Professor Scott Teeple was elected to the presidency of the College Band Directors National Association – North Central Division. Teeple was elected by the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) membership from nine states in the Midwest region. He will be responsible for representing the region at the national meetings, and leading the professional conference for the North Central region at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2026. 

CBDNA members are devoted to the teaching, performance, study, and cultivation of music, with particular focus on the wind band medium.

Teeple serves as a professor of music and director of bands at the School of Music. In this role, he conducts the Wind Ensemble, teaches graduate conducting, and oversees all aspects of the UW–Madison Band program.

Professor Parry Karp’s new album with conductor Kenneth Woods and the BBC National Orchestra is earning critical acclaim.

Released July 2025 on Signum Records, “Ernest Bloch: Schelomo – Hebraic Rhapsody, Suite for Viola and Orchestra,” was included on Gramohphone’s August 2025 “Editor’s Choice” list, which recognizes the best new classical recordings.

“The performance by Karp and Woods is all that one could wish for, conveying the atmosphere and energy of Bloch’s inspired writing and finding a breathtaking sense of fantasy in the lyrical central episode of the final movement,” Gramohphone writes. “With engineering as excellent as the performances, this is a very desirable release.”

According to the Signum Records release notes, “Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque is the most celebrated part of Ernest Bloch’s Jewish Cycle, and although originally conceived for voice, Bloch determined that only the cello could adequately embody the character of Solomon. The Suite for Viola and Piano was composed between February and May 1919, and the cello version is the work of the pianist and composer Adolph Baller and cellist Gábor Rejtő, who recorded their version in 1969. This album sees the World Premiere Recording of  the cello version for orchestra, with cellist Parry Karp, who studied with Rejtő.”

“Getting to record these two masterpieces with conductor Kenneth Woods and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales is a dream come true,” Karp said in the notes.

In another review from Arcana FM, the reviewer notes the “Balance between cello and orchestra could not be bettered in the spacious yet analytical ambience of Hoddinott Hall, while Woods contributes his customary insightful observations. Aficionados and newcomers alike will find much to delight and absorb them on this release.”

Karp is Artist-in Residence, and the Robert and Linda Graebner Professor of Chamber Music and Cello at the School of Music, where he is director of the string chamber music program. He has been cellist of the Pro Arte Quartet for the past 49 years, the longest tenure of any member in the quartet’s over 100-year history.

Woods earned his Master’s in Cello Performance as a student of Karp at the School of Music from 1991-1993. He is a 2020 recipient of the Mead Witter School of Music Distinguished Alumni Award,  which recognizes an alumnus or alumna who is making an outstanding contribution to the music profession in service or in artistic impact. Woods was appointed Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra in 2013, , and has quickly built up an impressive and acclaimed body of work with them.

As a guest, Woods has conducted ensembles including the National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the English Chamber Orchestra.

After distinguished careers, Professor Martha Fischer and Professor Marc Vallon have each announced plans to retire at the end of the spring semester.

“Professor Fischer and Professor Vallon have made innumerable contributions to the university and our school over the years,” Dan Cavanagh, director of the School of Music, said. “I have particularly benefited from their wise counsel, exceptional musicality, and warm personalities since arriving here two years ago. We wish them both the best in retirement, and know that their contributions will live on for years to come.” 

In addition to her current duties as Associate Director and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Fischer has served as Professor of Piano and Collaborative Piano since 2000.

Her approach to piano pedagogy, emphasizing both technical proficiency and expressive artistry, has shaped the careers of many students. In 2022, she received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, which recognizes the university’s finest educators. Fischer’s students have gone on to hold positions as freelance performers and within academe, as well as to take their collaborative training into areas outside music where the lessons learned in her classroom continue to inform and strengthen their work. 

Throughout her career, Fischer has recorded numerous albums, showcasing her versatility and interpretative skills. Her collaborations include recordings with trombonist Mark Hetzler, soprano Julia Faulkner, baritone Paul Rowe, tubist John Stevens, hornist Lin Foulk, and many others. For the past 12 years, Fischer and her husband Bill Lutes have presented their annual Schubertiade on campus, an all-Schubert concerts of lieder, vocal ensembles, and piano music in the style of the original Schubertiade.

In 2020, Fischer’s project “Replacement of Workhorse Musical Keyboard Instruments for Research and Performance” was one of 17 proposals funded through a Research Core Revitalization Program grant by by the UW–Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education and Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. This initiative provided funds for the purchase of replacement pianos in faculty studios and practice rooms, as well as an 1820s-style Viennese fortepiano. 

Vallon joined the School of Music faculty in 2004, where in addition to his teaching duties, he has been a member of the Wingra Wind Quintet, one of three faculty chamber ensembles in-residence at the School of Music. His career is marked by contributions to both contemporary and early music, his dedication to teaching, and his extensive performance history.

Vallon started playing professionally at the age of 18 during his conservatory studies and joined the Paris-based Orchestre National de France and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France, performing under many renowned conductors including Sergiu Celibidache, Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Karl Boehm, and Lorin Maazel. He also collaborated with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, conducted by Pierre Boulez, and took part in the first performance of Boulez’s major work, Répons.

In the 1980s, Vallon became a pioneer in the early music movement, serving as principal bassoonist with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra for over 20 years 1. His expertise in historical performance practice has been showcased through collaborations with leading ensembles such as La Chapelle Royale, Les Arts Florissants, and Tafelmusik. Vallon’s collection of early instruments, ranging from originals to copies dating from 1670 to 1920, reflects his deep commitment to preserving and performing early music.

His name can be found on more than 100 commercial recordings, among them his acclaimed rendering of the Mozart bassoon concerto with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Vallon performs and conducts Baroque music with the Madison Bach Musicians.

Assistant Professor of Musicology Gabrielle Cornish has been awarded a 2025 ACLS Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The longest running program at the organization, ACLS Fellowships support outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

After four years of restricting ACLS Fellowships to early-career scholars due to the impact of COVID-19, the 2024 competition was re-opened to scholars across all career stages. Cornish has been recognized as one of 62 outstanding scholars from a pool of over 2,300 applicants through a multi-stage peer review process.

ACLS Fellowships provide up to $60,000 to support scholars for six to 12 months of full-time research and writing. Awardees who are independent scholars, adjunct faculty, or have teaching-intensive roles receive an additional stipend between $3,000 and $6,000.

Cornish’s research explores how music and sound helped to construct Soviet identity during the Cold War. Using archival research, musical analysis, historical sound studies, and interviews, it argues that the Soviet government strategically considered sound and music within a broader politics of socialist modernity—that is, a socialist alternative to capitalist models of cultural and technological development.

“Ultimately, this project presents a model for rethinking aesthetic modernism in the late socialist context and, in doing so, reintroduces the Soviet Union into broader discourses of musical modernism, invention, and the ‘new’ in twentieth-century music history,” Cornish writes in the project abstract.

The ACLS Fellowship Program is funded primarily by the ACLS endowment, which has benefited from the generous support of esteemed funders, institutional members, and individual donors since our founding in 1919.

Professor of Composition Laura Schwendinger has been named the 2024-25 Abravanel Distinguished Visiting Composer at the University of Utah School of Music. Schwendinger’s residency includes a lecture and concert featuring her work. Both events are on February 10 at Dumke Recital Hall on the University of Utah campus.

Schwendinger is the composer of the opera Artemisia (about the painter Artemisia Gentileschi), is the winner of the 2023 American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Opera award ($50,000) and was the first composer to win the Berlin Prize (1999).

A professor at UW–Madison since 2005, her works have been championed by Dawn Upshaw (on tour 1997-2005); the Arditti, Spektral and JACK Quartets; Jennifer Koh, Janine Jansen, Miranda Cuckson, Matt Haimovitz, ICE, Eighth-Blackbird, Chameleon Arts Ensemble, Collage New Music, ACO, Richmond Symphony and Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra. Her music has been performed at the Kennedy & Lincoln Centers, Berlin Philharmonic, Wigmore & Carnegie Halls, Miller & Théâtre du Châtelet, and Tanglewood, Aspen, Ojai, & Talis Festivals. Her prizes and fellowships include those from the Guggenheim Foundation, Harvard-Radcliffe Institute, ALEA III, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, and multiple fellowship residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo Colony, Copland House, Bogliasco Foundation, Tyrone Guthrie Center (IRE) and Visby Center (Sweden), and was a League of League of American Orchestras/New Music USA composer in residence with the Richmond Symphony Orchestra (2014); as well as a rare two-time recipient of commissions from the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations.

Recent premieres include orchestral works Nightingales a poem for two violins and orchestra for Ariana Kim and Eleanor Bartsch, a harp concerto for Atlanta Symphony Principal Harpist, Elisabeth Remy Johnson and a saxophone ensemble work for the Northwestern saxophone Ensemble.

In reviews, her music has been called “captivating, artful and moving,” “music of infinite beauty” (NY Times), “ the genuine article…onto the ’season’s best list “ (Boston Globe); Colin Clarke wrote about her JACK CD QUARTETS, “the sheer intensity of the music is spellbinding…the passion shines through like a light.”

In 2025, she has several major premieres including a new choral work Silent Spring, commissioned by Cantori NY, based on Rachel Carson’s seminal book (May 2025 at Merkin Hall, NY), Ghost Music for the Chameleon Arts Ensemble in Boston (April 2025), Ghost Songs for Loadbang Ensemble (National Opera Center, NYC in February 2025), and she was awarded the Creative Arts Award ($30,000) for her third opera.

Professor of Piano and Piano Pedagogy and Director of Graduate Studies Jessica Johnson recently produced a video featuring Missy Mazzoli’s Isabelle Eberhardt Dreams of Pianos. Johnson filmed the piece in Collins Recital Hall at the Hamel Music Center on a DS Standard 5.5 keyboard.

According to the notes, “Isabelle Eberhardt was an explorer and writer who, at the beginning of the 20th century, abandoned a comfortable aristocratic life for a nomadic existence in North Africa. She was a liberated individual who rejected conventional European morality in favor of her own path. She died in a desert flash flood at the age of 27.

Isabelle Eberhardt Dreams of Pianos imagines her riding on horseback through the desert, lost in thought, remembering sounds and sensations of her old life. Fragments of Schubert’s A Major Sonata pierce her consciousness and are quickly suppressed. In her fatigue she dreams of a piano half-buried in sand, a flash flood of sheet music swirling around her.”

The School of Music is excited to announce Herb Payung as the next Assistant Director of Bands. He will serve alongside the band faculty to teach and help guide the historic University of Wisconsin Bands program in the School of Music. In addition, he will assist with aspects in both the athletic and concert band programs, and the undergraduate curriculum. Payung replaces Alexander Gonzalez, who has been hired as the Director of Bands at Southern Oregon University.

“As an alumnus of UW–Madison, I am aware not only of the well-established musical tradition of the Mead Witter School of Music, but of the tightly-knit community formed by its faculty and students,” Payung said. “I am grateful for the opportunity to re-enter this flourishing creative space in a new capacity and continue to build relationships through music making.”

Previously, Payung served as the Assistant Director of Bands at Elon University where he was involved with all aspects of the athletic band program and conducted the Concert Band. At the onset of his career, Payung taught instrumental music in eastern Pennsylvania. During his six years in public education, Payung conducted high school concert bands, jazz ensembles, pit orchestras, and marching bands. He taught courses in instrumental music and jazz improvisation. Payung also served as an elementary band director and brass and percussion instructor at the middle school level.

“We are extremely proud and excited to welcome Dr. Payung home to UW–Madison after an extensive national search by the Mead Witter School of Music,” said Corey Pompey, Associate Director of Bands and Director of Athletic Bands. “Payung is an exceptional artist-teacher and high-caliber individual. Without question, our students will benefit from all that he has to offer.”

Payung holds music degrees from Penn State University (BME, MM Wind Conducting), Boston University (MM Music Education) and UW–Madison (DMA Wind Conducting). His primary conducting teachers include Scott Teeple of UW–Madison and Dennis Glocke of Penn State University.

“We conducted a comprehensive national search to find the individual best suited for our position,” said Scott Teeple, Director of Bands in the School of Music. “Dr. Payung brings a wealth of knowledge about Big Ten band programs. He exercises a deep appreciation for our traditions, while also bringing a forward-thinking philosophy to our students and programs.”

Payung is a member of the College Band Directors National Association, the National Band Association, the National Association for Music Education, the American Federation of Musicians, and Pi Kappa Lambda, Music Honor Society.

 

The School of Music is thrilled to announce Albert Pinsonneault as the incoming Associate Director of Choral Studies starting this fall. Pinsonneault will teach choir, conducting, and the graduate choral literature seminar.

“I am so honored to join the faculty at the Mead Witter School of Music and to begin my work making art collaboratively in this community,” Pinsonneault said. “I have a lifelong passion for ensemble singing and I am grateful for the opportunity to share, critically examine, and produce music here.”

Pinsonneault is founder and artistic director of the Madison Choral Project, a 24-voice professional chamber choir based in Madison. A fierce advocate for new music, he has commissioned and premiered dozens of new works for choir. He received second place in the American Prize for Professional Choirs in 2020, performed at Midwestern ACDA Regional conferences (2018, 2020), presented at ACDA National in 2017, and will headline the Iowa Choral Directors Association state conference in 2024. His booklet Choral Intonation is published through Graphite and in active use at over 150 high schools, universities, churches, and community choruses.

Pinsonneault was Director of Choral Activities at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota where he oversaw a large undergraduate choral program involving 200 student musicians, a nationally televised Christmas program, and a history of international travel. From 2015-2019 he was Associate Director of Choral Organizations at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, where he helped administer a distinguished doctoral program in choral conducting, led two choirs, taught the graduate choral literature sequence, and served on dissertation committees.

A native of Minnesota, Pinsonneault attended St. Olaf College (BM Piano Performance) and the University of Minnesota (MM Choral Conducting) before completing his studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (DMA Choral Conducting, minor in Music Theory).

After competitive national searches, the School of Music is thrilled to announce the hiring of Dawn Dongeun Wohn as Assistant Professor of Violin, and Matthew Treviño as Assistant Professor of Voice. Wohn and Treviño join the faculty this fall.

Wohn, who is currently in a teaching faculty role at the School of Music, has performed in concert halls across five continents including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She has appeared as a soloist for live-broadcast performances with orchestras such as the Korean Broadcasting Symphony and the Aspen Conducting Orchestra, The New York Sinfonietta, and Japan’s Telemann Ensemble. In addition, she has performed recitals across the world including Carnegie Weill Hall, Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, and Jordan Hall.

Her debut solo album Perspectives, featuring works by female composers, was featured by the New York Times, Spotify and Apple Music and was chosen as one of WQXR’s best albums of the year. Her recent release, Unbounded by Delos Music, explores music by American women.

“I’m very excited to continue working for the School of Music in this new position,” Wohn said. “I love working with our curious, creative and open-minded students, and our collaborative and supportive faculty and staff. I am happy to be able to add my voice and be able to serve our School of Music community.”

Hailed as “a bass of rare talent,” Treviño most recently performed the role of Bonze in Madama Butterfly and Ferrando in Il Trovatore with L’Opéra de Montréal, Dr. Bartolo in Le nozze di Figaro with Calgary Opera’s and Austin Opera, Dr. P in Nashville Opera’s revival of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Friar Laurent in Roméo et Juliette with Florentine Opera, and Dr. Grenvil in La Traviata with the Calgary Opera.

Treviño is currently the chair of the voice department at McGill University in Montreal. A devoted and passionate educator, he is committed to a teaching approach which includes the science of healthy singing, a sensitivity to the artist’s physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing, and an unyielding commitment to guiding students towards a more productive life both personally and professionally.

“I am thrilled to join the faculty of the School of Music’s voice department and look forward to contributing to the school’s already stellar reputation,” Treviño said. “My wife, son, and I are so excited to begin our adventure in a city as vibrant and beautiful as Madison, and I’m eager to be a contributing member of its educational and artistic community. I’m humbled by this opportunity to teach, mentor, and guide the students at UW–Madison and help propel the School of Music to even greater heights.”