Boston University College of Fine Arts Appoints Six Professors, Two Visiting Professors
From receiving MacArthur fellowships to writing for The Tonight Show, CFA’s newest faculty members capture the spirit of artistic excellence at BU
Boston University College of Fine Arts Appoints Six Professors, Two Visiting Professors
From receiving MacArthur fellowships to writing for The Tonight Show, CFA’s newest faculty members capture the spirit of artistic excellence at Boston University.
Boston University College of Fine Arts (CFA) is pleased to announce the addition of full-time professors who will be joining the arts faculty at Boston University this fall.
Boston University School of Music welcomes MacArthur Fellow Matthew Aucoin as Visiting Professor of Composition and Conducting; Guggenheim Fellow and contemporary composer Yotam Haber as Associate Professor of Music, Composition & Music Theory; seasoned conductor Joshua Roach as Assistant Professor of Music and Boston University’s new Wind Ensemble Director; and musician and writer Dan DiPiero as Assistant Professor of Music, Musicology & Ethnomusicology. Joining the Boston University School of Theatre faculty is director and writer Jim Fagan as Assistant Professor of Directing. Another MacArthur Fellow, painter and installation artist Anna Schuleit Haber, joins Boston University School of Visual Arts as Visiting Assistant Professor, Painting.
Chris Edwards, Artistic Director of Actors’ Shakespeare Project and formerly a Senior Lecturer of Theatre, has been appointed as an Assistant Professor of Theatre following a national search. Vicky Mogollón Montagne has been hired as an Assistant Professor of Music, Musicology and Ethnomusicology. Dr. Mogollón Montagne will spend the 2025 – 2026 year as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago and will be in residence at BU in 2026 – 2027.
“Our newest faculty are extraordinary—extremely accomplished—individuals with a sincere interest in mentoring the next generation of artists and arts leaders.”
Matthew Aucoin
Visiting Professor of Composition and Conducting
Recently featured in the Boston Globe, Matthew Aucoin is an American composer, conductor, and writer, and a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. He is a co-founder of the pathbreaking American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) and was the Los Angeles Opera’s Artist in Residence from 2016 to 2020.
Aucoin’s orchestral and chamber music has been performed, commissioned, and recorded by such leading artists and ensembles as Yo-Yo Ma, the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Roomful of Teeth, and the Brentano Quartet. In the summer of 2023, the MET Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, featured Aucoin’s orchestral work “Heath” on its first European tour in several decades.
His newest music-theater work, “Music for New Bodies,” is a vocal symphony created in collaboration with the director Peter Sellars, based on poetry by Jorie Graham. In the summer of 2025, Aucoin conducts Sellars’s production of “Music for New Bodies,” featuring AMOC, at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall and the Tanglewood Music Festival. The work was originally commissioned by the Los Angeles Opera, the American Modern Opera Company, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.
Aucoin is also well-known for his operas, which include “Eurydice,” “Crossing,” and “Second Nature.” These works have been produced at the Metropolitan Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Boston Lyric Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Canadian Opera Company, among others. The Metropolitan Opera’s recording of “Eurydice” was nominated for a Grammy in 2023.
His upcoming projects include the orchestral song cycle “Song of the Reappeared,” composed for the soprano Julia Bullock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; a new song cycle for Roomful of Teeth, commissioned by Little Island; and an opera based on Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons,” commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera.
Yotam Haber
Associate Professor of Music, Composition & Music Theory
His music hailed by New Yorker critic Alex Ross as “deeply haunting,” Yotam Haber was born in Holland and grew up in Israel, Nigeria, and the American Midwest. He is a recipient of a 2022 commission from Chamber Music America, the winner of the 2022 Third Annual Henri Lazarof International Commission Prize, the winner of the 2021 Benjamin Hadley Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2020 Azrieli Music Prize, a 2017 Koussevitzky Commission for the Library of Congress, a 2013 Fromm Music Foundation commission, a 2013 NYFA award, the 2008 Rome Prize and a 2005 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.
After an undergraduate degree in composition from Indiana University, he completed a DMA at Cornell, as well as completing the year-long course on live electronics with Alvise Vidolin and Adriano Guarnieri at the Milan Conservatory.
He has received grants and fellowships from Civitella Ranieri, the MAP Fund, New Music USA, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation, Yaddo, Bogliasco, MacDowell, the Hermitage, ASCAP, the Copland House, Aspen Music Festival and Tanglewood.
In 2015, Haber’s first monographic album of chamber music, Torus (Naxos), was hailed by New York’s WQXR as “a snapshot of a soul in flux – moving from life to the afterlife, from Israel to New Orleans – a composer looking for a sound and finding something powerful along the way.” His second album featuring Talea Ensemble, Bloodsnow, was released on Sideband Records in fall of 2023.
Before joining the BU faculty, Haber served as Associate Professor of Composition at UMKC Conservatory where he also co-directed and founded a music education program at Lansing Correctional Facility. He was a 2023-2024 Fulbright Distinguished Senior at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. He is Artistic Director Emeritus of MATA, the non-profit organization founded by Philip Glass that has, since 1996, been dedicated to commissioning and presenting new works by young composers from around the world. His music is published by RAI Trade.
Joshua Roach
Assistant Professor of Music; BU Wind Ensemble Director
Prior to joining the faculty at BU School of Music, Joshua Roach taught at a myriad of institutions across the United States, including The Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, The College of New Jersey, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Peru State College, and California Lutheran University. He has provided clinics to bands and orchestras from across the country and has served as guest conductor for the Los Angeles Winds, cover conductor for Pacific Symphony, and assistant conductor for the Young Musician’s Foundation Debut Orchestra and the Downey Symphony Orchestra. As an honor band and honor orchestra conductor, Roach has led groups in California, New Jersey, New York, and Nebraska. Internationally, he has worked with the Irvine Young Concert Artists in Korea and China and also as assistant conductor for the Landesjugendorchester of Baden-Württemberg, a highly selective youth orchestra in Southern Germany.
Before pursuing teaching full-time in higher education, Roach resided in Los Angeles, where he was the music director of the Pacific Symphony Youth Wind Ensemble, instrumental coach for the “Grammy Signature School Award” Diamond Bar High School, and orchestra manager for the USC Thornton School of Music. For eleven years, he spent his summers teaching at the Idyllwild Arts Summer Program where he worked with domestic and international middle and high school students. From 2015-2017, he was on the brass staff for the Phantom Regiment drum and bugle corps.
Ensembles in Southern California, Michigan, Ohio, and New Jersey have performed Roach’s compositions and arrangements, and his television music has been played on network broadcast shows such as Sport Science, Crime 360, Project Runway, and Last American Cowboy. He has assisted in productions by Turner Classic Films, PBS, Fox, Universal, and DreamWorks. In addition to the works available on his website, he is also published by Murphy Music Press.
Roach is a member of the National Association for Music Educators, the College Band Directors National Association, and is an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi. At the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, he earned a bachelor of music degree in performance, graduate certificate in scoring for motion pictures and television, and a master of music degree in instrumental conducting. At the University of Michigan, he earned a doctoral degree in wind conducting. Roach’s primary conducting teachers and mentors have been Michael Haithcock, Larry Livingston, Carl St.Clair, H. Robert Reynolds and Sharon Lavery. He studied composition with Frederick Lesemann, Jack Smalley, and David Spear. He has studied trumpet with Boyde Hood, Timothy Morrison, Russell Plylar, Judith Saxton, and Mark Niehaus.
Dan DiPiero
Assistant Professor of Music, Musicology & Ethnomusicology
Dan DiPiero is a musician, writer, and Assistant Professor of Music at Boston University. His research focuses on the affective connections between aesthetics and politics, with a particular emphasis in U.S. improvised and popular music.
Dan is the author of Big Feelings: Queer and Feminist Indie Rock After Riot Grrrl, forthcoming with the Tracking Pop series at University of Michigan Press. The first academic monograph to seriously consider feminist indie rock from beyond the 1990s, Big Feelings discusses bands like Soccer Mommy, Indigo De Souza, Vagabon, The Ophelias, SASAMI, and other young artists who are remaking what rock music means in the present moment. It also situates these musicians in essential socio-cultural contexts, helping readers understand how the music matters, and looping in the voices of fans along the way.
Dan’s first book, Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life (University of Michigan Press, 2022), is an interdisciplinary exploration of improvisation as it appears across contexts. Through a series of nested comparisons, it aims to explicate a nuanced understanding of what improvisation is, how it appears, and what it helps us to think about, socially, musically, and politically. Contingent Encounters was a finalist for the International Association for the Study of Popular Music Book Prize in 2023.
A fierce advocate for popular music studies, Dan is passionate about working in community both in and beyond the academy. In 2022, Dan co-founded the Music and Sound Studies Working Group at the Cultural Studies Association, remains active in the Popular Music Study Group of the American Musicological Society, and currently serves as the secretary of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (US). They regularly present research at conferences such as IASPM, the American Musicological Society, the American Studies Association, the Pop Conference, and more. With Christine Capetola, Dan co-edited a special issue of the journal American Music Perspectives; featuring the work of graduate students and early career scholars, “Sound and Affect in Times of Crisis” was published in early 2023.
An award-winning teacher, Dan has taught interdisciplinary courses across musicology and the humanities. Prior to joining BU, he taught at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Ithaca College, Miami University, and the Ohio State University, where he earned his PhD in the Department of Comparative Studies in 2019. They also hold degrees from the California Institute of the Arts (MA, MFA) and Capital University’s Conservatory (BM). Their principal drum teachers are Joe La Barbera, Bob Breithaupt, and Bill Ransom.
Jim Fagan
Assistant Professor of Directing
Jim Fagan is a director and writer — as well as a producer, actor, editor, and designer — whose eclectic career spans stage, screen, and tiny pocket screen. His passion for new work, comedy, and large-scale collaborations has led to many career highlights: writing for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon; directing and producing for Comedy Central and Live From Lincoln Center; directing Off-Broadway and regionally; writing and directing for a new sketch series for Adult Swim currently in production; and assisting on the New York Philharmonic’s acclaimed Sweeney Todd starring Emma Thompson and Audra McDonald.
Jim’s theater directing credits span houses of all sizes in New York, regional theaters, universities, festivals, and new work incubators. Highlights include the aforementioned Sweeney Todd (Emmy, Special Class Program — which included a working rehearsal with Stephen Sondheim himself), assistant directing for Roundabout Theatre Company and Guild Hall, directing comedy shows at Upright Citizens Brigade NY/LA, Symphony Space galas honoring the late Hal Prince, and productions on Boston stages including Apollinaire Theatre, SpeakEasy Stage Company, and the Boston Theater Marathon. His original works — including the short play Love Always (published and produced internationally) and the recent climate-fiction The Sound (Oxford University’s climate magazine Anthroposphere) — reflect his commitment to bold comedic storytelling and new work that crosses genres and forms.
On screen, Jim’s directing and producing work ranges from prime-time to late-night TV, capturing live theater, docu-series, short films, and branded comedy. In addition to writing for The Tonight Show, he has written, directed, and produced dozens of digital series for Comedy Central, over 100 episodes of The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, ABC’s prime-time People’s List (starring Jerry O’Connell), the hit docuseries Fallen Idols (#1 on Max and now filming its second season), and marquee events for Live From Lincoln Center (Nathan Lane’s The Nance, NY Philharmonic’s Show Boat, Danny Elfman’s Music from the Films of Tim Burton). He co-founded New York Picture Company to create original and branded comedy, and as part of Comedy Central’s digital team won multiple Webby and Shorty Awards, including Digital Media Company of the Year.
As a committed educator and mentor, Jim has taught directing, acting, and industry courses for the MFA program at the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University, as well as workshops, lectures, and mentorships with Boston College, Babson College, Tufts University, Ish Entertainment, ACT Two Mentorship, Entertainment to Affect Change, and more. As head of the Creators Program at Comedy Central, Jim led a team of young comedians who have gone on to star on Saturday Night Live, write for The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, perform for Netflix and Adult Swim, and earn major awards and national distribution at the Sundance Film Festival and beyond.
Combining eclectic training from The Actors Studio Drama School, Boston College, the British American Drama Academy at Oxford University, and the Upright Citizens Brigade, Jim brings a diverse toolkit to his rehearsal rooms and classrooms alike. A passionate advocate for new work and collaborative spaces, he is a proud member of the Writers Guild of America East, an Associate Member of the Society of Directors and Choreographers, and SAG-eligible.
Anna Schuleit Haber
Visiting Assistant Professor, Painting
A Radcliffe Institute Fellow and MacArthur Fellow, Anna Schuleit Haber is a painter and installation artist whose works range from public and museum installations, to large-scale temporal projects in forests, on uninhabited islands, and in psychiatric institutions. Her media have included extensive sound systems, live sod, thousands of flowers and plants, floating mirrors, a web of telephones, typography and daily newspapers, as well as neuroscience technologies. She was named a MacArthur Fellow for work that has “conceptual clarity, compassion, and beauty.”
Anna has served as a visiting artist at Brown University, MIT School of Architecture, Smith College, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, The New School, Brandeis, University of Michigan, McGill University, Kansas City Art Institute, RISD, Boston University, Mass Art, Pratt, Bowdoin, and Syracuse University. She has been a fellow at Yaddo, MacDowell, The Hermitage, Blue Mountain Center, Banff Center, and Bogliasco. Recent projects include commissions in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark, and other architectural settings in the US.
Her works are included in private collections in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia, in the Vehbi Koç Foundation in Istanbul, as well as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Anna holds degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and Darmouth College.
Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized institution of higher education and research. With more than 34,000 students, it is the fourth-largest independent university in the United States. BU consists of 17 schools and colleges, along with a number of multi-disciplinary centers and institutes integral to the University’s research and teaching mission. In 2012, BU joined the Association of American Universities (AAU), a consortium of 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada. Learn more at bu.edu.
Established in 1954, Boston University College of Fine Arts (CFA) is a community of artist-scholars and scholar-artists who are passionate about the fine and performing arts, committed to diversity and inclusion, and determined to improve the lives of others through art. With programs in Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, CFA prepares students for a meaningful creative life by developing their intellectual capacity to create art, shift perspective, and think broadly. CFA offers a wide array of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs, as well as a range of online degrees and certificates. Learn more at bu.edu/cfa.
Founded in 1872, the School of Music combines the intimacy and intensity of traditional conservatory-style training with a broad liberal arts education at the undergraduate level, and elective coursework at the graduate level. The school offers degrees in performance, conducting, composition and theory, musicology, music education, and historical performance, as well as Artist and Performance diplomas and a certificate program in its Opera Institute.
The School of Theatre at Boston University College of Fine Arts offers conservatory-style education for the study of acting, stage management, design, production, and all aspects of the theatre profession within the setting of a major research university. The School of Theatre seeks to provide students with opportunities for artistic growth through a rigorous curriculum, professional connections, and an emphasis on collaboration and new work.
Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts prepares students to think seriously, to see critically, to make intensely, and to act with creative agency in the contemporary world. The School of Visual Arts merges the intensive studio education of an art school with the opportunities of a large urban university, and is committed to educating the eye, hand, and mind of the artist. With rigorous graduate and undergraduate fine art programs that are rooted in studio practice, CFA School of Visual Arts provides highly motivated students with programs in the bedrock disciplines of the fine arts coupled with a vast array of electives and liberal arts opportunities.