The Wanda L. Bass School of Music's faculty engage in dynamic creative and scholarly work that crosses disciplinary and pedagogical boundaries. Faculty scholars are leaders in their fields and present regularly at the annual meetings of the American Musicological Society, Society for Music Theory, and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, among others. Their work models for students how the study of music is an art in itself.
Check out our faculty's most recent recordings and publications (since 2020), organized by author surname:
Reimagined Possibilities (2021)
Dr. Tommy Dobbs, Associate Professor of Percussion
Andrew DeBoer, clarinet
In their 2021 chamber music album Reimagined Possibilities: Works for Clarinet and Percussion, the Wind and Wood Duo (featuring clarinetist Andrew DeBoer and percussionist Tommy Dobbs) presents four "reimagined" musical pieces originally composed for other instruments. Highlighting unique instrumental configurations and dense modern rhythms, the collection spans versatile new iterations of Astor Piazzolla's Histoire du Tango, Gene Koshinski's Pocket Grooves and Get It!, and Luis Cardoso's Seres Imaginarios 3, Op. 36.
Available via online streaming.
ALCHEMY: New Music for Saxophone & Piano (2022)
Dr. Joshua Heaney, Assistant Professor of Saxophone
Benjamin T. Nylander, piano
This release features contemporary music for saxophone and piano concerned with exploring a fundamentally intertwined relationship. Performed by saxophonist Joshua Heaney and pianist composer Benjamin Nylander, each piece is highly idiomatic for each instrument and makes full use of a wide palette of techniques, colors, and sounds. The end result is a collection of music that could not possibly be performed on any other combination of instruments. Seeking novel expression, storytelling, and human connection through contemporary music.
Available via Clarinet & Saxophone Classics and online streaming.
My Father's Age (2024)
Prof. Peter Markes, Associate Professor & Director of Music Education
This release features a collection of reflective folk and acoustic-pop music written and recorded over a span of five years. Meditative and personal, the album acts as a series of musical windows capturing the perspective of a middle-aged father navigating personal evolution, family dynamics, and a return to teaching. The songs examine the unique collective disruptions of the pandemic era and its aftermath, seeking deeper human connection and emotional storytelling. Utilizing a warm foundation of acoustic guitar, striking violin layers, and intimate vocal arrangements, the end result is a deeply spiritual, cohesive, and intentional listening experience.
Available via Peter Markes Store and online streaming.
Louis Vierne (1870–1937): Complete Piano Works, Vol. 2 (2023)
Sergio Monteiro, Professor of Piano & Director of Piano Activities
Continuing the exploration of Vierne's inspired piano repertoire, this second volume features the evocative Douze Préludes reflecting wartime tumult, and the poignant Solitude composed following personal bereavements.
Available via Naxos Records and online streaming.
Louis Vierne (1870–1937): Complete Piano Works, Vol. 1 (2021)
Sergio Monteiro, Professor of Piano & Director of Piano Activities
Louis Vierne is celebrated as a premier French organ composer, though his imaginative piano works remain lesser-known. This first volume features lyrical early pieces, the joyful Suite bourguignonne, impressionistic nocturnes, and wartime reflections.
Available via Naxos Records and online streaming.
Scarlatti: Complete Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 23 (2020)
Sergio Monteiro, Professor of Piano & Director of Piano Activities
Domenico Scarlatti’s vast output of keyboard sonatas is recognized for its extraordinary variety, imaginative architectural design, and dramatic expressive power. This 23rd volume showcases works from across his career, capturing the vibrant atmosphere of Spain with its colorful folk dances, innovative voice-leading, virtuoso leaps, and unexpected harmonic shifts.
Available via Naxos Records and online streaming.
Brahms and Shostakovich: Piano Trios No. 2 (Live) (2021)
Chavdar Parashkevov, Assistant Professor of Violin
Viktor Valkov, piano and Louis-Marie Fardet, cello
This live album captures an intimate and powerful chamber music performance by pianist Viktor Valkov, violinist Chavdar Parashkevov, and cellist Louis-Marie Fardet. The program pairs two monumental masterworks of the piano trio repertoire: Johannes Brahms's warm, expansive, and texturally rich Piano Trio No. 2 in C major, Op. 87, and Dmitri Shostakovich's haunting, emotionally stark Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67. Rendered with raw live energy, the collection contrasts the soaring late-Romantic architecture of Brahms with the tragic, wartime solemnity and frantic "Dance of Death" themes found in Shostakovich's profound commemorative piece.
Available via Francoeur Chamber Music Society and online streaming.
What We Need Is Here (2023)
Lisa Reagan-Love, Artist-in-Residence in Vocal Performance
Lisa Reagan's album What We Need Is Here (set for release on August 25 by Stillpoint Records) features ten classic poems by authors like Yeats, Frost, and Shakespeare set to her original music. She collaborated with producer/orchestrator Jamshied Sharifi, who also worked on her previous release Shunia alongside Suzanne Jackson.
Available via Stillpoint Records and online streaming.
Shunia (2021)
Lisa Reagan-Love, Artist-in-Residence in Vocal Performance
Suzanne Jackson, vocal duo
The self-titled album by duo Lisa Reagan and Suzanne Jackson features transcendent harmonies co-composed with producer Jamshied Sharifi, alongside guest appearances by Moroccan artist Hassan Hakmoun.
Available via Shunia Sound and online streaming.
Moxie (2025)
Dr. Elizabeth Robinson, Assistant Professor of Flute
Chamber Winds of South Dakota
Don Linn, conductor
Chamber Winds of South Dakota's debut album features new works by American composers Nicole Chamberlain, Marie A. Douglas, Alyssa Morris, Jonathan Newman, and Kimberly R. Osberg, with conductor Don Linn and flute soloist Elizabeth Robinson
Available via Aerocade Music Official Store, Chamber Winds of South Dakota Bandcamp and online streaming.
Aviary (2023)
Dr. Elizabeth Robinson, Assistant Professor of Flute
Emlyn Johnson, Carmen A. Lemoine, Erin K. Murphy, and Nicole Riner, flutes
Elizabeth Robinson's debut album, Aviary, explores nature and whimsy through seven compositions for flute, piccolo, and flute quartet by American composers Lisa Bost-Sandberg, Nicole Chamberlain, Gay Kahkonen, Anne McKennon, and Kimberly R. Osberg.
Available via Aerocade Music Official Store, Elizabeth Robinson Bandcamp, and online streaming.
The Music of the How to Train Your Dragon Trilogy: A Guide to the Scores of John Powell (2024)
By: Dr. Erik Heine, Professor of Music Theory, Assistant Director of Honors Program
One of the many reasons why children and adults love the How to Train Your Dragon films is the music. John Powell composed the music for all three films, maintaining thematic consistency while writing new themes for each film. This book serves as a score guide for the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy. Every note has been examined to thoroughly discuss the music for Hiccup, Toothless and the other dragons, Vikings, and the enemies and friends that they encounter. It features interviews with the composer and nearly 100 musical excerpts.
Available from Amazon or McFarland Books
The Music Room: A Story of Art, Friendship, and Gathering in Betty Freeman's Beverly Hills Home (2025)
By: Dr. Jake Johnson, Associate Dean of the Wanda L. Bass School
From 1981 to 1994, music patron and art collector Betty Freeman (1921--2009) hosted a series of monthly musicales, or salons, in Los Angeles. Most of these salons were held in a room off the den of Freeman's Beverly Hills home--a space she dubbed "the music room." Freeman saw these salons as an important space to foster the development of contemporary composition among leading and upcoming composers in both America and Europe. Over the span of thirteen seasons, 144 composers, performers, and dignitaries in the contemporary music world spoke, performed, and shared their music before a gathering of elite arts administrators, scholars, critics, patrons, and composers from the greater Los Angeles area. Freeman and her co-organizer, music critic Alan Rich (1924--2010), ensured that young, local composers were frequently featured alongside established ones with international reputations, constructing a network of mentors and mentees within contemporary music.
The Music Room is a collection of transcriptions of tape recordings made at the salons and photographs Freeman took of these events that gives an unprecedented look inside one of the most significant musical gatherings of the last century. Among those famous today who appeared in the salons were John Cage, Libby Larsen, Pierre Boulez, Steve Reich, John Adams, György Ligeti, and Philip Glass. Featuring sixteen composers whose work and relationship with Freeman showcase the wide influence of her salon series, The Music Room is at once a record of these specific composers as well as a documented history of salon culture in America.
Available from Oxford University Press
Unnerved: The Performer's Guide to Managing Anxiety (2026)
By: Dr. Melissa Plamann, Wanda L. Bass Chair of Organ, Professor of Music, Coordinator of Graduate Studies
A relatable and practical roadmap for combating each performer's unique brand of performance anxiety by discovering and managing root emotional drivers-it is designed to uncover what makes each individual performer “tick.”
Melissa Plamann provides an engaging and humorous book, chock-full of data, for anyone who experiences performance anxiety in any music and performing arts discipline at any age. After taking an objective stance to define “performance anxiety,” she examines treatment options, including medication and several types of therapy. She delves into personal responses to anxiety, looking at emotions of fear, shame, and anger, and then shows how performers can address and start managing their unique brand of performance anxiety based on these personal responses. Chapters deal with myriad other elements impacting performance anxiety, including the mind-body connection, suggesting that emotional turmoil and stress cause physical ailments and exacerbate the somatic expressions of anxiety. Also addressed are miscellaneous issues that predispose performers to increased anxiety: educational settings, hierarchical relationships, hormonal shifts, gender, and even the pandemic.
This book offers practical advice and insight for performers, gleaned from the author's lifetime of personal performance and practice as well as hundreds of interactions with students navigating their own performance anxiety.
Available from Bloomsbury
