Music

A person standing up adjusting a headset over a person sitting in a soundproof room. Barely visible in front of the sitting person is a computer screen and keyboard. A fire alarm sits above a window behind both people.

Singing, speech production, and the brain

This summer, rising second-years Audrey Keener and Nicholas Eiffert worked in the lab of Penn linguist Jianjing Kuang studying vowel articulation in song, running an in-person experiment and built a corpus of classical recordings by famous singers.

Michele W. Berger ・

Person playing a tuba in a dark room with a green laser shedding light on water mist

Music-making and the flow of aerosols

If simply breathing can spread the SARS-CoV-2 virus to others nearby, what about blowing into a tuba? Researchers from the School of Engineering the School of Arts & Sciences used fluid mechanics to study the movement of aerosols generated by musicians.

Katherine Unger Baillie ・



In the News


Broadway World

TAK Ensemble announces Fall 2022 season featuring a Tyshawn Sorey world premiere & more

TAK Ensemble’s 2022 fall season begins with their first of six appearances as Long-term Visiting Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, including a co-commission by Tyshawn Sorey of the School of Arts & Sciences.

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Philadelphia Inquirer

5 performances to see at Rehearsing Philadelphia

Composer Tyshawn Sorey of the School of Arts & Sciences will collaborate with students from Drexel University and the Curtis Institute in a performance for Rehearsing Philadelphia, a city-wide arts show.

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Gizmodo

What was the earliest music?

Mary Channen Caldwell of the School of Arts & Sciences said there’s evidence of written music from as early as 1400 BC. “The western musical notation that is often, if misleadingly, considered ‘standard,’” she said, “is only one possible system for recording music, and can only reasonably be used to notate musical works that follow certain conventions of pitch, rhythm, harmony, etc.”

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The New York Times

The composer Tyshawn Sorey enters a new phase

Tyshawn Sorey of the School of Arts & Sciences was profiled for his accomplishments as a musician, composer, and academic.

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Philadelphia Inquirer

They Shazamed songs blasting from cars on Philly’s Girard Avenue and created a ‘Girard Jams’ playlist on Spotify

Guthrie Ramsey of the School of Arts & Sciences spoke about two Philadelphians who compiled a playlist of songs played from cars passing by their apartment. “If we all listen to playlists created in that manner for us, you might get a different understanding about the world surrounding you,” he said.

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Philadelphia Inquirer

PhillyBloco to celebrate its first Brazilian summer carnival

Michael Stevens of the School of Arts and Sciences spoke about the upcoming PhillyBloco Summer Carnaval, which will feature a collaborative performance by Stevens’ Brazilian music band and students from the samba school he founded.

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