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Awards / Grants

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.

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2023 RecipienT

Wesley Somers

The 2023 winner of the Selch Prize is Wesley Somers, for his paper “The Jarana as Baroque Guitar: A Neocolonial Claiming of Jarocho Instrument-Making Traditions.”

Previous Recipients

Receipient Name
Year
Contribution
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"
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