Gwyneth Bravo | Print |

bravo website aug 2011

Gwyneth Bravo is active in the fields of musicology, music education, and cello pedagogy. A recipient of a President's Fellowship while at the University of California, Los Angeles, she was also a winner of a 2009 Collegium of University Teaching Fellowship for her seminar Music and War. Presently, she is working on two forthcoming projects: an edited volume Music of War: Global and Transnational Perspectives, as well as a collaborative, documentary film with David Leaf (The US vs. John Lennon, 2006). A Fulbright scholar to Germany, she worked with the research group Exilmusik, contributing an article to their book Lebenswege von Musikerinnen im Dritten Reich und im Exil while also researching the music of composer Viktor Ullmann at archives in Europe. As the Visual Research Assistant to Music Director James Conlon for the Los Angeles Opera's 2007 Recovered Voices Project, she was instrumental in developing the slide installations that accompanied the premiere at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. She is the producer and director of the multi-media production Music Memory Metamorphosis, featuring a live performance of Ullmann's 1944 melodrama The Lay of Love and Death of the Cornet Christopher Rilke against a cinematic backdrop. Created in collaboration with Rezn8's Paul Sidlo, the program features Belgian-born pianist Steven Vanhauwaert and speaker Neal Stulberg. Shown as part an international conference on the composer's music at Arizona State University in 2012, the production will receive its Los Angeles premiere at the Saban Theater in 2013. Gwyneth is active as lecturer on twentieth century topics and has been a presenter for the Los Angeles Opera's Opera for Educators Program as well as for the Opera Program at UCLA. Focusing primarily on issues related to exile, nationalism, technology, and war in twentieth-century European music, her research also examines esotericism in the western musical tradition from the seventeenth century to the present. Her dissertation, Staging Death: Allegory in the Operas of Erwin Schulhoff and Viktor Ullmann (2011), examines changing cultural conceptions of death during the twentieth century with reference to works of these composers. Gwyneth was the winner of the 2007 Ingolf Dahl Competition from the Pacific Southwest and Northern Chapters of the American Musicological Society and is the moderator of the panel Music and War at the November 2012 annual conference of the American Musicological Society (AMS), the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), and the Society for Music Theory (SMT) in New Orleans.

 Gwyneth has a broad background in the field of education and holds a state of California teaching credential in Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development (CLAD) with a specialization in elementary music, which she earned from the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Department (BMED) at California State University, Sacramento in 2001. Influenced by the educational philosophy of Paulo Freire, she worked as a bilingual (Spanish/English) and ESL teacher in Sacramento public schools. As a recipient of several Artists in Schools Grants from the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission, Gwyneth taught literacy through poetry in inner city public schools for two years, also establishing the Martin Luther King Jr. Cello Program with a Neighborhoods Art Grant from the commission in 1998. Founded as a non-profit organization, this after-school music program provided group and private cello lessons to students at the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School and from the surrounding community for over four years and was featured on Good Day Sacramento. Gwyneth began her cello studies in Los Angeles with Gretchen Geber at the age of twelve. She studied with Yehuda Hanani at Peabody Conservatory and later with Janet Horvath and Tanya Remenikova in Minneapolis where she earned a B.A. in Music from the University of Minnesota. While working in Japan for NHK Spring Co. Ltd, she studied Japanese taiko and shinobue music and performed with the drum group Nippatsu Taiko. Gwyneth holds an M.M. in Cello from California State University, Sacramento where she was a student of Andrew Luchansky and worked as the cello instructor for the Community Music Division of the university. She completed her pedagogical training as a cello teacher under the direction of Pam Devenport, Jean Dexter, and Nancy Yamagata at the Chicago Institute of Music and at Ithaca College between 2002 and 2007. Gwyneth is an active music educator and cello teacher in the Los Angeles area where she has worked on the board of the Suzuki Music Association of California/Los Angeles, serving as its president from 2007-2009. Her cello students have been winners and finalists in competitions such as the Kiwanis, the Los Angeles Cello Society Competition, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Young Artist Competition. She is on the faculty of the SO-LA Music Academy and serves as the pedagogical advisor and teacher for the cello program at the St. Anne School, which provides music lessons to children from underprivileged communities throughout Los Angeles. The program will be included as a segment in the forthcoming PBS documentary Arts and the Mind.

Gwyneth is a member of the American Musicological Society (AMS), the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), UNESCO's International Society for Music Education (ISME), the American String Teacher's Association (ASTA), and the Suzuki Association of the Americas (SAA)

GWYNETH BRAVO is active in the fields of musicology, music education, and cello pedagogy and is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles where she was a recipient of a President’s Fellowship. A winner of a Collegium of University Teaching Fellowship, Gwyneth taught her own seminar on Music and War at UCLA in 2009. As a development of the course, Gwyneth is currently working on two related projects: a co-edited volume on Music of War with ethnomusicologist Benjamin J. Harbert and a collaborative, documentary film with filmmaker David Leaf whose work includes The Night James Brown Saved Boston (2008), and The US vs. John Lennon (2006).  Earlier, as a Fulbright scholar at the Musicological Institute of the University of Hamburg in Germany, Gwyneth worked with the research group Exilmusik contributing an article to their book Lebenswege von Musikerinnen im Dritten Reich und im Exil. Under the auspices of the Fulbright, Gwyneth also researched the music of Viktor Ullmann at archives in Europe, which served as a departure point for her ongoing work on the composer. As the Visual Research Assistant to the Los Angeles Opera’s Music Director James Conlon for the opera's 2007 Recovered Voices Project, Gwyneth assisted in the development of the cinematic slide installations accompanying the opera’s inaugural production of works by Walter Braunfels, Erich Korngold, Ernst Krenek, Erwin Schulhoff, Franz Schrecker, Viktor Ullmann, and Alexander Zemlinsky at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Active as lecturer on twentieth century operatic topics, she has served as a presenter for the Los Angeles Opera’s Opera for Educators Program as well as for the Opera Program at UCLA. While Gwyneth focuses primarily on issues relating to exile, nationalism, technology, and war in twentieth-century European music, her research also includes an exploration of diverse lineages of esotericism in the western musical tradition from the seventeenth century to the present. Her dissertation, Staging Death: Allegory in the Operas of Erwin Schulhoff and Viktor Ullmann (2011), examines changing cultural conceptions of death during the first half of the twentieth century with reference to operatic works by these two composers. Gwyneth was the winner of the 2007 Ingolf Dahl Competition for her paper presented at the Joint Meeting of the Pacific Southwest and Northern Chapters of the American Musicological Society. As part of her continued engagement with the work of Ullmann, and for performance in Spring 2012, Gwyneth is developing a multi-media presentation of the composer's 1944 melodrama based on Rainer Maria Rilke’s Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke with Belgian pianist Steven Vanhauwaert.

Gwyneth holds a state of California teaching credential in Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development (CLAD) and has been active as a music educator and cello teacher in both public and private schools since 1998. As a recipient of several Artists in Schools Grants from the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission for teaching music in Sacramento public schools, Gwyneth established the Martin Luther King Jr. Cello Program with a Neighborhoods Art Grant from the commission in 1998. Founded as a non-profit organization, this after-school music program provided group and private cello lessons to students at the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School for four years.

Gwyneth studied cello with Yehuda Hanani at Peabody Conservatory and later with Janet Horvath and Tanya Remenikova in Minneapolis where she earned her B.A. in Music from the University of Minnesota. While working in Japan for NHK Spring Co. Ltd, Gwyneth studied Japanese taiko and shinobue music and performed with the drum group Nippatsu Taiko. Gwyneth holds an M.M. in Cello from California State University, Sacramento where she was a student of Andrew Luchansky.

As a cello teacher in the Los Angeles area, Gwyneth maintains a private studio and has been active on the board of the Suzuki Music Association of California/Los Angeles, serving as its president from 2007-2009. Presently, Gwyneth works through the Sol La Academy as the cello teacher and pedagogical advisor for the strings program at the St. Anne’s School, which provides music lessons to children from underprivileged communities. Begun in 2010, the strings program at the St. Anne’s school will featured on the forthcoming PBS documentary Arts and the Mind.GWYNETH BRAVO is active in the fields of musicology, music education, and cello pedagogy and is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles where she was a recipient of a President's Fellowship. A winner of a Collegium of University Teaching Fellowship, Gwyneth taught her own seminar on Music and War at UCLA in 2009. As a development of the course, Gwyneth is currently working on two related projects: a co-edited volume on Music of War with ethnomusicologist Benjamin J. Harbert and a collaborative, documentary film with filmmaker David Leaf whose work includes The Night James Brown Saved Boston (2008), and The US vs. John Lennon (2006). Earlier, as a Fulbright scholar at the Musicological Institute of the University of Hamburg in Germany, Gwyneth worked with the research group Exilmusik contributing an article to their book Lebenswege von Musikerinnen im Dritten Reich und im Exil. Under the auspices of the Fulbright, Gwyneth also researched the music of Viktor Ullmann at archives in Europe, which served as a departure point for her ongoing work on the composer. As the Visual Research Assistant to the Los Angeles Opera's Music Director James Conlon for the opera's 2007 Recovered Voices Project, Gwyneth assisted in the development of the cinematic slide installations accompanying the opera's inaugural production of works by Walter Braunfels, Erich Korngold, Ernst Krenek, Erwin Schulhoff, Franz Schrecker, Viktor Ullmann, and Alexander Zemlinsky at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Active as lecturer on twentieth century operatic topics, she has served as a presenter for the Los Angeles Opera's Opera for Educators Program as well as for the Opera Program at UCLA. While Gwyneth focuses primarily on issues relating to exile, nationalism, technology, and war in twentieth-century European music, her research also includes an exploration of diverse lineages of esotericism in the western musical tradition from the seventeenth century to the present. Her dissertation, Staging Death: Allegory in the Operas of Erwin Schulhoff and Viktor Ullmann (2011), examines changing cultural conceptions of death during the first half of the twentieth century with reference to operatic works by these two composers. Gwyneth was the winner of the 2007 Ingolf Dahl Competition for her paper presented at the Joint Meeting of the Pacific Southwest and Northern Chapters of the American Musicological Society. As part of her continued engagement with the work of Ullmann, and for performance in Spring 2012, Gwyneth is developing a multi-media presentation of the composer's 1944 melodrama based on Rainer Maria Rilke's Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke with Belgian pianist Steven Vanhauwaert.
Gwyneth holds a state of California teaching credential in Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development (CLAD) and has been active as a music educator and cello teacher in both public and private schools since 1998. As a recipient of several Artists in Schools Grants from the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission for teaching music in Sacramento public schools, Gwyneth established the Martin Luther King Jr. Cello Program with a Neighborhoods Art Grant from the commission in 1998. Founded as a non-profit organization, this after-school music program provided group and private cello lessons to students at the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School for four years.
Gwyneth studied cello with Yehuda Hanani at Peabody Conservatory and later with Janet Horvath and Tanya Remenikova in Minneapolis where she earned her B.A. in Music from the University of Minnesota. While working in Japan for NHK Spring Co. Ltd, Gwyneth studied Japanese taiko and shinobue music and performed with the drum group Nippatsu Taiko. Gwyneth holds an M.M. in Cello from California State University, Sacramento where she was a student of Andrew Luchansky.
As a cello teacher in the Los Angeles area, Gwyneth maintains a private studio and has been active on the board of the Suzuki Music Association of California/Los Angeles, serving as its president from 2007-2009. Presently, Gwyneth works through the Sol La Academy as the cello teacher and pedagogical advisor for the strings program at the St. Anne's School, which provides music lessons to children from underprivileged communities. Begun in 2010, the strings program at the St. Anne's school will featured on the forthcoming PBS documentary Arts and the Mind.