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Singing, speech production, and the brain
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.

Eiffert situates a headset on participant Maggie Compton. The metal contraption holds an ultrasound probe in place under Compton’s chin, to capture images of her tongue placement in the mouth.

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

A summer internship with Play On Philly
Derecskey-Chaily-Play-on-Philly main

Rising College of Arts and Sciences second-year Chaily Derecskey is a summer intern with Play On Philly, a nonprofit that provides orchestral instrument instruction to Philadelphia school children. Although pictured playing the euphonium, her chosen instrument is a full-sized tuba.

A summer internship with Play On Philly

Rising College of Arts and Sciences second-year Chaily Derecskey is a summer intern with Play On Philly, a nonprofit that provides orchestral instrument instruction to Philadelphia school children.
‘Music connects’ for Summer Institute students
Timothy Rommen next to a piano and a podium teaching a class full of students.

Timothy Rommen (right) teaches a class on Dominica’s popular music, one of several in this year’s Center for Africana Studies Summer Institute for Pre-Freshmen.

‘Music connects’ for Summer Institute students

The Summer Institute for Pre-Freshmen brings new students together with experienced faculty and graduate students to discuss cultural themes in Africana studies.

Kristina García

Music-making and the flow of aerosols
Person playing a tuba in a dark room with a green laser shedding light on water mist

Members of The Philadelphia Orchestra, including Carol Jantsch, principal tuba player, took part in a study led by Penn scientists Paulo Arratia and Douglas Jerolmack. Their investigation examined the aerosols professional musicians generate as they play. (Image: Courtesy of Paulo Arratia)

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

More intricate riddles of life on ‘In These Times’
Fantasy drawing of a human overcoming inner demons.

Image: Marina Munn

More intricate riddles of life on ‘In These Times’

Episodes 4 and 5 of the OMNIA podcast’s fourth season cover how to confront trauma, using words as a coping mechanism, and music and meaning.

Identities in harmony: How Beth Burton integrates the personal with the professional
A woman with purple hair sits at a piano and stares off into the distance.

Beth Burton, a graduate student at the Perelman School of Medicine, has degrees in both music and science. Even as a full-time researcher, she still finds time to play piano. Image: Courtesy of Beth Burton.

Identities in harmony: How Beth Burton integrates the personal with the professional

The doctoral candidate in the Perelman School of Medicine is a scientist studying the genetic causes of Alzheimer’s. She’s also a musician, a queer woman, and a voice for those with genetic disorders.

Luis Melecio-Zambrano

James Diaz composes ‘works of stark, haunting elegance’
James Diaz.

James Diaz, Ph.D. student in the Department of Music. (Image: OMNIA)

James Diaz composes ‘works of stark, haunting elegance’

The Ph.D. student studying composition in the Department of Music has already won multiple international and national awards.

Blake Cole

Four Penn faculty awarded Guggenheim Fellowships
four faculty faces

Four Penn faculty have been awarded a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship. They are (left to right, top to bottom) Daniel Barber in architecture in the Weitzman School of Design and Kimberly Bowes in classical studies, Guthrie Ramsey in music, and Paul Saint-Amour in English, all in the School of Arts & Sciences.

Four Penn faculty awarded Guggenheim Fellowships

Four faculty have been named 2022 Guggenheim Fellows—Daniel Barber in architecture in the Weitzman School of Design and Kimberly Bowes in classical studies, Guthrie Ramsey in music, and Paul Saint-Amour in English in the School of Arts & Sciences.
Composing an interplay of music and language 
Student sitting at grand piano

A Ph.D. candidate in music, composer-pianist Ania Vu brings her Vietnamese roots, Polish upbringing, and experience studying in America to her music compositions and poetic lyrics. She is now writing the music and the libretto of an original opera for her doctoral dissertation, to be premiered in Philadelphia. 

Composing an interplay of music and language 

A Ph.D. candidate in music, composer-pianist Ania Vu brings her Vietnamese roots, Polish upbringing, and experience studying in America to her music compositions and lyrics. She is now writing an original opera for her doctoral dissertation, to be premiered in Philadelphia.
Understanding migration and the arts
Children raising their hands with a rainbow in the background

Children at the gardens of the Centro de Cultura, Arte, Trabajo y Educación’s new location at 1246 West Main St. Norristown, Pennsylvania, in fall 2021. The organization, founded by Obed Arango of the School of Social Policy & Practice, is a nonprofit with a mission “to ignite social transformation developing the talents and empowering the Latinx community through education, culture, art, technology, health, and science.” (Image: Obed Arango)

Understanding migration and the arts

In the latest episode of Penn Today’s “Understand This …” podcast series, Obed Arango of the School of Social Policy & Practice, alongside Wolf Humanities Graduate Fellow Shelley Zhang, discuss migration, the arts, and identity.