February 2026 Part 1

February will be a busy month for music at Emory—so much so that the newsletter will be split into two parts, so that this newsletter will not be overly long. The second part will be issued later in the month. Before saying any more about February, I want to acknowledge the damage of winter weather closures for Emory music the last two weekends in January. The in-person parts of the Emory Young Artist Piano Competition including the Finalists Concert and the Guest Artist Recital by Katherine Benson were cancelled. Three ECMSA Masterclasses were cancelled as well as ECMSA concerts at Oxford and Atlanta.  It is difficult to see all of the effort put into these events not come to fruition!

There is much to look forward to in the very wide array of concerts detailed below. Of special interest is the Katz Foundation Piano Concert and what it celebrates. Although none of us will be taking the Music 370 course described below, it is worth reading about for it is one more illustration of the ways in which the Music Department is taking advantage of the many resources of the Atlanta arts community.

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. 

This annual one-hour concert before the Super Bowl features music by J. S. Bach and two of his most accomplished sons, Johann Christian and Carl Philipp Emanuel. The great Jaeckel Organ will be featured in J. S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

The program features a Johann Christian Bach piano sonata, a C. P. E. Bach flute concerto with chamber orchestra, and the J.S. Bach Toccata and Fugue. The program for this recital can be seen by clicking here.

CompFest 2026 highlights Afrofuturistic sonic, musical, and narrative visionaries, and features internationally acclaimed creative flutist, composer, conceptualist, bandleader and educator Nicole Mitchell and vocalist, interdisciplinary artist, and researcher Lisa E. Harris. 

The festival culminates on Saturday 2/14 with a presentation of Mitchell and Harris’s collaborative, evening-length piece EarthSeed, inspired by and in tribute to groundbreaking African American science fiction author Octavia E. Butler. EarthSeed powerfully interprets Butler’s writings through composed and improvised music for instrumental ensemble and vocalists. Mitchell and Harris bring their innovative practices to Emory, presenting the work in an ensemble with local improvisers, faculty members, and Emory students.

Note that students will not only benefit from attending, and even participating in these programs, but also in their classes. The guest artists will join Katherine Young's songwriting class and Dwight Andrews' class during the week before the concerts.

Mitchell and Harris present their duo music, sharing the evening with Grammy-winning Atlanta-based improviser Kebbi Williams. Students and alumni from Emory Jazz Combo will also perform on Friday’s concert.

Note that the Arts Calendar listing for this concert has a SignUp link. Registration is not required, but registration will help ensure a seat, although there is no assigned seating.

There will be a Pre-Concert Talk at 7pm with the artists and Georgia Tech scholar of Black Feminism, Black Digital Media, and Afrofuturism Dr. Susana Morris. Senior Director of Culture, Community, and Partner Engagement at Emory Libraries and Michael C. Carlos Museum Dr. Clint Fluker will moderate the conversation.

Mitchell and Harris present EarthSeed in a mixed ensemble featuring Christopher Briggs Rodriguez (voice), Katherine Young (bassoon), Kenito Murray (percussion), and student performers from Emory Sound Collective.

Note that the Arts Calendar listing for this concert has a SignUp link. Registration is not required, but registration will help ensure a seat, although there is no assigned seating.

The Department of Music and Piano Studies at Emory University extends its deepest gratitude to the Katz Foundation for their extraordinary and transformational gift of $1,000,000. This generous support enables the purchase of new Steinway pianos, placing us on the path toward becoming an All-Steinway School alongside our peer institutions. Most importantly, it profoundly enriches the artistic and educational experience of our students while sustaining the highest standards of teaching and musical excellence. This concert is presented in honor of the Katz Foundation, with sincere appreciation for their visionary support of the arts at Emory. 

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

The upcoming collaboration between Emory Wind Ensemble and Emory Sound Collective, Resonant Histories, is a program that explores how memory, place, and storytelling shape musical expression across time, culture, and tradition.

The program opens with Deciduous by Viet Cuong, a deeply personal meditation on grief, renewal, and cyclical healing. From there, the ensemble moves into the sweeping sonic landscapes of the iconic work The Pines of Rome by Ottorino Respighi, a journey through ancient and modern Rome, where history and imagination merge through a reorchestration for wind ensemble. Dance and folklore emerge in Danza de los Duendes by Nancy Galbraith, a work full of rhythmic vitality and spirit. 

The second half shifts toward narratives of identity, resilience, and American musical storytelling. Freedmen of the Five Civilised Tribes by Valerie Coleman honors the rich and powerful histories of African American and Native American communities, weaving cultural memory into her signature compositional voice.

The program concludes with Murder Ballads by Bryce Dessner, originally written for Eighth Blackbird. Drawing on Appalachian folk traditions and the haunting storytelling of historical ballads, the work blurs the boundaries between classical and folk sound worlds.

The program offers a musical reflection on how personal, cultural, and collective histories continue to resonate in the present, shaping how we listen, remember, and imagine the future.

A new course being taught in the Music Department usually doesn't merit mention in this newsletter, although new courses represent new directions in the department. This new course is really something special. Here is the course catalogue description:

MUS 370: Arts Leadership in Practice-The Fundamentals of Orchestra Management 

This course is designed to explore the fundamentals of leading a non-profit performing arts organization through the lens of a professional symphony orchestra: the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO). The ASO will serve as a "learning laboratory" and its senior leadership as learning facilitators. This course will explore both theoretical and practical elements of non-profit arts leadership through traditional lectures, collaborative group projects, role-play scenarios, and a capstone project. Class sessions will be offered in-person, virtually, and on-site at the Woodruff Arts Center, the home of the ASO.

One of the faculty in the course is Paul Bhasin, the director of EUSO. Here is his description of the course:

“I’m delighted to partner with Jennifer Barlament (95C) on her Arts Leadership in Practice Course. Jennifer has long been an advocate for Emory arts students through her on- and off-campus efforts. Jennifer has employed Emory students at the ASO in various internships, who have gone on to careers in arts administration in the US and abroad. She has been an advisor to Emory students and helped to strengthen connections between Emory’s music program, orchestral students, and the ASO. This new pilot course offered by the Department of Music encourages students to “look under the hood” of the ASO; students will learn, first-hand, large orchestra management principles and best practices. These principles can be applied more broadly to other non-profit management fields. Most importantly, several class sessions will be held at Woodruff Arts Center so that students can observe and engage with industry leaders in situ. We are grateful to Professors Stephen Crist (Department Chair), Meredith Schweig (Dir. of Undergraduate Studies), Dean Kevin Karnes, and Vice Provost Branden Grimmett for their support of this offering. Our hope is that this pilot will lead to durable and regular course offerings in this exciting arena.”

Jennifer Barlament is the Executive Director of the ASO and you can read her Bio on the ASO website. A more interesting article about her can be found in the Spring 2016 issue of Emory Magazine. There you can find, for example, that like so many of our music students, she was a double major at Emory (in music and physics!) Her music teachers encouraged her to pursue a career in clarinet performance and she went to graduate school at Eastman School of Music. Her career from there is detailed in the article and we are so fortunate in Atlanta that ultimately she came to the ASO, and so fortunate at Emory that she is so interested in engagement with Emory students!

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 3,500 views after only 3 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.

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!