Because Berkeley is holding its commencement ceremony tomorrow beginning at 10AM, the area around campus will be busy and parking may be difficult. Since I wrote about logistics last week the university has released some new information about parking arrangements for the day. The crucial change from what I wrote last week is that university-operated parking garages will not be available to us tomorrow. Instead please look for parking either in the Telegraph-Channing garage, at meters on the streets around campus (8 hrs max; look for the green signs marking areas where you can park for more than 2 hours), or in the Allston Way Garage in downtown Berkeley. The university has also announced some street closures for the morning. These are mostly near the stadium and won’t affect people coming to Morrison Hall, but note that Dwight Way will be closed above Telegraph Avenue, and Piedmont Ave. and Gayley Rd. across the top of the campus will be closed (see details of road closures here).
program: May 14 2022 chapter meeting, UC Berkeley
Spring Meeting, 14 May 2022
128 Morrison Hall, UC Berkeley
9 to 9:30 light breakfast
9:30 – 11:00 Paper Session 1
Chair: Pierpaolo Polzonetti, UC Davis
Mara Lane (UC Berkeley), “Acting Surprised in Le Nozze di Figaro and Il barbiere di Siviglia”
Nathaniel Pergamit (San Jose State University), “Buried Treasure in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park: Cultural Trends Demonstrated by Golden Gate Park Concert Band’s Programming”
Edmund Mendelssohn (UC Berkeley), “A Typology of Musical Kitsch”
11-11:15 break
11:15 – 12:15 Book Panel featuring James Davies (UC Berkeley), Beth Levy (UC Davis), and Rachel Vandagriff (San Francisco Conservatory of Music); moderated by Mary Ann Smart (UC Berkeley)
12:15 – 2:00 lunch and Many Musics of America brainstorm session
2:00 – 3:30 Northern California Prize competition
Chair: Kirsten Paige, North Carolina State University
Sean Keenan (UC Santa Cruz), “Semiotics of Text-Based Compositions: An Analysis of La Monte Young’s Compositions 1960”
Joseph Finkel (UC Santa Cruz), “‘Listen to those Candy Apple Colors’: Harold Budd and ‘Pretty’ Music”
Tracy Monaghan (UC Davis), “‘High Camp Femme Antics’ and Music in The Birdcage and La Cage Aux Folles”
3:30 – 4:00 break
4:00 – 5:30 Business Meeting and Reception
Congratulations to Benjamin Ory, winner of the AMS NorCal Award in Musicology
The competition for the first AMS NorCal Award in Musicology took place on May 9, 2021. The prize was awarded to Benjamin Ory (Stanford University), for his paper “The ‘In-Between’ Generation: Mid Sixteenth-Century Polyphony and the Long Shadow of Early Twentieth-Century German Historiography.”
The panel of judges and the program committee offer warm congratulations to Ory, and thank all the finalists and those who submitted abstracts for consideration for the award. The submissions were exceptionally strong this year.
May 8-9, 2021 Joint Meeting, Northern California and Pacific Northwest chapters
Virtual Spring Meeting: May 3, 2020, 10 am PDT
Program:
Virtual (Zoom) meeting of the North California Chapter
of the American Musicological Society
May 3, 2020, 10 am PDT
Ingolf Dahl Competition Finalists
10:00
Adam Bregman, USC
“Musica ficta, Conjunction Theory, and the Hermaphroditic Nature of the Mi-Fa Complex”
10:30
Kelly Christensen, Stanford
“Privatizing the Canon: France’s Commercial Sheet Music Industry and the Opéra-Comique, 1825-1845″
11:00
Ramona Gonzalez, UCLA
“Quejío: Flamenco Trauma Expression and Rosalía’s El mal querer”
11:30 Break
12:00
Business Meeting and Announcement of Dahl Winner
Agenda for the Business Meeting
Election of the President and Secretary/Treasurer*
AMS NorCal Award for the Best Graduate Student Paper*
Bylaws Amendment*
Report by Secretary/Treasurer Alice Miller Cotter: Update on Chapter Finances
New Method for Paying Dues
New Webpage
*voting will be by email following the meeting
Beverly Wilcox, Cal State University Sacramento, will host the meeting. The link will be sent to all chapter members by email on May 1. Others may register by emailing wilcox@csus.edu.
Virtual Spring Meeting: Sunday morning, May 3
Update from Jessie Ann Owens, President, AMS NorCal (March 23, 2020)
I am pleased to report that we will be able to hold the Dahl competition this year, the final time it will be open to graduate students registered in both the Northern California and Pacific Southwest chapters. (Next year, the Northern California chapter will hold a competition open just to students registered in our chapter.) The meeting will be held virtually by Zoom, hosted by Beverly Wilcox at California State University, Sacramento. Following the presentations, there will be a brief (virtual) business meeting. Many thanks to Bev for hosting us!
We will keep the same deadline for abstracts that we announced earlier, April 7. Please submit an abstract of 300 words, along with the proposed title, author’s name and institutional affiliation via email to: amsnorthcal@gmail.com.
A graduate student committee chaired by last year’s winner, Malachai Komanoff Bandy (USC), will select three finalists. They will present their papers via Zoom on Sunday, May 3. The Dahl Committee will then decide which paper will receive the award.
Details about the Zoom meeting will be sent once the program is set.
I am also pleased to report that our website is now up and running, with many thanks to JoAnn Taricani. Because we’ve been a year without updates, there will be some catch up work to do. Please email me with corrections and updates: jaowens@ucdavis.edu. The new address is— https://norcal.ams-net.org/
Regarding the May 2-3 meeting (see update of March 23)
Message from the Chapter President, Jessie Ann Owens (March 17, 2020)
Like so many other organizations, AMS NorCal must rethink its “standard operating procedure.” Following consultation with the student and chapter representatives and discussion with the officers and our hosts at UC Davis, we have decided to cancel the in-person meeting scheduled for May 2-3. We would, however, like to find a way to hold a virtual/online Dahl competition for the best paper by a graduate student registered in either the NorCal or PSW chapters. At this time I am seeking a volunteer to manage the tech aspects and host the virtual meeting.
We have other business to conduct. We invite nominations and self-nominations for the positions of president and of secretary/treasurer. These leadership positions offer a way to provide valuable service to the discipline, to help support new scholarship and to provide a positive, workshop-like atmosphere for graduate student presentations. Please send nominations to me <jaowens [at] ucdavis.edu>. The deadline is April 20.
I recently learned by chance that the Pacific Southwest Chapter had unilaterally decided, with no consultation, to turn the Ingolf Dahl Award from a joint competition open to graduate students from both chapters, which it has been since its inception, to an award open to PSW students only. Thus, the Dahl competition, if we are able to manage it virtually, will be offered this year for the final time as a joint award.
The officers of AMS NorCal are unanimous in their desire to establish a new graduate student award for students in our chapter. This will require an amendment to our bylaws. At this time we invite nominations to name the prize: please submit a proposal to Alice Miller Cotter (amsnorthcal@gmail.com), providing a brief biography of the scholar/teacher you would like to honor and a rationale for naming a chapter prize for him or her. The deadline is April 20. We will then conduct an email vote of members of the chapter.
Our chapter site is still not operable (it can be consulted but not updated). We have a new URL and WordPress site. I would be happy to hear from any volunteers who know WordPress and are willing to clone our existing page onto this new platform.
Thank you for your patience during these challenging times.
Meeting, May 2-3, 2020, UC Davis (see update of March 23)
Message from the Chapter President, Jessie Ann Owens (March 9, 2020)
The Spring meeting of the Northern California chapter of the American Musicological Society will be held on Saturday all day and Sunday morning, May 2 and 3, at UC Davis. Proposals are invited for papers or other scholarly presentations on any subject of musicological interest. We particularly welcome proposals for pre-planned sessions on a specified topic, especially those that cross disciplinary boundaries. Papers should require no more than 20 minutes for full presentation, plus 10 minutes for questions and discussion.
This meeting will also feature the competition for the Ingolf Dahl Memorial Award in Musicology, which is given annually to the best student paper presented at the conference. (Details concerning the Dahl Competition may be found at http://www.ams-net.org/chapters/psc/Dahl2.html.) Students who are currently enrolled in institutions within the boundaries of the Northern California and Pacific Southwest chapters are invited to submit abstracts, specifying in the cover email their intention to participate in the competition. The abstracts will be assessed separately by a committee chaired by last year’s winner, Malachai Komanoff Bandy (USC). Three finalists will be chosen, all of whom will present their papers in the Sunday morning session of the meeting. The Dahl Committee will then decide which paper will receive the award.
Those wishing to make a presentation should submit an abstract of not more than 300 words (500 words for a pre-planned session) by April 7, along with the proposed title, author’s name and institutional affiliation, and a list of the equipment necessary for the presentation. Abstracts may be sent by email to amsnorthcal@gmail.com.
Meeting, February 8, 2020, University of the Pacific
Message from the Chapter President, Jessie Ann Owens (December 2, 2019)
The Winter 2020 meeting of the Northern California Chapter of the American Musicological Society will be held on Saturday, February 8, 2020 at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA.
The Program Committee invites proposals of up to 300 words for 20-minute papers (this is now the length for papers at the AMS annual meeting). Proposals may also be submitted for an organized session consisting of three related papers; these sessions can involve allied disciplines such as ethnomusicology or music theory. Proposals for an organized session should provide a rationale for the session and a brief description of each paper, no more than 500 words in all.
Abstracts will not be subject to blind review, in order to promote diversity of all kinds, including institutional and career stage. Submissions from faculty, independent scholars, and graduate students are all encouraged and welcome.
Abstracts should be submitted before midnight on Monday, January 6, 2020 via email to amsnorthcal@gmail.com. Decisions will be announced shortly thereafter.
Please refer to the AMS abstract guidelines: “Proposals should represent the presentation as fully as possible. A successful proposal typically articulates the main aspects of the argument or research findings clearly, positions the author’s contribution with respect to previous scholarship, and suggests the paper’s significance for the musicological community, in language that is accessible to scholars with a variety of specializations.”
If you are not already, you are encouraged to become a member of the chapter. Annual chapter dues are voluntary: all AMS members within the chapter boundaries are automatically members of the chapter, so don’t forget to pay your AMS national dues! Suggested annual chapter dues of $15.00 can be submitted via Paypal to AMSNorthCal(at)gmail(dot)com, specifying “Chapter Dues” in the message; dues can also be paid in person at our meetings, or by contacting our Secretary-Treasurer, Alice Miller Cotter (alicemillercotter(at)gmail(dot)com).