Student Highlights: Spring and Summer, 2025

Undergraduate Student Highlights - Spring and Summer, 2025

Nichole Botsoe (B Mus. Music Ed. ’28)  was a Camp Southern Ground Music Counselor in Fayetteville, Ga., teaching music to students who range from 7–17. Camp South Ground (CSG) is an inclusive camp, with students who are neurotypical and neurodivergent. Botsoe will be learning how to accommodate the music classroom to the diverse needs of all students.

Will Emde (B. Mus. ’26) Selected as a composer for the Sewanee Music Festival and also the Summer Composition Intensive at St Mary’s.

Maddi Finn (B Mus. Music Theory ’26) was featured in an article entitled, “ Changing the key: The women reshaping UGA’s music theory major” as the primary interviewee who is a model for the future of women in music theory. It was published in the Red and Black in March of 2025. 

Emily Johnson (B Mus. Music Ed. ’27) participated in an early childhood education study abroad Maymester in Italy through the College of Education at UGA. 

Caroline Malcolm (B Mus. Piano Performance ’27) Winner of the 2025 Pro-Mozart Society of Atlanta Scholarship Competition Scholarship to study for a week at the International Summer Academy at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, Austria.

Carter Naughton (B Mus. Performance ’26) Carter Naughton premiered his new composition “Lucent” for saxophone and electronics on his senior recital this April. 

Lauren Smith (B.Mus. Music Therapy and B.S. Psychology ’28) was awarded the UGA Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO) Summer Research Fellowship. Thirty undergraduate students are selected for this fellowship, which takes place from May to July. All students presented their research at the end of the summer and at the 2025 CURO Symposium. 

Mentored by Ellyn Evans, associate professor of music therapy, Smith researched the effects of live and recorded music in music therapy interventions for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Research trials followed Board-Certified Music Therapist Celia Nowlin at adult summer camps hosted by ESP Athens, a charity that serves people of all ages with disabilities. 

De’Nasia Thomas (B Mus. Music Performance (Voice), Music Theory  ’26) was accepted and participated in the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival: Opera and Musical Theatre Intensive in Fairbanks, Alaska for the summer of 2025.

Graduate Student Highlights - Spring and Summer 2025

Richie Arndorfer (DMA Music Composition ’27) received the Willson Center Graduate Research Award for project “Combining Generative Patterns with Distortion and Synthesis for Operatic Storytelling.”

Alexis Boylan (B.M. Violin Performance and B.S. Biology ’23, MM Violin Performance ’25, DMA Violin Performance ’28); Thomas LaMon, cello (MM ’23; DMA ’26) and Jesse Hu, piano (DMA ’26) as a piano trio, we were selected to compete in the semifinals of the 2025 Plowman Chamber Music Competition in Columbia, Missouri. Our competition program consisted of Dvorak’s F minor piano trio and Schubert’s “Notturno.”

Tim Fitzgerald (DMA Performance ’26) presented at Timbre and Orchestration in Popular Song Conference at McGill University, June 7th, 2025.

Scott Mullen (DMA Conducting ’26) was a finalist for Air Force Bands Officer position. The recording of “Vital Sines” he conducted last spring played nationally on NPR’s “Performance Today.”

Sydney Passmore (DMA ’26) presented her work “Rhiannon Giddens and a Cross-Cultural Examination of American Folk Music” at the Women Composers Festival of Hartford, CT.

Yun Qu Tan (DMA ’27) returned  Singapore to teach and perform at the inaugural Singapore International Saxophone Summit Conference and Competition held at Singapore Raffles Music College in January 2025. Tan served as a judge for the Summit’s competition, performed at the Summit’s gala concert, and gave two lectures on saxophone techniques to the participants. After the Summit, Yun Qu gave a masterclass to the students of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Yun Qu was also invited to present ethnomusicological research focusing on the culture and pedagogy of the saxophone in Singapore at this year’s Society of Ethnomusicology, Southeast and Caribbean Chapter Conference.

Yiqi Wang (DMA Performance ’27)  was invited to participate in the Harrower Summer Opera Program with a scholarship. As part of the program, she performed the role of Nannetta in the opera Falstaff by Verdi, which was staged in Atlanta in June, 2025.

She was also the winner of the Opera Guild for Atlanta’s Fourth Annual Trotter Grant Competition for Emerging Opera Singers. Wang was also invited to serve as a judge and faculty member at the Shanghai International Forte Yearly Music Festival & Competition in the summer of 2025.

Mateo Wojtczak (DMA ’26)  was selected as a Fellow for the SphinxConnect 2025 conference.