Students

Musicology

Ross Clowser

Ross Clowser

Ross Clowser is an MA student in Musicology. Ross received his Bachelor of Arts in both Music and International Relations from the University of Iowa in 2018 and returned to Iowa to continue his studies. His research interests include the Black American Music and local jazz scenes, as well as the roles of race and gender in contemporary popular and art music. Ross is also a working guitarist and composer, performing and recording regularly throughout the Midwest. In his free time, he enjoys going to record stores, tending his houseplants, and spending time with his friends.

Rebekah Erdman

 

Rebekah Erdman

Rebekah Erdman is a PhD student in musicology. She holds a MM in Clarinet Performance from the University of Minnesota Duluth and a BM in Music Education from the University of Wisconsin Green Bay. Rebekah’s primary research interest is the music of late-nineteenth and twentieth century Great Britain, with an emphasis on women composers and chamber works. Her interests also include Latin American and Spanish composers, and in 2019, her woodwind quintet was awarded a Campus Climate Grant from the University of Minnesota Duluth to prepare a concert of Latino composers for performance at Duluth-area grade schools. As an educator, she has worked with students of all ages and aspires to a career in higher education in order to pass along her love of discovering new music from new places to the next generation of musicians and teachers.

Cody Norling

Cody Norling

Cody Norling is a PhD candidate in historical musicology at the University of Iowa where he, as a graduate-student instructor of record, is currently teaching a musically diverse, general-education course titled “Great Musicians.” As an archival historian, he studies a range of topics related to operatic dissemination, consumption, and reception in the United States, and is currently undergoing dissertation research regarding the civic density of operatic cultures in 1920s Chicago. In 2016, Cody received the National Opera Association’s Leland Fox Scholarly Paper Award for his work on indigenous depictions in Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, and in addition to giving recent papers for the Society for American Music and American Musicological Society, he was a guest speaker for the Des Moines Symphony’s 2019/2020 season. Cody’s published work can be found in The Opera Journal, a recent volume from Hastings College Press on midwestern identity formation in the long-nineteenth century, and a forthcoming volume from Kent State University Press.

Anastasia Scholze

Anastasia Scholze

Anastasia Scholze is an MA student in Musicology. She holds a BA with an emphasis in Voice Performance from the University of Iowa. Her research interests include film music, women in music, and surrealism. Recently, she has worked as an ICRU Fellow with Dr. Nathan Platte on the film music podcast Sounding Cinema, and as the Classical Music Intern for Interlochen Public Radio, where she helped research and produce The Interlochen Collection. Outside of the classroom, Anastasia enjoys hiking, listening to podcasts, and playing guitar and piano.

Christos Sidiropoulos

Christos Sidiropoulos is an MA student in Musicology. Christos received his Bachelor in Arts from University of Macedonia, Greece, in 2020. His research interests include popular music, folk music, and nineteenth-century music. Christos participated in his university’s chamber choir and also plays violin and piano. In his free time, he enjoys playing video games, watching movies, and talking to his friends.

Megan Small

Megan Small

Megan Small is a PhD candidate in Musicology at the University of Iowa. She holds three degrees in musicology and horn performance and was a recipient of the Fulbright Student Research Grant to Budapest, Hungary in 2014-2015. Expanding upon her research of American and Hungarian music of the twentieth century, Megan’s dissertation explores gender and exoticism in the music of early water ballet performances. Her passion for music and teaching has provided opportunities to present at international, national, and regional conferences. Currently residing in Minnesota, Megan stays active maintaining a private studio of piano and horn students, working as the music director at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in St. Paul, performing with the Mississippi Valley Orchestra, and serving as the President of the Minnesota Fulbright Alumni chapter. In her free time, Megan enjoys spending time with her husband Dan, studying languages, recording audiobooks for LibriVox, and taking Irish dance class.

Music Theory

Ryne Carlson

Ryne Carlson

Ryne Carlson is a PhD student in Music Theory. He holds a Bachelor of Music Education from Northern Arizona University and a Master of Arts in Theory from the University of Iowa. His primary research interests include music from the 19^th century, pedagogy, and formal analysis. His thesis explores the rare cases where Schubert borrowed melodic material from his instrumental music for use in his vocal music.  Ryne served as the program committee chair for the Midwest Graduate Music Consortium in 2020. In his spare time, he likes to sit down with friends for a board game or get up and hike with his family.

 

Zane Larson

Zane Larson

Zane Larson is a PhD student in Music Theory.  He holds a MM in Music Theory from Florida State University and a BA in Music Performance (vocal) with a minor in education from Luther College.  Zane’s primary research areas include pop music, musical theatre, choral music, and film music.  Additionally, he looks at how musical analysis and identity are intertwined.  Some other interests of Zane are music theory pedagogy and ethnomusicology.  In 2021 Zane served as the co-chair of Florida State University’s Music Theory Forum.  In his spare time, Zane enjoys hanging out with friends, exploring nature, and taking part in trivia.

Composition

Matt Mason

Matt Mason

Matt Mason is a composer and pianist from Lincoln, Illinois whose compositions represent an intersection of poetry, theater, and music creating a psychogram where melodic, harmonic, and intervallic elements are dictated by tense constellations and brooding undertones. Matt’s current work emphasizes research into dissociation, mental health, queer visibility, nostalgia, and ethics in contemporary composition.