Peter Breithaupt
Peter Breithaupt is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a Master of Music degree in percussion performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2013) and a Master of Arts in music research (2011) as well as a Bachelor of Music in percussion performance (2010) from Western Michigan University. His dissertation
research examines the alternative music scene in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, focusing on issues of labor and development. Peter is currently a lecturer at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Peter has presented papers at the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) Annual Meeting (2018), the SEM Southern Plains Chapter Conference (2017 and 2018), and the University of Texas at Austin’s New Directions in Anthropology (2017). His article “Entering the Conversation: Finding Information in the Library and Online for Percussion Research” appeared in the May 2019 volume of Percussive Notes. Peter’s research has been supported by Fulbright-IIE and the Presser Foundation.
Complementing his scholarly work, Peter maintains an active professional life as a drummer, percussionist, composer, and songwriter. He tours internationally with Msafiri Zawose, one of Tanzania’s foremost Gogo musicians, and performs regularly with Rattletree, an award-winning Afro-dance band, and Hecho a Mano, an Austin-based salsa band. He also composes music for
film; most recently, he composed, produced, and scored the soundtrack to Maasai Remix (2019), a documentary film that follows three Maasai individuals from Tanzania who are trying to defend their community’s rights to land and a pastoralist lifestyle. An old-time music enthusiast, Peter is a dedicated clawhammer banjoist. He is also an avid mountain biker.
John Bimbiras
John Bimbiras is a second-year Ph.D. student in Ethnomusicology. He holds a B.M. in jazz and classical guitar performance from Towson University (2011), as well as an M.A. in composition from The City College of New York (2016), where he studied with David Del Tredici. His research focuses on politics, transnationalism, and the music of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. He is also interested in Lithuanian polyphonic songs and Algerian Chaabi. After graduating from CCNY, John became a Research Associate at the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute and helped the Institute secure a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create an interactive website entitled A History of Dominican Music in the U.S. During his time at CUNY DSI, he also transcribed and arranged an entire collection of original manuscripts from the composer and bandleader Rafael Petitón Guzmán (1894-1983).
As a guitarist and vocalist, John began performing in bars and nightclubs in Baltimore City at the age of twelve. He released a CD of original material with his band Everyman in 2011, produced by Mike Pope. In New York City, he performed regularly at venues such as Rockwood Music Hall, The Bitter End, Pianos, and the Shrine. Here in Austin, John has been performing with the UT Hispanic Caribbean Ensemble, Tambores Del Pueblo, and other groups. Recently, he also wrote music for the Tiny Banger, a play by Alice Stanley that was premiered by Trinity Street Players.
Heather Couture
Amelia McElveen
Amelia McElveen is a PhD student in Musicology. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music General Concentrations in flute from Truman State University in 2017. Amelia’s main research interest is contemporary medievalism in modern Catholic monasteries and symphonic metal music. Her Master’s Report topic is on English chants written since the Second Vatican Council in North American monasteries. Her report will be based around her fieldwork at six monasteries and their development of vernacularism and tourism perspective.
Amelia is currently the Teaching Assistant for MUS 213M: History of Western Music I and ENS 106E: Early Music Ensemble (“Austinato”). Amelia currently serves as Musicology Colloquium Representative for the Association of Graduate Ethnomusicology and Musicology Students (AGEMS). Amelia currently plays the traverso with the Early Music Ensemble.
Jordyn Middleton
Jordyn Middleton is a PhD student in Musicology. She a holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from the Boston Conservatory (2010). Jordyn’s research interests include the music of the Renaissance, issues of gender and sexuality, women’s studies, performance practice, and public musicology. She is currently working on her Master’s Report which will examine Anne Boleyn’s use of music to legitimize her position as queen of England through a discussion of her musical education, practice, and patronage. She is exploring ways of making this research more accessible and has begun work on a digital database which will be published later this year.
Victoria Mogollón Montagne
Andrew Normann
Matthew Ovalle
Kevin Parme
Kevin Parme is a PhD student in the Department of Ethnomusicology. His research interests include nationalism and music, tourism and music, cultures initiatives in Post-Revolutionary Mexico, and indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica. He has received the Rainwater Innovation Grant, E.D. Farmer Fellowship, Tinker Field Research Grant, and Foreign Language Area Studies Grant, among other awards. His dissertation project explores the participation of indigenous Oaxacan brass bands in nation-building initiatives of the Post-Revolutionary period. It considers the effects of such participation in the contemporary contexts of tourism, activism, and private celebrations. Kevin is currently conducting fieldwork in Oaxaca City.
Xuan Qin
Xuan Qin is a doctoral student in Musicology at the University of Texas, Austin. She received her Master’s Degree from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami in 2015, after earning a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Central Conservatory of Music in China. Her primary research interests include nineteenth century opera and gestural performance.
Xuan won the Eileen Southern Travel Grants from AMS in 2013 to attend the annual conference at Pittsburgh. Her paper “Alienation between Music and Poetry: On Cultural Misunderstanding in Alexander Tcherepnin’s Musical Setting of the Chinese Poem Drink Song” was accepted by International Graduate Student Conference in 2014 under the auspices of the International Musicological Society. Her Master’s Thesis titled “Ornament and Gesture – Approaches to Studying Bellini’s Norma and Giuditta Pasta’s Performance.” She presented one part of her thesis in the AMS Southern Chapter in 2014.
Jeannelle Ramirez
Jeannelle is a PhD student in Ethnomusicology. She completed her Masters in Ethnomusicology at UT and holds a dual BA/BFA in Jazz Vocal Performance and The Arts from The New School in New York City. Prior to attending UT, she interned at Smithsonian Folkways in Washington DC and worked as an assistant in an entertainment law practice, where she became interested in copyright and intellectual property.
She is an Americanist focused on the study of popular music. Her research interests include transnational and global flows between Latin America and the United States, Latinx and African American musics, media and technology, sound studies and intellectual property. She is concerned with the ways in which national and ethnic identities are (de)constructed through music. Her research focuses mainly on new Latin Alternative music and related styles that work against hegemonic discourses and challenge the meaning of Latinidad. She has presented papers at the Society for Ethnomusicology Southern Plains Conference, Princeton University Voz Latina Conference, and the ILASSA conference. Jeannelle is also an independent singer-songwriter and particularly enjoys creating music with computer software.
Hannah Salmon
Hanna Salmon is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation research combines literatures from affect and atmosphere studies, sound studies, voice studies, and performance studies with ethnomusicology to study Arabic music and hakawati storytelling with a special focus on the voice. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Classical Piano Performance from Temple University in Philadelphia in 2017; now, she focuses most of her musical energy on the oud.
Golriz Shayani
Office: MBE 3.412
Ashley Thorton
Ashley Thornton is a second year PhD student in ethnomusicology at UT Austin. She holds a Bachelor of Music in Percussion Performance (2018) and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology (2018) from Southeast Missouri State University. Her research focuses on Kurdish and Turkish music, specifically the roles of gender and identity among women who play daf and erbane, both are types of frame drums. Other research interests she has include nationalism, transnationalism, migration, violence, representation in films and literature, applied ethnomusicology, and medical ethnomusicology.
Outside of her academic work, Ashley directs UT Austin’s Middle East Ensemble, Bereket’s, percussion section. In addition to that, she is a volunteer for UT Austin’s Refugee Student Mentorship Program with the Austin Independent School District (AISD) where she works with “English as a Second Language” students.
Yu Ye
Yu Ye is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at the University of Texas at Austin. He got a M.A. in musicology from Shanghai Conservatory of Music (2011) with the thesis on Astor Piazzolla and Tango Nuevo. Currently he is working on the doctoral dissertation, dealing with the contemporary tango music in the U.S. and China. Besides this primary interest, his other research interests include music and media, contemporary music in China, the twentieth and twenty-first century music, and musical nationalism/transnationalism. Outside the academic research, he plays piano and bandoneón, and enjoys the experience in the Gamelan ensemble and the Hispanic Caribbean ensemble at the University of Texas at Austin.
