2018 Meeting SCSMT, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, March 23-24
The Annual Meeting of SCSMT, held at the University of Southern Mississippi, was a great success with 40 present, including 21 faculty, 18 graduate students, and one undergraduate. Presenters and attendees arrived from many regions of the United States and Canada. Dr. Daniel Harrison (Yale University) gave a keynote on undergraduate pedagogy that proposed a set theory-infused presentation of fundamentals. Dr. Scott Murphy led an innovative graduate student workshop with 11 attendees on film music and its connections with art repertoires. Andrew Selle, a graduate student at Florida State University, won the Best Student Paper award with “Formal Function in Electroacoustic Music: A Spectromorphological Approach.” This was the second year with concurrent sessions, which allow a greater number of papers to be presented. This year had a record number of proposals submitted (52), with 19 being accepted, for an acceptance rate of 36.5%, the most selective in the society’s history. Before Friday’s dinner, the attendees were treated to a solo piano recital by Miklós Veszprémi (Yale University; see image), who performed virtuosic transcriptions of film scores from Star Wars: A New Hope and Interstellar. Away from the venue, well-known area restaurants such as the Crescent City Grill and Leatha’s Bar-B-Que Inn were favorites.
In the Business Meeting, Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge) was selected as the venue for 2019, tentatively slated for March 22-23, with a possible focus on corpus studies. A raise in registration fees to $30 per year for faculty only was approved to match fees of other regional conferences. Ben Wadsworth (Kennesaw State) was reelected to a second, two-year term (2018-2020) as President. Rebecca Long (UMASS Amherst) joined the officers as Social Media Coordinator, joining Webmaster Trevor Declercq to create an IT Committee. Clare Sher Ling Eng (Chair, Belmont University), Jeremy Orosz (University of Memphis), Angela Ripley (University of Alabama), and Andrew Selle (Florida State) were appointed to the Program Committee for 2018-2019.
A key strength of SCSMT is its strong roster of talent. We are appreciative of Doug Rust’s service as Local Arrangements Chair, to Joe Brumbeloe (Treasurer), to Adam Hudlow (Secretary, Northwestern State University), to Trevor Declercq (Webmaster), and to all Program Committee members (2017-2018): Jeff Yunek (Chair, Kennesaw State), Courtenay Harter (Rhodes College), Clare Sher Ling Eng (Belmont University), and Robert Komaniecki (Indiana University). All of their efforts have strengthened the Society, thereby increasing opportunities for scholars to present their research. For questions about the society, please contact Ben Wadsworth (bwadswo2@kennesaw.edu).