What's New: November

News about NEC students, alumni, and faculty members including Margaret Deutsch, Jenny Herzog, Vi Austenfeld, Theodora Nestorova, Kirsten Lamb, Abigale Reisman, Jason Palmer, Jerry Bergonzi, Tanya Blaich, Paula Murrihy, and more.

Margaret Deutsch

Margaret Deutsch ’67,  Principal and Chief Financial Officer at CBT, is a Boston Business Journal 2020 CFO of the Year Award winner in the Midsize Private Companies category:

    How did you end up in finance? Having earned an undergraduate degree in applied piano, I had been teaching music for about a decade in the private school sector in Boston which afforded me long summer vacations. My husband, on the other hand, was very busy during the summer, so I accepted a temp job typing specs at CBT to fill my days. When school started again, I was asked to stay on in the firm. When the recession of 1991 came along, CBT sent me to accounting school, which I followed up with an MBA in finance. Music and math clearly are related.

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    Jenny Herzog smiles while teaching tap in the park. Students are watching her. In the background is bright green grass and trees.

    Contemporary Improvisation alumna Jenny Herzog ’16 MM has been featured in the Boston Globe for her free outdoor "Tap for Joy" series:

    “Isolation is one of the worst plagues on society, especially now. When I’m in a funk, the improvisational freedom of tap cheers me up,” said Herzog, who earned a master’s degree in improvisation at New England Conservatory.

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    Vi Austenfeld (they/them) smiles at the camera. Their hair is short, and they are wearing a black top and earrings.

    Vi Austenfeld ’20 MM received the Best Poster Award at the National Association of Teachers of Singing 2020 Virtual Conference for their poster “Acoustic Registration for Transgender Singers on Testosterone.”
     
    Theodora Nestorova ’21 MM won the Pan American Vocology Association Virtual Symposium 2020 Student Presentation Award for her research performed at NEC, “Does Vibrato Define Genre or Vice Versa?: A Novel Approach to Stylistic Vibrato Derivative Analysis.”

    Vi and Theodora developed their research with support from NEC faculty Kayla Gautereaux ’19 MM and Dr. Ian Howell in NEC’s Voice and Sound Analysis Lab, supported by Josh Gilbert through NEC’s Music in Education Internship.
    Ezekiel's Wheels Klezmer Band poses with their instruments

    The Boston Music Awards 2020 nominees have been announced, and they include:

    • Ezekiel's Wheels Klezmer Band (which includes Contemporary Improvisation alumnae bassist Kirsten Lamb ’15 MM and violinist Abigale Reisman ’13 MM), nominated for International Artist of the Year.
    • Jason Palmer ’01 and faculty Jerry Bergonzi, nominated for Jazz Artist of the Year.

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    A large statue, approximately 20 feet high, with two scroll shapes like those at the end of a string instrument. The statue is metal, three-dimensional, and lit up from within. It stands at the corner of Gainsborough and St. Botolph streets. In this photo, a man stands at the foot of the statue looking up at it. He is wearing a face mask.

    A piece of public art on NEC's campus—"Scrolls" by David Phillips, which evokes the scroll at the end of a string instrument—has lent inspiration to the creation of a new work of public art commemorating Boston native Leonard Nimoy's iconic "Live Long and Prosper" gesture from his role on Star Trek.

    “My folks came to the United States as immigrants, aliens, and they became citizens. I was born in Boston a citizen; I went to Hollywood, and I became an alien. [Spock] was the embodiment of the outsider, like the immigrants who surrounded me in my early years. How do you find your way as the alien in a foreign culture? Where does your identity and dignity come from? And how do you make a contribution?”

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    • Ensemble Connect at Carnegie Hall features an upcoming performance on November 18 including NEC alumni Stephanie Zyzak ’15, ’17 MM and Nik Hooks ’18, as well as current student Halam Kim ’21 GD. Read more
    • CI alum Rachel Panitch ’13 MM composed music to accompany poetry for folk music podcast Stars in the Rafters

    • Dongyoung Jake Shim ’22 has been selected as one of five finalists for our second annual Lillian and Maurice Barbash J.S. Bach Competition, competing via The Violin Channel's Facebook Live on Dec. 1

    • Bruce Brubaker's performance with Francesco Tristano in the 2016 Arte Festival at the Gaîté Lyrique in Paris will be broadcast on Nov. 13

    • Violinist Masha Lakisova ’24 and her mother, pianist Lyudmila Lakisova performed Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert live from the Chicago Cultural Center

    • Collaborative Piano faculty Tanya Blaich ’02 MM, ‘06 DMA and soprano Paula Murrihy ’03 MM, ’04 GD have released an album, “I Will Walk With My Love.” A review in The Guardian praised how “Murrihy’s voice dances through [the] melodic twists and turns“ and Blaich's playing as “unfailingly expressive and finely judged, is supportive rather than soloistic.”  Read more