A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
The University of Mary Washington was represented by Department of Music faculty, students and alumni at the 2015 Root Signals Electronic Music Festival at Jacksonville University in Jacksonville Florida. Root Signals is sponsored by the Division of Music at Jacksonville University, and the Department of Music at Georgia Southern University and featured guest percussionist Tony Steve for the three-day festival of electronic music and media art.
Mark Snyder, Assistant Professor of Music, performed his song cycle Facets of Love to close the festival on Saturday, September 12th. The performance featured Paige Naylor ’14: soprano, Becky Brown ’15: harp, Mark Snyder ’97: guitar, piano, synthesizer & electronics. The poems for Facets of Love were penned by Jeanine Casler, a faculty fellow at Hobart, Northwestern’s Women’s Residential College and the video was created by Anna Weisling, the Music Technology Specialist at The Juilliard School in New York. The first movement can be viewed below:
Junior Music major Austin O’Rourke performed his composition Hazel Colored Nebula during the Emerging Composers Concert on Thursday night, September 10th. His performance of this piece on UMW’s 2015 Undergraduate Research and Creativity Day can be viewed below:
Becky Brown (UMW Music graduate 2015) performed her multimedia self-portrait composed during her spring 2015 independent study, Hold Still for pencil, copper, and Arduino on paper, poetry and video in Max/MSP/Jitter on the Saturday September 12th afternoon concert. Her performance of this piece on UMW’s 2015 Undergraduate Research and Creativity Day can be viewed below:
Stephen Hennessey (UMW Music graduate 2014) performed his work for processed guitar and electronics composed during his spring 2014 independent study, Ausgang during the Emerging Composers Concert. His performance of this piece on September 9,2014 can be heard below:
“This is their first taste of what it’s like to be on a research team and to be with other people who are just doing research,” said Deborah Zies, associate professor of biology and co-director of the Summer Science Institute. “It’s a great opportunity for faculty and students to get started on a project and work.”
The daylong event is one of the few to bring together biology, chemistry, earth and environmental science, math, computer science and physics students to present their original research projects to faculty, families and peers.
Students presented on a wide-range of research, from chemical signals in crayfish interactions to astrophotography to the downfall of antibiotics.
“It’s a high-impact learning experience,” said Nicole Crowder, assistant professor of chemistry and co-director of the Summer Science Institute. “I hope that this program exposes students to what it’s really like to be a scientist. Students take the knowledge that they’ve been gaining in the classroom and really apply it.”
At the end of the symposium, the following students received awards for their research presentations:
First-place Oral Presentation: Jerome Mueller, “Developing a Tetra Interpreter,” Faculty Advisor: Ian Finlayson, assistant professor, computer science
Second-place Oral Presentation: Amy Jayas, “The Best Dam Project Ever,” Faculty Advisor: Alan B. Griffith, associate professor, biology
First-place Poster Presentation: Kevin Speray, “Qualifying the Efficacy of Aeschynomene virginica as an Indicator Species for Sea-Level Rise,” Faculty Advisor: Alan B. Griffith, associate professor, biology
Second-place Poster Presentation: Shehan Rajapakse, “Designing the Tetra IDE,” Faculty Advisor: Ian Finlayson, assistant professor, computer science