Featured Alumni

Christopher Alan Adler '94

Christopher Alan Adler, MIT BS Math (18), BS Music (21M) is a composer, improviser and pianist. While at MIT he received the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts, the Gregory Tucker Memorial Prize, and a Ragnar and Margaret Naess Music Scholarship. He later obtained an AM and PhD in Composition from Duke University and is now Professor of Music at the University of San Diego. His music draws upon over a decade of research into the traditional musics of Thailand and Laos and a background in mathematics. He is internationally recognized as a foremost performer of new and traditional music for the khaen, a free-reed mouth organ from Laos and Northeast Thailand. As pianist and composer-in-residence with NOISE and co-founder of the soundON Festival of Modern Music he has promoted the works of emerging composers, and as an improviser on piano and as a conductor he has performed with many of the West coast's finest improvisers. His works have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony Center, Tanglewood, Merkin Hall, Sumida Triphony Hall in Tokyo and at new music festivals and universities across the U.S. by performers including the Silk Road Ensemble, percussion ensemble red fish blue fish, Ensemble ACJW, harpsichordists Michiyo Honma and Martin Pearlman, sheng virtuoso Wang Zheng-Ting, guitarist Colin McAllister, violinist Carmel Raz, violist Chia-Ying Hsu and innovative new music ensembles such as pulsoptional, NOISE, and the Seattle Creative Orchestra. His compositions have been broadcast and webcast internationally on WGBH's Art of the States and may be heard on his 2008 CD Ecstatic Volutions in a Neon Haze (Innova) and his 2004 CD Epilogue for a Dark Day (Tzadik). His improvisations have been released on Nine Winds Records, pfMENTUM, and Artship Recordings. www.christopheradler.com

 

Pelarin Bacos '93

An aerospace engineer with an MA in music composition from the University of Chicago claims that he learned how to fly at MIT, but not the way he had planned, he ended up flying off the engineering wagon onto the music train: a Ph. D. in composition from the University of Chicago.

Bacos graduated from MIT in 1993 with a SB in Aerospace Engineering and a SB in Music. When he began studies at MIT in the fall of 1989 he had no idea that he would end up with a career in music rather than in aerospace engineering. Music was just a hobby for him but when he finished his degree in Engineering he was one class short of completing a major in music. Bacos stayed an extra year at MIT to complete the music major requirement. "That fifth year proved pivotal, " he says. With John Harbison as a focal inspirational point, he took the leap and made the decision to pursue graduate studies in composition rather than engineering.

As Bacos points out, he received his musical training from a school whose reputation is built on science and engineering, yet he says, " there are few places I can think of that could have given me the knowledge and opportunity to prepare me for both paths [music & engineering]; even fewer places that could have prepared me to make [a] choice. MIT has made all the difference." Baco's third String Quartet was performed by the Pacifica Quartet on two concert programs this past summer.

 

David J. Bondelevitch '85

David J. Bondelevitch, MPSE, CAS '85 works as a freelance music & dialogue editor and re-recording mixer in Los Angeles. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Music & Entertainment Industry Studies Recording Arts program at the University of Colorado, Denver's College of Arts & Media. Previously, he was faculty at the University of Southern California for sixteen years.

His most recent major projects have been the independent feature film The Six Wives of Henry Lefay (starring Tim Allen) and the Lifetime series State of Mind, starring Lily Taylor. He won an Emmy in 2000 for Sound Editing on the movie The Hunley. He has also won MPSE Golden Reel Awards for his work on the Showtime musical Ruby's (starring Angela Bassett) and the Imax documentary film Island of the Sharks. He has been nominated for Golden Reel Awards twenty-one times.

David is Past President of the Motion Picture Sound Editors and is currently Vice President of the Cinema Audio Society. He was also co-editor of the CAS Quarterly.

He holds a B.S. in Art and Design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His major was in Visual Studies and his Humanities Concentration was in Music with a focus on composition and performance. While at MIT he played trumpet in the Festival Jazz Ensemble under Herb Pomeroy, the Symphony Orchestra and the Brass Ensemble. He holds a separate B. Mus. from the Berklee College of Music in Boston in Jazz Composition. He also holds an M.F.A. in film production from USC.

He is a member the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the Motion Picture Editor's Guild, the American Federation of Musicians (Local 47), the Society of Composers and Lyricists, the Audio Engineering Society, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Film Independent, and BMI (Broadcast Music, Incorporated) as a writer/publisher. David currently splits his time between Los Angeles and Denver.

 

David Breitman '76

David Breitman is a pianist who graduated from MIT with an SB in Humanities (Music). He performed as cellist with the MIT Symphony and played recorder and harpsichord in the Wellesley Collegium Musicum. In Boston he studied piano with Patricia Zander, chamber music with Ben Zander and fortepiano with Malcom Bilson and obtained an MM in piano performance from the New England Conservatory and a DAM in Performance Practice in 18th century instrumental music from Cornell University. David Breitman is equally at home with the fortepiano and the modern piano, and his growing discography reflects that versatility. He recorded a major new song cycle by the Cuban-American composer Jorge Martin with baritone Sanford Sylvan, after giving the 65-minute work its New York premiere at Carnegie Recital Hall. This was the fourth recital record with Sylvan, following "Beloved that Pilgrimage" (three 20th century song cycles) Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin (using a replica of a Graf fortepiano), and an all-Fauré disc. "Pilgrimage" and the Fauré were nominated for Grammy awards. This past year also saw the release of the complete Mozart violin-fortepiano sonatas with Jean-François Rivest, available as a 4-CD set on Amberola. Breitman has been involved in another large project: a complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle on original instruments, shared among seven fortepianists. This series, originally presented as a series of eight concerts at New York's Merkin Hall in 1994, was then recorded for the CLAVES label, and performed live, again at the "Accademia Bartolomeo Cristofori" in Florence. A Montreal native, Mr. Breitman now teaches at the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, where he directs the Historical Performance program.

 

Elaine Chew '98

SM Operations Research (Computational Finance); PhD Feb 2000, Operations Research (Mathematical Modeling in Music). Elaine was a pianist in the Chamber Music Society and in Advanced Music Performance. She was the recipient of the Weisner Award. While at MIT she performed and premiered many works by various MIT composers, including the 3rd movement of John Harbison's cello concerto in an open rehearsal reading with Yo-Yo Ma (1994). Her post-MIT performances include a multimedia concert at the Ask Jeeves Planetarium in the Chabot Space and Science Center (Oakland, CA) with MIT alum Julia Ogrydziak, a benefit concert in Thousand Oaks (CA) for the Parkinson's Institute with members of the Utah Symphony (Lynn Rosen, Tad Calcara, and Brant Bayless), and various new music concerts with the group Music of Changes at the Zipper Hall in Los Angeles. Elaine is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California where she teaches in the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and conducts research in music and computation as a senior investigator at the Integrated Media Systems Center.

 

Adrian Childs '94

Adrian P. Childs '94 graduated from MIT with an SB in Math and an SB in Humanities with a major in Music. His musical interests were in composition, performance, and theory; his instruments, piano, bassoon, and 'cello. While at MIT he was a member of the Concert Band, the MIT Chamber Music Society, The Symphony Orchestra, and the Concert Choir. His MIT teachers included Peter Child and John Harbison. At MIT he received an Eloranta Fellowship, the Gregory Tucker Prize, the Hodges Prize, the I. Austin Kelly III prize and the Wiesner Award.

After leaving MIT, Adrian pursued graduate studies in composition and theory at the University of Chicago, earning an AM in 1996 and a PhD in 1999. Following teaching stints at the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Illinois, he joined the faculty of the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia, where he is now Associate Professor and Chair of Composition and Theory and Director of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble.

Among Adrian's awards are fellowships and honors from the U.S. Department of Education, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the ASCAP Foundation, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Mannes Center for Advanced Studies in Music Theory, and the Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. His music has been performed at festivals, conferences, and concerts across the U.S. and Europe and is available on the ACA Digital label. His theory scholarship has appeared in the Journal of Music Theory and Music Theory Online. He is a founding member of the editorial board for the Journal of Mathematics and Music and serves as editor for the journal Theory and Practice.

 

Eran B. Egozy '95

Eran B. Egozy graduated with a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Eran conducted research on combining music and technology at the MIT Media Lab. He performed frequently in MIT's Balinese Gamelan, Chamber Music Society, and Symphony Orchestra. Eran is the co-founder and chief technical officer of Harmonix Music Systems. Harmonix was founded in 1995 on the principle that non-musicians should be able to experience the sheer joy of music creation. He currently spends most of his spare time playing clarinet in Boston's Radius Ensemble.

 

José Luis Elizondo '95

In addition to his engineering studies, Jose studied composition with Prof. Peter Child and Edward Cohen at MIT, as well as studying orchestral and choral conducting with James Yannatos and Jameson Marvin at Harvard. The recipient of the Tucker Prize, Jose was a Burchard Scholar and a member of the MIT Concert Choir and Chamber Chorus. Since leaving MIT, he's worked as an engineer, specializing in speech-recognition technology. But music continues to be his passion, and while he does not compose often, his music is performed frequently around the world. Performers of his works include over 170 orchestras, as well as distinguished soloists like Yo-Yo Ma, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Sefika Kutluer, James Buswell, Sam and Carol Ou, Saúl and Álvaro Bitrán, Orlando Cela and MIT alum Carlos Prieto. Jose's music draws upon his Latin American roots. His suite for orchestra "Estampas Mexicanas", written as a homework for a class at MIT, has been performed in more than 150 concerts around the world. His composition "Danzas Latinoamericanas" has been performed in over 250 concerts and it has been featured in 12 albums by various performers and orchestras. In 2018, he was commissioned to write "The Dawn of Hope" for the celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the World War I Armistice.

 

Michael Good '79

Michael received his B.S. and M.S. degreees in computer science. His B.S. thesis research was conducted at the MIT Experimental Music Studio under the supervision of Prof. Barry Vercoe. This experience was a major step in leading Michael to start Recordare, an Internet music publishing and software company, in 2000. Michael invented the MusicXML format for exchanging music notation between computer programs. MusicXML is currently used by more than 100 music software applications, including industry leaders Finale, Sibelius, and Cubase. More information about Recordare and MusicXML is available at www.recordare.com. Michael blogs about music and software at songsandschemas.blogspot.com.

While at MIT, Michael played trumpet in nearly every MIT musical ensemble, including the Concert Band, Symphony Orchestra, Festival Jazz Ensemble, Brass Ensemble, Chamber Music Society, and Musical Theater Guild. His trumpet playing can be heard on the Symphony's CDs of music by Barber, Hanson, Piston, and Copland on the Vox label. Since leaving MIT, Michael switched instruments from trumpet to voice, and currently sings tenor with the Stanford Symphonic Chorus and West Bay Opera in Palo Alto.

 

Kenneth E. Goodson '89

completed a B.S. in Music Performance, and a B.S. M.S. and PhD in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. A baritone and cellist, Goodson participated in the MIT Chamber Chorus while at MIT. Goodson is an oratorio soloist in the San Francisco Bay Area and was named California Young Artist for the year 2000 after winning the Carmel Voice Competition. Goodson has appeared frequently as soloist with the Stanford University ensembles and appears in recital with his wife, pianist Laura Dahl.

Kenneth studied recital repertoire for a year with the renowned German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who arranged an appearance at the Berlin Philharmonic Recital Hall in 1994. Earlier he had been awarded fellowships in 1990 and 1991 to the prestigious voice program at the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he appeared in recital and studied with Phyllis Curtin.

Goodson is a tenured Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University.

 

Daniel William Hosken '90

Graduated from MIT with an S.B. in Music and Physics. He studied composition with John Harbison and Electronic Music with Tod Machover. His principal instruments are guitar and trombone and while at MIT he performed with the Festival Jazz Ensemble and Concert Jazz Band. He graduated with an M.M. in Composition with honors from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with William Thomas McKinley. He then obtained his D.M.A in composition from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His music has been performed at the National Conference of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music, the Society of Composers, the International Symposium on Electronic Art, the Florida Electro-Acoustic Music Festival and in concerts in Boston, New York, Madison, Chicago and Los Angeles. He is Co-founder and Co-director and conductor for the AUROS Group for New Music, Boston. He has been on the faculty of Music at California State University, Northridge.

 

Wilson Cheng-Yi Hsieh '95

Graduated from MIT with a PhD and an SB/SM in computer science. While at MIT he was a violist in the MIT Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society and in Advanced Music Performance. He plays chamber music in his free time and is on the faculty of the School of Computing of the University of Utah.

 

Roland Hutchinson '76

MIT alumnus Roland Hutchinson is a freelance performer and private teacher of viola da gamba. He graduated from MIT in 1976 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Humanities and Science. A founding member of the MIT Early Music Society, he participated in "anything and everything that had strings in it," on an off the MIT campus.

Like most MIT students, he didn't come to MIT to be a music major, but says he was impressed and wooed by the quality of the music faculty. He remarks on the" small class sizes and the extremely bright and talented fellow students who provided a stimulating environment for learning with the support of a fine music library." He claims that a major contribution to his development as a musician was the availability of performance opportunities on the MIT campus and in the Boston area.

"The undergraduate education I obtained was an excellent preparation for postgraduate studies in music, with a well-balanced (but flexible) distribution of emphases on theory, history and performance, says Hutchinson, whose postgraduate studies culminated in an A.M. degree in music performance and a nearly-finished Ph.D. in historical musicology from Stanford University.

A frequent workshop and summer school coach, clinician and tutor, he is on the editorial board for the Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. He is also a barytonist (baritone viol player) and recently played Haydn's baryton music in the Eszterhazy palaces in Hungary and Austria. Roland will be performing two concerts at Kings Chapel, Boston, in September and will make other appearances in the area in January.

He has been praised in the press for the "eloquence and virtuosity" of his playing, his "spry and elegant technique," and "a lovely, pure and ringing tone" as well as the "extraordinary vigor" and "passionate feeling" of his performances. Roland has recordings on the Centaur and Erato labels. In addition to performing alone and with well-known ensembles in the United States and in Europe, he has taught and presented lecture-demonstrations at many major universities in the United States.

 

John Paul Ito '93

John Ito graduated with an S.B. in music, receiving the Sudler Prize in the Arts. Highlights of his musical involvement at MIT include conducting an IAP concert performance of Mozart's Bastien and Bastienne with Ellen Harris, then associate provost for the arts, and Michael Behnke, then director of admissions, in the title roles, and returning after graduation to perform Walton's viola concerto with the MIT symphony, of which he was a member throughout his time at MIT.

 

He received further training in viola at Boston University and in music theory at Columbia, and following several years teaching in the conservatory at Lawrence University, he now teaches music theory in the School of Music at Carnegie Mellon University.  His publications can be found in Bonner Beethoven-Studien, College Music Symposium, The Journal of Musicology, The Journal of Music Theory, and Music Perception.  His principal area of research, which explores interrelations among time in music, musical performance, music cognition, and the history of musical style, shows the lasting influence of David Epstein.

 

Leonard H. Kim '96

Graduated from MIT with an S.B. in 21S (Physics/music). His instruments are cello and piano and while at MIT participated in the Chamber Music Society and Advanced Music Performance and was awarded a Kelly Prize and a Tucker Award. He did graduate work in musicology, forte piano and harpsichord and received a Masters degree in Fortepiano performance and a doctorate in harpsichord performance from the University of Michigan.

 

Mike Marks '85

S. B in Course 5 and S. B. in Course 6-1, 1989. While at MIT he was an active trumpeter in the Concert Jazz Band, Brass Ensemble, and MIT Symphony. A few years after leaving MIT, Mark stumbled onto the Cleveland Latin music scene and has been actively performing with a lot of the local salsa bands. In 1996 he started performing with Orquesta Creativa and later joined the Orchesta Nabori and remained with them until late 2001, at which point he joined up with The Latin Crew. The experience gained with The Crew has made him one of the more popular Latin trumpet players on the Cleveland scene. Mark has also played with Son Alegre, Grupo Fuego, Invacion Secreta, Conjunto Kawakan, Grupo K-Non, Leyito y Su Orquesta, Orquesta Nissi, and Sammy De Leon. On a trip to Cancun in 2003, he played with Grammy Award winner Aramis Galindo and was selected as lead trumpet player for the "Salsa All Stars" band to back up Richie Ray at the 2004 Cleveland Puerto Rican Parade. When not playing Latin music Mark can be found playing big band with Tony Fortunato and the Emperors of Swing and classical works with The Seasonal Brass Quintet. By day Mark is a software engineer and a reviewer of video equipment for Widescreen Review Magazine.

 

Rajesh Kantilal Mehta '86

Rajesh Mehta , MIT '86 (born 1964 in Calcutta now Kolkata, India), artistic director and founder ORKA-M: International Institute of Innovative Music is an internationally renowned hybrid trumpet player, ensemble leader, composer, and engineer who makes music-artworks. Mehta began trumpet studies at the age of 10 in NJ, USA and graduated as an engineer from MIT in 1986 and was mentored by MIT Music Lecturer, Trumpeter and Bandleader Mark Harvey and then a year of composition studies from 1989-1990 at the Mills College Contemporary Music Center, Oakland with avant-garde jazz saxophonist/composer Anthony Braxton.

Mehta was invited to Switzerland for his first professional music tour in 1991 and the rest is history – spanning a well-documented international professional playing, recording, composing, lecturing and producing music career based first in Amsterdam with parallel extensive tours with modern dance companies in France and musical projects in unusual acoustical spaces in Czech republic and then a 7 year residence in Berlin (1998-2005) with awards leading him to Cork, Ireland, and Chennai, India and presently in Mumbai where he is the founder/artistic director of his longstanding vision for a pioneering music institution in India/Asia: ORKA-M: International Institute of Innovative Music – an international platform for innovative musical production, research and educational activities with a specific focus on intercultural and interdisciplinary collaborations which he is presently establishing in Asia.

He performs on his trumpet innovation, the "hybrid trumpet" – an extended multiple trumpet instrument that has dramatically opened up new percussive and sonic possibilities as well as on a microtonal slide-trumpet which has an additional trombone-like slide for bending notes made by manufacturer Holton. He performs and composes for his ensembles such as Trio ORKA-M featuring his closest musical partners the great Sri Lankan Contemporary music Cellist Rohan de Saram and South Indian musicians such as percussionist Jay Rao. With a view towards inter-disciplinary and inter-cultural collaboration he has worked on a series of "imaginational maps" and "songlines' jewels" which make use of innovative musical notation as an art form and one of his works will be published in Spring 2009 in an anthology of new musical notation entitled Notations 21 inspired by John Cage. These drawings and narrative paintings are notes and reflections of his musical ideas on paper and have also lead to his interdisciplinary music-architecture project series sounding buildings which transforms unusual buildings into resonating musical instruments. www.rajesh-mehta.com

 

John William Miller, Jr.'64

BS XXI was an active member of the professional music community of Boston while he studied at MIT. He obtained an MM and Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory of Music in '67 and '69 and received a Fulbright Award for Bassoon study in the Netherlands. He is the founder of the Bubonic Bassoon Quartet and the American Reed Trio and is Principal Bassoon of the Minnesota Orchestra. He is on the Faculty of the University of Minnesota.

 

Alan Pierson '96/'97

Graduated with B.S. degrees in Physics and in Music. He studied composition with Peter Child and Elena Ruehr and conducting with David Epstein and John Corley. He was a pianist in the MIT Chamber Music Society, played percussion, clarinet, and piano in the MIT Concert Band, and was the first president and assistant conductor of the MIT Symphony Orchestra. While at MIT, he received an Eloranta grand and a Wiesner Award. After graduating, he pursued a Masters degrees in composition and a Doctorate in conducting at the Eastman School of Music where he co-founded the ensembles Ossia and Nuove Musiche and was assistant conductor of Musica Nova.

Alan is currently the Artistic Director and conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and of Alarm Will Sound, and Principal Conductor of Dublin's Crash Ensemble. He's also appeared as a guest conductor with the London Sinfonietta, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Steve Reich Ensemble, Carnegie Hall's Ensemble ACJW, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the New World Symphony, and The Silk Road Project, among other ensembles. He has collaborated with many composers and performers, including Yo Yo Ma, Steve Reich, Dawn Upshaw, Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, Augusta Read Thomas, David Lang, Michael Gordon, and La Monte Young.

 

Alex Rigopulos '92

Majored in music and graduated with a B.S. in Humanities. His principal focus was composition, percussion and keyboards. He was a founding member of Gamelan Galak Tika and also sang with the MIT Concert Choir. He was the recipient of the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts and of an Eloranta summer research fellowship. He obtained a graduate degree in computer music at the MIT Media Lab and received an Interval Research Fellowship in 1994 for computer music research. He is founder and CEO of Harmonix Music Systems, Inc, which develops new products and technologies that allow non-musicians to make music.

Sarah Rumbley '12

Sarah Rumbley began piano lessons at the age of three and has performed frequently as a soloist and chamber musician, including performances with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall and with several orchestras near her hometown of Boulder, Colorado. She developed a serious interest in music and a love for playing the piano at age 14, when she began studying with David Korevaar at the University of Colorado. Between 2006 and 2010, she attended several summer music festivals, including the Aspen Music Festival, Bowdoin International Music Festival, and Pianofest in the Hamptons, where she studied with Antoinette Perry, Arie Vardi, and Paul Schenly, respectively. As an undergraduate at MIT from 2008 to 2012, Sarah studied with David Deveau as part of MIT’s Emerson Music Scholarship/Fellowship. She enjoys playing chamber music, and has received coaching through the MIT Chamber Music Society for several years. She also played violin in the MIT Symphony Orchestra for one semester.

After a two-year hiatus from music, Sarah returned to the piano in October 2014, shortly after returning to MIT to pursue an M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. On the academic side, her research focuses on photon-efficient computational imaging and her coursework concentration is in artificial intelligence.

 

Dan Schmidt '91, B.S. XXI

majored in music at MIT and was interested in composition and piano. He works at Harmonix Music Systems, a startup in Cambridge founded by Eran Egozy and Alex Rigopulos, two MIT alums who did graduate work at the Media Lab. They write music software for non-musicians. Dan's musical tastes have always been varied. He leads a rock band, called Honest Bob & the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives. He also played for many years with MIT's Balinese Gamelan Galak Tika, directed by Evan Ziporyn and continues to play piano, composes, and avidly listens to and analyzes whatever he can get his hands on.

 

Yukiko Ueno '99

Graduated from MIT with an M.S. in Biology. At MIT she was a pianist in Advanced Music Performance. She received a Ragnar and Margaret Naess Award and the Philip Lowe Memorial Award. She attended the New England Conservatory of Music and received a master of Music degree in Collaborative Piano performance. She is currently busy as a collaborative pianist in the Boston area.