Hugh Hodgson School of Music names four tenure-track educators for 2017-2018

Four highly sought-after music educators and performers will take on new faculty roles at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music in the 2017-2018 academic year.

David Fung and Emily Koh join the faculty at the University of Georgia’s music school, and current Hodgson School professors Alison Farley and Liza Stepanova will step into new positions.

“We are so proud of the faculty we’ve assembled here,” said Dale Monson, director of the School of Music. “These four people are world-class educators and performers, and they are strong additions to the University of Georgia and the School of Music.”

Farley, Fung, Koh and Stepanova will be tenure-track assistant professors: Farley in music education, Fung and Stepanova in piano and Koh in composition. Farley, Koh and Stepanova will assume these new roles in the 2017 fall semester, with Fung joining the School in Spring 2018.

Prior to her 2016 appointment at UGA, Alison Farley was a lecturer of music education at the University of Washington (UW) and a research coordinator at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at UW. Her research interests include psychology of music, student-directed learning, teacher education and perception and performance of written notation. Farley has presented her research at international, national and state conferences.

David Fung, the first piano graduate of the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles and a recent Yale Ph.D. graduate, has won numerous international music competitions and performed as soloist with the Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Melbourne Symphony, Sydney Symphony, and many others. Fung 

Emily Koh is a recent Ph.D. graduate (Music Composition and Theory) of Brandeis University, and taught at Harvard and Brandeis Universities, and Walnut Hill School for the Arts. Described as “the future of composing” by The Straits Times of Singapore, she is the recipient of awards such as the Yoshiro Irino Memorial Prize, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and first place in the Prix D'Ete and PARMA Student Composer competitions.

Liza Stepanova, a Hodgson School faculty member since 2015, has established herself as a leading educator and performer. In the 2016-17 season alone, Liza Stepanova has performed at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Spivey Hall, Kravis Center, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, on tour in Israel, at the Copenhagen Summer Music Festival, and with New York Philharmonic Ensembles.

The Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia is a rising national leader in musical education and performance. With over 300 undergraduate and 200 graduate students, the School of Music trains the music performers, educators, scholars, composers and therapists of tomorrow with world-class facilities, unparalleled instruction and hundreds of performance opportunities each year.