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Eugene Lew reflects on a year without live performances
Eugene Lew in his music studio

Eugene Lew, lecturer and director of Sound and Music Technology in the Department of Music. (Image: OMNIA)

Eugene Lew reflects on a year without live performances

During the pandemic, the lecturer and director of Sound and Music Technology in the Department of Music switched from organizing live performance events to collaborative online technology.

Susan Ahlborn

What it’s like to be a composer during a pandemic
Ania Vu at the piano.

Graduate student, composer and pianist Ania Vu. (Image: The Pennsylvania Gazette)

What it’s like to be a composer during a pandemic

Graduate student Ania Vu found creative ways to compose music during a pandemic, despite the challenge of finding inspiration while being stuck at home.

The Pennsylvania Gazette

The Philadelphia Orchestra is playing safe
philly orchestra on stage at kimmel

Results of the experiments so far, along with insights from Penn Medicine’s P.J. Brennan, have helped inform the arrangement of members of The Philadelphia Orchestra as they have resumed performances that are captured and later streamed on their new “Digital Stage.” (Image: The Philadelphia Orchestra)

The Philadelphia Orchestra is playing safe

Penn experts are working with The Philadelphia Orchestra to study the aerosol droplets that wind and brass musicians produce when playing. Their findings, aimed at reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission, could help the Orchestra once again play together.

Katherine Unger Baillie

Penn Museum interns explore jazz through family, protest, and creativity
Father plays keyboard while his daughter smiles. Bookshelves in background.

Music is “a kind of family love language” for Guthrie Ramsey (right) and his daughter Bridget Ramsey (left). “One of my deepest joys is that I’ve been able to pass that along,” he says. 

Penn Museum interns explore jazz through family, protest, and creativity

Penn Museum interns delve into “The Year of Jazz” through a monthly series of events exploring family, protest, and creativity. Music Professor Guthrie Ramsey and his singer/songwriter daughter Bridget Ramsey headline the first event on Feb. 28.

Kristina García

Historic preservation of Black Philadelphia
Woman in a fur coat sings before several microphones; one says 'NBC'

Martin Luther King, Jr. was in attendance at Marian Anderson's Lincoln Memorial performance on Easter Sunday, 1939. This location served as the inspiration for King's March on Washington address, says Jillian Patricia Pirtle, CEO of the Marian Anderson Museum and Historical Society. (Image: University of Pennsylvania/Marian Anderson Collection of Photographs)

Historic preservation of Black Philadelphia

Preserving Black history in Philadelphia is an evolving dynamic of the city’s legacy.

Kristina García

Niko Simpkins: At the nexus of engineering and music
Niko Simpkins sitting with arms folded, smiling

Penn Engineering undergraduate Niko Simpkins. (Image: Penn Engineering Today)

Niko Simpkins: At the nexus of engineering and music

For Niko Simpkins, a musician who performs, produces, and engineers his own tracks, the most exciting processes combine structure and flexibility, creativity, and rigor. As a third-year student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, he sees his mechanical engineering education as a framework for problem solving that might serve him across a broad set of endeavors, and for now, he’s more interested in learning than narrowing to any one particular career path.

Evan Lerner

Amateur music-making in the early republic
Glenda Goodman stands at a desk looking at an antique book on a stand.

Assistant professor of music Glenda Goodman

Amateur music-making in the early republic

Glenda Goodman, an assistant professor of music, explores how hand-copying musical compositions and amateur performance shaped identity and ideas in the post-Revolutionary War period.

From Omnia

Penn Band celebrates 50 years of women on the field
Members of the Penn Band take the field in a row in 1970.

Penn Band celebrates 50 years of women on the field

After decades of superstition and pushback, the first group of women stepped onto Franklin Field with the Penn Band 50 years ago.

The Pennsylvania Gazette