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Music FacultyThe Core, Associated, and Studio Faculties of the CGU Music Department are a group of musicians of outstanding pedigree and achievement. They bring to their teaching significant professional accomplishments in the fields of musicology, composition, and performance. The Music Department is composed of faculty whose appointments are directly in the department and who provide the majority of seminar teaching and serve as the students' primary advisors. Robert Zappulla, Peter Boyer, and Nancy Van Deusen hold faculty appointments in the Music Department. Peter Boyer, Helen M. Smith Chair in MusicB.A., Rhode Island College; M.M., D.M.A., The Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford; Graduate Certificate, University of Southern California; Doctor of Music (Honorary), Rhode Island College
Peter Boyer has emerged in recent years as one of the most frequently performed American orchestral composers of his generation. His orchestral works have received over 250 public performances, by 90 orchestras. He has conducted recordings of his music with two of the world’s finest orchestras, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia. His works have received numerous national broadcasts in the U.S. and abroad. He has received seven national awards for his work, including two BMI Awards for young composers, the First Music Carnegie Hall commission, and the Lancaster Symphony Composer’s Award. Conductor Keith Lockhart chose Boyer for the Boston Pops 125th anniversary commission honoring the legacy of John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy. Acclaimed actors Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, and Cherry Jones narrated the premiere of Boyer’s The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers in May 2010, which was attended by many members of the Kennedy family, and received extensive national media attention. Boyer’s work was the centerpiece of the TV special An American Salute: The Boston Pops at 125, produced and broadcast by WCVB-TV, Boston’s ABC affiliate. A commercial recording of Boyer’s new work will soon be released by the Boston Pops. In addition, it will be performed as part of the annual Boston Pops Fourth of July concert on the Charles River Esplanade, and telecast on WBZ-TV, Boston’s CBS affiliate. The Boston Pops will also perform the work with narrator Alec Baldwin at Tanglewood. Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya has appointed Boyer as the 2010-11 Composer-in-Residence for the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Boyer’s music has been performed by the symphony orchestras of Dallas, Nashville, Pacific, Phoenix, Buffalo, Brooklyn, Kansas City, Virginia, Hartford, Toledo, Richmond, Grand Rapids, Elgin, Rhode Island, Portland, Winston-Salem, Fresno, Santa Barbara, Sarasota, Kalamazoo, Fort Wayne, Greenville, Bamberg, Belgrade, the New York Youth Symphony, Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra, and many others. Boyer’s major work Ellis Island: The Dream of America for actors and orchestra, which celebrates the historic American immigrant experience, has been his most successful composition to date. Premiered in 2002, the work has received over 100 live performances by 50 orchestras, making it one of the most-performed American orchestral works of the last decade. Boyer’s recording of this work was released by Naxos in its American Classics Series in 2005, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. In addition to his work for the concert hall, Boyer is active in the film and television music industry. He has contributed orchestral arrangements to more than a dozen major feature film scores, from studios such as Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Disney/Pixar, Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, and Lionsgate/Marvel. Film composers for whom he has orchestrated music include Michael Giacchino (the Oscar-winning Up, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible III, Speed Racer), Mark Isham (Robert Redford’s The Conspirator) and the late Michael Kamen (Open Range, First Daughter, Against the Ropes). Boyer has twice arranged and orchestrated music for the Academy Awards, including the 2009 telecast. He scored episodes of the TV series Engineering an Empire for The History Channel. For more information, please visit www.PropulsiveMusic.com. Professor Peter Boyer Nancy van Deusen, Louis and Mildred Benezet Chair in the HumanitiesB.M., Houghton College; M.M. (Piano), MM. (Musicology, Music Theory), Ph.D., Indiana University
Robert Zappulla, Department Chair; Fred W. Smith and Grace Hobson Smith Chair in MusicB.A., State University of New York, Stony Brook; M.A., M.M., Rutgers University; A.M., Duke University; Ph.D., Utrecht University
Download files of live, unedited recordings of Professor Zappulla's concerts at The Claremont Colleges:
Associated FacultyThe associated faculty of the Claremont Graduate University Department of Music comprise the music faculty at Pomona, Scripps, and Harvey Mudd Colleges, and the Claremont School of Theology, and they provide service to CGU Music in various ways, from teaching courses to guest lecturing, providing studio instruction, and serving on the advisory committees of CGU music students. Prospective CGU students are strongly urged to contact only the CGU Department of Music Secretary at sylvia.quintana@cgu.edu, and not members of the faculty, to discuss options regarding prospective instrumental/vocal teachers. Only requests for specific teacher assignments indicated in writing on the audiiton form will be considered valid, and CGU does not guarantee that such requests will be accommodated. Once made, teacher assignments can be changed only after the first semester - and before the second semester - of individual instruction. Exceptions to this policy may only be permitted by the department chair, who has final authority in such matters. Music students are permitted to take private lessons only from their assigned teachers (as distinct from other Claremont Colleges faculty) while enrolled in CGU's performance programs unless written permission to do otherwise first is obtained from the department chair, who may impose appropriate sanctions if this policy is breached.
Studio FacultyFaculty providing studio instruction are drawn from the Claremont Colleges, as well as from the outstanding pool of musicians in the greater Los Angeles area. For instruments not specified below, CGU draws on the talents of other highly qualified Los Angeles-area musicians. Prospective CGU students are strongly urged to contact only the CGU Department of Music Secretary at sylvia.quintana@cgu.edu, and not members of the faculty, to discuss options regarding prospective instrumental/vocal teachers. Only requests for specific teacher assignments indicated in writing on the audiiton form will be considered valid, and CGU does not guarantee that such requests will be accommodated. Once made, teacher assignments can be changed only after the first semester - and before the second semester - of individual instruction. Exceptions to this policy may only be permitted by the department chair, who has final authority in such matters. Music students are permitted to take private lessons only from their assigned teachers (as distinct from other Claremont Colleges faculty) while enrolled in CGU's performance programs unless written permission to do otherwise first is obtained from the department chair, who may impose appropriate sanctions if this policy is breached.
Early Music/Historical Performance Practice FacultyMembers of CGU's resident early-music ensemble, Concordia Clarimontis (Robert Zappulla, director). Prospective CGU students are strongly urged to contact only the CGU Department of Music Secretary at sylvia.quintana@cgu.edu, and not members of the faculty, to discuss options regarding prospective instrumental/vocal teachers. Only requests for specific teacher assignments indicated in writing on the audiiton form will be considered valid, and CGU does not guarantee that such requests will be accommodated. Once made, teacher assignments can be changed only after the first semester - and before the second semester - of individual instruction. Exceptions to this policy may only be permitted by the department chair, who has final authority in such matters. Music students are permitted to take private lessons only from their assigned teachers (as distinct from other Claremont Colleges faculty) while enrolled in CGU's performance programs unless written permission to do otherwise first is obtained from the department chair, who may impose appropriate sanctions if this policy is breached.
Emeriti Faculty
Contact information for associated, studio, and emeriti faculty is on file in the Music Department, and can be obtained on request from the department secretary. |
Professor van Deusen has published on music and institutional culture in medieval Rome, the cathedral milieu of 11th- and 12th-century France, and music in the history of ideas. Her most recent book, Music and Theology at the Early University (1995), explores the concept of a university, as well as music's place as an analogical bridge between the natural sciences and philosophy within that concept. Her current book project deals with the development of a notion and academic discipline of "folklore" and "folkmusic" during the course of the 19th century as a reinvention and retooling of significant medieval concepts. A musicologist and music theorist with ongoing interest in music analysis, van Deusen's work has intersected disciplines often kept apart on more conventional, standardized music faculties. Equally at home in "music theoretical" systems, analytical discourses, and historical issues, as well as historical anthropology, both her teaching activities and scholarly publications have transcended the boundaries between music theory, history, and practice within a cultural context. Professor van Deusen is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, and has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant, several Fulbright Research Grants, and an American Philosophical Society Research Grant. Her teaching career has included positions at California State University, Northridge and the Institute for Musicology at the University of Basel, Switzerland. For further information you are invited to visit Professor van Deusen's 
Professor Zappulla is known primarily as a harpsichordist and scholar specializing in the field of historical performance practices. His book, 