Speakers

 

Jonathan Berger

Jonathan Berger has composed symphonic works, three concerti, works for all varieties of chamber ensemble, vocal, choral and electroacoustic works. Among his awards and commissions are three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, prizes from ASCAP, commissions from WDR, and prizes from the Bourges Festival. His works are available on Sony, Neuma, CRI and Harmonia Mundi labels. His current commissions include Tears in Your Hand for piano trio, a violin concerto and his fourth string quartet.
Berger's most recent CD, Miracles and Mud will be released by Naxos Records on their American Masters series in Spring 2007.

In addition to composition Berger is an active researcher with over 60 publications in a wide range of fields relating to music, science and technology.

Berger is Associate Professor of Music at Stanford and Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SICA) and the University's arts initiative.

 

Anthony Brandt

Composer Anthony Brandt is an Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. His honors include a Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet-the-Composer, the New England Foundation for the Arts and the Houston Arts Alliance and fellowships to the Wellesley Composers Conference, Tanglewood, the MacDowell Colony and the Djerassi Resident Artists Colony. He has been a Visiting Composer at the Bowdoin International Festival, the Bremen Musikfest, Baltimore’s New Chamber Arts Festival, Southwestern University, SUNY- Buffalo and Cleveland State University and Composer-in-Residence of Houston’s OrchestraX and the International Festival of Music in Morelia, Mexico. His chamber opera, The Birth of Something, with a libretto by Will Eno (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005) was commissioned and premiered by Da Camera of Houston. Dr. Brandt directs the acclaimed Houston based contemporary music ensemble Musiqa (www.musiqahouston.org). His innovative online music course “Sound Reasoning” (www.soundreasoning.org) was awarded an Access to Artistic Excellence Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has been recognized with Rice University’s George R. Brown and Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Awards.

David Eagleman

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action. He holds joint appointments in Psychology, Biomedical Engineering, and the Institute for Neuroscience at UT Austin, as well as an adjunct appointment in Psychology at Rice University. He earned his Ph.D. at Baylor College of Medicine, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute. He is on the editorial boards of Journal of Vision and PLoS One.

Eagleman's scientific work has combined psychophysical, behavioral, and computational approaches to address the relationship between the timing of perception and the timing of neural signals. He has explored temporal encoding, time warping, manipulations of the perception of causality, and time perception in high-adrenaline situations. This data is used to understand how neural signals processed by different brain regions come together for a temporally unified picture of the world. Eagleman also studies synesthesia, a harmless perceptual condition in which the senses are mixed – for example, someone hearing music might experience colors. He has recently authored a book on synesthesia entitled Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia (MIT Press, 2009).

David Huron

David Huron, professor of music, joined the School of Music faculty and the OSU Center for Cognitive Science in 1998. Although he was trained in performance, Huron has an international reputation for his research in music perception and cognition. This research includes such areas as music and human emotion, and the perception of harmony, voice-leading, and melody. Since graduating in 1989 from the University of Nottingham (England) with a Ph.D. in musicology, Huron has published over 80 scholarly articles.

He has been associate editor for the discipline's two major journals, and has twice been awarded extended research leaves by Stanford University's Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities. Prior to coming to OSU, Huron served on the faculty of the University of Waterloo (Canada), where he held concurrent positions as an associate professor of music, associate professor of psychology, and adjunct professor of engineering.

Fred Lerdahl

Composer and music theorist Fred Lerdahl is the author of A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (with linguist Ray Jackendoff) and Tonal Pitch Space, both of which model musical listening from the perspective of cognitive science. A Generative Theory of Tonal Music was acknowledged by three conferences in 2008 in honor of the 25th anniversary of its publication. Tonal Pitch Space received the 2002 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Special Recognition Award and the 2003 Wallace Berry Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Music Theory. Recent publications include “The Capacity for Music: What Is It, and What’s Special About It?,” co-authored with Ray Jackendoff, and “Modeling Tonal Tension”, co-authored with Carol Krumhansl. Lerdahl is Fritz Reiner Professor of Music at Columbia University.

Dr. Isabelle Peretz

Dr. Isabelle Peretz is a cognitive neuropsychologist and a professor of Psychology at the University of Montreal. Dr. Peretz was born and educated in Brussels, Belgium. She earned her Ph.D. in experimental psychology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles under José Morais in 1984. Shortly therafter she took on a faculty position at Université de Montréal where she has remained ever since. Dr. Peretz’s focuses on the musical potential of ordinary people, its neural correlates, its heritability and its specificity relative to language. She has published over 150 scientific papers on a variety of topics, from perception, memory, and emotions to performance (for her publications see www.brams.umontreal.ca/plab). She is renowned for her work on congenital and acquired musical disorders (amusia) and on the biological foundations of music processing in general. Dr. Peretz’s research has received continued support from the Canadian Natural Science and Engineering Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research since 1986. In 2004, The Université de Montréal earned her an endowed Casavant chair in neurocognition of music and in 2006, a Canada Research Chair in neurocognition of music. In 2005, Dr. Peretz became the founding co-director of the international laboratory for Brain, Music, and Sound research (BRAMS), a unique multi-university consortium that is jointly affiliated to McGill University and Université de Montréal http://www.brams.org, with state-of-the art facilities dedicated to the cognitive neuroscience of music. Dr. Peretz is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Psychological Association.

 

Sarah Rothenberg

Noted for her “power and introspection” (The New York Times) and “heart, intellect and fabulous technical resources” (Fanfare), pianist Sarah Rothenberg has one of the most distinguished and creative careers of her generation. Ms. Rothenberg has received international acclaim as solo recitalist and chamber musician, and her innovative programs have been enthusiastically received by audiences across America and in Europe. She was member pianist of the Da Capo Chamber Players from 1985-94, and she has premiered over 85 new works. As chamber musician she has collaborated with members of the American, Brentano, Emerson, Schoenberg, St. Lawrence and Juilliard string quartets; the pianists Rudolf Firkusny and Leon Fleisher, and leading international soloists and vocalists. She has been a Senior Fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics of The New School in New York, and in fall 2008 is artist-in-residence of the Mitchell Center for Collaborative Arts at the University of Houston. As a writer on musical, literary and cultural issues, Ms. Rothenberg’s essays have appeared in The Musical Quarterly, Chamber Music, The Crisis of Criticism (New Press), Keyboard Magazine, World Policy Journal, Nexus (The Netherlands) and the literary journal Conjunctions. Since 1994, Sarah Rothenberg has been Artistic Director of Da Camera of Houston, one of America’s leading chamber music organizations. Under her direction, Da Camera has been awarded numerous national awards, including, from Chamber Music America, the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the CMAcclaim Award for long-lasting contribution to cultural life, and a Special Commendation for Original Concepts in Chamber Music Programming. She received the Medal of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters from the French government in 2000.

Dr. Gottfried Schlaug

Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, currently Director of Neuroimaging at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, received an M.D. and a Ph.D. in Neurology and Neuroscience from the University of Cologne (Germany). He completed residencies in Neurology both at the University of Duesseldorf (Germany) and at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center - Harvard Medical School (Boston). He then completed a fellowship in Stroke/MRI at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Dr. Schlaug’s research interests involve:

1. pathophysiology of acute human stroke: using MR perfusion and diffusion imaging to base treatment decisions on risks and benefit assessments;

2. structural-functional relationships within cortical auditory and motor areas: using musicians as a model to study cerebral correlates of musical abilities;

3. Functional and structural MR imaging to to study cerebral adaptations as well as cognitive enhancements to skill acquisition;

4. Functional MRI and TMS to study correlates of sensorimotor recovery from stroke;

5. Functional MRI and other behavioral measures to assess the effects of Melodic Intonation Therapy in facilitating Language Recovery.

His areas of expertise include clinical neurology, stroke diagnosis and therapy, diffusion and perfusion imaging, stroke recovery, and functional neuroimaging. His hobbies include classical music as a keyboard performer and mountain hiking.

Ron Tintner

Ron Tintner, Co-Director Movement Disorders and Rehabilitation Clinic
His primary interests consist of movement disorders (Parkinson's, tremor, dystonia, Tourette's) including treatment with botulinum toxin, EMG and motor control and cognitive dysfunction. He also studies the neurobiologic basis of music perception and performance and neurologic problems of musicians.

Clinical Interests: Movement disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, dystonia, myoclonus, Huntington’s disease. Dementias, including Lewy body dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Research Interests: Therapeutics of movement disorders and dementia; functional neurochemistry; metabolic imaging; botulinum neurotoxins.

Mark Jude Tramo

Mark Jude Tramo, M.D., Ph.D., Director.
Mark Jude Tramo MD PhD is Director of The Institute for Music & Brain Science, Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, and Attending Neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. A recipient of research awards from the National Institute on Deafness and Communication Disorders, National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, Grammy Foundation, McDonnell-Pew Program in Cognitive Neuroscience, National Organization for Hearing Research, and other foundations, Dr. Tramo has conducted original research on the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of music perception and cognition for over 20 years. He studied musical theater with Lehman Engel, John Hood, and Walter Jones at the Yale Schools of Drama and of Music, did his doctoral dissertation, Neural Representations of Acoustic Information in Relation to Music & Voice Perception , at Harvard with Nobel Laureate David Hubel, received his MD and trained in Neurology at The New York Hospital - Cornell Medical Center and Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center with Fred Plum and Jerome Posner, and spent his fellowship and early faculty years at Cornell and Dartmouth in Cognitive Neuroscience with Michael Gazzaniga. His work has been published in Science, Journal of Neurophysiology, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuropsychologia, Contemporary Music Review, and other professional journals. Dr. Tramo serves on the Steering Committee of the Harvard University Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative and holds research appointments at the M.I.T. Research Laboratory of Electronics and the Eaton-Peabody Laboratory of Auditory Physiology at Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary. Winner of the Harvard Provost's Award for Educational Innovation and Sackler Award in Psychobiology, Dr. Tramo founded the world's first Music and the Brain course at Harvard College in 1997 and founded the Auditory Neurobiology and Cognitive Neuroscience of Language & Music courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and Harvard-MIT Graduate Studies Program in Health Sciences & Technology. A Diplomate in Neurology of the American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology, Dr. Tramo's work in patient care has been recognized by Best Doctors in America. A published songwriter member of ASCAP, Mark's 1970's recordings continue to receive airplay, and he is currently touring science museums throughout the U.S. as part of the Wild Music! exhibit.