School Notes: School of Music
September/October 2022

Alums earn prestigious prizes

Three alums won the Concert Artists Guild’s 2022 Victor Elmaleh Competition. Bassoonist Eleni Katz ’20MusM, ’21MusAM, soprano Magdalena Kuzma ’22MusM, and pianist Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner ’20MusAD earned US management contracts and will perform at Merkin Concert Hall in New York. Kuzma also earned a UK management contract and will perform at Wigmore Hall in London. 

Alums Andy Akiho ’11MusM and Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti ’08MusM were finalists for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Music—Akiho for Seven Pillars, which was commissioned and premiered by Sandbox Percussion (YSM alums Jonathan Allen ’13MusM, ’14MusAD; Victor Caccese ’13MusM; Ian Rosenbaum ’10MusM, ’11MusAD; and Terry Sweeney ’15MusM), and Lanzilotti for with eyes the color of time, which was commissioned and premiered by the String Orchestra of Brooklyn.

Concert season announced

The school’s 2022–23 concert season is marked by some special performances and sees the return of several popular music series. This year, the Yale Philharmonia will perform the Piano Concerto in C minor by Helen Hagan, who, in 1912, became the first Black woman to graduate from the school. The season will also include Yale Opera productions in the fall, winter, and spring, and the return of the Oneppo Chamber Music Series, Horowitz Piano Series, Faculty Artist Series, and the Ellington Jazz Series, which will present a concert celebrating the 100th anniversary of Charles Mingus’s birth—50 years after Willie Ruff ’54MusM, now professor emeritus of music, welcomed more than 40 giants of jazz, including Mingus, to Yale. The school’s concert season will also include a full New Music New Haven series and numerous other performances.

Norfolk Festival welcomes audiences

The Yale Summer School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival took place in Norfolk, Connecticut, in July and August and took as its theme festival director Melvin Chen’s sentiment, “It’s about time!” The festival included new music and choral workshops, and chamber music performances by festival artists and festival fellows.