The UTRGV School of Music released the first issue of SOUND, a digital, biannual magazine, in October. The magazine’s creative team is composed of a variety of faculty. Mark Joseph Ramírez (far right), a School of Music professor of percussion, is the editor of the magazine. Also shown (from left) are music education Assistant Professor Kristina Weimer, music theory Assistant Professor Rachel Mann, piano Lecturer Stacy Kwak, Communication department Chair and Professor Jennifer Lemanski, percussion Assistant Professor Marco Schirripa, music Assistant Professor Anthony Marasco, Lecturer of music technology and composition Jason Mitchell and Writing and Language Studies department Chair Colin Charlton. Courtesy Photo
UTRGV’s School of Music premiered its digital magazine SOUND, which features alumni, upcoming events and articles pertaining to music written by UTRGV faculty on Oct. 22.
Mark Ramirez, the associate director of the School of Music and editor of SOUND, said the magazine was created to connect the community.
“Being forced into a virtual environment, it’s very easy to feel disconnected when all you really want to feel is some kind of connection,” Ramirez said.
He said the idea for a magazine is not new, but came about due to the stay-at-home orders brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We found ourselves in the middle of a pandemic,” Ramirez said. “I had found myself in front of the computer, and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to really bring [SOUND] to life.”
When it came time to bring this idea up to faculty after it had been approved by the board of directors, he said many faculty were ready and willing to contribute what they could to the project.
“I didn’t really know what to expect when I brought this idea up to everyone,” Ramirez said. “With technology, I think a lot of people are a little uncomfortable with recording themselves and worrying about audio and video quality. ‘Do I even have the right gear for this kind of thing?’ There’s quite a bit that goes into post-production, but I was really happy with the creative team that we got.”
Assistant Professor of music, technology and composition Anthony Marasco said he decided to get involved with SOUND to keep the community engaged with the arts and because he had previous experience in writing articles.
“If we wrote a new article about something, such as the new jazz program at UTRGV, and it piqued somebody’s interest just by the title alone, I want to give them a good experience through my articles and keep their interest,” Marasco said. “We want to pull them in so that people will want to be more involved with the school and their events.”
Rachel Mann, an assistant professor of music theory at UTRGV and member of the SOUND creative team, said the magazine will provide outreach to UTRGV alumni to solidify connections with them through a digital platform, as well as intriguing prospective students to join the School of Music.
“I think that [SOUND] is a good platform for showing the world, as well as our students, and saying that ‘you could choose to go anywhere, and here’s why this university is a good place to choose.’” Mann said. “We also want to let other people who aren’t here see what we’re doing. Being a part of [‘SOUND’] and telling the different stories, I think, is really cool.”
Not only does SOUND want to provide reasons for students to join UTRGV’s School of Music, but it also aims to provide a connection with current faculty and past, present and future students.
“One of the things that’s interesting about the School of Music versus other [schools] is that we do a lot of one-on-one teaching,” Mann said. “With music, usually you go to a private lesson with one teacher and you end up working with that person for many years. So, you end up building a very strong connection with that person. By reading the magazine, people get to form connections with faculty that they never would have formed because they wouldn’t have known that they had these similarities without these faculty interviews featured.”
SOUND wants to provide a multimedia format for its viewers.
“The goal with the magazine is to not just contribute to the traditional written narrative format, but to also contribute to a digital multimedia format with hyperlinks throughout the articles, or embedding videos so that it’s more interactive for the audience,” Ramirez said.
