Tomeka Reid was named one of twenty five MacArthur Fellows for 2022.

Based in Chicago, Tomeka is active as a performer, composer, teacher and band leader. She leads the Tomeka Reid Quartet which released its second album Old New in 2019, and is a member of the trio Hear in Now. In 2022 she was named Jazz String Player of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association for a second time. 

Noël Wan is the Gold Medalist of the 2022 USA International Harp Competition, one of the two most prestigious international harp competitions in the world and held only every three years! She also was awarded the prize for the best performance of the new work in Stage III of the four-round competition held over nine days. The 12th edition brought together 44 contestants from 20 countries in July. Dr.

The University of Illinois School of Music will celebrate its 125th anniversary from April 29 to May 1, 2022, with a weekend of special concerts that demonstrate the talent and range of its students, faculty, alumni, and community performers. Formally established in 1895, the School of Music ranks among the nation’s top music programs and has enriched the Champaign-Urbana community, the State of Illinois, and the nation through musical artistry for generations.

Dr. Joshua Zink (MM in Performance and Literature, 2008) has been named a 2022 Emerging Leaders Award by the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS). Zink has been on the faculty at Carson-Newman University since 2017 and is being recognized for his success as an early-career teacher of singing. To read the full news story, please click here.

Dai-An Liu has been appointed Principal Harp of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Ecuador (OSNE).

Alumna Noël Wan won Second Prize in the 2021 Orford Music Awards held in Quebec, Canada this August. She also was the semi-finals Audience Award winner. Her program featured her own transcriptions of demanding works by J.S. Bach and Leo Brouwer as well as Alexina Louie’s From the Eastern Gate, chosen "especially to represent shared identities as diasporic Asian women." 

Megan Woller (Ph.D. ’14) recently published From Camelot to Spamalot: Musical Retellings of Arthurian Legend on Stage and Screen, with Oxford University Press.

Watch the Spring 2021 School of Music Convocation, streaming on the Illinois Music Youtube Channel.

Scholarship established in his honor.

University of Illinois alum and clarinetist Master Gunnery Sgt. John Mula is a member of the “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, which provided music for the swearing-in ceremony.