Natalie L. Haslam College of Music

Jessica Rae Wiseman

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Jessica Rae Wiseman

Lecturer in Elementary General Music Education

Jessica Wiseman is an experienced music educator. She taught for 13 years in the Ohio public schools in areas such as choir, band, and general music. Her students earned many honors and superior ratings at competitions and were selected to perform at the Ohio Music Education Association’s Professional Development Conference. They also participated in service projects such as a fundraiser for the USO and Paws for Patriots, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and an annual Go Light Your World challenge. During this time, she also had significant involvement in school and community theater and music programs. Jessica left Ohio to serve as the music director at Ranger College in Texas. She is excited to be now working with future educators.

Jessica earned her bachelor’s degree at Kent State University, her master’s degree and Kodaly certification at Capital University, and her Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her dissertation focused on refugees’ perceptions of music participation and implications for the music education profession. Jessica is also passionate about exploring ways to meet the academically diverse needs often found in music classrooms.

Jessica has been an active member of NAFME and the Organization of American Kodaly Educators. She enjoys performing with her church’s worship team on piano, flute, voice, and bass guitar. When not teaching or making music, Jessica enjoys spending time with her Anatolian-Pyrenees, Nora Rose.

Taber Gable

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Taber Gable

Assistant Professor of Practice in Jazz Piano

Pianist Taber Gable from Knoxville Tennessee graduated from The Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz in Hartford (2010-2014), Connecticut and The Juilliard School (2016), Studied with Teachers Andy Laverne Steve Davis, Nat Reeves, Kenny Barron, Kenny Washington, Ben Wolfe, Wynton Marsalis and received his Masters in Jazz Performance and Jazz Studies. Taber has been called on to perform alongside many great musicians such as:

Marcus Strickland E.J.Strickland, Gregory Tardy, Terrace Martin, Ben Williams, Jaleel Shaw, Jimmy Greene, Myron Walden, Abraham Burton, Trevor Lawrence, Jonathan Barber, Braxton Cook, Lakecia Benjamin, Jesse Palter and many more.

Gable is a highly sought after musician in the New York music scene as well as internationally known and called on for his cross-genre abilities and captivating live performance style.

Gable has Recorded on more than 30 albums and in fall 2020 Gable released his first solo album “Hidden Driveways”. With a new Record on the way to be released in fall 2024!

Mehrenegar Rostami

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Mehrenegar Rostami

Lecturer in Musicology

Mehrenegar Rostami is an ethnomusicologist with interdisciplinary research interests in anthropology and political philosophy. She received her PhD in ethnomusicology from UCLA in 2023. Her research engages with the dynamics of human mobility, socio-economic developments, and politico-cultural identity formations in inter-and multicultural environments. She has conducted extensive fieldwork research on international music festivals in Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Austria, Germany, and the United States. Focusing on traditional and popular musics of Central Asia and the Middle East, she examines in her dissertation the modern manifestations of the Silk Road phenomenon and the ways in which this phenomenon has influenced the formation of international music festivals in the age of globalization and neoliberal capitalism. In 2017, she published “Silent City: A Commemoration of the Halabja’s Tragedy” in Music and Politics. Her translational essays have appeared in Māhname Honar-e Musiqi [The Art of Music] and she has presented her research at national and international conferences throughout North America, Europe, Iran, and Central Asia. She has also served as a reviews editor of Ethnomusicology Review. As a santur (hammered dulcimer) player, she has worked in Iranian, European, and North American scenes.

Jennifer Salamone

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Jennifer Salamone

Lecturer of Music Theory

Dr. Salamone serves as a Lecturer of Music Theory at UT’s College of Music. She has authored several articles on creative pedagogy, and is always seeking out new and relevant ways to captivate the classroom. With a current research thread focused on utilizing culturally relevant music in therapeutic settings for substance abuse, Dr. Salamone is excited to settle into the Appalachian region to deepen her work with bluegrass music and opioid abatement.

Previously, Dr. Salamone served on the faculty of Florida Gulf Coast University and the Oberlin College Conservatory. She holds degrees in music theory from the University of Kentucky and a degree in voice from The Hartt School. Her personal interests include running, baking, furniture restoration, and befriending all of the neighborhood dogs.

Education

PhD, Music Theory – University of Kentucky (2017)
MA, Music Theory – University of Kentucky (2012)
BM, Voice – University of Hartford—The Hartt School (2010)

Juan Carlos “JC” Quintero

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ADDRESS
Natalie Haslam Music Center 1741 Volunteer Blvd, Knoxville, TN 37916
Website
https://www.juancarlosquintero.com/

Juan Carlos "JC" Quintero

Director of Music Business & Communications, Professor of Practice

Those well versed in Latin American culture know Medellín, Colombia is often referred as, “La ciudad de la eterna primavera (the city of eternal spring),” a reflection of the vast Andean Valley’s culture, art, flowers, music and people.  Both musically and spiritually, the heart, soul and guitar of Juan Carlos Quintero’s music reflects the colorful sounds and diverse rhythms of his cherished birthplace. 

Latin music was a very natural gravitation for JCQ when he first picked up the guitar at age eight: “No matter what style I ever played in, I always came back to my heritage. Music from Colombia crosses so many boundaries and its ability to seduce while celebrating life has always moved me. Colombian rhythms are so majestic, they have a strong natural appeal to me. This music seems to show up every time I compose or perform, I can’t help it! A few years before I picked up the guitar, I remember being mesmerized by a band that played in a high school next door to my elementary school in Brussels. They were a cover band playing Latin music and I was convinced, ‘Those are the guys from the radio!’ I was hooked from then on.”

JCQ was particularly inspired by masters like Quincy Jones, Gato Barbieri, Cal Tjader, Miles, Tito Puente, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Jeff Beck and Carlos Santana, but he felt that Chick Corea, Eddie Palmieri, Gato Barbieri and Gary Burton best brought out the excitement of bridging melodic improvisation with composition. JCQ took this lead both attending Berklee College of Music in the early 80’s and when he launched his own solo career later in the decade.  He studied composition at Boston’s New England Conservatory with George Russell before moving to Los Angeles, where he plugged into the city’s studio scene with the help of his mentor Tommy Tedesco (The Wrecking Crew). While developing his freelance guitar-work by day, JCQ composed a volume of original music and sought out old Boston schoolmates to help bring the music to life via gigs throughout Los Angeles. An opportunity to open for longtime hero, Gato Barbieri convinced him to keep writing and start making records… 

Dreams come true…Achieving his goal of producing music blending contemporary jazz with music styles from Colombia, JCQ quickly became a staple of NAC, World, Jazz and Smooth Jazz radio with tracks from his first two albums, a self-titled effort in 1990 (featuring Tommy Tedesco) and Through The Winds in 1992 on Nova Records. Critically acclaimed records followed in 1997 with The Way Home on Escapade records segueing to releases on Moondo Records, a label he founded in early 2000 and distributed by Robert Fripp’s label, DGM. A decade of music ensued with notable releases, Medellín, Los Musicos, Los Primos, Las Cumbias…Las Guitarras, Joy To The World, and Guitarras De Pasión compilation series featuring music by JCQ (Vol. 1 Charted #1 on iTunes/World Music for 7 months). Amongst many highlights in JC’s recording career, a standout remains when featured on Jazz on the Latin Side Volume 1 (2000) and Volume 2(2001), all-star live recordings at B.B. King’s Blues Club in Los Angeles (Ubiquity/Cubop Records) alongside Alex Acuna, Poncho Sanchez, Justo Almario, Otmaro Ruiz, Francisco Aguabella and Luis Conte, to name a few. Joining forces with top tier music collaborators and label partners has bolstered JCQ’s profile as a world-class guitarist/recording artist able to produce, perform and record a world of music while nurturing a signature sound.

When his hands aren’t on the guitar, JCQ’s career in music expands to session work, teaching, producing, custom music, music licensing, publishing, and consulting. Career highlights includes teaching music business, composition and jazz studies at Colleges throughout Los Angeles (College of the Canyons, California State University), launching Moondo Records Inc. into a formidable world/jazz record label (distributed by Ryko, WEA, Eone Ent.), securing a publishing deal with BMG Rights Management to administer his Publishing, and establishing Café Moondo, a Production Music-label partnership with Warner Chappell to produce music of multiple genres for TV and Film licensing. A recent chrysalis was when JCQ transitioned to TV production as Music Supervisor and Executive in Charge of Music for Haim Saban’s entertainment company, Saban Brands LLC, producing music and championing music rights for all of Saban’s TV properties (The Power Rangers, Paul Frank Industries, Julius Jr., Digimon, Glitter Force, etc.). The unique role culminated in opportunities to produce acclaimed recording artists such as Sheryl Crow and Blush to perform pop songs featured on the Julius Jr. Show/Netflix and Glitter Force/Netflix respectively. 

Successfully fulfilling diverse music paradigms throughout multiple decades has been the pillar for JCQ’s expansive career. Recognized as a seasoned all-purpose music specialist, JCQ remains in the forefront while creating, producing and exploring new ventures…

Looking ahead…”One of the greatest things about creating music today is the ability to record without limitations while nurturing an artistic voice! Often through collaboration, the results can easily surpass one’s vision and for me, that’s the gift! To follow the creative steps with a distribution strategy one can control independently is equally remarkable. The collaborators, whether in business or creative, are essential as new ways to circulate works are developed internationally. I’m excited about the chapters ahead, let the music binging begin!” 

– Jonathan Widman

Leslie C. Gay

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
236 Natalie L. Haslam Music Center
Knoxville, TN 37996-4040
Phone
865-974-7525

Leslie C. Gay Jr.

Associate Professor of Musicology

Leslie C. Gay Jr., Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee, holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Columbia University. He has published articles and reviews on American music and culture in the journals Ethnomusicology, American Music, and World of Music. His research also appears in Audible Infrastructures: Music, Sound, Media (2021) and Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader (Routledge, 2005, edited by Jennifer C. Post). With his collaborator, René Lysloff, he conceptualized, co-edited, and contributed to Music and Technoculture (Wesleyan University Press, 2003), which examines emerging and dynamic relationships among music, culture, and technology.

Gay has published research on indie rock musicians in New York City and music publishing in the 19th-century United States. Currently, he is completing a book on the reception of African American music in Denmark. He began this continuing historical and ethnographic research with a Fulbright Scholar grant in 2002, at which time he also served on the faculty of Aarhus University (Aarhus, Denmark).

His additional teaching and research interests include ethnography, sound studies, and ecomusicology.  At University of Tennessee, Gay founded and served as inaugural director of the Balinese gamelan, a semar peguligan ensemble. He’s also active within the College of Arts and Science interdisciplinary programs of Africana Studies and Global Studies.

Leslie Gay is a member of the editorial board of the journal Jazz Perspectives. He remains active in the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Society for American Music, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and the International Council for Traditional Music. He has been a participant in the NEH Summer Research Program (1994) and the Fulbright Specialist Program (2011).

Education

PhD, Ethnomusicology – Columbia University (1991)
MPhil, Ethnomusicology – Columbia University (1989)
MM, Music Theory – University of North Texas (1980)
BM, Music Theory – University of North Texas (1976)

Research & Creative Endeavors

Books

  • Rhythmic Nation: African American Music and Danish Identity. In progress.
    • This book engages broader dialogues within ethnomusicology concerning music’s significance as tied to global flows of people, ideas, technologies, and commodification practices, especially explorations of how global music features in the construction and maintenance of contemporary, local cultural identities. My research focuses on an important case of such a “localization” of Black music within the Northern European country of Denmark. I address Denmark’s incorporation of African American jazz and other diasporic musics as Danish, under their concept of rytmisk musik as driven by a group of public intellectuals known as the cultural radicals. To frame this research, I draw on the work of Paul Gilroy (1993) and his notion of diasporic culture, which I find to be seminal and corrective in acknowledging the multifarious contributions of Black cultures to regions traditionally understood as “European” in a sense that conveys whiteness.  I demonstrate how the Danish cultural radicals effectively bracketed Black and popular musics within the broad aesthetic-political category of rytmisk musik.  Further, I underscore the importance of African American music as a key component of Danish modernity, at the time of its emergence after World War I, through the present day. Overall, I argue that the continued pervasiveness of multiple African diasporic forms in Denmark today subvert overly simplified approaches to race, nationality, and received notions of European modernity.

 

  • Music and Technoculture. Coedited by Leslie C. Gay Jr. and René T.A. Lysloff. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003.
    • Inspired by the concept of technoculture, this book locates technology squarely in the middle of expressive culture, musical creativity, and local practice. The constituent essays range from the Victorian parlor to the 21st-century shopping mall, and are concerned with how technology culturally informs and infuses aspects of everyday life and musical experience.  The book argues that this merger does not necessarily result in a “cultural grayout,” but instead often produces exciting new possibilities.  Further, the volume offers evidence of musical practices and ways of knowing music that are informed and significantly transformed by new technologies, yet remain profoundly local in style and meaning.
  • See https://www.weslpress.org/9780819565143/music-and-technoculture/

 

Representative Articles and Essays

 

  • “Shadows of Black and White: Materialities and Medialities in May Irwin’s ‘Frog Song.’” In Audible Infrastructures: Music, Sound, Media, edited by Kyle Devine and Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, 178-205. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.
  • “Ensemble.” In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Music and Culture, edited by Janet Sturman, 807-812. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2019.
  • “Acting Up, Talking Tech: New York Rock Musicians and their Rhetoric of Technology.” In Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, edited by Jennifer C. Post, 209-22. New York: Routledge, 2006.
  • “Before the Deluge: The Technoculture of Song Sheet Publishing Viewed from Late 19th-Century Galveston.” American Music 17, no. 4 (1999): 396-421. Physical publication Summer 2000
  • “Hearing is Seeing: Listening for New York Rock Musicians.” The World of Music 41, no. 1 (1999): 9-17.
  • “Acting Up, Talking Tech: New York Rock Musicians and their Metaphors of Technology.” Ethnomusicology 42, no. 1 (1998): 81-98.
  • “Lullaby.” In Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art. Thomas A. Green, 2:514-15. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1997.
  • “Musical Instrument.” In Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art. Ed. Thomas A. Green, 2:570-74. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1997.
  • “Rockin’ the Imagined Local: New York Rock in a Reterritorialized World.” In Popular Music — Style and Identity, edited by Will Straw, et al., 123-126. Montreal: Centre for Research on Canadian Cultural Industries and Institutions, 1995.

Nathan Madsen

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Website
https://madsenstudios.com/

Nate Madsen

Adjunct Instructor of Music and Audio for Video Games

Nathan Madsen has been involved in game audio since 2005 and has worked with many top tier brands including LEGO, Dragon Ball Z, Harry Potter, MechWarrior, Monopoly, Clue, The Game of Life, Titanfall, Great Wolf Lodge and Disney. He’s an experienced composer and sound designer who is well-versed with the technologies used to create and implement music, sound, and voice overs into interactive multi-media. Madsen is also an active performer and recording artist on saxophone and piano and has experience rearranging and producing covers of iconic video game scores. On top of his creative pursuits, he’s an active lecturer who’s given presentations at Oklahoma Baptist University, University of Northern Iowa, University of Northern Colorado, as well as has taught game audio courses for DeVry University’s Game, Simulation and Programming degree and is currently teaching Audio for Video Games within the UT College of Music.

Education

MM, Music Performance – Texas Christian University (2005)

BME, Music Education – Oklahoma Baptist University (2002)

Jon Clark

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Jonathan Clark

Adjunct Instructor of Short Form Music for Television

Jonathan Clark is a Telly award-winning composer, creating scores, branding campaigns, and themes for 100’s of shows over the last 25 years for Discovery, HGTV, Motor Animal Planet, A&E, OWN, HBO/TNT Latam, just to name a few. He has a bachelors in Communications from BYU, a Masters in Music Technology from IUPUI and has taught what he does at UTK for over five years. Jonathan is a native Knoxvillian and currently resides near Nashville with his wife, Jen. They are the parents of four and have two grandkids.

Education

MS, Music Technology – Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis
BA, Communications – Brigham Young University

Kevin Zetina

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee College of Music 204 Natalie L. Haslam Music Center Knoxville, TN 37996-4040
Website
https://www.kevinzetina.com/
Phone
865-974-4577

Kevin Zetina

Lecturer of Percussion

Kevin Zetina is a passionate performer, composer, and arranger of all things contemporary whether it be performing seminal works of the last century, premiering or writing brand new works, or arranging popular music for contemporary classical ensembles. As a percussionist, he has performed with members of Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble Signal, the JACK Quartet, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Having grown up as a guitarist playing various sorts of death metal, Kevin has always been drawn to music that is experimental in nature. In this effort to push musical experimentation, Kevin started the first student-run new music ensemble at the Yale School of Music: Versicolor. The group champions composers who would otherwise be underrepresented and provides a space for contemporary music at Yale. Kevin has played frequently with the Austin based contemporary chamber music group, Density 512 and has served as the Production Director for the Nief-Norf Summer Festival.

Kevin currently serves as Lecturer of Percussion at the University of Tennessee Knoxville where he teaches applied lessons to percussion majors, Percussion Methods to Music Education majors, and directs the UT Chamber Percussion Ensemble. He champions a diverse array of contemporary music through his position by programming everything from Caroline Shaw to Animal Collective. His students have also gotten opportunities to premiere brand new works by fellow student composers as well as composers such as Marc Mellits and Emma O’Halloran. Being a composer himself, Kevin strives to blend his backgrounds in both contemporary classical and popular styles to create something that is both unique yet accessible to audiences from either background. Some recent projects include Coalescence (2021), a piece for mallet quartet & two pianos commissioned and premiered by the Yale Percussion Group, shepard tone (2020), a piece for Vibraphone & Piano premiered by Tactus at the Manhattan School of Music, and Sink (2019), a percussion quartet premiered by the UT Percussion Ensemble.

Previously he has taught percussion lessons for undergraduate students at Yale College and high school students at the Cheshire Academy, a private college preparatory boarding school in Connecticut. His students at Yale College, all of whom were non-music majors, have excelled comparably to conservatory students through winning spots at summer music festivals as well as the College Band Director’s National Association’s Intercollegiate Band. Kevin has also worked with high school students in Texas as a Marching Percussion Instructor and has guided many young percussionists as a private lesson teacher throughout the Round Rock/Leander area. While there, he coached the Walsh MS Honor Band as they were invited to perform at the Midwest Clinic.

Kevin holds a BM from the Eastman School of Music with the Howard Hanson Scholarship where he studied with Michael Burritt, and he earned his MM and MMA degrees from Yale University as a Havemeyer Scholarship recipient under Robert van Sice.

Education

MMA – Yale University (2021)
MM – Yale University (2020)
BM – Eastman School of Music (2018)

Shawn Turner

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Shawn Turner

Director of Gospel Choir

Shawn Turner is an alumnus of the UT College of Music, having completed a degree in Studio Music and Jazz.  He has experience teaching in middle and high school levels and is the lead male vocalist in Pinky Ring and Aftah Party, local professional entertainment bands performing classic and modern R&B, Funk and Soul musics.  He is also Artist in Residence at the Old City Performing Arts Center. Professor Turner has over twenty years of experience in church music ministry and currently serves as the Choir Director at Sevier Heights Baptist Church. He is excited to be joining the Choral Area of the College of Music in Fall 2023 as Director of Gospel Choir.

Education

BM, Studio Music & Jazz (Piano Concentration) – University of Tennessee (2011)