well as conductor and artistic director of several CDs, among them Danças de Outros Tempos (2006), and Música Colonial de Goiás (2004). Marshal G. Pinto is professor at the Federal Center of Technological Education of Goiás, and in 2005 received a scholarship from the Fulbright Foundation and the Ministry of Education of Brazil in order to study for the Ph.D. in Musicology at University of Kentucky.
Laura Pita
Laura Pita is a Ph.D. student in musicology at the University of Kentucky. For the past several years she has been researching piano salon music of the late nineteenth century with special emphasis on Latin American composers and salon genres. She has done extensive archival research on the renowned Venezuelan pianist and composer Teresa Carreño (1853-1917). Also, she has been researching Teresa Carreño’s involvement in the creation and diffusion of Edward MacDowell’s piano compositions. Her work in the area includes an edition of Carreño’s piano and chamber compositions. She has presented her research in Venezuela and the United States, at venues including the Congreso Venezolano de Musicología (Caracas, 2000), Museo de Teresa Carreño (Caracas, 2001), Universidad Central de Venezuela (Caracas, 2002), and the Annual Meeting of the South-Central Chapter of the American Musicological Society (Memphis, 2006).
Before moving to the United States, Laura worked as a faculty member at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (where she earned her Masters degree), the Conservatorio Nacional de Música Juan José Landaeta, and the Escuela de Música Pedro Nolasco Colón, teaching History of Music, Music Aesthetics, and Latin American Music. She also participated as researcher and secretary for a comprehensive musicological project that culminated in the publication of the Encyclopedia of Venezuelan Music (Caracas, 1998).
Michael Rintamaa
Michael Rintamaa has been the full-time director of music at Central Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in downtown Lexington since 1993. As organist and director, he leads voice and handbell choirs for children, youth, and adults. In 2003, Michael helped to found the Central Music Academy, providing free lessons to inner city children from underprivileged families. Michael has a bachelor of music degree in piano performance from Northwestern University, and a master of music degree in organ performance from Emory University.
Erica Rumbley
Erica Rumbley graduated from Olivet Nazarene University in May 2006 with a degree in piano performance and received a fellowship to attend the University of Kentucky. She is currently beginning her M.A. in musicology. Miss Rumbley has a deep love of music history and recently completed a lecture recital on the life and works of L.M. Gottschalk, incorporating the performance of some of his piano pieces into her recital. She has not chosen an area of specialization yet, though nineteenth-century music is a great interest. She continues to play the piano and also performs on the violin.
Eric Strother
Eric Strother, originally from Parkersburg, West Virginia, holds a B.A. in music education (K-12) from Marshall University and an M.A. in music theory from the University of Kentucky. His master’s thesis was entitled “The Development of Duke Ellington’s Compositional Style: A Comparative Analysis of Three Selected Works.” His research interests include music and religion, music in Appalachia, music as an expression of culture, gender and music, popular music, and jazz. Eric has contributed articles for The Appalachian Encyclopedia and Women and Music in America Since 1900 and reviews for Computer Music Journal and American Music. He also serves as a peer-reviewer for the Journal of Popular Music Studies.
Eric has taught Introduction to Music, History of Jazz, and Symphonic Literature while at U.K. and has also taught Introduction to Music and American Music at Bluegrass Community and Technical College (formerly Lexington Community College). He is currently working on a dissertation on the contemporary Christian music industry.
Abbye Tackett
Abigail Marie Tackett was born in Kentucky, where she still resides. In her earliest years, Abbye’s mother was a ballet dancer. Her mother’s short dancing experience contributed greatly to her early appreciation of classical music. Abbye began playing the cello in elementary school after spending several years persuading her parents to allow her to join the orchestra. In her teenage years she stopped playing the cello to study painting, but returned to her instrument after a five-year absence. Abbye holds a Bachelor’s in Music Performance from the University of Kentucky where she is currently seeking a Master’s in Musicology. She prefers to spend her time practicing her archery, playing her cello, and reading.
Jenny Tullmann
Jenny Tullmann is a transfer graduate student from Truman State University. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Music, with an emphasis on clarinet performance, from Truman State University. Jenny is currently pursuing her Masters in Musicology and is a Teaching Assistant for MUS302 under Dr. Diana Hallman, for which she tutors students in music history. Her interests include 20th century opera, composers of the Second Viennese School, gay and lesbian musicology, and feminist musicology.
Erin Walker
Erin Walker is a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology, having recently completed a D.M.A. in percussion. Erin’s undergraduate and graduate degrees are from Northern Illinois University and DePaul University respectively. As a percussionist with an extensive background in world music, many of Erin’s interests lie in the field of ethnomusicology. She has assisted the director of the U.K. gamelan ensemble and is particularly intrigued by Indian, African, and Irish music. She intends to focus much of her musicological research on 20th-century music in both the classical and popular genres. Her dissertation will focus on the Scottish pipe band in North America.
Ross Whitaker
Ross M. Whitaker is a native Lexingtonian and first year M.A. student in musicology. He holds a B.A. in Music with a minor in Spanish from the University of Kentucky. Ross’s areas of interest include jazz and the music of Frank Zappa. He is also an electric guitarist.
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