School Notes: School of Music
January/February 2017

Students perform in London

Yale School of Music students, along with YSM dean Robert Blocker and director of communications and alumni affairs Donna Yoo ’09MusM, traveled to London where they gave concerts for Yale alumni and friends at the Royal Automobile Club and the Royal College of Music. As part of the visit, which was made possible by Helen Chung-Halpern and Abel Halpern ’88 (each is a member of YSM’s board of advisors), Blocker presented a master class to RCM students. The YSM students who traveled to London are violinists Sophia Mockler ’17MusM and Laura Park ’18MusM, violist Joshua Newburger ’17MusM, cellist Eric Adamshick ’17MusM, pianist Sun-A Park ’16ArtA, ’17MusAM, and soprano Jessica Pray ’17MusM.

Students, alumni earn coveted honors

Guitarist Ji Yeon “Jiji” Kim ’17MusM won the Victor and Sono Elmaleh First Prize at the Concert Artists Guild’s 2016 Victor Elmaleh Competition, and double bassist Samuel Suggs ’14MusM, ’20MusAD, was named the organization’s New Music/New Places Fellow. Each has received a management contract from the Concert Artists Guild and will be presented in recital in New York City. Kim also earned a $5,000 cash award.

Composer Julia Wolfe ’86MusM was named a 2016 MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Wolfe is a cofounder and co–artistic director of the New York–based contemporary-music championing organization Bang on a Can, and was awarded a 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her oratorio Anthracite Fields.

A gift from the Class of 2016

The Class of 2016 became the first graduating class to present a gift to the Yale School of Music. More than half the class’s 98 members contributed to the gift, which exceeded $1,000. A seat in Sprague Hall (seat C101) has been adorned with a plaque identifying the Class of 2016 as having made a contribution to YSM. Acknowledging the gift during the school’s commencement ceremony, Dean Robert Blocker told the graduating class, “You’re starting a very, very important tradition, and the tradition is more about staying connected to your school and to this community and what has become your family, than it is about giving a gift.”