Alumni News | May 2023

Please join us in congratulating our alums on their recent successes.

Four Yale alums received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. David Ludwig ’12BA received a $10,000 Arts and Letters Award in Music and will receive another $10,000 with which to make a recording and present a program of original music at the Academy in New York City. Robert Honstein ’04BA ’10MMA ’14DMA received a $10,000 Andrew Imbrie Award in Music. Peter Shin ’20MMA received a Charles Ives Award in Music. And Andy Akiho ’11MM received a $15,000 Goddard Lieberson Fellowship in Music. Two current YSM students, Luke Haaksma ’24MM and Harriet Steinke ’22MM ’23MMA, received Charles Ives Scholarships. Awardees were chosen by Academy members Annea Lockwood, David Sanford, Chinary Ung, Melinda Wagner, and YSM alums Christopher Theofanidis ’94MMA ’97DMA, Augusta Read Thomas ’88, and Julia Wolfe ’86MM.

The "Whisper" Concerto by Katherine Balch ’16MM was premiered by Zlatomir Fung and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in April.

Hana Beloglavec ’13MM was appointed Assistant Professor of Trombone at Florida State University and released a solo album titled Bayou Home on Summit Records in February.

Trumpeter Benjamin Berghorn ’04MM served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Trumpet at Lamar University, in Beaumont, Texas, during the 2022-2023 academic year.

Swan Songs by composer Ethan Braun ’21DMA was premiered by Contemporaneous with Tariq al-Sabir and Lucy Dhegrae at Roulette Intermedium in March.

Violinist Davis Brooks ’78MM released his fifth solo album, Lines from Poetry, on Ablaze Records. The album features music for violin and viola by composers Ronald Caltabiano, Richard Einhorn, Frank Felice, Filipe Leitão, and Balee Pongklad.

A new setting of the 16th-century carol "What Cheer?" by choral conductor Margaret Burk ’19MM will be featured in the new collection "Carols for Choirs 6," which will be published by Oxford University Press in summer 2023. This new version of Oxford's best-selling collection celebrates the centenary of the OUP Music Department and features music for Advent through Epiphany.

Trio Ondata—violinist Michael Ferri ’21MM ’22MMA, cellist Miriam Liske-Doorandish ’21MM ’22MMA, and pianist Anthony Ratinov ’20BS ’22MM ’23MMA—won First Prize and the Audience Prize at The Chamber Music in Yellow Springs competition.

Composer Robert Honstein ’04BA ’10MMA ’14DMA released a portrait album of works for percussion, Lost and Found, on New Focus Recordings. Drawing inspiration from early memories and new parenthood, Honstein’s Lost and Found features performances by cellist Hannah Collins ’06BS ’08MM ’09AD, percussionist Michael Compitello ’09MM ’12MMA ’16DMA, and the percussion trio Tigue.

Nathan Huvard ’19MM ’20MMA is serving as the guitarist/lutenist/mandolinist for the Broadway revival of Camelot at the Lincoln Center Theater through June 25.

Violist Brian Isaacs ’22BA ’23MM won an audition for the Berlin Philharmonic’s Karajan Academy in February and will join the program in September.

Composer Sophia Jani ’22MM received a residency scholarship from the Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia.

Carter Johnson ’23MMA won First Prize at the fifth Weatherford College International Piano Competition in Texas.

Simon Karakulidi ’22MM won the Silver Medal and the Audience Prize at the 13th Mayenne International Piano Competition in France and won the Grand Prize at the 2023 Piano Campus Festival Concours International in Pontoise, France.

Syöjätär, a work by composer Bálint Karosi ’14MMA ’18DMA, was a winner in the chamber orchestra and organ category at the International Kaija Saariaho Organ Composer Competition in Helsinki. Karosi's piece also won the Finnish Composers Association’s Special Recognition Prize. Syöjätär will be performed in 2024 and 2025 by the Sibelius Academy Symphony Orchestra and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, respectively.

A new recording by Christopher Mallett ’09MM, Justin Holland (1819-1887): Guitar Works and Arrangements, was released in February on the Naxos label. The album showcases 19th-century African American guitarist Justin Holland's original compositions and arrangements for solo guitar and includes several world premieres. The album reached No. 14 on Billboard’s "Traditional Classical" album chart.

Composer Chris Rogerson ’12MM won the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Elise L. Stoeger Prize for a chamber piece called Afterward, which will be performed in January on the Society's Sonic Spectrum series.

Bass-contralto Morgan Sullivan ’18MM joined the faculty of The Voice Lab in Chicago, an “LGBT+ led business, created for and by our transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming family,” according to the organization.

Baritone Edward Vogel ’19MM will make his solo debut with the New York Philharmonic in the 2023-2024 season singing Handel's Israel in Egypt under the direction of Jeannette Sorrell. Vogel recently received the Betty Brummett Award at the Oratorio Society of New York's annual Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition.

Pianist Althea Waites-Hayes ’65MM will serve in 2023-2024 as the Leonard Stein Resident Artist for PianoSpheres, a Los Angeles organization that “supports and encourages the composition and performance of major new works for the piano,” according to the organization. Waites-Hayes’ new recording of works by Margaret Bonds will be released in July.

Choral conductor Nate Widelitz ’14MM ’26DMA organized the Five Cities Baroque Festival, which will present three concerts over two days in May, in Decatur, Ill.

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