At the Sub-basement Studios in downtown Baltimore, Tom Goldstein (Associate Professor/ Percussion) performed a percussion recital, "Speaking of Silence," assisted by colleagues and the UMBC Percussion Ensemble. Included in the program was the world premiere of transients/waves for solo percussion, by Thomas DeLio. Professor Goldstein’s essay, "...breaking the silence," was published by Edwin Mellen Press in Essays on the Music and Theoretical Writings of Thomas DeLio, Contemporary American Composer.

Zane Forshee, Affiliate Artist in classical guitar, has received a Fulbright Grant to spend nine months in Spain. While in Spain, Prof. Forshee will be performing concerts, preparing a recording of 20th Century Spanish music, as well as conducting research for a book. He comments “I am very excited to have been chosen, and I feel honored to be given the opportunity to represent UMBC abroad.”

Linda Dusman’s (Professor/Composition) magnificat 3: lament was performed by the Polish violinist Anna Zielinska at the ElectroMediaWorks 08 festival in Athens, Greece in May. A new work for two flutes, An Unsubstantial Territory, was premiered by the inHale Duo (Lisa Cella and Jane Rigler) in Piacenza, Italy in June. Dr. Dusman is also writing a bi-weekly blog for the American Music Center's New Music Box, and her article "Luminous Presence: Thomas DeLio's 'think on parch'" was published in Essays on the Music and Theoretical Writings of Thomas DeLio, edited by Thomas Licata.

Lisa Cella (Assistant Professor/Flute) performed in June with the ensemble NOISE at the SoundON Festival of Modern Music in La Jolla, CA, sponsored by the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library and San Diego New Music (of which she is artistic director). The festival features young composers and composers from Southern California. Also in June, Dr. Cella performed a concert with her flute duo inHale (Jane Rigler) of music by Italian and American composers in Piacenza, Italy. She spent nine days in July teaching and performing as a faculty member at the Soundscape Festival in Pavia, Italy.

Wayne Cameron (Adjunct/Trumpet) has been appointed principal trumpet in the Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra based in West Virginia. He has also founded Trompete International Publications, which publishes arrangements and transcriptions that he has completed during his career for trumpet and piano, trumpet and band, trumpet and orchestra, and brass quintet. The company will also publish original works and arrangements by other brass players from the mid-Atlantic region.

Janice Macaulay (Adjunct/Music Theory, Orchestration) presented morning and afternoon lectures on “Beethoven: The Later Years” for the Day of Discovery program series of the Elderhostel program at The Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University in July 2008.

Airi Yoshioka (Assistant Professor/Violin) performed a recital to a sold-out audience in June 2008 in New York City, co-sponsored by the SONY Corporation and Japan Foundation. A CD of chamber works by Karen Tanaka and Chen Yi with Dr. Yoshioka as violinist, was published by New World Records, also in June.

This summer Thom King (Adjunct/Voice) sang in and directed a fully-staged English-language production of Puccini's "Tosca" with the High Desert Opera in Grand Junction, Colorado. The setting of the opera was changed from 1800 to 1943, and the role of Scarpia (played by Prof. King) was a Nazi Colonel!

David Kim-Boyle (Assistant Professor/Music Technology) presented a paper, "Network Musics - Play, Engagement and the Democratization of Performance" at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference in Genoa, Italy in June, and two papers - "Spectral Spatialization – An Overview" and "Network Musics - Play, Engagement and the Democratization of Performance" at the International Computer Music Conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland in August. Dr. Kim-Boyle was also a guest artist at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe, Germany in June.

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).

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.

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

In 2008, Anna Rubin (Associate Professor/Compositon) received a commission from Maria Loos for a piece for multiple recorders entitled Banish Gloom!, which was premiered at the Festival of Women Composers, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. A French translation of her article “On Forêt profonde” was published in Portraits polychrome-Francis Dhomont.

A box set of four concerts held at the University of Akron in March 2008, in celebration of Stuart Saunders Smith’s (Professor/Composition) 60th birthday, has been released as a two-compact-disc set by 11 West Records.