2018 - 2019 Officers

Blake Ritchie, President 

Blake is a third year PhD student in the music theory department. She received her bachelor's degree from Stephen F. Austin State University and her master's degree from the University of Oklahoma. Her master's thesis is titled "More Than A Key: A Semiotic Analysis of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 8." At OU she was a GA for a variety of undergraduate music theory and aural skills courses. At Rutgers she serves as a part-time lecturer in music theory. Her research interests include feminist theory and semiotics, with a specific interest in the narrative structure of Russian Modernist composers. 

Albert Bellefeuille, President

Albert is a PhD student in musicology, working under Dr. Cypess, as well as a historical keyboardist, director of the Rutgers Baroque Players, and a musicological sceptic who dedicates his research to the reunification of musical performance and scholarship. He served on the 2019 RUMS Conference Committee and was the designer of its program. He has served in various capacities for student organizations at Oberlin College and Conservatory, including a term as a Student Senator. 

Gwenyvere Ferlazzo, Secretary 

Gwenyvere is continuing at Rutgers University as a first-year PhD student in Music Theory starting Fall 2019. They recently completed an MA in music theory from Rutgers University, and hold a BM in bassoon performance from Oberlin Conservatory (’16). At the fifth annual RUMS conference, they chaired a session focused on popular music. At the 2017 SMT conference, they co-presented the paper “Textual Norms and Deformations in Beatles’ Bridge Sections 1963–67” with David Heetderks. Their research interests include 21st-century pop music, vocality, and American serialism. 

Zhuo Zhao, Treasurer

Zhuo holds Piano Performance Bachelor’s degree from Inner Mongolia University, China; Music Theory Master’s degree in New England Conservatory of Music, Boston. She is currently pursuing Doctoral degree in Rutgers University. Zhao has done many researches on both tonal and post-tonal music. During her study in New England Conservatory, Zhao had received merit scholarship and did lots of analysis on Beethoven’s piano sonatas. She also did narrative and analysis on Chopin’s four Ballades as well as the influence of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier on Chopin’s works. Vocal music in French tradition is another branch in her research during this period of time. For post-tonal music, Oliver Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, and Steve Reich are her most favorite composers and she did large amount of work on the rhythmic unity in Steve Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians. Right now in Rutgers, Zhao focuses mainly on the research on contemporary music and explores diversities of compositional techniques in the twentieth century.

Dr. Christopher Doll, Faculty Advisor

Christopher Doll, Chancellor's Scholar and Associate Professor, came to Rutgers in 2007, after receiving his PhD with Distinction from Columbia University. He teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in music theory, analysis, composition, and the history of popular music. He was a fellow at the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music (Pop and Jazz, 2008), and taught courses at Columbia, Stony Brook University, the Barnard College Pre-College, and the University of Cincinnati (CCM). His scholarly work covers topics ranging from Bach to Babbitt, and his monograph Hearing Harmony: Toward a Tonal Theory for the Rock Era was published by the University of Michigan Press in 2017.