The Department of Music is thrilled to announce two new assistant professors. Starting last week, Tomoko Kashiwagi and Micaela Baranello joined the faculty and are hard at work settling into their roles within the Department of Music.

Kashiwagi is not new to the UA campus. Since 2012, she served as instructor of piano and keyboard area coordinator in the Department of Music. Her new position as an assistant professor was granted for her dedication to the department and her commitment to the University of Arkansas. Our faculty and students could not be more pleased with her return.

Kashiwagi earned her B.M., M.M. and Performer Diploma in Piano Performance from Indiana University and a Doctor of Musical Arts in collaborative piano from the University of Texas, Austin. She previously taught at the Austin Chamber Music Center and served as staff pianist and program coordinator for the collaborative piano program at the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas, Austin. Since 2012, she has taught piano and collaborative piano at the University of Arkansas. She has served as the official pianist at numerous conferences, conventions, competitions, and summer programs. Kashiwagi performs regularly nationally and internationally.

The department also welcomed a new musicologist to campus. Micaela Baranello has joined the faculty to further build the department's academic area. She will be teaching in the music history sequence for music majors as well as graduate review courses in music history. She will also offer new seminars in her areas of expertise in opera, musical theatre, and more.

Baranello is a musicologist specializing in 19th- and 20th-century opera. She received a Ph.D. in musicology from Princeton University, where she held a Mellon/ACLS fellowship. She arrives in Arkansas from Smith College, where she was a postdoc and taught courses on topics like music and gender and American musical theater. Her book-in-progress, The Operetta Empire, considers musical theater and national identity in Vienna during the final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her research interests also include Richard Strauss, Wagner, and contemporary opera staging. She is also a freelance contributor to the New York Times — her latest article came out last month.