COURSES TAUGHT
- Composer Recordings
- Opera on Record
- Lieder; Mahler; Schumann
- Music History of the 18th and 19th Centuries
- Music History of the 20th and 21st Centuries
EDUCATION
- PhD, Cornell University
- Post Graduate Diploma, San Francisco Conservatory of Music
- MM, Manhattan School of Music
- BA, Princeton University
ENSEMBLES
- Sacramento Opera
- Caramoor Music Festival
- Aspen Music Festival
AWARDS AND DISTINCTIONS
- Edison Fellowship, National Sound Archive, British Library
- First Place, Vocal Division, Los Angeles International Liszt Competition
- Spencer Prize for Excellence in Teaching (honorable mention), Cornell University
- magna cum laude, Princeton University
What is your hometown?
Davis, CA
What is your favorite recording?
Only one??! Malcolm Bilson, Sonata in Bb K.333 (Mozart); Heinrich Schlusnus, "Avant de quitter ces lieux” (Gounod); Werner Güra and Christoph Berner, "Da unten im Tale" (Brahms); Paul Anka, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (Nirvana)
What are you passionate about outside of music?
Education, gardening, cooking, and my family.
What is a favorite quote that you repeatedly tell students?
"Where's my time machine??! I WANT A TIME MACHINE!!!!!"
What was the defining moment when you decided to pursue music as a career?
Composing a piano sonata for first-year theory. It was probably terrible, but I got lost in it anyway.
What was a turning point in your career?
The first summer I studied at Aspen, hearing students griping about their music history classes made me want to teach music history at a Conservatory.
If you weren't a musician or teacher, what do you think you would be doing now?
I'd probably be a pediatrician.
If you could play only three composers for the rest of your life, who would they be?
Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann.
What are your academic publications?
The Substance of Style: How Singing Creates Sound in Lieder Recordings, 1898-1939
What is your unrealized project?
Recording the complete songs of Clara Schumann using a Wieck fortepiano
