Tyler Woodbury, a tuba student currently enrolled at the Department of Music and Dance, is one of only 10 collegiate student semi-finalists chosen from an international field by the Leonard Falcone International Euphonium and Tuba Festival, one of the most prestigious solo competitions for tuba in the world.

On May 1, the Department held its annual Convocation Ceremony to honor undergraduate, graduate, and honors students for their accomplishments. The event featured performances by oboist Erin Hussey, winner of the 2018 Theodore Presser Scholar Award, with Annierose Klingbeil, violin; Lauren Brown, viola and David Lookwhy, cello; and mezzo-soprano Caroline Lee, the 2018 Howard LeBow Memorial Scholarship awardee, with Sarah Kim, piano.

Two solo artists – Grace McKay and Matt Twaddle – and a jazz combo – the UMass Odd Meters Combo ­– from the Jazz & African-American Music Studies Program at UMass Amherst's Department of Music & Dance received awards in Downbeat Magazine’s 2019 Student Music Awards.

It’s been a busy month for Fumi Tomita, Assistant Professor of Jazz and String Bass in the Music & Dance Department. His new book, The Jazz Rhythm Section: A Manual for Band Directors, was published by Rowman & Littlefield and at almost the same time, his newest CD, The Elephant Vanishes: Jazz Interpretations of the Short Stories of Haruki Murakami was released by OA2 Records.

When UMass Associate Professor Felipe Salles met Tereza Lee while earning his doctorate at the Manhattan School of Music, he could not have guessed he was receiving the flicker of inspiration that would become a Guggenheim grant-supported musical composition. On April 9, Salles’s multimedia production, The New Immigrant Experience, had its sold out world premiere in the Old Chapel.

Highlights include a full performance of Bach’s epic St. Matthew Passion led by Andrew Megill (pictured), conductor of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra Chorus, and a full-day Symposium on April 13 featuring an international roster of scholars and a keynote by Columbia University’s Lydia Goehr. Website>