News Stories

The group has been chosen to perform at the 2021 festival 

The Butler School of Music’s Longhorn Music Camp will be placed on hiatus for the summer of 2022. This decision was difficult, and not made without careful thought and deliberation; but like many other summer camp programs, we are faced with a complex series of logistical and financial complexities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

"Celebrating lifetime achievements for his work, associate professor Drott of the Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music won the 2020 Dent Medal, a Royal Music Association award recognizing “outstanding contributions to musicology.” Last week, Drott traveled to the U.K. to receive his acknowledgement and deliver a presentation on his recent music research." 

The Butler School warmly welcomes our newest Lecturer in Percussion Ivan Trevino, a Mexican-American composer, percussionist, writer and arts advocate. 

Ivan Valbuena received his Doctorate from the Butler School in 2018.

Cary Peñate was recently selected for one of the prestigious Emerging Voice Fellowships for the 2021-22 year. It comes following the completion of her doctoral degree in ethnomusicology from the Butler School of Music Earlier this year.

The 2021-22 Butler School of Music performance schedule is here! After a year without in-person performances, we are safely welcoming audiences back to our community and getting back to what we love. This year features an array of performances, kicking off Friday, Sept. 10, with the Miró Quartet­­––the Butler School’s quartet in residence since 2003––in Bates Recital Hall.

Photo by, Prensa Latina/Associated Press

Butler School of Music Ethnomusicology Professor Robin D. Moore wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal detailing the role of music in Cuba's political history,  and the protest song, "Patria y Vida," that has become the soundtrack of this summer's demonstrations. “We represent the dignity of an entire people who have been crushed at gunpoint and by meaningless words,” the lyrics read. 

One hundred years ago in a small home in Laredo, Texas, a woman named Maria Antonia Decker lived with her husband and eight children. Decker loved music, especially opera, and listened to Un bel di vedremo, an aria from Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, over and over again. She dreamed of one day visiting the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio to see a show, but the constraints of motherhood, housework and little extra money for travel kept Decker from realizing her dream.  

During her journey through the Butler School of Music, recent alumna Sydney Pérez has kept that story of her great-great-grandmother close to heart.

After playing a song he had written six years ago over and over in his head, Vernon Rust finally got his chance to record it recently at the Mosaic Sound Collective in Austin’s far eastside. He played guitar and sang vocals and was accompanied by recent Butler School of Music alumnus Matthew Gustafson who played cello. It was made possible with funding from the Graduate Music Award from the Presser Foundation, which was awarded to Butler School doctor of musical arts candidate Abbey Young last spring.