Music Department
University of Wisconsin Whitewater
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Melissa Reiser
Lecturer
OFFICE: CA 2006PHONE: (262) 472-1217
EMAIL: reiserm@uww.edu
Education
B.M. Eastman School of Music; B.A. University of Rochester; M.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison
Bio
Currently in the dissertation phase of a PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Melissa Reiser has been studying the music and festivals of the nomadic Tuareg people of northern Mali for the past several years. During a trip to Mali in January of 2005, funded in part by the Benward Travel Award, Melissa worked with local musicians in Timbuktu and Gao and traveled to the Festival au Desert in Mali's remote northern Saharan region to conduct fieldwork on Tuareg festival music. Her fieldwork culminated in a master's thesis portraying the Festival au Desert within the larger context of globalization, the music industry, and the international trend of world music festivals both historically and today.
Well-versed in many musical genres, Ms. Reiser has long held an acute interest in world music and has been playing saxophone with the klezmer ensemble Yid Vicious for the past six years. The band's third CD, The Seventh Schlemiel, won Best World Music Album at the 2006 Madison Area Music Awards, marking the band's third consecutive MAMA award since 2004. Most recently, Yid Vicious had the opportunity to travel to Japan as ambassadors of Wisconsin for its Wisconsin-Chiba Sister State program. As a classical musician, Ms. Reiser has performed and premiered works in solo as well as chamber music settings throughout France, China, and the US. She can currently be heard in the contemporary ensemble Present Music, the Milwaukee Symphony, and the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra. In such venues as the Overture Center of Madison, the American Church in Paris, the Milwaukee Museum of Contemporary Art, and the George Eastman House in New York, Ms. Reiser has avidly supported new music leading to the commissioning and premiering of works by such composers as Gunther Schuller, Michael Horvath, Larry Fritts, and Roscoe Mitchell.
Previously the Adjunct Professor of Saxophone at Luther College in Iowa, Ms. Reiser has been a doctoral teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she has taught introductory classes in world music for the past four years. Ms. Reiser graduated with distinction from the Eastman School of Music while earning an additional degree in European History from the University of Rochester, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude. She subsequently attended the Conservatoire National de Region de Boulogne-Billancourt in Paris, France and graduated with the highest honor, a First Prize. A recipient of numerous grants, Ms. Reiser's music education has been supported by the Frank Huntington Beebe Grant, the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship, the Joseph P. O'Hern Phi Beta Kappa Scholarship, the Rochester National Grant, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison University Fellowship.