The College of Fine Arts and Department of Music are excited to announce that Dr. David Edmonds will be joining our faculty this fall as the new Director of Choral Studies. Dr. Edmonds joins UNM after serving as Director of Choral Activities at the University of Montana since 2012. Under his direction the UM Chamber Chorale was invited to perform for the 2015 NAfME NW and 2016 NW ACDA Conferences—both first-time invitations for the choir.
As an active member of the American Choral Directors Association, he has held multiple leadership roles through the organization, including Montana R&R Chair for Women’s Choirs and NWACDA R&R Chair for Student Activities. In 2018, he was appointed as the ACDA National R&R Chair for Student Activities. Before his work at the University of Montana, Dr. Edmonds obtained advanced degrees in conducting from the University of North Texas and Westminster Choir College and taught high school choral music for six years in Iowa and Texas.
His original choral works and arrangements have been commissioned and recorded by schools and arts organizations in the United States and Canada and are available through Alliance Music Publications, Inc., Colla Voce Music, and Morningstar Music Publishing.
The Enchantment Brass releases first album!
The Enchantment Brass, the brass ensemble-in-residence at the University of New Mexico, has released their debut recording, A Brass Menagerie: The Music of John Cheetham, on all digital formats.
Students from Dr. Kristina Jacobsen’s class, “Diné (Navajo) Expressive Culture,” help build a shadehouse (cha’a’oh) as part of a service-learning project and cultural immersion camping trip to the Navajo Nation.
The class focuses on music, language, poetry, film and expressive arts in the context of sovereignty and contemporary politics on the Navajo Nation.
Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez: Imagining Something Better: Punk, Tejano, La Bamba, and Other Rolas from My Border Hi-Fi
Unrepentant border crosser, writer, ex-dj, and academic. Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez is an Associate Professor of US Southwestern Literatures, and Creative Writing in the Department of Spanish, and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico.