David Rosenboom will step down as Dean and join the regular faculty of the Herb Alpert School of Music at California Institute of the Arts at the end of the spring 2020 semester.

CalArts Provost Tracie Costantino sent the following note to share the news:

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students,

It is with great appreciation for his almost 30-years of contributions to CalArts that I announce David Rosenboom’s intention to step down from the role of Dean of The Herb Alpert School of Music as of June 30, 2020.

We will begin assembling a search committee and compiling a prospectus for the position and will undertake the search for our next Dean beginning this academic year.

In order to ensure a smooth transition, the new Dean will serve alongside David during the 2019-2020 academic year, with David joining the regular faculty in the School of Music on July 1, 2020, after completing his 30th year as Dean. Quite an accomplishment!

Although my time working with David as Dean of the Herb Alpert School of Music has been brief, it has been an honor and pleasure to learn from his deep knowledge of the history of CalArts, and to witness the care and concern he shows for students, and his commitment to supporting his faculty as educators and artists.

In a meeting with all Music faculty today, we shared thoughts on David’s tenure as Dean and colleagues remarked upon his fair-mindedness, his collaborative style that brings the whole School together in cooperation, and his general benevolence and concern for the well-being of students, staff, and faculty in the School of Music, and at CalArts.

Currently, as the Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in Music, David has carefully stewarded the School of Music since 1990. In addition to his many years as Dean, David also served CalArts as Acting President in 2011.

Before CalArts, he taught at Mills College from 1979 to 1990, where he held the Darius Milhaud Chair and was Professor of Music, Head of the Music Department, and Director of the Center for Contemporary Music. Before Mills, he was founding faculty and a professor in the Music Department at York University in Toronto.

David has had a profound impact on music education at CalArts as well as achieved great acclaim as a pioneer in American experimental music.

Numerous retrospectives celebrating the influence of his work on a global scale have taken place in recent years, including a fifty-year retrospective of his music presented in a series of performances at the new Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2015), a six-month exhibition of his work with brainwave music at Centre Pompidou-Metz in France (2015-2016), a four-month exhibition of his work in computer music at Whitechapel Gallery in London (2015-2016), and a retrospective of his music for piano(s) at Tokyo Opera City Recital Hall (2016).

During the 2017-2018 season his music was presented in a composer-pianist portrait at El Centro de Experimentación del Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a feature of his recent live electronic music with brainwave performers at Le Centquatre in Paris, a performance of his music for piano and electronics at The Annenberg Center in Philadelphia, and in a concert including several new premieres at REDCAT.

His new double-CD anthology with booklet titled “Deviant Resonances — Live Electronic Music with Instruments, Voices and Brains,” which features several CalArts-affiliated performers, is scheduled for release in March 2019.

I am deeply appreciative that we will continue to benefit from David’s wisdom and generous spirit in his role as a faculty member at CalArts well into the future.

Sincerely,

Tracie Costantino
Provost