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Mark Mazullo,
Associate Professor of Music, is a pianist and music historian with broad
interests in the traditions of Western art music and American popular
music. He received his Ph.D. in musicology in 1999 from the University of Minnesota,
and he holds a Master of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory (Johns Hopkins University).
As a writer on music, Professor Mazullo’s work
has appeared in The Yale Review, The Musical Quarterly, American Music,
Journal of the American Musicological Society, Popular Music, College Music
Symposium, and other publications. Topics of his recent articles have
ranged from the use of American popular songs from the 1950s and 60s in the
films of David Lynch, to the imagery of the “drowned virgin-whore” figure
in the songs of British recording artist PJ Harvey, to the performance
history of the 24 Preludes and Fugues for piano by Dmitri Shostakovich.
This last topic is the subject of Professor Mazullo’s
book in progress, for which he has received numerous grants for travel and
research in Russia, France,
and elsewhere. The book, Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues: Context,
Style, Performance, will be the first in English on this monumental,
widely performed and recorded piano cycle, composed in 1950-51.
As a pianist, Professor Mazullo participates actively in the musical life of
the Twin Cities. In recent years, he has appeared as concerto soloist with
such groups as the St. Paul Civic Symphony, the Civic Orchestra of
Minneapolis, and the Minnesota Philharmonic. He is featured regularly on
the Schubert Club’s Courtroom Concerts Series at the Landmark
Center in downtown St. Paul, and in faculty recitals at Macalester’s Janet
Wallace Fine
Arts Center,
performing with such area musicians as Claudia Chen (pianist), Tom
Rosenberg (cellist), and Mary Horozaniecki
(violinist). He serves on the Board of the Frederic Chopin Society of
Minnesota, which is responsible for bringing several of the world’s leading
piano artists to the Twin Cities each year for solo recitals held at Macalester’s concert hall. Recent seasons of the series
have featured such pianists at Richard Goode, Angela Hewitt, Jonathan Biss, and Mihaela Ursuleasa.
Professor Mazullo
teaches studio piano at Macalester and heads the division of keyboard
studies for the Music Department. He also teaches surveys of Western art
music from the Medieval era to the present, as well as topics courses on
Beethoven, Shostakovich, and American popular music during the Civil Rights
era, among other subjects. He performs often with students’ recent
performances have included the Piano Quintet of Dmitri Shostakovich with
four student string players, the Fantasy in F Minor for piano four-hands by
Franz Schubert, and the Sonata for Flute and Piano by Sergei Prokofiev.
Recent Independent Study projects with students have focused on such
subjects as Wagner’s Ring cycle, the genre of Western Swing in
mid-20th-century American popular music, Russian ballet, and the piano
music of Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Along with his scholarly work, Professor Mazullo maintains a great interest in writing for, and
speaking to, the general population of music lovers. He is known in the
Twin Cities area for his pre-concert lectures at the Ordway Center
for the Performing Arts for concerts by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and
his occasional music reviewing for both the Minneapolis Star Tribune. His
reviews and essays on various musical subjects have also appeared in the
Ruminator Review and the Johns Hopkins Magazine.
You may reach Professor Mazullo by email at <mazullo@macalester.edu> and
by phone at 651-696-6582
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