FAMI PROJECT TEAM
Katherine K. Preston / Team Chair
Katherine K. Preston, David N. & Margaret C. Bottoms Professor of Music Emerita, College of William & Mary, and Chair of the FAMI Committee. Preston is an expert on musical culture in 19th-century America, especially musical theatre and opera, the work of journeymen musicians, and George Bristow. Her four monographs include two path-breaking books on the history of opera performance in 19th-century America and a biography of Bristow; she has also edited or co-edited four volumes of music, including two of Bristow’s symphonies. She is Past-President of the Society for American Music.
Neely Bruce, John Spencer Camp Professor of Music at Wesleyan University and Vice-Chair of the FAMI Committee. Bruce is a prolific composer, an accomplished conductor and pianist, and a scholar of American music. He self-consciously identifies as an American composer. His most performed work is a setting of the Bill of Rights for chorus and chamber orchestra. He has also set the three Reconstruction Amendments and the Nineteenth Amendment (women's suffrage) to music, and his first full-length opera is an allegory of the American Revolution. He recorded Bristow’s “Andante et Polonaise” for Vox in 1972 and produced the only 20th century performances of Bristow’s opera Rip Van Winkle at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1974.
Kyle Gann, Taylor Hawver and Frances Bortle Hawver Professor of Music at Bard College. Gann is a composer and musicologist at Bard College of Music and brings expertise on American music and wide connections with scholars and composers. He is the author of seven books on American composers and related topics, and the editor of the modern editions of George Bristow’s Fourth Symphony.
John Graziano, Professor Emeritus of Music History and Director of the Music in Gotham Project at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Graziano is an expert on nineteenth-century American music history and has published widely on that topic.
