Dear Mason Music Family,

We are excited to announce our Dewberry School of Music Fall 2025 Concert Series.  Individual tickets are now on sale! 

We hope you will join us for our opening concert of the season on Sunday, September 21 at 3 pm for our Grand Piano Celebration honoring Mason's All-Steinway School and celebrating the 20th Anniversary of our Friends of Music at Mason!  

How thrilled we are to welcome our many new and returning students to our Dewberry School of Music for the upcoming academic year.  We are very pleased to welcome four new adjunct music faculty for our Fall 2025 semester, as highlighted in this newsletter.  How proud we are of our Mason Jazz students and faculty for a successful performance at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy in July! 

We hope to see you at our upcoming Dewberry School of Music concerts and events in the Fall 2025 semester as we share the joy of music. Thank you for your support of our extraordinary music students and faculty. 

Warm regards,

Dr. Linda A. Monson
Director, Dewberry School of Music

Grand Piano Celebration Honoring George Mason's All-Steinway School and the 20th Anniversary of Friends of Music at Mason.

Join us for a spectacular opening of our 2025 Fall Concert season with A Grand Piano Celebration on Sunday, September 21 at 3 p.m. in Mason's Center for the Arts. This concert honors Mason's All-Steinway School and the 20th Anniversary of the Friends of Music at Mason. Outstanding student and faculty artists of the Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music at George Mason University will be on stage to display their marvelous talents. The concert will be led by Dr. Linda Apple Monson, International Steinway Artist. Additional piano faculty artists include Dr. Anna Balakerskaia, Dr. John Healey, and Dr. Eunae Ko Han. Professor Jennifer Casey Cabot, soprano, and guest artist Dr. Kris Monson, bassist, will also perform in this celebratory event.

Duo-pianists Monson & Balakerskaia will perform a world premiere by American composer Scott Wheeler in celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the Friends of Music at Mason. Exciting and dramatic piano works by Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Bizet, Rachmaninoff, Florence Price, Pauline Viardot-Garcia, and William Bolcom will be performed by student and faculty artists! Mason's faculty piano ensemble (8 hands) will also be showcased!

Dr. Connor Mikula is an active performer and teacher in the Washington D.C. area and currently serves as a saxophonist with “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band in Washington, D.C. He joined the organization in 2019 and has performed regularly at the White House as well as in concerts around the D.C. area and throughout the United States.

Originally from the great state of Michigan, he holds degrees from University of Michigan (MM Music Performance) and Michigan State University (DMA, BM Music Performance & Jazz Minor). Dr. Mikula has studied under Dr. Timothy McAllister, Prof. Joe Lulloff, and Dr. Jonathan Nichol.

An avid performer, Dr. Mikula has been a featured soloist at the Severance Music Center, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts. His passion for commissioning new works for the saxophone have led to world premieres at Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School of Music, and multiple NASA conferences, including the 2014 World Saxophone Congress in Strasbourg, France and the 2018 World Saxophone Congress in Zagreb, Croatia.

Dr. Mikula is a passionate educator who is the newly appointed Adjunct Professor of Classical Saxophone in George Mason University's Dewberry School of Music. He has previously taught at Alma College in Alma, Michigan, and is an in-demand masterclass teacher, having given master classes at Northwestern University, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin- Madison, and Michigan State University.

Dr. Patrick LeStrange, Adjunct Applied Faculty in Viola at the Dewberry School of Music at George Mason University, earned the Doctor of Music Interpretation and Master of Music from l’Université de Montréal, as well as a Bachelor of Music from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. His primary teachers included Roberta Crawford, Victoria Chiang, Jutta Puchhammer-Sédillot, as well as string pedagogy studies with Rebecca Henry.

An advocate of the viola and string pedagogy, he is in high demand as a masterclass and strings clinician. Dr. LeStrange serves as strings department chair at Levine Music, Washington DC, where he oversees a thriving music program consisting of private lessons and group offerings. Many of his viola students have gone on to study at prestigious conservatories and universities throughout the country. Dr. Patrick LeStrange was formerly a viola teaching artist at Ithaca College Summer Music Academy, the NY ASTA String Institute- Ithaca College, and guest professor of viola at Binghamton University. At George Mason University, he directed the Summer Viola Bootcamp and has served as a viola teaching artist for many summer programs, including Ovations, Strings Camp, and the Strings Intensive.

Dr. LeStrange is a member of the Georgetown Chamber Players Orchestra, and former violist with the Binghamton Philharmonic. He frequently appears in chamber music concerts throughout the Washington DC area and has performed throughout the United States and Canada. He resides in the Northern Virginia area.

Dr. Torres-Rivera's work centers Puerto Rican, Spanish, and Latin American histories and repertoires, and his methodological lenses include music and meaning (topic theory, semiotics, hermeneutics), music and politics, historiography, decolonial/postcolonial studies, avant-garde/experimentalisms, microhistories, and performance. He has presented his research at the annual meetings for the Society for Music Theory (SMT), the American Musicological Society (AMS), and the Society for American Music (SAM), as well as at conferences and symposiums in Puerto Rico, México, Argentina, Brazil, and Spain. In the field of public scholarship, he has presented concert talks in Germany and Puerto Rico, written and translated content for various online platforms and blogs, and currently serves as the program annotator for the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and the Festival Casals de Puerto Rico. 

He is currently working on a monograph (under contract with Oxford University Press) on the early work of Puerto Rican composer Rafael    Aponte-Ledée (b.1938). By centering five works, this monograph explores issues of politics, esthetics, pedagogy, and technology in various contexts in Spain and Argentina. He has articles published or forthcoming at the Journal of American Musicological Society and American Music. Dr. Torres-Rivera's  ongoing publication projects include an edited volume of essays on Puerto Rican music studies and a second monograph on avant-garde music in Puerto Rico in the late 1960s, and is also working on an essay centered on Auschwitz (1968), a polyartistic work by Francis Schwartz (b.1940). 

Inside and outside of academia, Dr. Torres-Rivera has worked in the production of various artistic and academic events. Most recently at      UMKC-Conservatory he directed “América Festival,” a Latin American music/academic event in collaboration with the Mizzou New Music Initiative, Classical KC, and the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. An active pedagogue, he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, City College of New York (CUNY),  New Jersey City University, and University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory. He holds a B.M. in Violin Performance from the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, a M.M. in Music Theory from Temple University, and a Ph.D. in Music Theory from The Graduate Center, CUNY. 

Professor Elizabeth Hornsby-Graham is the newly appointed adjunct faculty music education strings specialist in the Dewberry School of Music of George Mason University. She is a highly accomplished orchestra teacher with over three decades of experience dedicated to student achievement and program growth in Fairfax County Public Schools. Prof. Hornsby-Graham has a proven record of leadership and mentorship, including coaching teachers, developing curriculum, and leading professional development initiatives. Her career is defined by a passionate commitment to equitable access to quality music education for all students and a strong focus on community engagement. 

Professor Hornsby-Graham's career within the school district began as an Orchestra Teacher, where she grew orchestra programs by over 100%, increased student retention and diversity, and developed high-quality music instruction that led to students earning superior ratings at VMEA music assessments. She also worked to begin the "Instruments for All" program to ensure students had access to quality instruments. She later transitioned into the Orchestra Resource Teacher role, where she provided individualized coaching to teachers, developed new curriculum and resources, and facilitated professional development for instrumental music teachers across the district. She is also recognized for her inclusive teaching practices, having attained fluency in Cued Speech to provide direct instruction to students in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing program. 

A dedicated advocate for the arts, Professor Hornsby-Graham was a founder of the Fairfax Arts Coalition for Education (FACE) to advocate for arts funding in Fairfax County. She was also the recipient of the Virginia String Teachers Association's 2024 Distinguished Service Award. She holds a Master of Education in Teacher Leadership from the American College of Education and a Bachelor of Music in Music Education from the University of Rhode Island.

Members of the George Mason Jazz Studies department (students and faculty) traveled to Italy July 9-19, 2025 to participate in the Umbria Jazz Festival. Starting in Milan, the group toured south to Florence, Sienna (Tuscany region), Perugia (home of the Umbria Jazz Festival), over to Ancona, on the east coast (on the Adriatic Sea), Lazio (Trevignano Romano, Lake Bracciano) and finally Rome.  

The "Combo Italia" performed at four festivals throughout Italy:  Serra di Rappalano (12th Century medieval village in Tuscany), Umbria (established in 1973 and one of the biggest Jazz festivals in Europe), Ancona Jazz Festival (established in 1973), and the Fondazione Entroterre music festival on beautiful Lake Bracciano.  

When not performing, the students enjoyed visiting historic Roman towns, sight-seeing in Milan and Florence, visiting museums including the Uffizi and Vatican, luncheon at the Madonna Bella Winery and Olive Oil Farm in Tuscany, hanging at the beach on the Adriatic Sea, walking throughout Rome, jamming with Grammy Winner Samara Joy, and of course, lots of gelato! 

Dr. Xinyu Zhang (pictured with her students above) has recently been appointed as a Piano Faculty Member at Shandong University of Arts. She earned her Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in Piano Performance from George Mason University under Steinway Artist Dr. Linda Apple Monson, complementing earlier degrees from SUNY Fredonia (MM) and Xinghai Conservatory of Music (BM).

Shandong University of Arts, established in 1958 as one of China’s first six art universities, is a prestigious hub for higher education in fine arts, music, and performing arts, championing cultural heritage and creative innovation.  Dr. Zhang maintains an active performance career, presenting solo, chamber, and lecture recitals in both the US and China. Her artistry has been recognized with awards, including 1st Prize at the Charleston World Music Competition (2023) and 1st Prize (Professional Category) plus the Best Technique Award at the World Grand Prix International Music Contest (2023).

Teaching lies at the heart of Dr. Zhang's work. Under her guidance, numerous students have achieved success in piano competitions, leading to Dr. Zhang receiving multiple Outstanding Instructor awards.