Dear fellow members of the NorCal Chapter of the AMS:

I am pleased to announce that we have a new chapter president-elect: Erica Buurman.

The elections were conducted remotely and closed on July 15, 2024.

Here are the detailed results of the elections:

23 members voted for Erica Buurman (22 using the Google Form and 1 via e-mail)

10 members voted for Monica Ambalal (all using the Google Form)

 

I am grateful to both Erica and Monica for their commitment to our Chapter and their willingness to serve.

Please feel free to contact Erica Buurman (erica.buurman@sjsu.edu) if you want to congratulate and/or have suggestions and requests for our next chapter activities.

 

Erica Buurman is Director of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies and Associate Professor in the School of Music at San José State University. Originally from Scotland, she began her studies as a violinist at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester before turning to musicology. She completed her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees at the University of Manchester and spent five years as a member of the music faculty at Canterbury Christ Church University (UK) before moving to the Bay Area in 2019. Her research centers on music and culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Vienna, particularly Beethoven and music for social dancing. Her publications include chapters in Cambridge Companion to the Eroica Symphony and the forthcoming Beethoven in Context, and a monograph, The Viennese Ballroom in the Age of Beethoven (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

 

Best wishes,

Pierpaolo Polzonetti

It’s time to elect a new President. Follow this link to cast your ballot. Please vote by July 15, 2024

POLL

2024 norcal chapter bylaws

Agenda for the business meeting of the NorCal Chapter in Reno, April 20, 2024

1. Ratification of the the Bylaws.

The Bylaws were last ratified on February 6, 2010, and are in need of further ratifications.

As current President, I propose the following changes to the Bylaws:

1. Officers and Terms of Office

I.2: Eliminate the confusing language about the vice president. There are only two non-student officers: the President and the Treasurer. I propose to replace “Vice-President” with “Treasurer and Secretary.”

I.3: eliminate language about “Secretary”: this is the Treasurer. I propose to call the Treasure “Treasurer Secretary.”

Also, modify the paragraph, “The Treasurer serves a two-year term which overlaps that of the President.”  The two terms should be staggered in order to ease the new officer in by ensuring that one of the two officers has the institutional memory and the information to operate the website, the funds, the e-mail list, and communicate about what unfinished business remains to be completed.

1. Elections

II.2: eliminate language about physical mail, considering that now all members have e-mail access (“The call, ballots, and results of the election shall be sent to all Chapter members via e-mail, with U.S. mail copies to those with no e-mail address“). Similarly, in II.3: eliminate language about physical mail communications.

III Meetings

Replace “The Chapter normally holds two meetings per calendar year, at times and places determined by the President” with “The Chapter normally holds at least one meeting per calendar year, at times and places determined by the President.”

1. Call for nominations and self-nominations to the office of President: please communicate nominations in person at the Chapter meeting or via email to ppolzonetti@ucdavis.edu

III. Invitation to graduate students and their representatives to design remote or in-person initiatives geared toward graduate student participation, exchange of ideas, and professional development.

Pierpaolo Polzonetti, President of the AMS Chapter

Spring Meeting of the NorCal Chapter of the American Musicological Society Reno, April 20, with additional recreational events on April 21

Location:

The University of Nevada, Reno, Rooms 152-153, Church Fine Arts Building, 1664 Virginia St., Reno, NV 89557

(On the east side of Virginia St, across the street from College Dr)

 

Free parking all day in Brian Whalen Parking Garage (the building right after Church Fine Arts on Virginia St.)

 

 

9:30 AM – 10:30 AM Registration and Light Breakfast (Coffee/Tea and Bagels/Donuts)

[program subject to minor adjustments and changes]

 

10:30 – 12:00pm      Session I – Politics and Identity in Popular Culture

Session chair: Louis Niebur (University of Nevada, Reno)

 

1. Mariana Da Silva Gabriel (University of California, Davis) “More Than Words: A Study of Chico Buarque & Gil Gilberto’s “Cálice” and ‘Covert’ Musical Protest

 

2. Joshua Strickland (University of Nevada, Reno), “It’s My Life”: Music, Baseball, and Identity”

 

3. Ryan Nason (University of California, Davis), “Imperialist Nostalgia in Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure”

 

12:00 – 1:00pm           Lunch Break

 

1:00 – 1:10pm             Business Meeting: ratification of the Bylaws, call for election of the new NorCal President.

 

1:10-2:00

Bridging the Gap between Musicologies:

Presentation of new books and Q&A with the authors:

 

Edmund Mendelsohn, White Musical Mythologies: Sonic Presence in Modernism (Stanford University Press, 2023)

Ruthie Meadows, Efficacy of Sound: Power, Potency, and Promise in the Translocal Ritual Music of Cuban Ifá-Òrìsà (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2023)

2:00 – 3:30pm            Session II – Transmission and Context in Motet and Opera

Session chair: Julianne Lindberg (University of Nevada, Reno)

1. Saagar Asnani (University of California, Berkeley), “The Curious Case of “mi doint”: Tracing Transmission Through Textual Variants of an Occitan-French Hybrid Motet”

 

2. Anushka Kulkarni (University of California, Davis), “Histories of Empire, Imaginings of India, and Mythologies of Alexander in Handel Opera Seria”

 

3. Ali Nia Moghaddam(University of California, Davis),, “Albert Lortzing’s Regina: Factory Workers On The Opera Stage”

 

 

3:30 – 3:45pm             Coffee Break

 

3:45 – 5:15pm             Session III – American Keyboard Stories

Session chair: Ruthie Meadows (University of Nevada, Reno)

1. Monica Francesca Ambalal (University of California, Santa Cruz), “The Advancement and Sustainability of the Piano Accordion in Northern California and the West Coast”

 

2. Paul Johnson (Independent scholar), “”Piano rolls: Unveiling the missing history of ragtime, blues and jazz piano performance”

 

Dear AMS members,

The NorCal Chapter invites you to attend its annual meeting on Saturday, April 20 with additional social activities taking place on Sunday, April 21, 2024 at the University of Nevada, Reno (part of the NorCal chapter). All events will be hosted in-person but will be also be accessible remotely.

Abstract submissions are due on March 10, 2024. Please send your proposals to the NorCal chapter president, Pierpaolo Polzonetti (ppolzonetti -at- ucdavis.edu). The proposal should include a title and a 250-word abstract. Papers proposals submitted for the AMS national meeting can be also submitted without changes for this chapter meeting. We will consider paper in all branches and genres of musicology, ethnomusicology, and theory.

At this conference we will confer the Northern California Prize in Musicology for the best graduate student paper. All graduate students presenting are eligible, as long as they bring four physical copies of their paper for the committee members by the day of the conference registration (Saturday, April 20), before sessions start.

You will find the complete conference program, travel and lodging information, and instructions for joining virtually at the conference webpage: https://norcal.ams-net.org/

Conference registration itself is free, but we ask that presenters and in-person attendees join the chapter or renew their memberships via the general AMS membership
We look forward to seeing you in Reno!

Sincerely,
AMS-NorCal chapter officers:

Pierpaolo Polzonetti, President
Edmund Mendelssohn, treasurer
Susan Bay and Daniel (Danny) Koplitz: graduate students representatives
Louis Niebur, conference organizer

 

2023 Spring Meeting Program

Northern California Chapter of the American Musicological Society

April 22, 2023

University of California, Davis
All events are hosted in-person in the Graduate Center (Walker Hall)
300 Shields Ave, Davis, CA 95616

Conference registration is free, but we ask that presenters and in-person attendees join the chapter or renew their memberships via the general AMS membership page: https://www.amsmusicology.org/store/ListProducts.aspx.

Chapter dues are $15.

Register Here: https://forms.gle/L1ZmG4xnH99aUK589

9:30 AM – 10:30 AM	Registration and Light Breakfast
10:30 AM – 12:00 PM Session I Chair: Jessie Ann Owens	Beverly Wilcox (California State University, Sacramento), “Preparing to Sing, Preparing to Print: The Miniature Scores of the Grands Motets of Michel-Richard de Lalande”   Laura Randall (Boston University), “A New Approach to Understanding Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre’s Cantates françoises, sur des sujets tirez de l’Ecriture: Social Context & Theological Function”   Allison Jerzak (University of California, Berkeley), “Algorithmic Filtering and the Hidden Logics of Genre”
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM	Lunch Break
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM	Business Meeting and Presentation of Carol Hess’s new book, Aaron Copland in Latin America (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2023)
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM Session II Chair: Carol Hess	Annie Liu, (University of Oregon), “China Nights: Li Xianglan, Hybridity, and Japanese Propaganda Films”   Christopher Pierce (University of Nevada, Reno), “Shifting Boundaries: Exploring Queer & National Identity in the Sanremo Festival”   Tracy Monaghan (University of California, Davis), “The Good, the Bad, and the Body: Moral Imperatives in the Musical Hairspray“
3:30 PM – 3:45 PM	Coffee Break
3:45 PM – 5:15 PM Session III Chair: Edmund Mendelssohn	Yahaira Rodriguez (University of San Diego), “Cross-Cultural Friendship and Musical Exchange in the 1940s Choral Works of Carlos Chávez and Aaron Copland”   Elaine Fitz Gibbon (Harvard University), “Concept, Laboratory, Playground: Ursula Burghardt as Composer-Artist in the 5-Day-Race (1968)”   eyda Çekmeci (University of California, Berkeley), “Sycophant Artistry: Musicians’ Participation in State Politics in Erdoğan’s Turkey”
5:45 PM	“Wine and Pink Floyd: A Psychedelic Wine-Tasting Experience”: Multisensory experience guided by Pierpaolo Polzonetti (gastromusicologist) and Andy Waterhouse (Director, Robert Mondavi Institute of Wine and Food Science). Sensory Theater of the Mondavi Institute of Wine and Food Science.
7:30 PM	Dinner on your own.

 

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).

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