The Department Welcomes Eight New Graduate Students

Published: September 24, 2007

Rebecca Dirksen intends to make a career sampling any culture and music that a plane, train, sailboat or burro will take her to witness, while looking at the ways in which ordinary people power their struggles through their artistic expressions (how they use their musical voice, for example, to enhance their living conditions in times of political, economical or social oppression, repression or suppression). But for now, she is quite content to focus her studies on the music and politics of the Caribbean and Latin America. She has enjoyed broad-ranging activities, including leading the choir program at an inner city public high school in Minneapolis; teaching classes on music history and musical cultures at Roehampton University in London; writing an online introductory music theory course that is presently being used by a British university; performing internationally as a solo and collaborative pianist; co-founding and running an independent record label; and regularly volunteering as a conductor and teacher at various music schools in Haiti. Rebecca comes to the UCLA Ethnomusicology Department with an MA in Music and Cultural Studies (University of Surrey Roehampton, London, England) and a BM in Piano Performance (Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin).

Jennie Gubner recieved her BA in 2005 from Pitzer College in Claremont, California. Her time at Pitzer was spent dedicated to a self-designed major, 'Intercultural studies through Languages and Music', focusing on Romance languages, violin playing and the cultures and musics of Latin America. After graduating she spent a year traveling on a Thomas J. Watson fellowship through seven countries in South America and Europe researching the history and different cultures of Tango music. After completing the Watson she spent the last year as a traveling musician, spending half the year playing with a tango group in Argentina, and the other pursuing her latest interests in Sicilian music by touring and recording with the Sicilian group Carmina Solis.

Michael Iyanaga, a Southern California native, received a Bachelor of Music in guitar and lute from the University of California, Irvine. Although his most recent research efforts have been focused on the musical preferences of the Bahian Society Radio during WWII, other interests include northeastern Brazilian music, the accordion in traditional musics, and music’s influence on human behavior. Michael is also an active jazz guitarist and educator.

A native of New York State, Shannon McCabe received her B.M. in Music
Education and Performance from the Crane School of Music in Potsdam, New York. After studying abroad in Mexico, she developed a strong interest in studying world music and cultures. Her particular research interests include music and society, diaspora, and
preservation. Shannon plans to share her knowledge of music through teaching, as she finds it most rewarding.

After graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a BM in Viola Performance (2000), Andrew Pettit fell in love with the classical music of North India. For the past seven years he has explored this music, both in the US and India. Beginning his studies with Roshan Jamal Bhartiya and now continuing with Ustad Shujaat Khan, Andy is excited to continue learning along with UCLA’s diverse community.

Michael Silvers, from Tucson, Arizona, earned his BA in music composition from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and his MM in musicology, with an emphasis in ethnomusicology, from the University of Arizona. He also taught elementary music for a year at an international school in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Michael's research interests include virtual communities, the music of northeastern Brazil, the klezmer revival, and the accordion.

Katie Stuffelbeam received her M.A. in Ethnomusicology from Tufts University in May '07 and is excited to join the UCLA community. Her main area of study focuses on traditional Dagomba singing, drumming and dancing from Northern Ghana; she is also interested in women and gender studies, youth and music, and ethnography.

Kathleen Wiens was born and raised in Manitoba, Canada. After studying oboe performance at McGill University in Montreal, she moved on to complete her Master's degree through Memorial University of Newfoundland. The focus of her thesis was music and politics in the Croatian community in Canada.