Theory PhD
Cheryl Bates is a PhD student and Teaching Fellow in the Music Theory program at UNT. She received a Toulouse Graduate School Academic Achievement Scholarship and the Harve B. King Scholarship. Cheryl completed her M.M and D.M.A. in Music Education (Dissertation: Analyses of Selected Published Choral works of Michael Hennagin) at the University of Houston where she held Teaching Fellowships in class piano and music education. Her bachelor’s degree in Music Theory was awarded by the University of Oklahoma where she was a 4-year piano scholarship recipient.
After several years teaching elementary music she moved to secondary choral music and taught at a Title 1 school for disadvantaged students where her choirs received many Texas U.I.L. Sweepstakes Awards. Cheryl then taught over a decade at a community college where she was music program coordinator and sole full-time music professor. During her years teaching community college, Cheryl wrote many grants and received over $50,000 in grant awards for the music program and was selected for a Faculty Excellence Award in 2006. She served as the Texas College All State Choir Coordinator in 2008-2009 and President of the Texas Two-Year College Choral Directors’ Association 2009-2010. She hosted many choral and piano music contests for high school students. In 2012 she hosted a choral workshop given by the internationally acclaimed composer, Eric Whitacre. Cheryl has presented several papers for both the Texas Music Educators’ Conference and the College Music Society. Her current research interests include aural skills pedagogy, film music, and form analysis.
David Huff is a Ph.D. candidate in Music Theory with a B.A. in Music (2004) and M.M. in Music Theory (2010) from the University of North Texas. David’s research interests include electroacoustic and computer music, the Second Viennese School, jazz and popular music, and the history of music theory. His most current research projects involve the analysis, pedagogy, and preservation of electroacoustic music, and his dissertation will focus on the analysis of early electroacoustic works through their “re-realization” via computer software that he is developing. David also stays busy as an audio engineer working in the UNT Music Library’s audio preservation studio.
Jason Patterson, from Ennis, TX, is currently working on his PhD in Music Theory. He received his Masters in Music Theory at UNT under the supervision of Dr. Jackson, while his undergraduate degree was a BA in Music from Texas A&M University.
Jason's research interests largely revolve around Mahler and Schenkerian analysis. He is interested in developing new ways of understanding Mahler's complex musical language and symphonic structures. Schenkerian analysis is one major tool he uses for these endeavors. Jason is currently working on an article about the first movement of Mahler's Seventh Symphony, exploring the tonal dichotomy and subsequent conflict through a musical narrative.
Patrick Sallings is a doctoral student in Music Theory. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree in classical guitar performance and Master of Music degree in music theory from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, his hometown. He is a long-time performer on the guitar, playing for corporate events, weddings, and clubs in the classical, jazz, blues, and rock styles. He has taught private guitar lessons for over eight years and has experience teaching at multiple private schools. In addition, he has taught jazz and classical guitar and music theory for two years at the university level. His research interests focus on meter in rock music.
Andrew Vagts is a doctoral student and teaching assistant in music theory at the University of North Texas. He is a recipient of the Robert W. Ottman Graduate Music Theory Scholarship and Toulouse Graduate School Academic Achievement Scholarship. A native of Minnesota, Andrew completed an AFA in Music at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, and a BA in Music (with distinction) and MA in Music Theory at the University of Minnesota. His research interests include Schenkerian analysis and the music of Zez Confrey.
Will Waldroup is a Ph.D. student in music theory. Prior to his doctoral studies, Will completed a Bachelor’s degree in music education at the University of Central Oklahoma and a Master’s degree in music theory at the University of North Texas. Will’s research interests include early twentieth-century French music and Schenkerian Analysis. While completing his Master’s degree at UNT, Will wrote a thesis on music by Jacques Ibert entitled Jacques Ibert: An Analytical Study of Three Movements from Histories using a modified form of Schenkerian analysis. In addition to his academic studies, Will is active in his home state, Oklahoma, as a composer and arranger. He has arranged numerous shows for marching band and his first original composition, La Linea en la Arena, was premiered at the Alamo in San Antonio, TX in June of 2012.
Theory MA
Yiyi Gao is pursuing the Master of Arts in Music Theory at the University of North Texas, having received her Bachelor of Music in Music Theory with the piano concentration from UNT. Having played piano for 16 years, she has performed in schools in China and taught at musical academies in Texas. Currently, Yiyi is working on her thesis with Professor Jackson. Her research interest include Schenkerian theory and piano music, especially the composers Chopin, Schumann, and Beethoven. She has finished research papers on Schumann's lieder op. 39, no. 2 and op. 45, no. 2, and Chopin’s Nocturne op. 9, no. 1.
Musicology PhD
Robert Michael Anderson is a PhD student in Musicology at the University of North Texas, where he is supported by a Robert B. Toulouse fellowship. He completed his MSt. in Musicology in 2012 at the University of Oxford where he studied with Dr. Laurence Dreyfus. He earned his BA in Music (magna cum laude) from Loyola University Chicago, completing the latter part of his degree at the University of Vienna and Institute for European Studies. While in Vienna he participated in a music research internship with Dr. Morten Solvik, which included work in the archive of the International Gustav Mahler Society. He also conducted independent research on Brahms's German Requiem, looking at primary source materials held in the Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek. His research interests include the music of Johannes Brahms and 19th century musical aesthetics and polemics. His article "Polemics or philosophy? Musical pathology in Eduard Hanslick’s Vom Musikalisch-Schönen" was published in the Autumn 2013 issue of the Musical Times. Most recently, he presented his paper “’They gladly eat sweet figs without thinking how they spoil the stomach.’ Rossini’s reception in I.F. Castelli’s Tagebuch aus Wien” at the GAMuT Graduate Student Conference at the University of North Texas in 2013.
Emily Hagen completed her Bachelor of Arts in Music and Spanish as well as her Master of Music in Vocal Performance at the University of MN Duluth (UMD). She was the 2006 recipient of the Olive Anna Tezla Award for outstanding achievement in the School of Fine Arts. She has studied opera in Izmir (Turkey) as a Rotary International Scholar, at the Conservatoire Régionale de Boulogne-Billancourt in Paris, and at the Istituto Musicale Vincenzo Bellini in Caltanissetta, Sicily. Her recent performances have included the roles of Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro and Giannetta inL’elisir d’amore. She is a second-year PhD student in Musicology with a related field in Opera, and her other research interests include sacred music and semiotics.
Sean Morrison is a first-year PhD Musicology student from Dallas, TX. After studying voice and composition at Oklahoma City University, he was the choir director and AP music theory instructor at Woodrow Wilson High School in east Dallas for six years. His MM thesis discussed American composer Don Gillis's Symphony No. 5 1/2 (1946). His topics of interest include vocal music, theory, American music, and twentieth-century music. He and his fellow UNT graduate music students helped to edit a scholarly edition of Monteverdi's Marian Vespers (1610), which will be published by Bärenreiter later this year. Outside of the classroom, he enjoys spending time with his wife and newborn son, smoking down-home Texas BBQ, and camping.
Ethnomusicology PhD
José R. Torres-Ramos is a PhD student of Ethnomusicology and Teaching Fellow at the University of North Texas. Currently José assists with teaching courses in ethnomusicology and is conductor of the university’s mariachi ensembles. While at UNT, he has held previous appointments in music education and community engagement. His scholarship is centralized in Latin America, including a specialization in mariachi teaching, performance, and research. Utilizing ritual studies and phenomenology, his current work investigates how modern mariachi ensembles embody and sonically manifest masculinity within performance. This includes an examination of how gender is socially conceived and musically ritualized, framed through an ethnomusicological theory of “mariachismo,” revealing both the iconic and indexical efficacy of modern mariachi ensembles to performatively “sound” Mexican machismo.
His writing has been published in the Proceedings of the American Musicological Society Southwest Chapter, the National Association for Music Education Online and the Society for Ethnomusicology Student Newsletter. José’s scholarship has been spotlighted in UNT’s Research Magazine and his accolades include the Perry R. Bass Fellowship in Music Education as well as the Society for Ethnomusicology Diversity Action Award. As a certified music teacher, he previously taught mariachi both at the secondary and collegiate levels. He continues to maintain a career as a professional performer and is often invited to be a guest clinician and adjudicator for mariachi festivals throughout Texas and the US. José is outgoing Vice-Chair of the Student Union section of the Society for Ethnomusicology and current President of UNT’s Student Society of Ethnomusicology at North Texas.
Ethnomusicology MA
Thanmayee Holalkere Krishnamurthy is an ethnomusicology MA student at UNT and an award winning professional South Indian Karnatik vocalist. As a student of T.M. Krishna, one of the foremost Indian classical vocalist, she has presented more than 300 performances in India and the US. Her research interests include South Indian classical music with an emphasis on its performing arts and rich historical heritage. Thanmayee holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and previously worked for two years as a software engineer for Tech Mahindra.
Yuxin Mei is a virtuosic performer of the traditional Chinese Pipa, and is currently writing her Master’s thesis at UNT. Mei holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree of Pipa Performance and Education from the China Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Xinghai Conservatory of Music in Guangzhou, respectively. From 2006-2012, she was a faculty member teaching at the Xinghai Conservatory of Music and previously held a post as Artistic Director and Soloist with the Chinese Music Chamber Orchestra in Zhuhai. Arriving in 2012, Mei entered UNT as an MA student of ethnomusicology. Her research focuses on Chinese immigrant music and culture, with a particular focus on the third wave of Chinese immigration in Texas. This work will be presented in her forthcoming master’s thesis entitled “Negotiating Decades of Change for Immigrants in America: The Houston Chinese Traditional Music Group.”
As a professional musician, Mei began her career as a soloist with the Zhuhai Chamber Orchestra. From 1997 to 2012, Mei has performed concerts throughout China, Portugal, Singapore, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau. She has taught master classes for the Chong Hong Chinese Music Association and at the Macau Art School. From 2012-2015, Mei accepted invitations from the Norwegian Cultural Rucksack in Akershus to participate in the “Spoor” cultural exchange project, performing concert tours throughout Norway. Mei Yuxin continues to perform actively including concerts at UNT, as well as lecture-recitals at Tarrant County College and Tarleton State University.
Sean Peters, originally from Syracuse, New York, is pursuing an MA in Ethnomusicology at UNT. He holds a BA in Music (magna cum laude) from Texas Woman’s University and his research interests include punk rock, hip-hop, and sound studies. His current work examines the studio recording practices among punk bands, particularly how the manipulation of sound is used to index larger social issues.