SOMD Alumni

Jamie Weaver
PhD ’06, Music History

Jamie Weaver is from Spokane, Washington, and was raised in the Northwest. She began teaching Music History at SFA in 2008, and she continues to serve there as an associate professor of musicology and coordinator of the musicology area. She holds a Master of Music from TCU, specializing in vocal performance and pedagogy. She earned her Ph.D. in music history, with a secondary area in vocal performance, from the University of Oregon in 2006. As the recipient of an International Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship as well as a University Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship from the University of Oregon, Dr. Weaver conducted her dissertation research in Bologna, Italy, exploring compositional ethics of composers in Florence and in northern Italy during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. While she continues to research compositional ethics and rhetoric in Italian music, her most recent projects explore the intersection between disability studies and music, particularly as these fields impact female musicians, and contributions to the emerging discipline of public musicology. Through invited lectures, innovative pre-concert talks, video presentations, and program notes, she partners with regional symphonies and performing ensembles to make concert music accessible for all members of its growing audiences.

Catherine Solaas
MS ’96, BS ’93, Dance

Catherine Solaas (she/her), MS ’96, BS ’93, Dance, currently serves as Department Chair and Associate Professor of Dance at Austin Community College. She has celebrated more than 30 years as a dancer, choreographer, educator, and arts administrator. At ACC, Solaas initiated a new, internationally recognized certificate program in Somatic Movement Education, collaborated in the development of the State of Texas’ freshman and sophomore level dance curriculum, and spearheaded a paid internship program for dance majors serving Austin’s Title I schools. She produces an annual season of six public dance events, and choreographs and performs original dance works on campus and at dance conferences and festivals. She has presented research on equity in higher education at The League for Innovation in the Community College, National Dance Education Organization, and the Peace and Conflict Studies Symposium. Solaas serves on several advisory committees, as well as the board of directors for the Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company.

Josh Deutsch
MM ’09, Jazz Performance & Composition

Grammy-winning trumpeter/composer Josh Deutsch has established himself as a versatile and unique voice in New York’s music scene. Equally comfortable as a leader and sideman, Deutsch has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, and Asia. Deutsch’s projects include the band Pannonia and the Josh Deutsch / Nico Soffiato Duo. He can also be heard with Lila Downs, Dafnis Prieto Big Band, Sofia Rei, Pedro Giraudo’s Expansions Big Band, the Terraza Big Band, Miho Hazama’s M_Unit, Livio Almeida’s Brazilian Dectet, Grupo Rebolu, Noa Fort, Juancho Herrera, and Niki Pankovits, and has appeared with Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society and the Duke Ellington Big Band directed by Victor Goines. Deutsch has twice led bands as part of the Festival of New Trumpet Music, directed by Dave Douglas, as well as the Earshot Jazz Festival in Seattle and the Outpost Summer Music Festival in Albuquerque. A native of Seattle, Deutsch holds degrees in music from the New England Conservatory of Music and the University of Oregon. He now resides in Queens, NY, where, in addition to performing, he is an active music educator.

Valerie Ifill
MFA ’09, Dance

Valerie Ifill is a dance educator, researcher, and performer focused on the intersections of dance and the community. She currently serves as Dance Program Director and Assistant Teaching Professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia.Ifill earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in dance from the University of Oregon, completed the Independent Study Program at The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and earned her Bachelor of Business Administration degree with a dance minor from Kent State University. Ifill is also certified to teach “Inside-Out Prison Exchange” courses, and recently led a pioneering Inside-Out movement class, “Politics of the Body,” with a group of university students and incarcerated citizens at a women’s correctional facility in Philadelphia.

Ifill’s studio-based work for the college dance student is grounded in sensory-driven improvisational work, builds a strong anatomical foundation for sustainable performance work, and is informed by movement vocabulary from the African Diaspora. Her written research is centered on understanding multiple perspectives through community-based learning, race and power in education, and making dance and movement accessible to everyone.

She continues to perform and choreograph across the country with the TRANSForm Dance Collective (a group of UO SOMD dance alumni that was formed soon after Ifill’s graduation), Ifill Dance Co.|Lab, and performs work by Maria Bauman with New York-based dance company MBDance. In addition to directing the dance program at Drexel University, Ifill directs a dance program for West Philadelphia (Mantua/Powelton Village) residents at the Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships and directs the Youth Performance Exchange Touring Ensemble.

Ifill recently accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Akron in Ohio, where she will serve as Assistant Professor of Dance in the School of Dance, Theatre, and Arts Administration. Her responsibilities will include developing a dance curriculum focused on the African Diaspora. She will also continue an innovative, interdisciplinary project she began at Drexel University called “Black Girls STEAMing Through Dance,” blending dance-making, code, and wearable technology to develop STEAM literacies, STEAM identities, and positive self-concept among African-American elementary and middle school-aged girls.

Todd Nix
BMus ’93, Tuba Performance

Todd Nix is a senior chief musician with the prestigious U.S. Naval Academy Band, where he has been a member for 22 years. He performs with the marching band and ceremonial units, and serves as Operations Division Leading Chief  Petty Officer. Nix has performed for every United States president since 2001, and at commissioning ceremonies for many naval warships, including the U.S.S. Bulkeley, a destroyer which launched from New York soon after the 911 attacks.

A native of Grants Pass, Oregon, and a 1988 graduate of Grants Pass High School, Nix received his Bachelor of Music degree in tuba performance from the University of Oregon in 1993. Nix credits Richard Frazier, his primary teacher at UO and the school’s first full-time performing instructor of tuba and euphonium, with strengthening his work ethic and laying a strong foundation for his musical career. Frazier also introduced Nix to his next musical mentor, Harvey Phillips, who visited UO as a guest artist.  

Nix went on to study under Phillips at the Indiana University School of Music, where he completed a Master of Music in tuba performance and served as a graduate assistant to Daniel Perantoni. Nix also counts Floyd Cooley as an influential teacher.  

Before joining the Navy, Nix performed with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra and Eugene Opera Company, and served as adjunct professor of music at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana. He has been recognized nationally for his ensemble work at both the Fischoff National Chamber Music Festival and the NY Brass Conference, and was awarded second place in the Mock Orchestral Audition Competition held at the International Tuba-Euphonium Conference in 1995.  In addition to his musical career, Nix is active in the sport of rowing and has been an internationally-ranked competitor at indoor rowing championships. He serves as a volunteer coach with the Naval Academy Crew Team and is the program director of Annapolis Junior Rowing.  Nix lives in Annapolis with his wife, Maegan, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy as a Navy intelligence officer and now works at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory after retiring from the military. They are the proud parents of three sons. 

Kelly Kuo
BA, Music and Chinese '96

Kelly Kuo began his musical studies on the violin at age five, and made his debut as a piano soloist with the Walla Walla Symphony five years later. He continued his piano studies as a student at the UO, under the mentorship of professor Dean Kramer, before going on to earn a MMus in piano performance from the prestigious Manhattan School of Music.

Praised by the Cincinnati Enquirer as “a leader of exceptional musical gifts, who has a clear technique on the podium and an impressive rapport with audiences,” Kelly Kuo’s dynamic and collaborative style, along with his fresh approach to programming, have been heralded by critics and audiences alike.

Kuo recently extended his contract through 2021 as Artistic Director of Oregon Mozart Players, having “transformed this chamber group into...a band of professional, enthusiastic and superior musicians, playing confidently as one unit” (The Register Guard). A versatile musician with a diverse repertoire, including over 80 operas, he also continues as Music Director and Conductor of the Butler Opera Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

This season Kuo leads performances of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and Verdi’s Falstaff at the BOC, makes his conducting debut with the Memphis Symphony, and leads six programs for Oregon Mozart Players. Recent conducting engagements have included Lyric Opera of Chicago, Cincinnati Opera, Anchorage Opera, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Ballet Fantastique, Kentucky Opera, Lexington Philharmonic, Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, concert:nova, and New York Harlem Production’s Porgy and Bess in Hamburg, Munich, and Las Palmas, in addition to having curated and conducted the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra’s inaugural Summermusik festival as Interim Music Director. 

An Oregon native and recipient of a 2009 Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistant Award for young conductors, Kuo continues to concertize as a keyboardist as the only living pianist to have studied with two pupils of the Russian virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz. Upcoming keyboard performances include recitals with Avery Fisher prize-winning clarinetist David Shifrin, Cleveland Orchestra’s principal cellist Mark Kosower, violinist Yi-Jia Susanne Hou, and the Zenith Chamber Music Festival. He holds a master’s degree in piano performance from the Manhattan School of Music and is an alumnus of the Houston Grand Opera Studio.
 

Gina Bolles Sorensen 
MFA Dance '08

Gina Bolles Sorensen is an artist and educator who delights in the body’s potential for movement, the mind’s capacity for imagination, and the possibilities that transpire at the intersection of the two. Her choreography has been produced in festivals and concert programs throughout the United States and abroad. She has danced for companies and choreographers in New York, San Francisco, Oregon, and San Diego, including Jesse Zarrit, Yolande Snaith, Elfi Schaefer-Schafroth, Stephan Koplowitz, Jean Isaacs, Elizabeth Swallow, Wallpaper Performance Company, Rita Honka Dance, Strong Current Dance Company, High Release Dance, and many more independent choreographers.

Bolles Sorensen has taught dance, composition, dance history, and world dance forms at festivals and institutions including the American College Dance Festival (Missoula, MT), the University of California San Diego (La Jolla, CA), the University of Oregon (Eugene, OR), San Diego State University (San Diego, CA), Sam Houston State University (Huntsville, TX), Winthrop University (Rock Hill, SC), Johnson C. Smith University (Charlotte, NC), and the Interlochen Arts Camp (Interlochen, MI) to name a few.

In 2007, Bolles Sorensen was awarded a Gary E. Smith Summer Research Grant and a Center for the Study of Women in Society Research Grant to study the classical Indian dance Bharatanatyam in Bangalore, India. In 2008, she was awarded the Georgianne Teller Singer Dean’s Fellowship in recognition of her work as a graduate student and teacher in Dance at the University of Oregon. An excerpt of her thesis entitled “Imagery Ability, Imagery Use, and Learning Style: An Exploratory Study” was published by the Journal of Dance Education in Spring 2009.

Most recently, Bolles Sorensen was the recipient of a 2013 National Artist Teacher Fellowship from the Center for Arts in Education at Boston Arts Academy. She has an MFA in Dance from the University of Oregon and a BA in Mass Media Communication Studies and Political Science from UCLA.

Bolles Sorensen currently teaches dance at the Coronado School of the Arts and Grossmont College, as well as yoga at Bonita Pilates and Yoga. Gina is an Experienced-Registered Yoga Teacher and the founder of Yoga Natyam, an online resource for yoga classes.