School Notes: School of Music
May/June 2023

Flutist joins faculty

Flutist Tara Helen O’Connor will join the faculty in September as visiting associate professor, adjunct, of flute, succeeding Ransom Wilson, who served on the faculty for more than 30 years. O’Connor is on the faculty at the Purchase College Conservatory of Music and Bard College Conservatory of Music, and in the Contemporary Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music. A recipient of both the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award, O’Connor has performed with many of the most celebrated artists and ensembles of our time.  

Faculty, student, alumni honors

Eight YSM alums and one faculty member won 2023 Grammy Awards, including composers Michael Gilbertson ’13MusM ’21DMA, Caroline Shaw ’07MusM, and Kevin Puts ’96MusM; faculty tubist Carol Jantsch; cellist Alexander Veltman’90MusM; double-bassist Daniel Krekeler ’99MusM; bassoonist Dennis Michel ’77MusM; and violinist Domenic Salerni’11MusM.

Four Yale alums and two current YSM students received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, including David Ludwig ’12; Robert Honstein ’04, ’10MusAM, ’14DMA; Peter Shin ’20MusAM; Andy Akiho ’11MusM; Luke Haaksma ’24MusM; and Harriet Steinke ’22MusM, ’23MusAM.

Ellington Jazz Series celebrates Mingus

In celebration of Charles Mingus’s 100th birthday, and 50 years after Willie Ruff ’54MusM (now professor emeritus of music) organized a historic jazz convocation that brought more than 40 giants of jazz to Woolsey Hall, the Ellington Jazz Series presented Epitaph: Mingus at 100, on April 2 in Woolsey Hall. This presentation of Mingus’s rarely performed magnum opus Epitaph featured the Mingus Big Band with Grammy Award–winning saxophonist, YSM lecturer in jazz, and director of the Yale Jazz Ensembles Wayne Escoffery and Yale students.