Alumni in the News

Keith Clifton (B.M., Voice and Opera, 1990) is a professor of musicology and coordinator of graduate studies at Central Michigan University, where he's taught since 2002. In late 2017, Clifton presented the paper, "Boléromania: Ravel, Pop Culture, and the Twilight of Espagnolade" at the 100th anniversary conference of the French Society for Musicology in Paris. His recent publications include articles and reviews for the Journal of Musicological Research, Fontes Artis Musicae, and the A-R Online Music Anthology. After completing a three-year term with the Committee on Career Related Issues of the American Musicological Society, he was recently elected Secretary of the Midwest chapter of the AMS. He is an active recitalist, oratorio soloist and chorister. Photo by William Lauerbach.

Hyeyoung Song (D.M.A., Piano, 2016) was honored with the title "Master Pianist" by Weatherford College in acknowledgement of her contributions and dedication as a performer, educator and music administrator. Song founded and successfully directed the first Weatherford College International Piano Competition this April, and has been performing extensively as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the spring 2019 season. 

Tamara Johnson (B.F.A., Studio Art, 2007), founded Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, which presents "May Show: Looms," an exhibition in collaboration with SMU's Pollock Gallery and organized by Austin art collective, Partial Shade. Sweet Pass will also be showing a recent film by Virgina Lee Montgomery and a site-responsive painting by Timothy Harding. 

Becca Borrelli, (M.F.A., Art Education, 2013) has created coloring books featuring iconic Austin scenes through her entrepreneurial business, Becca Borrelli Illustrations. 

Steve Rowell (B.A., Studio Art, 1992) received a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship to finish a final cut of his Oxford thesis film, Humans Lived Here Once. He will also complete his Creative Capital supported project, Uncanny Sensing, Remote Valleys, which will premiere in early 2020 as a multi-screen installation, a series of photographs for publication, and a film for the festival circuit. 

Christine Erlander Beard (D.M.A., Woodwinds, 2003) was awarded the 2018-19 campus-wide Award for Distinguished Research or Creative Activity at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she is a professor teaching flute, chamber music and contemporary music literature. She was also awarded the Kayser Professorship for outstanding performance in research/creative activity. Photo by Chasing Light Photography

Natalia Anciso (B.A., Studio Art, 2008) has original artwork featured on the cover of the forthcoming book, Meditacion Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life and Labor (University of Arizona Press), written by renowned writer and scholar Norma Elia Cantú, Professor of Humanities at Trinity University and Professor Emeritus at UTSA. The book is a collection of poems that explore life in the Texas-Mexico borderlands and are a "celebration of culture, tradition and creativity that navigates themes of love, solidarity and political transformation." 

Alan E. Hicks (D.M.A., Voice and Opera, 2009) was awarded the Craig Noel Award for Outstanding Special Event by the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle for his production, All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914. He will also join the faculty of the Music Academy International (Primiero, Italy) this summer as the stage director for La Clemenza Di Tito. Photo by Valerie Durham.

Kim Perlak (D.M.A., Guitar, 2008) discusses performance, pedagogy, the department at Berklee and her doctoral research in American music at the University of Texas at Austin on the Sounds of Berklee podcast. Perlak is Chair of the Guitar department at Berklee College of Music in Boston, and joined Berklee in 2013 as assistant chair. She is the first woman to chair the department since the college added guitar as a principal instrument in 1962. 

Nicolas Maximiliano Emilfork Diaz (D.M.A., Guitar, 2018) is a lecturer at Universidad de Chile, where he teaches chamber music and classical guitar in a new masters program and serves as their chamber music coordinator. He has recently been named artistic director for Fundacion Guitarra Viva Ernest Quezada, a new organization that will provide scholarships, organize national and international master classes and concert series. He will teach "Baroque Music History" at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in fall 2019. Photo by  Adolfo Rodriguez