The Frederick R. Selch Award
The Frederick R. Selch Award, named for an important collector of American musical instruments who was a founding member and second president of AMIS, was established in 2004 to honor the best student paper presented at an annual meeting of the Society. Papers will be judged by a committee appointed by the President, which may include members of the Board of Governors, the program committee, or additional persons: a prize is awarded at their discretion. The prize will consist of $250 and a certificate. The first prize was awarded at the 2005 Annual Meeting.
2025 RecipienT
Tsz-ching Tung
Tsz-ching Tung (University of Hong Kong) has received the 2025 Fredrick R. Selch Award for her paper "In Reconstructing the 'Left-Hammered' Technique: A Historical Analysis of Early Cantonese Dulcimer Performance Practice," read at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Musical Instrument Society, Georgia Southern University, Savannah, GA, June 7, 2025.
Previous Recipients
Receipient Name | Year | Contribution |
|---|---|---|
Abigail Byrd | 2024 | "The String Instrument Industry and the Triple Bottom Line" |
Wesley Somers | 2023 | "The Jarana as Baroque Guitar: A Neocolonial Claiming of Jarocho Instrument-Making Traditions." |
Francis Lapointe | 2022 | “George Hooper Mead: One of Canada’s First Instrument Makers, 1827–1851” |
Dominik Ukolov | 2022 | “Historical Instruments in Virtual Acoustic Environments: A Framework for the Generation of Interactive Acoustic Objects and Multimodal Organological Datasets” |
Julin Lee | 2021 | “Sounds of Futuristic Nostalgia: The Cultural Legacy of Blade Runner and the Yamaha CS-80.” |
Saskia Maxwell Keller | 2019 | “The Side-Saddle Seating Position and Its Relationship to the Popularization of the Cello Endpin during the Victorian Era” |
Jimena Palacis Uribe | 2018 | “The Brass Bands of Santiago Chazumba in Oaxaca, México: A Historical Reconstruction” |
Charles Pardoe | 2018 | “Reconstructing ‘the Kindian Lute’: An Invitation” |
Núria Bonet | 2017 | Plymouth University, “Mechanised Shawms: Comparing the Development of the Tenora, Suona and Jangsaenap” |
Jonathan Santa Maria Bouquet | 2016 | University of Edinburgh, “Self-Destructive Elements in the Construction of Guitars in the 19th Century" |
Diane Oliva | 2015 | Harvard University, "Toward a History of Walking-Stick Violins" |
Emily Peppers | 2014 | University of Edinburgh, "An Untold Story: Private Instrument Collections and Music-Making in Sixteenth-Century France" |
Jayme Kurland | 2013 | Arizona State University, "A Narrow Escape from Nazi Europe: Mark Brunswick and His Work with the National Committee for Refugee Musicians, 1938-1943" |
Olga Sutkowska | 2012 | Universität der Kunste Berlin, “The Art of Tibiae: A Music-Archaeological Case Study of an Instrument from Late Antiquity" |
Melanie Piddocke | 2011 | "Which Lempp? Identifying Instruments by Friedrich and Martin Lempp of Vienna" |
Karen Loomis | 2011 | "What Happened to This Broken Harp? An Early Gaelic Harp with a Story to Tell" |
Lisa Norman | 2010 | "Early natural horns in the Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Instruments and other collections: An organological investigation" |
Hannes Vereecke | 2009 | “The Geometrical Documentation of Historical Musical Instruments” |
Eugenia Mitroulia | 2008 | “The Saxotromba: Fact or Fiction” |
Edmond Johnson | 2007 | “Who’s Playing the Player Piano—and Can the Talking Machine Sing?: Shifting Perceptions of Musical Agency in Mechanical Instruments, 1890-1910” |
Mauricio Molina | 2006 | "In quattuor lignis; Reconstructing the History, Timbre and Performance Practice of Medieval Iberian Square Frame Drum" |
Sunni Fass | 2005 | "Cultural Resonance: Musical Instruments as Material Culture" |