Madeline Styskal

Madeline Styskal (b. 1995) is always exploring ways to combine her interests in music and citizen diplomacy, whether through composing, performing, curating, or researching. She is a third-year doctoral student in musicology at the University of Texas at Austin (UT), from which she obtained an M.M. in composition (2022) studying under Yevgeniy Sharlat. Her research interests are in the history of US-USSR musical exchange programs during the Cold War and in avant-garde music of the late Soviet period.

She holds a certificate in composition studies with Vladimir Tarnopolsky from the Moscow State Conservatory (2019-20) and a bachelor's in composition from the Moores School of Music, where she studied with Robert Smith and David Ashley White (2018). A faculty artist of AFA since 2021, she teaches Russian music history, composition, and theory to junior and senior high students from the Greater Houston Area.

Some of her collaborations in composition include a commission by the Kingwood Park High School Chamber Orchestra in 2016; the Veteran's Songbook Project with HGO Community, Grace After Fire, and local female veterans in 2017; writing for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception choir in Moscow (2016-20); and the 2020/23 theatrical-musical production The Women Have Something to Say. Her latest soundscapes album, Kommunalka: a thin-walled memory palace in sound (2022) focuses on creating spatial narratives through evocation and construction of personal and collective sonic memories.