The Catherine Filene Shouse Arts Leadership Certificate of Achievement is an experiential program designed to complement a student’s primary area of study and provide professional development training to support students’ career goals. Part of the resources reserved for ALP students and recent alumni is the Special Opportunity Grant, which provides funding for professional development up to $1500. This summer, 14 students and alumni received Opportunity Grants to grow musical cultural understanding, attend national and international conferences, and shadow music festivals and youth programs.
This June, Joy Hsieh (DMA Viola Performance and Literature) had the opportunity to shadow Victoria Paterson ’93, founder and director of the Mostly Modern Festival, during the festival’s seventh season. The festival was one of the first of its kind exclusively dedicated to the coaching and performance of works by living composers and 20/21st century repertoire. While there, Hsieh observed all the production and administrative gears that keep a festival turning. She attended production meetings with Paterson, and observed the director’s responsibility for the logistic, marketing, venue, and hospitality teams’ communication.
What particularly impressed Hsieh was how arts administration balances immediate needs with long term planning. “Discussions often focused not only on the current season but also future programming and organizational goals [for next season].” By having a bird’s eye view of festival operation, the experience has helped guide Hsieh into her specific career interests in arts administration. “Being able to learn directly from the festival’s leadership gave me an opportunity I couldn’t have gained anywhere else. Observing the decisions made behind the scenes deepened my appreciation for the people who make the artistic experiences possible and broadened my awareness of the wide range of career paths within the arts. This experience expanded my perspective on the impact that thoughtful leadership, collaboration, and adaptability can have on the success of an organization.”
Ash Mach (PhD Music Theory) recently returned from The 4th International Conference on Timbre, where they presented a poster of their research titled “The Contours of Timbre in Rebecca Saunder’s Fury II.” Unlike speaker presentations, posters allow the researcher to engage in face-to-face dialogue with peers about their work. This feedback proved invaluable to Mach as they were able to incorporate more interdisciplinary ideas for their next presentation in November, this time as a speaker at the Society for Music Theory’s annual meeting. “My time at the International Conference on Timbre inspired me to listen to, observe, and analyze sound from a whole host of new perspectives. I feel much more prepared for my dissertation research as I have even more methodological ideas to play with.”
However, what struck Mach the most in their visit was how much research on timbre has changed even in the last three years. The field that used to be dominated by acoustics and computational methods has seen a great increase in philosophical and cultural contribution, such as decolonizing the use of Western analysis for non-Western music. “Based on this conference, I’ve now realized that it’s not so much a matter of choosing the best spectrogram parameters or calculating the appropriate audio descriptors… but rather asking how sound through composers’ artistic decisions contributed to nationalistic sentiments. In other words, how did timbre impact society?” Mach’s work is a continuation of their research in post-tonal theory seminar at Eastman. They hope to publish this work before their graduation.
As a recent graduate, Zachary Costello ’26E (MM Saxophone Performance and Literature) presented his saxophone recital “Echoes of the Peninsula” in Seoul, South Korea. The project focused on newly commissioned works by Korean and Korean adoptee composers, with a blend of classical and contemporary saxophone techniques and traditional Korean music Sanjo. Both saxophonists and and traditional Korean musicians were in attendance and worked with Costello on musical style. “Presenting this music in Korea revealed the difference between studying a tradition and experiencing it within the deep culture that shaped it,” Costello says. “The feedback I received deepened my appreciation for the ways Korean history, storytelling, and musical aesthetics can inform performance, and it will continue to influence my work as a performer and advocate for this repertoire.”
A Korean adoptee himself, this project had a personal connection to Costello, and allowed him to find audiences that related to his identity. “Thoughtful outreach ensures the work exists in dialogue with the communities it is connected to. Together, these expenses supported a structured professional exchange rather than a standard recital presentation. They make it possible for this project to function as a site of feedback, learning, and cultural engagement.”
Interested in becoming a Catherine Filene Shouse Arts Leadership Certificate of Achievement Candidate? Applications are open until September 20th, 2026. Apply Now!