Tom Hawley (Adjunct/Organ) returned from 3 weeks in Buenos Aires, where he gave a presentation at the 12th World Congress for Music Therapy.

In late May 2008, Lori Kesner (Adjunct/Flute) traveled to Venezuela, where she taught lessons, ran sectionals, and played alongside the students in one of the youth orchestras of the Venezuelan El Sistema in the city of Acarigua-Araure. She spent the remainder of the summer playing with the Utah Festival Opera in Logan, Utah.

Tom Lagana (Adjunct/Jazz Guitar) participated in a performance of David Del Tredici's Final Alice on tenor banjo with the National Symphony Orchestra in May. It was the debut performance for the NSO and the first time in 20 years that the work was performed without any cuts. Leonard Slatkin was conducting. Professor Lagana also played at Wolftrap in May with the NSO, backing Eric Idle of Monty Python fame in his Not the Messiah. He played nylon string, steel string acoustic, twelve-string, and electric guitar in this performance.

Cambridge Scholars Press (UK) published a book in May 2008 edited by E. Michael Richards (Associate Professor and Chair/Clarinet, Orchestra) and Kazuko Tanosaki (Adjunct/ Fundamentals) entitled Music of Japan Today, which includes 23 essays by 20 international scholars and musicians who participated in the Music of Japan Today 2007 symposium at UMBC in March 2007. Besides Drs. Richards and Tanosaki, contributing authors include Airi Yoshioka (Assistant Professor/Violin), and Colin Holter (UMBC class of 2005/Music Composition).

Naoko Makino (Certificate, Jazz Piano) completed her masters degree in jazz at Towson University in May. She is back in Japan teaching jazz piano at a university in Tokyo.