In a special quarantine edition of Though My Ears, mezzo-soprano and DMA candidate Kelly Guerra hosts an Instagram Live interview with assistant teaching professor Sarah Gibson of the composition program at UCSB. They discuss the importance of creating music during lockdown, Sarah’s use of improvisation in her compositional practice, and the creative freedom her piano duo HOCKET allows her to have: “…we could change what the repertoire would be in the modern era, and we could explore all the things we wanted to explore.”  

The third episode of Through My Ears stars Stefanie Tcharos, an associate professor of musicology, and is hosted by Timothy Bausch, a PhD candidate in theory. They discuss her teaching philosophy, how music plays a role in what precedes historical transformations, and her taste in modern music, including how she's been “totally obsessed with Lizzo”. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Anchor.  This podcast was produced by Connor Long and the UC Santa Barbara Department of Music. Intro and outro music was recorded at the Kerr Hall Sound Studio, performed by second-year music major Kaitlin Webster-Zuber. Stefanie Tcharos is a historian of early modern music with broad expertise in 17th- and 18th-century Europe, and specialties in Italian music and musical practices.  Her research and teaching traverse diverse subjects, including the critical history of opera, baroque music drama and related vocal traditions, music production and reception in early modern contexts, genre study, historiography and theories of social and cultural history, and the history of musicology.  She holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from Princeton University and has been on the UCSB music faculty since 2002. She is the author of Opera’s Orbit: Musical Drama and the Influence of Opera in Arcadian Rome (Cambridge, 2011), and has written articles, reviews, and book chapters on opera, the serenata, and related 17th- and 18th-century issues of music and culture.  Professionally, she has served on the Governing Board of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, and the Editorial Board for Eighteenth-Century Music.  She has co-directed the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music (CISM) at UCSB, and is current co-editor of Cambridge Opera Journal.

Now in his third decade as a much sought-after performing artist, Canadian pianist Robert Koenig has performed throughout the world to great acclaim as a collaborative pianist and chamber musician. His partnerships with many of today’s leading classical artists have seen him grace many of the world's most important stages including New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Boston’s Jordan Hall, San Francisco’s Herbst Theater, Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, Vancouver’s Chan Center, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Taiwan’s National Theater, Hong Kong’s City Hall, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Paris’ Louvre Museum, Brussels’ BOZAR, and Amsterdam’s Het Concertgebouw. These frequent recital appearances have seen him collaborating with many of this generation’s most renowned musicians, including Augustin Hadelich, Sarah Chang, Hilary Hahn, Pamela Frank, Ida Kavafian, Kyoko Takezawa, Esther Yoo, Paul Huang, Roberto Diaz, Jonathan Moerschel, Zuill Bailey, Sara Sant’Ambrogio, Jennifer Kloetzel, Isabel Bayrakdarian, Miro String Quartet, St. Lawrence String Quartet, and members of the Tokyo and Juilliard String Quartets. Of significance is Koenig’s frequent partnership with legendary late violinist Aaron Rosand that resulted in many successful recital tours throughout the world, in addition to a recorded legacy of live performances. Koenig’s 25-year collaboration with renowned American violinist Elmar Oliveria continues to see the pair travel the globe in recital performances as well as in multiple acclaimed recordings for the Artek and Biddulph Recording labels. His additional recording activity includes a GRAMMY nominated CD for Naxos of William Primrose Transcriptions for Viola and Piano with violist Roberto Diaz as well as recordings for Decca, Cedille, Eroica, Ambassador, Centaur, and CRI. A favorite at summer festivals, Koenig has performed at such prestigious festivals as Ravinia, Aspen, Saratoga, Chamber Music Northwest, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Caramoor, Banff, Mostly Mozart, Campos do Jordao Festival in Brazil, and Interlochen Summer Arts Festival. A strong advocate for new music, he commissioned American Composer Lowell Liebermann to write his Piano Trio for flute, cello and piano, Op. 87 and gave the world premiere at the National Flute Association Convention in Nashville, TN. Mr. Koenig’s 2019-20 season includes performances at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, The Forum in Harrisburg, PA, Bankhead Theater in Livermore, CA, and recitals in Copenhagen and Brussels. In addition to a southern California tour with well-known Camerata Pacifica, he will also perform Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Waynesboro Symphony Orchestra in Virginia. A native of Saskatchewan, Canada, Koenig is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied with renowned collaborative pianist Dr. Vladimir Sokoloff. In addition to his decade long association with the Juilliard School where he served as staff pianist, he was formerly Professor of Piano and Chamber Music at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS. Since 2007, Koenig has been Professor and Head of Collaborative Piano at the University of California Santa Barbara where he also serves as the Chair of the Music Department and Head of Performance. His summers are spent at the Interlochen Summer Arts Camp where he is Coordinator of Collaborative Piano.

The second episode of Through My Ears stars Derek Katz, an associate professor of musicology, and is hosted by Timothy Bausch, a PhD candidate in theory. They discuss how the field of musicology is changing, advocacy and public engagement, and Derek’s current research on Ellen Stone, the first female to ever be included in a brass section of a symphonic body not composed exclusively of women. As Derek puts it, “…having a 20 year old woman playing a brass instrument at the front of a section in a major symphony orchestra… was literally national news.”    This podcast was produced by Connor Long and the UC Santa Barbara Department of Music. Intro and outro music was recorded at the Kerr Hall Sound Studio, performed by second-year music major Kaitlin Webster-Zuber. Bio Derek Katz received his PhD from UCSB, his BA from Harvard, and has studied at The Free University of Berlin on a Fulbright Fellowship. A specialist in Czech music, he has published articles in Musical Quarterly and multiple Czech journals, as well as chapters in Nineteenth Century Chamber Music (Schirmer, 1998), Janáček and His World (Princeton, 2003), and Modernism and Opera (Johns Hopkins, 2016). His book Janáček Beyond the Borders was published by the University of Rochester Press in 2009. His more recent work deals with institutional support for professional string quartets in the United States in the mid-20th Century. In particular, he has been researching the American career of the Kolisch Quartet and the history of the New Friends of Music in New York. Katz has also worked extensively in public musicology and audience enhancement. He has written for The New York Times, the San Francisco Opera, the Teatro Real Madrid, and the Bavarian State Opera, and spoken at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. He also collaborates with the San Francisco Opera Guild, the Ives Collective, and the Hausmann Quartet. He is an enthusiastic amateur violist and chamber music player. Publications Articles and essays include "A Turk and a Moravian in Prague: Janáček's Broucek and the Perils of Musical Patriotism" (Janáček and His World, ed. Michael Beckerman. Princeton University Press 2003); "Janáček a tradice" (Hudebn’ veda 1998); "Smetana's Second String Quartet: Voice of Madness or Triumph of Spirit?" (Musical Quarterly, 1997); "The Chamber Music of Dvořák and Smetana" (with Michael Beckerman. Nineteenth Century Chamber Music, ed. Stephen Hefling. Schirmer 1998). Articles for The New York Times, including "So a Composer Met a Woman at a SpaÉ" (July 20, 2003); "Is Jenufa a Heroine or a Sitting Duck?" (January 5, 2003); "Music of Messages, Hidden and Overt" (March 10, 2002); "Two Czech Operas, Rarely Performed" (August 19, 2001); "Reading the Future in Readings of Rusalka" (May 2, 1999). Program essays for the San Francisco Opera, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Bard Festival and the Aspen Music Festival; Pre-concert lectures for Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Bard Festival.