Collegium Musicum

The Collegium Musicum is one of Columbia University's leading choral ensembles and has been a part of University life since the mid-1950s.

The group is connected to Columbia's core curriculum, traditionally singing Josquin's Ave Maria...virgo serena for Music Humanities classes. Although in the past the Collegium has devoted itself to the performance of music of the middle ages and Renaissance—that by composers like Machaut, Josquin, Palestrina, Ockeghem, Tallis, and Monteverdi—in recent years the Collegium has broadened its repertoire to embrace works of all historical epochs, including 20th-century and contemporary music.


The director of Collegium Musicum for the 2023-2024 academic year is Justin Gregg (jtg2141 [at] columbia.edu).

Auditions for the Spring 2024 semester are now closed. Stay tuned for updates if you are interested in auditioning in the Fall.

Please mark your calendars for our Spring concert, which will take place at 7 PM on Friday, April 26th in St. Paul's Chapel! More information will be posted here as the concert approaches.

Upcoming

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Check out our event archives and back here soon for the latest events.
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Events Archive

1969–1970

1970–1971

1971–1972

2001–2002

2002–2003

2003–2004

2004–2005

2006–2007

2007–2008

2008–2009

2009–2010

2010–2011

2012–2013

2015–2016

2017–2018

2019–2020

2021–2022

2022–2023

History

The Collegium Musicum has been performing for the Columbia community for nearly sixty years. Founded in the mid-1950s, the Collegium was first conceived as an opportunity for graduate students in musicology to experience early music in a performance context that was tightly integrated with the academic curriculum.

Previous directors have founded or are currently directors of notable choral ensembles, including Capella Nova (Richard Taruskin), Pomerium (Alexander Blachly), and Anonymous 4 (Susan Hellauer, also director of the Collegium Musicum at Queen's College), and Eric Rice (the Collegium Musicum of the University of Connecticut). Historic recordings of the Collegium can still be found at Minstrel Records.

Lineage of Directorship 

  • Unknown - 1955–1969
  • Noah Greenberg - 1957
  • Harold Brown - 1958–1961
  • Robert Croan - 1957–1958
  • Stoddard Lincoln - 1958
  • Henry Bloch - 1959–1962
  • Cecil Isaac - 1959–1961
  • Austin Clarkson - 1959–1961
  • Peter Flanders - 1960–1962
  • J Newman - 1961
  • Hendrik van der Werf - 1962–1963
  • Walter Hilse - 1965
  • Kenneth Cooper - 1967
  • Richard Taruskin - 1969–1971
  • Alexander Blachly - 1971–1973
  • Paul Hawkshaw - 1976–1977
  • Robert Myers - 1977–1978
  • Peter Lefferts - 1979
  • Susan Hellauer - 1979–1981
  • Lucy Cross - 1981–1982
  • Mary Monroe - 1983
  • Wendy Powers - 1983–1984
  • Michael Rogan - 1985–1986
  • Mark Ettinger - 1986
  • Gregory Salmon - 1986–1988
  • Angela Yeung - 1988–1990
  • Susanna Lodato - 1993–1994
  • Eric Rice - 1997–1998
  • Ramin Arjomand - 2000
  • David Lyczkowski - 2001–2003
  • Ryan Dohoney - 2004–2005
  • Michel Galante
  • Sean Parr - 2006–2008
  • Amber Youell - 2008–2009
  • Michael Shaw - 2009–2010
  • Mahir Cetiz - 2011–2013
  • Matthew Ricketts
  • Anne Levitsky
  • Preston Smith
  • Evelyn Troester DeGraf

  • Russell O'Rourke
  • Justin Gregg
  • Liz Kiger

 

Eric Rice

Eric Rice (PhD, Historical Musicology, 2002), is an Associate Professor of Music History at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. A musicologist and conductor, Dr. Rice is a specialist in the history and performance of music composed before 1750.  He  teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in music history, notation, and historical performance, and he also serves as a member of the Medieval Studies faculty.

more info...

Ramin Amir Arjomand

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Ramin Amir Arjomand is an Iranian-American composer, pianist, conductor, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. His composition teachers include Stephen Jaffe, Gheorghe Costinescu, Fred Lerdahl, Jonathan Kramer, and Tristan Murail. His concert music has been commissioned and/or performed by Speculum Musicae, So Percussion Ensemble, the New York Virtuoso Singers, the Cassatt Quartet, TAK Ensemble, the Columbia Collegium Musicum, and numerous independent ensembles and soloists in venues throughout the United States.

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Ryan Dohoney

Ryan Dohoney (PhD, Musicology 2009) has been  Assistant Professor of Musicology at Northwestern University's  Bienen School of Music since Fall 2013. Dr. Dohoney was previously Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Kansas (2012–2013), and faculty fellow in music at Colby College (2011–2013).

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Michel Galante

Composer/conductor Michel Galante is the founder and artistic director of the Argento New Music Project. He has guest conducted the Royal Irish Academy of Music, St. Peterburg Symphony, St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic, Moscow Symphony, Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, Fort Worth Symphony, Janáček Philharmonic, Artes National Orchestra, Decoda Ensemble, Ergo Ensemble, Ensemble Courage, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, TACTUS, Cornell University Chorus, Dessoff Choir, and Monday Evening Concerts Ensemble, amongst many other ensembles.

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Sean Parr

Sean Parr is a 2010 alumnus of Columbia's PhD program in Historical Musicology.  He is currently an Assistant Professor of Music , in the Dept. of Fine Arts, at St. Anselm College. 

For current information please visit his faculty page.

 

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Amber Youell

Amber Youell is an Executive Team Member of Morningside Opera.  She is a mezzo-soprano and 18th-century scholar who loves wigs and coloratura.  In October 2012, she completed her PhD in historical musicology from Columbia University, with a dissertation on opera, fashion, money, and politics at the court of Empress Maria Theresia. For Morningside's 2009 production of Alcide al bivio, Amber constructed a performance score from manuscript and acted as dramaturg.

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Mahir Cetiz

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Mahir Cetiz is a Core Lecturer in Music Humanities. Born in Ankara, Turkey in 1977, he received his undergraduate degree in music performance in 1998 from Ankara State Conservatory, where he studied cello, piano and composition. Following his undergraduate studies, Cetiz earned his master's degree in composition from the University of Memphis (U.S.A.) and in conducting from Hacettepe University (Turkey). In the year 2000, he won a scholarship from British Council, which enabled him to continue his studies with Anthony Gilbert, at "Royal Northern College of Music".

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Anne Levitsky

Lecturer in Music

Website

Anne Adele Levitsky is a scholar and musician living in New York City. She is a graduate of Stanford University and earned her PhD in Historical Musicology from Columbia University in May 2018. She is a Lecturer at Columbia for the 2018-2019 academic year, and has also taught at Stony Brook University. As an academic, she is interested in medieval vernacular song and Old French and Occitan poetry and narrative literature.

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Evelyn Troester Degraf

Ghostlight Chorus

Dr. Evelyn Troester DeGraf is the choral director and cantor at Sacred Hearts & St. Stephen Church in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, as well as the founder and artistic director of the internationally-acclaimed chamber choir GHOSTLIGHT, an ensemble she guided to prize-winning performances at the 2015 International Chamber Choir competition in Marktoberdorf, Germany. A versatile musician, conductor, and music educator, Dr.

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Russell O'Rourke

Core Lecturer, Music Humanities

Russell O’Rourke is a Core Lecturer in Music Humanities at Columbia University, where he earned his PhD in Historical Musicology in 2020. Since 2021, he has also been a member of the 

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Justin Gregg

PhD Student in Historical Musicology

Justin Gregg is a PhD candidate in Historical Musicology at Columbia University, where he began in the Fall of 2018. His research broadly revolves around the intersections between music and European politics during the interwar period; he is working on a dissertation titled “Mahler, Politicized: Musical Diplomacy and Internationalism in the 1920 Mahler Festival,” under the guidance of Prof. Walter Frisch.

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Liz Kiger

Director of Collegium Musicum

Liz Kiger is a Turkish-American non-binary soprano vocalist, violinist, and opera director specializing in Baroque performance practice. They are the founder and director of the Brooklyn Telemann Chamber Society, one of the first primarily digital opera companies, focused on providing LGBTQIA emerging artists with opportunities reinterpreting Baroque operas as feature films, thereby bringing opera to new audiences through inclusion and accessibility. Their work with BTCS has been featured on numerous podcasts and most notably via @360ofopera and OperaWire.com. 

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