Performances + Events
EM Alumni Award Winners
Congratulations to our 2024 EM Alumni Award Winners!
Lisa Linde ’98 MM
Jazzhers
Lisa is the founder of Jazzhers, an organization committed to shaping the future of jazz by helping young women and non-binary musicians become connected to and feel empowered by the jazz community. Her EM Alumni Award win will support a two-day honor band festival.
Ross Wightman ’18 MM
Fiddle Henge
Ross is the inventor of his instrument, Fiddle Henge. Fiddle Henge consists of four motorized violins mounted on a 26” bass drum via customized 3D printed parts bowed by a central spinning acrylic disk. Funding from his EM Alumni Award will support the creation of custom cases so Ross can take Fiddle Henge worldwide.
Bree Fotheringham ’23 MM
Salt Lake Chamber Orchestra
With support from her EM Alumni Award, Bree will launch the Salt Lake Chamber Orchestra, Utah’s first 16-member democratically led orchestra. The Salt Lake Chamber Orchestra provides concert programming tailored to the 21st-century audience through creative, thematic, and engaging performances in nontraditional performance settings.
Honorable Mentions
- Hannah Shanefield ’20 MM
- Anna Miakelian Meschian ’04
Past Winners
Ana López (aka Nnux) ’18 MM, Contemporary Improvisation
Metamorfosis – Video Project
A live video session for the music of their upcoming album, working with an all-female all-Mexican vocal ensemble. This new work explores the story of a fictional goddess who goes through a process of learning and transformation. This work reflects on the experience of femininity, oppression, freedom, and transformation, all through the lens of symbolism and myth.
Holly Choe ’17 MM, Instrumental Conducting
Ensemble Reflektor Conducting 101 Workshop
An introductory conducting workshop for young conductors. While anyone is allowed to apply for this course, there will be a focus on engaging female conductors. This educational project will help create new pathways for aspiring female conductors by giving them the opportunity to see other female conductors, in addition to the course material they will receive.
Iva Casian Lakos ’16 MM, Cello Performance
Unheard-of // Ensemble Presents: Helix
A 25-minute work for clarinet, violin, cello, piano, electronics, and video exploring the concept of femicide. Specifically, the work looks at the ways femicide has shaped the composers’ perspectives as artists and women, the way it has impacted Latinx communities generationally, and ways in which the cycles of women’s collective trauma can be broken. This album will premier as a cross-genre collaboration in September 2023 for their on-the-water concert series at the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club.
Honorable Mentions
- Zoe Murphy ’22 MM
- Lysander Jaffe ’20 MM
Rafael Natan ’17 MM, Contemporary Improvisation
The School of Arts and Social Justice
The School of Arts and Social Justice was founded in 2020 to provide virtual community arts and education initiatives that center the needs of LGBTQ people, POC, immigrants, and people with disabilities. Classes held include writing workshops tailored specifically for queer, trans, and POC identities, basic education seminars on a variety of social justice issues, artistic techniques that focus on empowering specific communities, and much more. Each semester features a minimum of 10 classes over the span of three months, with all classes being professionally closed-captioned to maximize accessibility. In addition to pandemic safety considerations, our virtual classroom model allows students all over the world to attend, and provides greater accessibility to students with walking disabilities, chemical sensitivities, and busy schedules.
Annemarie Guzy ’10 MM, Piano Performance
Cuddle Concerts
This is a concert series for babies, young children, and their families in downtown Riverside, California. This delightful concert series provides a playful and interactive live concert experience for the youngest of children that is high quality, baby-friendly, and designed to boost learning. Each concert is hosted by a professional singer and features a small ensemble of high caliber professional musicians. Pre-concert activities are provided by partners such as the Riverside Public Library.
Aristides Rivas ’06 MM, Cello Performance
English Course for Spanish-Speaking Musicians
The English Course for Spanish-Speaking Musicians is an initiative that is designed to help Spanish-speaking musicians of all levels understand musical terms in the English language. The English Course for Spanish-Speaking Musicians is an online, three-unit program with seven to eight lessons per week. The course will be taught online with both asynchronous and synchronous sessions. The asynchronous sessions will be a mix of pre-recorded videos and PDF materials for students to prepare on their own time. The synchronous sessions will be held via Zoom, where students will have the opportunity to work on their communication skills and ask questions to the instructors.
The expected outcome of this project will provide musicians the language tools to have a successful communication in different situations: as students, teachers for English speaking students, members of Symphony Orchestra, etc.
Honorable Mentions
- Andrea LeBlanc ’06 BM
- Ross Wightman ’18 MM
Fanny Wyrick-Flax ’18 MM, Flute Performance
Musical Storytelling Project
Musical Storytelling Project is to design and present two distinct musical storytelling programs featuring diverse composers/storytellers and inspirational subject matter. There will be six performances, with one program being presented in both English and Spanish. All performances are free to attend.
Isabella Dawis ’16 BM, Vocal Performance
Sunwatcher: The Civilians’ Findings Reading Series
Isabella Dawis is the librettist for the new chamber musical Sunwatcher, the story of astronomer Hisako Koyama (1916-97) intertwined with the ancient Japanese myth of the sun goddess Amaterasu, in a retelling inspired by classical Japanese Noh theater. This musical celebrates this underrecognized Asian woman in science; her message of perseverance is urgently needed during the global pandemic. Sunwatcher was created with an all-female team of Asian-American theater artists with preliminary research done with bilingual interviews from solar scientists and Noh scholars in Japan and the U.S.
Katie Martucci ’16 BM, Contemporary Improvisation
Creative Practice in Wilderness
Creative Practice in Wilderness leads tours to build connections with the self, others, and the environment through music, movement, and immersion in the natural world. By inviting individuals into the creative practice and refusing to treat music as a club one has to earn entry to, this project shares the connection, imagination, and agency that music provides and gives participants powerful tools to stay present and engaged, process the scope of shared stories and recognize the potential in interdependence.
Abigale Reisman ’13 MM, Contemporary Improvisation
The Klezmer Fidl Project
Creative Practice in Wilderness leads tours to build connections with the self, others, and the environment through music, movement, and immersion in the natural world. By inviting individuals into the creative practice and refusing to treat music as a club one has to earn entry to, this project shares the connection, imagination, and agency that music provides and gives participants powerful tools to stay present and engaged, process the scope of shared stories and recognize the potential in interdependence.
The project aims to create video recordings of Klezmer Fidl after delving into the historically challenging and moving techniques, and after using secret sources and recordings from lost klezmer archival 78s, to learn the intricacies of the Klezmer Fidl.
Emma Gies ’19 MM, Contemporary Improvisation
LA Chinatown Massacre of 1871 Commemoration
The second installment of a three-year commemoration of the Los Angeles Chinatown massacre of 1871, leading up to the 150th anniversary of the massacre on October 24, 2021. Listen to Emma’s podcast, Blood on Gold Mountain, which focuses on a tragic day in U.S. history 150 years ago that resulted in the largest race lynching in this country. With romance, intrigue, and mass murder, this seven-episode storytelling podcast describes the little-known, horrific 1871 Los Angeles Chinatown Massacre.
Jose Soto Gamboa ’14, Jazz Piano Performance
Orquesta Juventud Esperanza International Ambassadors
An appearance at the Festival Internacional de Jazz por la Paz in Santiago, Chile.
Honorable Mentions
- Laura Umbrio ’05
- Bennett Parsons ’19 MM
- Melanie Leinbach ’11 MM and Jessica Harika ’14 MM
Timothy Feil ’14 MM, Oboe Performance
Timothy Feil is an active freelance performer and teacher and the sole proprietor of Timothy Feil Oboe Reeds. The EM Alumni Award will fund the expansion of his current business to showcase interviews with experts that document the philosophies behind the precise craft of reed making.
Bo Lee ’18 MM, Flute Performance
Bo Lee is currently a freelance flutist and teacher in Augusta, Georgia. Most recently, she was a 2018 Kenan Fellow at Lincoln Center Education (LCE) in New York City. While a Kenan Fellow, Lee collaborated with theater artist Maggie Gayford to present Magic Pearl, a shadow puppet play with new music by EM grant winner Christopher Vu, which premiered at LCE on December 14, 2018. The EM Alumni Award will fund the purchase of projection equipment that will bring Magic Pearl to a city near you.
Honorable Mentions
- Amanda Ekery ’18 MM
- Becca Conviser ’09, ’11 MM
- Sadie Gregg ’14 MM
- Michael Unterman ’12 MM
- Fanya Wyrick-Flax ’17 MM
- Isabella Dawis ’16 UD
Ashleigh Gordon is the violist, co-founder and artistic director of Castle of our Skins, a Boston-based concert and education series dedicated to celebrating Black artistry through music. With the help of the EM office and the EM Alumni Award, she will transition her series into a 501(c)3 nonprofit and create a long-term, sustainable business plan.
Ariel Friedman is the cellist in Cardamom Quartet, a Boston-based ensemble dedicated to raising the profile of women composers through performance and education. The EM Alumni Award funded a community concert on the morning of June 16, 2018 at the Jamaica Plain branch library with a program of music written entirely by women, including the premiere of a piece by Friedman.
Honorable Mentions
- Katharine Martucci ’16
- Tong Wang ’16
- Kayleigh Miller ’16 GD
Violist Hannah Rose Nicholas is dedicated to music as a means for building relationships with other cultures. She currently plays in the New World Symphony in Miami under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, where she has performed as principal viola on highlighted concerts including Strauss’s Don Quixote with cellist John Sharp, and on tour to the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall with soloist Anne Sophie Mutter. The New York Classical Review wrote of the Carnegie performance: “Violist Hannah Nicholas’s solo line that elided off the end of one of Mutter’s phrases was exceptional.” Most recently, Hannah was appointed Principal Viola of the Central City Opera Orchestra in Colorado.
Hannah is producing a multi-disciplinary concert this April for the O, Miami Poetry Festival in Miami, Florida. Combining live readings of poetry with live music performance, the concert culminates in the premiere of a work combining newly commissioned poetry and music. Previous interdisciplinary collaborations include commissioning Silk Road Ensemble’s visual artist Kevork Mourad and composer Sahba Aminikia.
Kiyoshi Hayashi is currently a violinist in Boston’s Palaver Strings Chamber Orchestra and in 2016 performed as a guest artist with A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra. In 2012, his quartet was selected as semifinalist at the prestigious Fischoff National Chamber Competition. Kiyoshi is very interested in the capacity for music to heal and teach, and he regularly volunteers to perform at local health care settings, nursing homes, and schools. He is on the community engagement and music education committees for Palaver Strings Chamber Orchestra and is a violin teacher for The Roxbury Youth Orchestra, a nonprofit organization inspired by El Sistema.
In February 2017, Palaver Strings focused its efforts in Jamaica Plain through a partnership with Fenway Health and the LGBT Aging Project to develop Life Songs, a songwriting workshop for older adults in the LGBT community. Based on their work with the Lullaby Project — a program that helps young disadvantaged mothers write lullabies for their children — Palver will create a similar workshop for a community that is close to the heart of Jamaica Plain. These songs were professionally recorded in Emmanuel Church in Boston and performed on February 25, 2017, at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jamaica Plain.
