Music Department 2026-2027 Colloquium Series 

This lecture series showcases new work by performers, composers, and scholars in ethnomusicology, musicology, music theory, sound art, and cultural history. The colloquia also invite dialogue with professionals working in the arts, music journalism, and in librarianship. A brief reception follows each formal presentation, offering a chance for collegiality. See our department website for a list of past colloquium visitors. All meetings take place in person.

Fall 2026
4:30–6:00pm
Adzenyah Rehearsal Hall 003 (*unless otherwise noted)

 

*Sep. 17 (Ring Family Hall)

Mark Applebaum (Leland & Edith Smith Professor of Composition, Department of Music, Stanford University)
  “Moral Dilemmas of the Experimental Composer”

Mark Applebaum, Ph.D. is the Edith & Leland Smith Professor of Composition at Stanford University. His solo, chamber, choral, orchestral, operatic, and electroacoustic work has been performed throughout North and South America, Europe, Australia, Africa, and Asia, including notable commissions from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Fromm Foundation, the Spoleto Festival, the Kronos Quartet, Chamber Music America, Ensemble Talea, and the Vienna Modern Festival. Many of his pieces are characterized by challenges to the conventional boundaries of musical ontology: works for three conductors and no players, a concerto for florist and orchestra, pieces for instruments made of junk, notational specifications that appear on the faces of custom wristwatches, works for an invented sign language choreographed to sound, amplified Dadaist rituals, silent “potential” music that allow listeners to infer sound, a chamber work comprised of obsessive page turns, and a 72-foot long graphic score displayed in a museum and accompanied by no instructions for its interpretation. His TED talk has been seen by more than five million viewers. Applebaum is also an accomplished jazz pianist and builds electroacoustic sound-sculptures out of junk, hardware, and found objects, and he has been awarded by the American Academy of Arts & Letters. At Stanford Applebaum is the founding director of [sic]—the Stanford Improvisation Collective. He has served on the boards of Other Minds and soundSCAPE, and is a trustee of Carleton College.

Abstract. Composer and Stanford University professor Mark Applebaum discusses his weird artistic metabolism through the presentation of many pieces composed over four decades. He discusses the manner in which both curiosity and boredom have activated opposing yet synergistic impulses: on the one hand to make experimental work (e.g., pieces for three conductors and no players; concerti for florist; pictographic scores; invented sound-sculptures), and on the other hand vernacular music (e.g., jazz piano improvisations; rock songs; derivative orchestral film music). These in turn suggest different modes of creative autonomy and an ethical dilemma in which convention is viewed as dubious consumption.  Confessional in nature, the talk is suitable for musical experts and casual listeners alike, and aspires to serve as a cheerleading session for all broad-minded creators.

 

Sep. 24     

Jin Hi Kim (Assistant Professor of the Practice in Music, Part-Time; and Director of the Korean Drumming Ensemble, Music Department, Wesleyan University)
  “The Jin Hi Kim Collection”

Jin Hi Kim is a Guggenheim Fellow, United States Artists Fellow, and recipient of numerous prestigious awards. A composer and innovative komungo virtuoso, she has performed her work worldwide at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the Berlin Free Music Festival. In 2021, Grammy.com described her as “A musical philosopher and radiator of electricity.” Kim bridges ancient Korean roots with contemporary American culture, pioneering the introduction of the 4th-century komungo to the international music scene. Through her compositional method Living Tones, she has created cross-cultural works performed with the Kronos Quartet, the American Composers Orchestra, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Over four decades, she has transformed the komungo into a contemporary instrument, developing the world’s only electric komungo with live interactive computer programming for large-scale multimedia performances. She is currently developing a komungobot, an algorithmic virtual robotic instrument that interacts with her electric komungo.

Abstract. Composer and innovative komungo (Korean stringed instrument) virtuoso and Assistant Professor of the Practice in Music Jin Hi Kim published two important archival works this year: the 9-CD box set The Jin Hi Kim Collection and my memoir, Duality of Ancient Korean Roots and New Western Music. Together, they represent her legacy—a body of work spanning more than four decades and reflecting the major works she has created since coming to America. In conjunction with Wesleyan University’s Music Library and World Music Archives, she is donating The Jin Hi Kim Collection featuring 52 tracks of music, and her memoir. Kim will discuss her Living Tones compositions, komungo cross-cultural improvisations, large-scale multimedia live interactive performances featuring her electric komungo system. These works bring together ancient Asian mythology and American contemporary art technology, creating a distinctive artistic language that bridges traditions and cultures.

 

*Oct. 8 (Ring Family Hall)

Joseph Getter (Wesleyan MA, ethnomusicologist, educator, multi-instrumentalist)
   “A History of Navaratri at Wesleyan”

Abstract. Wesleyan’s Navaratri Festival derives from the Hindu celebration of Navaratri held in the honor of the goddess Durga that spans nine (nava-) nights (ratri). Yet it also emerges from a series of programs organized by faculty members T. Ranganathan, T. Viswanathan PhD ’75, and Balasaraswati to present South Indian music and dance alongside educational workshops on campus that were open to Connecticut’s large Indian diaspora. In this presentation, musician, ethnomusicologist, and educator Joseph Getter MA ’99 will explore the history of the Navaratri Festival at Wesleyan, how it has transformed over the years, and how it continues to evolve to meet communities today. This event is part of the 50th anniversary Navaratri Festival at Wesleyan.  

 

Oct. 15

Kiara Benn (Assistant Director for Programming and Assistant Curator for Performing Arts, Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University)
Ben Chaffee (Associate Director and Curator of Visual Arts, Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University)
                      

Oct. 22  SEM Presentation.

Anya Shatilova (Visiting Assistant Professor of Music, Wesleyan University)
   “Listening to Nuclear Landscapes in Eurasia: Sound, Ecology, and More-than-Human Temporalities”

Anya Shatilova is an ethnomusicologist whose work draws on new materialist thought and sound ethnography to examine music as a site of material, transnational, and ecological relations. She is currently working on her first book, The Balalaika Finds Its Place: History, Identity, Media, which draws on historical and ethnographic research to explore how a musical instrument commonly understood as a stable symbol of Russianness has repeatedly acquired new identities and forms of belonging through migration, media, performance, and changing social environments. The book develops a new materialist approach to musical instruments that understands them as participants in the production of cultural history, asking how they both shape and are shaped by the worlds through which they move.

Abstract. This paper explores how sonic and musical practices engage nuclear landscapes as sites of ecological vulnerability, ethical responsibility, and more-than-human relationality. Drawing on theories of nuclearity, it examines how music and sound participate in forms of environmental attunement and response in a nuclear age, particularly in contexts shaped by the ongoing ecological afterlives of Soviet nuclear modernity. The paper juxtaposes works by composers shaped directly by late Soviet cultural contexts, such as Alfred Schnittke’s oratorio Nagasaki, with transnational and contemporary reinterpretations of nuclear damage, including recent experimental projects such as Galya Bisengalieva’s Polygon and the soundtrack to the video game Atomic Heart. This grouping allows me to trace how nuclear imaginaries move from late Soviet artistic responses to catastrophe toward twenty-first-century ecological and media-saturated reinterpretations across Eurasian contexts. Rather than treating these works as representations of nuclear sites, I ask: How do they make nuclear environments sensible? How might listening itself function as a mode of engagement with irradiated landscapes and damaged ecologies? Methodologically, the paper turns to sound ethnography not only as an analytical framework but also as a listening practice attentive to environments, bodies, infrastructures, and more-than-human agencies. Instead of positioning sound as a reflection of place, I approach it as a medium through which nuclear landscapes are mediated and imagined.

 

Oct. 29      SEM Presentations. Invented Traditions: The Revival of Musical Instruments in Central Asia

Aidai Kalmamatova (PhD student, Wesleyan University)
   “Strings of Memory: The Jetigen Revival in Kyrgyzstan”
 
Abstract. This paper traces the revival of the jetigen (plucked zither) in Kyrgyzstan and examines how the reconstruction of this once-forgotten instrument has extended beyond cultural preservation to produce national heritage in the present. The history of the jetigen is closely linked to the Kyrgyz historical homeland in southern Siberia, particularly present-day Khakassia, which Kyrgyz historiography regards as an ancestral territory. In this context, the Kyrgyz jetigen has been revived on the basis of the Khakass chatkhan, demonstrating the connection between ancestral lands and contemporary Kyrgyzstan. My study draws on autoethnography and interviews with key research participants, including Jusup Aisaev, a leading revivalist of the instrument; Sergei Charkov, a musician and artisan from Khakassia; and Kyrgyz instrument makers Mirbek Manapbaev and Eldiyar Kalenov. The paper documents the process of adapting the jetigen for contemporary musical practice in Kyrgyzstan, including decisions about construction, tuning, and performance. It also addresses issues related to the analysis and transcription of Kyrgyz kuus (instrumental compositions), highlighting prospects for further development of the repertoire. I argue that the jetigen revival demonstrates how musical instruments can articulate historical continuity while simultaneously supporting the construction of modern national identity. Drawing on scholarship on musical nationalism and Eric Hobsbawm’s concept of “invented tradition,” the paper situates the revival of this instrument within broader debates on heritage-making and cultural memory and contributes to ethnomusicological discussions of music revivals and post-Soviet cultural politics.

Aibek Baiymbetov (PhD student, Wesleyan University)
  "From the Epic Memory to Sonic Practice: The Reconstruction of Kyrgyz Signaling Instruments”
 
Abstract. This paper examines the reconstruction and modernization of Kyrgyz wind signaling instruments within the framework of the Kyrgyz Kairyk musical-educational initiative (2018–2025). Once central to nomadic military, ritual, and festive life, instruments such as the jeznai, kernei, surnai, and chynyroon largely disappeared from performance practice during the late nineteenth and Soviet periods. Drawing on interviews with master musician and instrument maker Nurlanbek Nyshanov and his student Dastan Birimkulov, as well as the author’s fieldwork and participation in Kyrgyz Kairyk, the study analyzes instrument revival as a multilayered process integrating craft reconstruction, restoration of sonic memory, repertoire renewal, and pedagogical transmission. Theoretically grounded in scholarship on musical revivalism and intangible cultural heritage (Howard 2022; Levin 2025), the paper argues that reconstruction in the Kyrgyz context extends beyond recovering lost material forms. Instead, it constitutes a dynamic process of cultural revitalization in which tradition is sustained through innovation. A distinctive feature of this case is the role of the Manas epic as a “sonic archive”: rather than relying on museum artifacts, reconstructors drew on epic descriptions to recover timbral, functional, and symbolic characteristics of signaling instruments. Modernization emerged from performance practice, particularly the need to expand tonal range while preserving timbre. Through inter-instrumental circulation of melodies and the creation of new compositions, revived instruments have re-entered contemporary cultural life, including festivals and public ceremonies. The study demonstrates that musical revival in Kyrgyzstan operates as functional continuity—restoring not only sound but also the social role of signaling music in contemporary society.

 

Saida Daukeyeva (Assistant Professor Music, Wesleyan University)
   “Kieli Aspaptar: Sacred Materialities and More-Than-Human Lives of Revived Musical Instruments”
 
Abstract. Contemporary practitioners of Kazakh musical instruments commonly describe them as kieli aspaptar, literally “spirit-bearing” or “enspirited instruments.” The expression evokes older animistic beliefs in the vitality and agency of material objects and other-than-human beings understood to possess sacred power (kie) and, in official heritage discourse, underscores their significance as symbols of Kazakh spiritual culture and identity. Yet the instruments described as kieli underwent complex histories of rupture, suppression, and transformation during the Soviet period before being revived and reintroduced within urban, Western-modeled performance contexts far removed from the relational environments of nomadic pastoralism in which they once circulated. This paper examines what the discourse of sacredness means under these transformed conditions. Focusing on contrasting case studies of the revival of stringed and wind instruments spearheaded by ethnoorganologist Bolat Sarybaev (1927–1984), I trace their trajectories from museum displays and archaeological artifacts into contemporary performance practice. Drawing on ethnographic research with instrument makers and performers, I explore how practitioners differently understand kie and how they conceptualize their instruments’ relations to other-than-human realms. Engaging recent scholarship on Central Asian music informed by the ontological turn and theories of material agency (Pegg 2024; Hutchins 2025), I argue that this revival has entailed a reconfiguration of more-than-human relations under postsocialist modernity. By reimagining the relational ontologies of premodern nomadic societies in 21st-century Kazakhstan, practitioners assign sacred meaning to their embodied creative engagements with instruments in ways that both assert continuity with the past and generate new forms of belonging in a modern, globalized world. 

  

Nov. 12    

Fake Radioloab. Akiva Zamcheck (Assistant Professor of Music, Lafayette University)
Adam Mirza (Associate Professor of Music Composition, Emory University)
  “Where’s Wanda?”

 

Fake Radiolab is a duo performance project in which Akiva Zamcheck and Adam Mirza interrogate mediated “facts” through explorations in the podcast media form. Our project self-consciously addresses radiophonic matter as both our subject and form. The result is a technologically and culturally hybridized discourse in which power-symbols presented as performative utterances are subsumed within an assault of genres. In particular, we use audio production to highlight and amplify the transformation of text into performance, and performance into text, powerful manipulations which we see as ubiquitous and scarily efficient throughout contemporary media culture(s). The first track from our upcoming album as well as a description of our creative process appeared as “Fake Radiolab: Audio and Ideology” in a special edition of Current Musicology titled “Experiments in Form”. Fake Radiolab is currently building a new immersive performance in collaboration with Dr. Cara Stacey (University of the Witwatersrand) and several South African musicians, which will be premiered in a live multimedia performance in November at the Bowed Electrons Festival 2026 at the University of Cape Town. Previous Fake Radiolab performances have centered on the history of the accordion (Serbian Composer’s Forum, Belgrade, 2022), the social scene at new music festivals  (Symposium for Improvised Electronic Music, 2023), and political problems with wordless music (Experiments in Electronic Sound Festival, Cal Arts, 2025). Zamcheck is Assistant Professor of Music at Lafayette University and Mirza is Associate Professor of Music Composition at Emory University.

Abstract. Our story begins with Wanda Landowska (1879-1959) at her studio outside Paris. A towering performer, scholar, and recording artist, Landowska was a key figure in the revitalization of the harpsichord in European concert music. After fleeing the Nazis (who looted her instruments, including the prized 16th-century “Landowska Harpsichord” ), she moved to Lakeville, Connecticut, where she continued to promote early music. Over the past year, Zamcheck and Mirza have been studying and sampling the “Landowska Harpsichord”, which is now in Johannesburg, South Africa, integrating sounds and stories into their work as the electronic  performance duo Fake Radiolab. Work on this instrument has led to collaborations with South African instrument builders and performers, including bow player/scholars Cara Stacey, Dizu Plaatjies, and Simphiwe Matolo. How can an instrument spur collaborations and launch flights?  The instrument in question here is actually a dysfunctional relic. What’s more, the “Landowska Harpsichord” may not have been Wanda Landowska’s instrument at all.