Swarthmore's music program is led by an outstanding faculty of performers, composers, and scholars. Students participate in classes and performing groups led by these faculty members whether or not they major in music. Swarthmore music faculty are distinguished scholars and composers in such fields as Jazz Improvisation and History, Opera, Lieder, Contemporary American Music, Conducting and Orchestration, 18th, 19th and 20th Century Music, Composition, Music of Asia, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, Medieval and Renaissance Music, Music Theory, Indonesian Gamelan, the Music of Asia, Harmony and Counterpoint, and many other areas of study. Click here for a partial list of instrumentalists and vocalists who teach at Swarthmore College. John Alston, Associate Professor of Music Chorus John Alston, director of the Chorus and Orchestra, has taught at Swarthmore since 1990. He is also the founder and artistic director of the Chester Children's Chorus. As a vocal soloist, he has appeared with many professional ensembles throughout North America and specializes in early music. He is also on the conducting faculty of the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin College. Marcantonio Barone, Associate in Performance Keyboard Musicianship Born in 1962, American pianist Marcantonio Barone made his debut at the age of ten at a Philadelphia Orchestra children's concert. He returned in 1990 as soloist with the Orchestra's subscription series under the direction of William Smith. He has also performed as soloist with the St. Louis Symphony, Houston Symphony, Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, among others. He has collaborated with such eminent conductors as Sir Simon Rattle, Leon Fleisher, Arther Fiedler, and Barry Tuckwell. His recital engagements in America and abroad have included Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Metropolitan Musuem, and the National Gallery. A prize winner at both the 1985 Busoni and 1987 Leeds Competitions, Mr. Barone also won the 1996-7 Musical Fund Society Award. He performs chamber music frequently with the Lenape Chamber Ensemble, 1807 and Friends, Orchestra 2001, and many other groups. An active champion of New Music, he has given the world premiere performances of works by several distinguished composers, including George Rochberg, David Finko, and Gerald Levinson. In addition to his duties at Swarthmore, Mr. Barone is also on the faculty of the Bryn Mawr Conservatory, where he is head of the piano department. James Freeman, Daniel Underhill Professor Emeritus of Music (part time) Opera, Lieder, Contemporary American Music, Conducting & Orchestration, 19th-Century Music James Freeman is Daniel Underhill Professor Emeritus of Music and co-director of the Swarthmore Music & Dance Festival. He is also the artistic director and conductor of Philadelphia's renowned contemporary music chamber orchestra and ensemble, Orchestra 2001, which he founded in 1988. He was trained at Harvard University (B.A., M.A., Ph.D), Tanglewood, and Vienna's Akademie für Musik. He counts among his principal teachers pianists Artur Balsam and Paul Badura-Skoda and his father, double bassist Henry Freeeman. As a conductor, he has commissioned and given the first performances of many new works by American composers. In 1990 he was given the first Philadelphia Music Foundation's award for achievement in Classical Music. Other honors include two Fulbright Fellowships, grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, Swarthmore College, the German Government, and Harvard University's Paine Traveling Fellowship. He spent the spring of 1991 at the Moscow Conservatory as a guest conductor and lecturer on new American music. Janice Hamer, Visiting Associate Professor of Music (part-time) Musicianship, Music Theory Janice Hamer teaches Musicianship in conjunction with the theory courses. Her B.A. is from Harvard; M.M. from Westminster Choir College, and Ph.D. from the Graduate Center at CUNY. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Bunting Fellowship at Harvard, grants from the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Councils on the Arts, Meet the Composer, American Music Center and ASCAP. She is the recent winner of two competitions--the Dale Warland Singers New Choral Music Competition and the Miriam Gideon Award from the International Alliance of Women in Music.  Recent performers and/or commissioners of her music include Orchestra 2001, the Dale Warland Singers, BBC Singers, Contemporary Music Forum of Washington, DC, Bowling Green (OH) Festival, I Cantori di New York, Double Image (UK), Pittsburgh Trio, Philadelphia Concerto Soloists, Apple Hill Chamber Players, University of Wisconsin Concert Choir, the Kharkov (Ukraine) Philharmonic, and the US Holocaust Museum resident ensemble. The large-scale opera she is currently writing, Lost Childhood, based on a Holocaust memoir, is being developed and commissioned by American Opera Projects. Andrew Hauze, Assistant Professor of Music Associate in Performance Director of the Swarthmore College Orchestra Andrew Hauze joins Swarthmore's faculty in the fall of 2006. He is entering his third year of the Helen F. Whitaker Fund Conducting Program at the Curtis Institute of Music. A graduate of Swarthmore College, Andrew also studied at Simon's Rock College of Bard. He has conducted productions of Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore," Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice," as well as concerts on the Curtis Student Recital Series, leading world premieres by Sheridan Seyfried and Solbong Kim. Also an active pianist and organist, Andrew serves as Music Director of University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation in Philadelphia, and as an accompanist for the Florence Voice Seminar in Italy and the CoOperative Program at Westminster Choir College. His principle teachers have included Otto-Werner Mueller, Marcantonio Barone, Keiko Sato, and Jeffrey Brillhart. Michael Johns, Associate in Performance and Director of the Elizabeth Pollard Fetter Chamber Music Program Wind Ensemble, Chamber Wind Ensemble, Chamber Music BM in Horn Performance from New England Conservatory. MM in Music History from Temple University. DMA in Horn Performance from Temple University. Director of Brass Ensembles at Temple University, Conductor of the Wind Ensemble at Swarthmore, member of the horn section of the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Ballet, and Philly Pops. Jonathan Kochavi , Visiting Assistant Professor of Music (part-time) Harmony and Counterpoint, Theory and Analysis Jon Kochavi received B.A.ís in both Mathematics and Music from the University of Chicago. He then earned an M.A. in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. in Music Theory from SUNY Buffalo, where he studied with John Clough. His areas of research include diatonic theory, transformation theory, and interconnections between music and mathematics. His work has been published in the Journal of Music Theory and Music Theory Spectrum. In addition, Jon serves as the program annotator for the Marin Symphony, the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, and the Edgar Bronfman Chamber Series. He has also served on the faculty at Temple University, University of Pennsylvania, and SUNY Buffalo Gerald Levinson, Jane Lang Professor of Music and Department Chair Composition, Music of Asia, 20th Century Music Gerald Levinson has been increasingly recognized as one of the major composers of his generation. In 1990 he received the Music Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which cited his "sensitive poetic spirit, imaginative treatment of texture and color," and his "potent and very personal idiom which projects immediately to the listener." His composition studies were with George Crumb, Richard Wernick, and George Rochberg at the University of Pennsylvania; with Ralph Shapey at the University of Chicago; and with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory. He has taught at Swarthmore since 1977. He has received many awards, including the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and two N.E.A. Fellowships. In the early eighties he spent two years in Bali, Indonesia (as a Luce Foundation Scholar and as a Guggenheim Fellow) studying Balinese music and composing. Recently his monumental Symphony No. 2 was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Recordings of his works are available on CRI, Laurel, Albany, and CRS labels. Barbara Milewski, Assistant Professor of Music Chopin, 19th- and 20th-Century Musical Nationalism, Symphony, Opera, Music of the Holocaust Barbara Milewski earned an AB in Political Science from Bowdoin College,an MA in Music History from SUNY Stony Brook, and a PhD in Musicology from Princeton University. Her research, which focuses on 19th- and 20th-century Polish music and music of the Nazi concentration camps, has been generously supported by fellowships and prizes awarded by the American Musicological Society, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, and the Kosciuszko Foundation. In 2007-08 she was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to conduct research in Poland. This year, with a colleague, she has released an annotated CD recording titled, "Ballads and Broadsides: Aleksander Kulisiewicz's Songs from Sachsenhausen." She is presently working on a book that explores the musical-poetic activities of prisoners in three Nazi camps: Birkenau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. She previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Michael Marissen, Daniel Underhill Professor of Music J. S. Bach, 18th Century Music, Medieval & Renaissance Music, Mozart Michael Marissen holds a B.A. from Calvin College and Ph.D. from Brandeis University. He joined the Swarthmore faculty in 1989 and since then has also been a visiting professor at Princeton University and the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. He teaches courses on medieval, renaissance, baroque, classical European music; Bach; a conceptual introduction to the music of various cultures; Mozart; and the string quartet. He has published many articles on J. S. Bach's instrumental and vocal music and is the author of The Social and Religious Designs of J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos (Princeton) and Lutheranism, anti-Judaism, and Bach's St. John Passion (Oxford); editor of Creative Responses to Bach from Mozart to Hindemith (Nebraska); and co-author of An Introduction to Bach Studies (Oxford) with Daniel R. Melamed. Click here for a list of selected publications and contact information. His research has been supported by fellowships from sources in Canada (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council), Germany (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung), and the USA (National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies). Current projects include a short book for general readers, Rejoicing against Judaism in Handel's Messiah. Drew Shanefield Instructor Associate in Performance Jazz Ensemble Director In addition to directing Swarthmore's Jazz Ensemble, Drew Shanefield is also an instrumental music specialist for the School District of Haverford Township. He is the director of the award winning Haverford High School Jazz Ensemble, which has earned top honors at the Cavalcade Jazz Championships and the University of the Arts Jazz Festival, among other distinctions. Drew graduated magna cum laude from New York University in 1992 with a Bachelor in Music. Further studies include an M.S. Ed. in 1995 from Queens College in music education and an M.M. in trumpet performance from West Chester University. Major teachers include William Vacchiano, Chris Gekker, Kenneth Laudermilch and Ronald Anderson. Drew is currently pursuing doctoral studies at Widener University and maintains an active schedule as a freelance artist, clinician and adjudicator. Drew is a Yamaha trumpet performing artist and clinician. His compositions for band are published by the Neil A. Kjos Music Company. Thomas Whitman, Associate Professor of Music Balinese Gamelan, Harmony and Counterpoint, Beethoven, Mahler, Britten, Performing Arts Education Composer Thomas Whitman studied with Gerald Levinson at Swarthmore College (B.A. 1982) and with George Crumb, Jay Reise, and Richard Wernick at the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D. 1992). He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has received commissions and performances from many ensembles in North America and abroad and is the recipient of many awards and honors. He has written three operas in collaboration with the poet Nathalie Anderson, a colleague in Swarthmore's English Department. For more information about Mr. Whitman's works, click here. As a Luce Scholar in 1986-7, he spent a year studying traditional music and culture in Bali, Indonesia, and he is the founder and co-director of Swarthmore's Balinese Gamelan Semara Santi. He also runs the Chester Children's Gamelan Project, introducing traditional Indonesian performing arts traditions to schoolchildren in Chester, Pennsylvania. Mr. Whitman is also an accomplished viola da gambist. Music Program Staff: Bernadette Dunning, Administrative Coordinator Donna Fournier, Performing Arts Librarian Donna previously worked as the Associate Librarian of Haverford College Library and as the music librarian there. A graduate of Connecticut College, she has an M.L.S. from Sourthern Connecticut State University and an M.A. in music history from West Chester University. A gambist and cellist, Donna instructs viola da gamba students at Temple University, is a member of the baroque ensembles Le Triomphe de L'Amour and Mélomanie. She also performs with other orchestras and ensembles. Geoffrey Peterson, Concert Manager Geoffrey Peterson studied composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with Richard Hoffmann and Dennis Eberhard, and with Donald Erb at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he received his bachelor of music degree. His works have been performed at venues throughout the United States and Europe. Recent works have included a string quartet, Seasons, which was premiered by the Cavani Quartet in April 2007, and a piano concerto, The Edmund Fitzgerald, which was premiered in 2005 by the Sault Saint Marie Symphony. His Sonata for Solo Oboe is published by Theodore Presser and has been performed by the principal oboists of the National Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, and the New World Symphony. He is also music director of The Garden Church in suburban Philadelphia.   home | overview | concerts | facilities | faculty | students | courses | lessons | ensembles | audio clips | other resources | forms | prospective students Updated September 2008