Sarah Agou does research on literature, languages, and textual analysis in Romance languages. She has an MA in classics, as well as in French and Italian, and she is currently pursuing a PhD in Romance Languages, with a certificate in Women, Sexuality, and Gender Studies, at the University of Oregon. She explores contemporary French- and Spanish-language narratives in the Caribbean and Quebec, focusing on the notion of contested sovereignty. Through her work she aims to foster dialogues between authors from Indigenous Quebec, Haiti, and Cuba through the concept of forced enclosures, such as reservations and embargoes, to understand how literature interacts with linguistical, geographical, economical, and political restrictions in order to counter them. Her research incorporates decolonial practices and approaches to multilingualism in literature as well as film. She has also done research on the role of contemporary music for language revalorization and revitalization in France and Spain, with bands singing in Basque/Euskera, Catalan, and Britton, among other languages.
Liberian-Norwegian pianist Kamilla Arku draws on her diverse background as inspiration for her work as a performer, educator, and scholar. She has recently performed for the Royal Opera House, the Lyric Opera House of Chicago, Chamber Music at Lincoln Center, the African Concert Series, and MoMA PS1, and her latest release is a collaboration with composer Dameun Strange out on the nonclassical label. Kamilla is the founder and Director of Music for Liberia, a nonprofit which supports education in Liberia, and also recently joined Madonna’s Celebration Tour as a piano coach and teacher. Kamilla has been published in Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, and is co-authoring an article on Dolly Parton for an edited volume, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.She is currently a PhD student in musicology at New York University.
Patrick Armstrong holds an MMUS in Piano Performance at the University of Ottawa, where he completed a BMUS in 2018, having studied piano and composition. He has received scholarships and awards from the SOCAN Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Orford Music Academy, and the Domaine Forget Academy. His compositions have been performed by prestigious Canadian musical ensembles, including the Thirteen Strings Orchestra and the Bozzini String Quartet. He has presented his research on progressive metal at the International Progect Network Conference in Sweden (2018) and Canada (2021), at IASPM-Canada (2019, 2023) and at the International Conference for Metal Music Studies (2023). He has published in Metal Music Studies (2021), in the edited collection Traveling Music Videos (2024), in The Oxford Handbook to Musical Variation (forthcoming), and in The Routledge Handbook of Progressive Rock, Metal, and the Literary Imagination.
Matt BaileyShea is a Professor of Music Theory in the College Music Department at the University of Rochester and the Eastman School of Music. He received his PhD in Music Theory from Yale University in 2003 with a dissertation on the music of Wagner. He has published on a variety of topics including form, gesture, agency, chromatic harmony, and recomposition. He recently published the book Lines and Lyrics: An Introduction to Poetry and Song with Yale University Press, which won the 2022 Wallace Berry Award from The Society for Music Theory. He is currently working on a book that, tentatively, shares the same name as his presentation for this conference: Troubled Sleep: The Dark Side of Lullabies in Rock, Broadway, and Beyond.
Lori Burns is Professor of Music at the University of Ottawa. She is co-editor of The Pop Palimpsest with Serge Lacasse (2018), The Bloomsbury Handbook to Popular Music Video Analysis with Stan Hawkins (2019), Analyzing Recorded Music with William Moylan and Mike Alleyne (2022), The Routledge Handbook of Progressive Rock, Metal, and the Literary Imagination with Chris Anderton (forthcoming), The Routledge Handbook of Metal Music Composition with Ciro Scotto (forthcoming), and The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song with Mike Alleyne (forthcoming). Analyzing Recorded Music received SMT’s multi-author collection prize in 2023. She was a founding Co-Editor of the Tracking Pop Series of the University of Michigan Press, is Co-Editor of the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series, and has recently finished a mandate as Associate Editor of Music Theory Spectrum.
Kaitlyn Clawson-Cannestra is a PhD student in Music Theory at the University of Oregon. She previously studied Piano Performance at St. Olaf College (BM) and Chicago College of Performing Arts (MM), and her research is heavily informed by her experience as a professional collaborative pianist. Her interests include art song by women composers, vocal timbre in popular music, inclusive music pedagogy, and feminist music theory. Most recently, Kaitlyn presented her paper titled “Musical Myths of Gender: Rapunzel as a Postfeminist Princess” at the American Musicological Society annual meeting in Chicago (November 2024). This January (2025), Kaitlyn is also excited to release the first episodes of her podcast from the margins: what music theory doesn’t want you to know with co-host Kasey Lynch, supported by the Cykler Song Scholar Award at the University of Oregon.
Dianne Davies’s multifaceted career includes composing, arranging, and performing. Her finely crafted piano music is centered on the natural world of creation or sonic representations of her life experiences. Her arrangements are an amalgam of her two greatest loves of music: traditional gems of sacred music and the works of major composers from a classically trained pianist’s repertoire. Her shows span from deeply personal to slap stick comedy that combine piano music with dance, live visual art creation, and theatre. Dianne holds memberships in National Federation of Music Clubs (NFMC), Oregon Music Teachers’ Association (OMTA), Cascadia Composers, Oregon’s local chapter of the National Association of Composers USA (NACUSA) and Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers (CFAMC). For the state level in Oregon (OMTA), Dianne chairs the annual State Composition Festival for honored student composers and at the national level (MTNA) she chairs the State of Oregon’s Composition Competition. For her upcoming projects, check out Dianne and her music at www.musiqPOWER.com.
Paula Alva Garcia began her music education in Trujillo, Peru, under the guidance of soprano Martha Perez, setting the stage for her classical singing career. In 2017, she moved to the U.S. to study with Dr. Jeanie Darnell at Florida Gulf Coast Univeristy, a key moment in her professional journey. Notable career highlights include her role as Berta in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, her participation in the first concert in the theater Víctor Raúl Lozano Ibáñez in the city of Trujillo, and her performances with the Symphonic Orchestra of Trujillo. Paula has also made significant contributions to Florida’’ opera scene with Opera Naples. Recently, Paula completed her Master’s in Music Performance from the University of Oregon and will pursue a Doctorate in Musical Arts under Dr. Camille Ortiz. At the university, she has excelled both academically and as a Graduate Employee (GE). She was one of two students to be awarded a Cykler Song Scholar award in 2023–24, during which time she did a reserach project on the Peruvian composer Rosa Mercedes Ayarza de Morales and presented a concert of Peruvian music to the local community.
After completing her PhD in music theory at the University of Oregon, Elizabeth Hepach moved to Leipzig, Germany. In Germany, she taught musicological courses at the Conservatory for Music and Dance in Leipzig, the Technical University in Dresden, as well as at the University of Tübingen. Now in England, Elizabeth continues to engage in various music endeavors, including teaching piano lessons to beginners, music and analysis tutorials, and as general musicological adult education courses. In a continuation of her dissertation studies, Elizabeth’s research focuses on German Lieder of the 19th century, particularly those of Hugo Wolf. While her dissertation focused on musical meaning within selected Lieder, her approach now combines musical analysis with an examination of primary and secondary resources to shed light on Wolf’s compositional style as well as form and structure within his Lieder in general.
Kendra Preston Leonard is a lyricist and librettist who tells stories about empowerment, resilience, and compassion. Inspired by history, language, nature, and myth, Leonard has worked with numerous composers to create new opera and art song. Current and recent projects include lyrics for singer Molly Noori’s Black Swan project with composer Lisa Neher; Where the Rivers Meet,a song cycle about Appalachia with composer Shane Cook; All of the Leaves, a song cycle with composer Jessica Rudman; and several operas, including she who will trouble you all night with composer Rosśa Crean and Protectress with Rudman. Leonard is also a musicologist and music theorist, focusing on women and music in the 20th and 21st centuries, and on music and screen history. You can follow her at https://kendraprestonleonard.hcommons.org/.
Soprano Laura Loge has been hailed for her “luminous stage presence” and “characterful and versatile voice.” In addition to appearing in numerous opera roles and on the oratorio and concert stage, she specializes in Nordic art song and chamber music, having performed across the United States and in Norway. She has produced two albums of Nordic song, and her next album, Der Skreg en Fugl, with pianist Angela Draghicescu, will be released in 2025 on the Chandos label. Loge is Founder and President of the Northwest Edvard Grieg Society, Artistic Director of Nordic Chamber Music, and Concert Series Coordinator at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle. She earned her BM in Vocal Performance from Saint Olaf College and an MM in Vocal Performance from the New England Conservatory, and she studied Nordic Art Song and chamber music at the University of Stavanger Conservatory of Music.
Lisa Neher (she/her) is an award-winning composer and new music mezzo on a mission to transform audiences through sound, story, and vulnerability. A singer of “great stamina” with the power to “open up and shine” (New York Classical Review) using her “full and rich” and “especially alive” voice (Oregon Arts Watch), Neher’s performance credits include Third Angle New Music, Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Resonance Ensemble, Experiments in Opera, and Renegade Opera. She is President of New Wave Opera and a member of Portland Opera Chorus. A “supremely talented,” “visionary composer,” (Willamette Week), “maestro of beautifully wacky noises” (Oregon Arts Watch) and author of “liquid, impressionist piano writing and fluent melding” of voices (New York Classical Review), Neher’s compositions are inspired by the climate crisis, the tender love of friends, and the mystery of ocean life. Her commissioners include NATS, Cincinnati Song Initiative, Third Angle New Music, and Opera Elect. She is Composer in Residence for the Beaverton Community Band. www.lisanehermusic.com
Raoul Manuel Palm is a historian, musicologist, and classical singer based in Bielefeld, Germany. He is working as a junior researcher at the collaborative research center SFB 1288 “practices of comparing” at Bielefeld University. He is currently finishing his PhD about the making of racial narratives through comparing and how they vary and/or change during and after the Haitian revolution (1791–1820) at Bielefeld University’s Graduate school in history and sociology.
Christopher Parton is a Lecturer in the Writing Program at Princeton University, where he also earned his PhD in musicology in January 2024. His research focuses on the aesthetics and media histories of 19th-century Lieder, spanning topics from early-Romantic philosophies of love and gender, to the global dissemination of German-to-English translations, to biofictions of disability. In November, he is co-organizing an interdisciplinary symposium on the blind pianist and composer Maria Theresia Paradis at Mount Holyoke College, MA. His article “Speech and Silence: Encountering Flowers in the Lieder of Clara Schumann” came out in a special issue of Nineteenth-Century Music Review last year.
Liz Pearse has alternately been described as a “badass,” having “a near-psychic understanding of what a composer is trying to accomplish,” and possessing “a voice made of arrows forged in a volcanic pit, transforming the didactic and mundanely intellectual into actual fire.” Though an enthusiastic multi-instrumentalist, Liz has focused her career on exploring the infinite possibilities of the human voice. Though a contemporary specialist, she enjoys a well-aged song. Liz has performed all over North America and in both Europe and the United Kingdom. She has commissioned and performed over a dozen works for solo singer/pianist, and the focus of her dissertation, Roger Reynolds’s Sketchbook for The Unbearable Lightness of Being for self-accompanying singer, was recently recorded and released on Neuma Records’s For a Reason. Liz also has a voracious appetite for the camaraderie of chamber music, working with Quince Ensemble and the Damselfly Trio. Liz lives and teaches in the beautiful Driftless region of Minnesota. lizpearse.com
Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Ottawa (Canada). Her research centers on aspects of musical form, the music of Clara Schumann, and the Second Viennese School. She has co-edited Formal Functions in Perspective: Essays in Musical Form from Haydn to Adorno (with Steven Vande Moortele and Nathan John Martin) and is currently working on a Cambridge Handbook on Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto Op. 7. She has published articles in Music Theory Spectrum, the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music Theory & Analysis, Music Theory Online, the Journal of Musicology, and elsewhere. She served as Associate Editor of Music Theory Spectrum from 2020 to 2024 and is currently on the editorial board of Intégral. She regularly gives pre-concert talks for the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa. Her work is supported by an “Insight” grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Heather Platt is the Sursa Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts at Ball State University. She is the author of Lieder in America: On Stages and In Parlors, Johannes Brahms: A Research and Information Guide, and co-editor, with Peter H. Smith, of Expressive Intersections in Brahms. Her articles on Lieder performances in 19th-century America have appeared in American Music and the collected volumes German Song Onstage and The Lied at the Crossroads of Performance and Musicology. Platt’s publications on the reception and structure of Brahms’s Lieder have appeared in such publications as Brahms and the Shaping of Time and The Journal of Musicology. She currently serves as the Digital Reviews Editor for Nineteenth Century Music Review.
Jonathan Spatola-Knoll enjoys a multifaceted career as a conductor and scholar. While Conducting Assistant for Symphony Tacoma, he made his subscription debut conducting the premiere of Elfrida Andrée’s (1841–1929) Intermezzo using his own scholarly edition. He has earned a growing international reputation as an expert on Andrée, a pioneering Swedish feminist composer. His publishers include Hildegard Publishing, Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy, and the journal Women & Music. His edition of her First Symphony is under contract with A&R Editions. Upcoming highlights as a conductor and editor include the Western-Hemisphere premiere of Andrée’s Suffrage Cantata at Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA), where he acts as Visiting Assistant Professor of Music, and a performance of her Second Symphony with the Issaquah Philharmonic, where he is music director. A winner of the Ansbacher Fellowship for Young Conductors (American-Austrian Foundation and Vienna Philharmonic), Spatola-Knoll earned his PhD in musicology from the University of California, Davis.
Madison Stepherson is a PhD candidate in music theory at the University of Oregon, where she works as a graduate employee. Her dissertation research considers the sound of femininity in post-millennial country music. She is also interested in persona, vocality, and popular music. She completed her MA in music theory at the University of Minnesota and her undergraduate studies at Kennesaw State University. Madison has presented at conferences for the Society for Music Theory, the American Musicological Society, the College Music Society, and the Society for American Music. She currently serves as the Technology Chair for the South Central Society for Music Theory and as Secretary for the SMT’s Popular Music Interest Group. Madison was selected as a 2023–2024 Cykler Song Scholar to research country femininity in the songs of Miranda Lambert and is the 2024–2025 recipient of the Harvey E. Lee Graduate Scholarship.
Xiaoming Tian is a New York-based operatic baritone and music educator, with a DMA from the CUNY Graduate Center. His research on intonation and melody in Chinese pronunciation earned him the 2024 HAMPSONG Fellowship and invitations to present at the 50th Annual Conference of the Society for American Music and the Cascade Song Festival. He was also selected for the SOUND TYPE music writers workshop by the Asian Arts Initiative. As an experienced baritone, Dr. Tian has performed at renowned venues like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, taking on principal roles in opera, art songs, chamber music, and oratorio. His voice has been hailed by New York critics for its “vibrant velvety tone… variations of color and dynamics.” Dr. Tian is also dedicated to music education, serving as a judge at multiple vocal competitions and sharing his expertise through his personal music tutoring channel, “Chord to Joy,” which has garnered millions of views across various mainstream video platforms.
Hailed as an “earnest and grounded” artist (San Francisco Classical Voice) with a “heart-touching and plush sound” (Bay Area Reporter), Hungarian mezzo-soprano Ágnes Vojtkó is known for her masterful presentation of early music repertoire. Ágnes made her Carnegie Hall debut in Handel’s Messiah and her Eugene Opera debut as Flora in La traviata last season. Recent appearances include Bach’s Mass in B Minor and St. John Passion with American Bach Soloists, Mozart’s Requiem with Connecticut Early Music Festival, and Bach’s Mass in B Minor with Music Worcester and Concora. After earning her BM at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest as a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, Agnes moved to the U.S. and completed an MM and DMA in voice from the University of Texas at Austin. Ágnes served on the voice faculty of Collin College and Southwestern University, TX.
Michael Womack is a pianist, music director, and vocal coach based in southern Arkansas. As a coach and pianist, he has collaborated on at least twenty song recitals a year since 2008. As someone with one foot in the classical world and the other in musical theatre, one of his main areas of research is the intersection of popular/theatre music with classical forms. Some of his recent favorite collaborations that fall in this area are Alphabet City Cycle (Georgia Stitt), Edges (Pasek & Paul), Songs for a New World (Jason Robert Brown), and Songs for Lulu (Rufus Wainwright).
Dana Zenobi is a nationally recognized pedagogy scholar and interpreter of art song by women. She published Joys Abiding: Duets by Historical Women Composers (album Navona Records/score anthology Classical Vocal Reprints) with baritone Oliver Worthington and pianist Chuck Dillard. She has performed with Austin Opera, Lyric Opera Cleveland, Opera in the Heights, line upon line percussion ensemble, and Austin Civic Orchestra. Currently Associate Professor at Butler University, Zenobi teaches studio voice, pedagogy, diction, and vocal literature. An American Prize Citation Winner (performing & teaching) and National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Voice Pedagogy Award recipient, Zenobi has presented for NATS, the International Music by Women Festival, Voice Foundation, Pan American Vocology Association (PAVA), Voice Study Centre, and Bel Canto Boot Camp. Zenobi earned DMA (Voice Performance & Pedagogy) and MM (Opera Performance) from The University of Texas at Austin and a BA (Music & Women’s Studies) from Duke University. www.danazenobisoprano.com
Cascade Song Festival * January 15-18, 2026 