Michigan Muse Winter 2025 > Alumni Awards
2024 Alumni Award Recipients
Presented by the School of Music, Theatre, & Dance Alumni Board
HALL OF FAME AWARDS
Rachel Childers
Michigan native Rachel Childers (BM ’03, MM ’06, horn) has been a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) since 2011, the first female member of the BSO brass section. As second horn of the BSO, she occupies the John P. II and Nancy S. Eustis chair. Prior to the BSO, Childers was the acting assistant principal/utility horn of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. She also held several positions in orchestras throughout California. Childers was in the first class of horn players admitted to the Colburn School, in Los Angeles, where she studied with David Jolley and David Krehbiel. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at SMTD, where she studied with Sören Hermansson. During her time at U-M she enjoyed performing with both the University Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Band, where she began her college career as horn 4B under director H. Robert Reynolds.
Childers is devoted to education initiatives and is particularly proud of the implementation of the “BSO in Residence” project in her adopted community of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Childers also develops and performs programs for the BSO’s “Concerts for Very Young People” at local libraries and children’s museums.
Childers is currently on faculty at the Longy School of Music at Bard College and the New England Conservatory of Music, where she is also chair of winds, brass, and percussion chamber music. During the summers, she teaches at Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Tanglewood Music Center, and Boston University Tanglewood Institute. She and her husband Sam, a bassoonist, have two lovely children and one loud cat.
Daniel Bernard Roumain
Daniel Bernard Roumain (MM ’95, DMA ’00, composition), known as DBR, is a prolific and collaborative composer, performer, educator, and social entrepreneur. “About as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets” (New York Times), DBR has worked with artists from Philip Glass to Bill T. Jones to Lady Gaga, as well as with institutions including Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Kennedy Center, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Sydney Opera House. Acclaimed as a violinist and activist, DBR has earned commissions from venerable artists and institutions worldwide.
Known for his signature violin sounds infused with myriad electronic, urban, and African American musical influences, DBR is a composer of solo, chamber, orchestral, and operatic works, and he has composed an array of film, theatre, and dance scores. He composed music for the acclaimed film Ailey (Sundance official selection), has released and appeared on 30 album recordings, and has published over 300 works.
An avid arts industry leader, DBR is the first artistic ambassador with FirstWorks; the first artist-activist-in-residence at Longy School of Music; and the first resident artistic catalyst with the New Jersey Symphony. He serves as a board member for the League of American Orchestras and is a voting member for the Recording Academy, which bestows the Grammy Awards. DBR is currently a tenured institute professor at Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.
CHRISTOPHER KENDALL AWARD
Kristen Pellegrino
Kristen Pellegrino (MM ’93, violin, chamber music; PhD ’10, music education) is a professor of music education at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and immediate past-president of American String Teachers Association (ASTA; 2018–24). Pellegrino’s degrees are from the University of Michigan and the Eastman School of Music.
Pellegrino has 40 scholarly publications. In addition to international and national research journal articles and book chapters, she was co-editor of The Oxford Handbook on Preservice Music Teacher Education in the United States (2019) and the Oxford University Press’s Teaching Instrumental Music: Contemporary Perspectives and Pedagogies (2023). She is co-authoring Conway Publications’ Journeys of Becoming and Being Music Teachers (2025), based on a seven-year longitudinal study that is written for college music education majors. Pellegrino was awarded ASTA’s String Researcher Award (2016), AERA’s Outstanding Early Career Paper Award in Music Education (2014), and three Internal Research Award Grants from UTSA. She has presented over 125 sessions/research posters at workshops nationally and internationally, including as a featured clinician at various MEA conferences. Pellegrino continues to perform as part of Rhode Island’s Music on the Hill Chamber Music Festival.
PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
Professional Achievement in Music Award
Nancy Yunhwa Rao
Nancy Yunhwa Rao (MM ’89, voice, music theory; PhD ’94, music theory) is a Distinguished Professor of Music at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. She began her career as a theorist writing about American ultra-modernist music. Her 2007 article “Ruth Crawford’s Imprint on Contemporary Composition” won the Lowens Award from the Society for American Music as the year’s best article. Rao’s most impactful contribution to music scholarship at large is her 2017 book, Chinatown Opera Theater in North America, which explores the iconic theatres and migration networks that integrated Cantonese opera into North American cultures. She sheds light on the often-unheard voices of Chinese Americans in American music history. The monograph was recognized with awards from the Society for American Music, the American Musicological Society, and the Association for Asian American Studies, as well as a Citation of Merit from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections.
Rao has been elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is praised for her transpacific perspective that offers a new framework for understanding contemporary music and expands the scope of American music studies. Rao has held numerous important leadership roles within major professional societies. She is currently editor-in-chief of the journal American Music. Together with Philip Bohlman at the University of Chicago, she co-edited the book series Big Issues in Music at the University of Chicago Press.
Professional Achievement in Theatre Award
Mike Mosallam
Mike Mosallam (BFA ’01, musical theatre) is a Tony Award-winning producer, director, and writer for theatre, film, and television. His production company, Mike Mosallam Productions, has produced the short films Breaking Fast (Cannes Film Festival) and Brothers (12-time jury and audience award winner), both written and directed by Mosallam, along with the short film Ubuntu, a co-production with the Muslim Public Affairs Council. His feature film debut, Breaking Fast (based on the short), is now available on Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, and anywhere movies are rented. He is the creator and co-executive producer of the 2011 critically acclaimed TLC series All-American Muslim. Mosallam also served as an executive creative consultant on season two of Hulu’s Ramy. His second feature film, an adaptation of Heather Raffo’s Nine Parts of Desire, premiered on PBS in spring 2023. His latest script, “The Untitled Chubby Muslim Project,” was a 2020 Black List selection. Currently in development are a TV series adaptation of Breaking Fast and a new tennis-inspired rom-com entitled Doubles.
On the theatre side, Mosallam has produced and directed more than 100 theatrical productions. Most notably, through his friends and partners at Runyonland Productions, he has joined the producing teams of the recent revival of Parade (Tony Award), starring Ben Platt; the revival of A Doll’s House (six Tony nominations), starring Jessica Chastain; Gutenberg! The Musical!; the revival of The Wiz; and the commercial transfer of Appropriate (Tony Award), starring Sarah Paulson. He is a proud Muslim and Lebanese American. Mosallam is represented by the Gersh Agency, Color Creative by Issa Rae, and Granderson Des Rochers, LLP.
Professional Achievement in Dance Award
Alexandra Beller
Alexandra Beller (BFA ’94, dance) has been the artistic director of Alexandra Beller/Dances since 2002. She was a Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company member (1995–2001). Beller has created over 50 original dance theatre works and has presented at theatres and universities throughout the United States and with companies in Korea, Hong Kong, Oslo, and Cyprus.
Beller currently choreographs predominantly for theatre. Her Off-Broadway credits include Sense and Sensibility (Sheen Center, the Gym at Judson; received the Helen Hayes Award, Lucille Lortel Award nomination, and IRNE Best Choreography award), The Mad Ones (59E59 Theaters), Bedlam’s Peter Pan (the Duke on 42nd Street), and How to Transcend a Happy Marriage (Lincoln Center Theater). Her regional credits include Two Gentlemen of Verona (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival), As You Like It (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival and Folger Shakespeare Library), Taylor Mac’s The Young Ladies of…, and Chang(e) (HERE Arts Center). Beller’s current projects include choreographing Antonio’s Song (Contemporary American Theater Festival and Milwaukee Rep) and Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes) (La MaMa and touring) and directing/choreographing Macbeth (Theatre Row). She wrote and directed an adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for 92NY.
Beller was on faculty at Princeton University, 2015–22, and she teaches at the Laban Institute of Movement Studies, HB Studio, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison graduate program. In addition to a BFA in dance, she has an MFA in choreography and is a CMA (Certified Movement Analyst).
PAUL BOYLAN AWARD
Catherine Coury
Catherine Coury (BFA ’10, dance) is the co-founder, co-artistic director, and principal dancer of award-winning international contemporary dance company Marcat Dance and Festival Vildanza, based in the south of Spain. She is the creative assistant to and wife of choreographer Mario Bermúdez, as well as a teacher of Ohad Naharin’s Gaga movement language.
As a dancer for Marcat Dance, Coury has been hailed as Best Female Contemporary Dancer at the Escenarios de Sevilla (2023), the Lorca Awards (2023), and the PAD Awards (2020). She was nominated for the Spanish Academy Award for Best Female Performer at the MAX Awards (2020, 2023, and 2024) and at the Talía Awards (2023 and 2024).
Dedicated to dance education, Coury teaches at major conservatories and dance institutions around the world. In 2019, she initiated the first study abroad program in Spain with the SMTD Department of Dance, a program that is ongoing. Prior to living in Spain, Coury resided in Tel Aviv for one year and New York for five years as a performer with Shen Wei Dance Arts and Shannon Gillen + Guests. As a dance administrator, she played an integral role in the development of Andrea Miller’s Gallim Dance and the play:ground NYC. Coury is a proud native of Grosse Pointe, Michigan and mother of two.