University of Pennsylvania Department of Music

Congratulations to Flannery Jamison, graduate student in Music Studies: Historical Musicology, on receiving a 2026–2027 Hopkinson Fellowship! Supporting graduate students in the humanities, the fellowship will fund her research on musical labor in twelfth-century Occitania as she travels to France this summer to begin her dissertation.

Congratulations to the Class of 2026!

The Music Department proudly celebrates your hard work throughout your journey. May you continue to share your voice, pursue your dreams, and let music guide you wherever life takes you. The world is ready for your next performance!

Congratulations to Mary Channen Caldwell, Associate Professor of Music at Penn, on being named a 2026–2027 Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow as the Rieman and Baketel Fellow for Music. During her fellowship year, she will work on her book Singing Conversion in Medieval Europe, which explores how song shaped religious transformation in the long thirteenth century. The Radcliffe Fellowship supports ambitious interdisciplinary research and brings together leading scholars, artists, and practitioners from across the world.

Join us today at 5:00 PM in Rose Recital Hall for a special senior recital presented by our talented undergraduate students, Charles Witmer and Samantha Fung-Lee, as part of the Marian Anderson Performance Program!

The performance will feature a rich and diverse program with works by Bach, Handel, Brahms, Mozart, Berg, Puccini, Fauré, Ives, Bellini, and Chaminade. Please come out to support Charles and Samantha as they celebrate this important milestone in their musical journeys!

Last week, we had the joy of welcoming back composition alumni Joshua Hey, Andrew Davis, Luke Carlson, and Ke-Chia Chen to Rose Recital Hall. Works by Carlson, Davis, and Hey were performed by the Daedalus Quartet and Matthew Bengtson. Thank you to all who joined us for a wonderful evening of music!

We're excited to share that our PhD Candidate in Music Studies: Ethnomusicology Armaghan Fakhraeirad has received a 2026 Student Grant Award from the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation!

Fakhraeirad will use her grant to pursue her film "Listen! Something Still Hanging from the Tree" — A collaborative experimental film that move between public mourning drums and private healing rituals in southern Iran. Co-created with visual artist Sara Abbasnejad from field recordings, photography, and drawn reconstructions, the film encourages listening for women’s agency, care, and histories that persist even when rarely recorded.

Congratulations, Armaghan!

(Sachs Image Design by Elaine Lopez)

We’re excited to share that our graduate student Echezonachukwu Nduka has been named a finalist for the 2026 Penn Grad Talks! Tomorrow, he’ll present “African Pianism in the United States: Who is Listening?” as part of the Humanities Presentations from 1–2 PM in the auditorium of the Perelman Center. Open to the public + ADA accessible, with refreshments (including vegan & vegetarian options) throughout the day!

This TED-style event brings together standout Arts & Sciences grad students—all competing for first place and an audience choice award. The student with the most votes within their category (both in person and online) will win a prize; so we hope you join us in cheering him on!

Penn Grad Talks 2026 | March 27, 1–2 PM
Perelman Center Auditorium
133 S. 36th St, Philadelphia

🎶 Tune in live + see full schedule via the link in our bio!

This week, join the Center for Africana Studies Africa Program for a talk by our third-year graduate student in Music Studies: Ethnomusicology Kingsley Okyere, who will trace how Ghana’s sikyi rhythm has traveled from local dance-drumming traditions to powering the pulse of global, viral dance music.

Brown Bag Series: Sikyi/Highlife Timeline as Ghanaian Rhythmic Identity
March 25, 2026 | 12 PM in Seminar Room 330-A
3401 Walnut Street, University of Pennsylvania

Congratulations to the 2026 composition competition winners! From a talented group of Penn Music students, two awardees were selected for their innovative and compelling work. Each recipient is honored with a $600 prize.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for For(u)m: Re-forming Value, Re-valuing Form in Music Studies last month!

This conference was thoughtfully organized and brought to life by our graduate students, and we’re incredibly proud of the work they did to create such a rich, engaging two days at the Kislak Center. Attendees and speakers explored music’s form and value across its social, political, and material dimensions. We’re grateful to all who helped make For(u)m such a success!