January 2026

The Spring Semester has just begun, and so there are no student performances this month. However, there is music to be heard at Emory, and all of the events listed below are free. You can see all of the events taking place this month by clicking on the Music at Emory Calendar above.

The Artist Affiliate recitals are always worth attending and give evidence of the amazing talent that our students have available for instruction. The masterclasses are another example, both of the quality of the students who are selected to perform in the masterclass, and the instructors they will learn from.

With best wishes,

Gray Crouse

A note about the event entries below. You can click on most of the headings of the events and be taken directly to the Music Calendar listing for that event for additional details. At the time of publication, the programs for many of these events are not yet available but will typically be added to the Calendar entry close to the performance date. You can also click on most of the names of the groups and performers and will be taken to more information about them. 

The Emory Music Department is able to offer performance instruction to its students not only from its faculty but from artists in the metro area. This program offers the opportunity to hear one of these artist affiliates in concert.

Experience the artistry of Justin Stanley, principal clarinetist of the Georgia Symphony Orchestra and a sought-after performer and educator. Stanley has appeared with esteemed ensembles including the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Opera, Greenville Symphony, and Columbus Symphony, and has performed at renowned festivals such as Aspen, Sarasota, and Banff. A dedicated teacher, Stanley serves on the faculties of Emory University, Kennesaw State University, and Atlanta Music Academy, shaping the next generation of musicians. His distinguished training includes degrees from Oberlin Conservatory, Yale University, and the University of Michigan, where he earned his Doctor of Musical Arts.

The program for this recital can be seen by clicking here.

Pianist Katherine Benson presents a recital featuring works by Haydn, Beach, Ravel, and Ginastera. She is at Emory as a guest artist and judge for the Emory Young Artist Piano Competition (see below).

Dr. Benson currently serves as Assistant Professor of Piano at Penn State. An avid chamber musician, she is the Artistic Director and pianist for The Paramount Chamber Players (TPCP), one of the premier chamber music ensembles of the southern Appalachian Region and in its twenty-first concert season. Since taking her role with TPCP in 2020, she has organized and performed on over thirty concerts with the ensemble and engaged dozens of musicians, including concertmasters from the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and Symphony of the Mountains as well as university faculty from across the state of Tennessee. She invites you to learn more about TPCP at www.paramountchamberplayers.com.

She holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, and University of Michigan, and her teachers have included Nelita True, James Giles, Chih-long Hu, and Arthur Greene. 

The mission of the Emory University Young Artist Piano Competition is to give exceptional young pianists, age 13 to 18 years old who live in the USA, the opportunity to advance their skills by performing in a public setting. Following a prescreening round, 12 semi-finalists (with three alternates) will be chosen to perform and compete live at Emory University. The public is invited for  the Finals Competition and the Winners Ceremony beginning at 7pm.

Masterclasses are a great opportunity for students to experience instruction by world-class musicians. ECMSA sponsors many masterclasses, which are usually taught by musicians brought in for ECMSA concerts. These masterclasses are open to the public and represent a rare opportunity for the public to observe high level instruction.

Ransom Wilson has long been recognized internationally as one of the greatest flutists of his generation. He is an Artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, was the Professor of Flute at Yale University from 1992-2023, is currently the Camilla Huxford Endowed Chair in Orchestral Studies at the University of Alabama.

Winner of both the Avery Fisher Career Grant (1987) and the Avery Fisher Prize (2000), David Shifrin is in constant demand as an orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber music collaborator. Mr. Shifrin joined the faculty at the Yale School of Music in 1987 and was appointed Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society of Yale and Yale's annual concert series at Carnegie Hall in September 2008. He has also served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, University of Southern California, University of Michigan, Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Hawaii.

Note: Both Ransom Wilson and David Shifrin are performing in the ECMSA: Cooke Noontime Series—Winter Winds on Friday, January 23, 2026, 12pm, at the Schwartz Center. This concert is free with no tickets required and includes Jesse McCandless, clarinet, and James Zellers, flute, with a special appearance by pianist Julie Coucheron.

Taiwanese-born pianist Gloria Chien has one of the most diverse musical lives as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She received her bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees at the New England Conservatory of Music with Wha Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. Chien has been at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, since 2004, and is a Steinway Artist.

Note: Gloria Chien will be performing in ECMSA concerts with the Vega Quartet in performances at Oxford College on Friday, January 30, 2026, 7:30pm and at the Schwartz Center on Saturday, January 31, 2026, 8pm. The program for this concert can be seen by clicking here.

EUSO has a fine online collection of some of their recent performances. Most of their recordings are available on the Media page of their website. EUSO also has a YouTube page, and that includes a few selections not available on their Media page, including their performance of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony in October of 2025 (which already has 3,300 views after only 2 months of being online). There is hope that it will be possible to expand the student video performances available, but it is a large amount of work to make and edit the videos and there are also complications in navigating various copyright issues. Thanks to Paul Bhasin for the great videos that are posted!

There are two relatively recent EUSO videos that are only available on the Schwartz Center Virtual Stage. On January 26, 2024, the Canadian Brass gave a great sold-out concert. For two of their pieces, they invited Emory student musicians to play with them. The video of the Gabrieli Jubilate Deo is on the virtual stage. The second is the EUSO World Premiere of Marejada de los Muertos by Johanny Navarro, performed on the April 26 and 27, 2024 concerts.

A big Thank You to those who have contributed during this year, and especially to those of you who have contributed in the past few months and have even increased your level of support or are new or returning supporters! There is no way to thank you enough. It was the strong level of giving last year that enabled us to substantially increase our grants to music students and faculty for this year.

My apologies that the donation information below is not up to date. We have not had any giving reports since October 15 of last year. I hope that the next newsletter will have updated information.

Much of our support for students and faculty is through grants to provide scholarships for students to help pay for required music fees, to help fund undergraduate research projects, and to provide enhancements for classes. You can see the grants for the 2025-2026 year by clicking here.

A special thanks to those of you who are sustaining members, either through payroll deduction, or a continuing contribution on your credit card. On the donations page you can choose to give a one-time gift or a monthly gift. You can click here to donate or visit our FOM page for other ways to give.

The list of members can be seen by clicking here.

Please Note: It is surprisingly difficult to generate a list of members who are current in their giving. Please let us know if you are missing from the list or your donations have not been properly credited. We measure our giving year from the start of our annual campaign, which is usually in July of each year. Some members give through payroll deduction or give more than one gift per year (thank you to both!) and we want to make sure we correctly acknowledge the level of giving. We don't have a set format for how names are listed and depend on member's preference. Sometimes we make mistakes. Please let us know if you find any errors in the list of members above. You can just reply to this newsletter and we will be glad to correct any mistakes. The date that the list was updated is given at the bottom. Among other problems, we are finding that it can take several weeks for us to get news of gifts.

This newsletter focuses on Emory music students and faculty. There is clearly much additional music being performed in Atlanta, including many performances at Emory. There is no space in this newsletter to give specific information about those many performances, and most of them are separately well advertised. All music performances on the Emory campus are listed in the Music At Emory Calendar. Below is information about the separate music organizations with strong Emory ties.

The Schwartz Center is the hub of music at Emory, with the Performing Arts Studio being a major secondary location for many recitals and concerts. In addition to the Box Office that sells tickets for all ticketed events, the Schwartz Center hosts two major concert series, the Candler Concerts and the Schwartz Artists in Residence.

I assume that all of our readers are familiar with ECMSA, whose Artistic Director is Professor William Ransom. All of their concerts are free, which is certainly remarkable given the extremely high quality of their performances with professional musicians. ECMSA has a variety of music series, most of which are at the Schwartz Center. The full array of their concerts can be seen on the ECMSA website.

Of particular note is the Masterclass Series which is an incredible gift for our students. These masterclasses feature outstanding musicians who will teach Emory students in these classes. Moreover, our members are invited to attend these masterclasses. There are ten masterclasses planned for this year, with an impressive array of artists involved.

The Artistic Director of the Atlanta Master Chorale is Professor of Music Eric Nelson, and the chorale is one of the finest in the country. All of their local performances are in the Schwartz Center, and tickets for concerts are available through the Schwartz Center Box Office or online. Last year AMC celebrated its 40th Anniversary Concert Season. This year AMC celebrates the return of Eric Nelson who was out last year on medical leave. The Chorale has an extensive YouTube site with over 250 videos with almost 4,000,000 views!

Not only is the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra a great orchestra, but our students benefit greatly from the ASO, as many of the Music Department Artist Affiliates are ASO musicians. The entire ASO concert series is detailed on the ASO website.

The ASO responded to the pandemic in a very creative way, beginning a series of "Behind the Curtain" performances featuring musicians playing without an audience. The "Behind the Curtain" series has continued, with a very modest yearly charge, featuring a selection of recorded performances from previous weeks.  Even if you can attend the live ASO performances, viewing the Behind the Curtain programs gives an entirely different perspective than you can get from the audience. Unless you are a player, it is rare to get close enough to a player to see the strings vibrate!