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News Release

Last modified: Monday, June 22, 2009

IU Jacobs School of Music students win prestigious fellowships

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 22, 2009

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Two doctoral students in the Musicology Department of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music have won prestigious fellowships to pursue dissertation research in Europe.

Lisa Cooper Vest was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to Poland, which will support 12 months of study. The topic of her dissertation is "Musical and Political Negotiations in Polish Music Life, 1956-1970."

Vest will be researching interactions between scholars, critics, composers and state representatives in Poland, investigating the ways in which these interactions shaped the character and significance of Polish avant-garde music culture.

Vest will reside in Warsaw, hosted by the Institute of Musicology at the University of Warsaw, and will make research trips to Krakow and other cities within Poland.

"I feel honored to have been given this opportunity to do research in Poland and to spend time with the wonderful scholars and students at the Institute of Musicology," said Vest. "My husband and I both look forward to meeting new friends and learning more about Polish culture and history."

Vest also won a Fulbright Fellowship and an American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Fellowship in East European Studies, which she had to decline because she could not hold more than one fellowship simultaneously.

Jonathan Yaeger was awarded a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) Research Grant from the German Academic Exchange Service. His dissertation, "The Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig in East Germany, 1949-1990," will focus on the political, cultural and musical interaction between the East German communist regime and the Gewandhaus Orchestra, one of the oldest and most esteemed orchestras in Europe.

Yaeger will investigate -- among other topics -- the ways in which communist rule impacted the orchestra's operations and music making, and the ways in which the orchestra's activities affected the communist regime.

Yaeger will spend the next year at the University of Leipzig, examining archival materials and interviewing current and past Gewandhaus musicians.

"I'm very excited about and grateful for this opportunity," said Yaeger. "I am also grateful for the support that I've received from the Musicology Department and the university in getting to this point."

For more information, visit https://music.indiana.edu.

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