A Select Bio of Juniper Hill

Areas of Specialty • Interests • Education • Professional Employment • Fellowships • Grants and Awards • Field Research • Performance Background

Areas of Specialty

Nordic/Baltic music (especially contemporary folk music in Finland)
American vernacular music (especially shape note, old-time, and contradance)
South American music (especially indigenous music of the northern Andes)

Interests

creative processes, improvisation, sociocultural influences on creativity, artistic freedom
pedagogy of improvisation in folk music and avant-garde music
institutionalization and academization of oral traditions
transnationalism, intercultural relationships, cross-cultural fusions
revival and post-revival

Education

Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles, 2005

Fulbright Fellow and visiting student, Folk Music Department, Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, Finland, 2002-2004

M.A. in Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles, 2001

B.A. High Honors in Music and Latin American Studies, Wesleyan University, 1998

Professional Employment

Established Lecturer (equivalent of tenured Assistant Professor), January 2009-present
School of Music
University College Cork
Cork, Ireland

Lecturer, Spring 2007
Women's Studies Program
University of California, Irvine

Lecturer, Fall 2006
Music Department
Pomona College
Claremont, California

Teaching Assistant/Associate, 2000-2003
Ethnomusicology Department
University of California, Los Angeles

Post-Doctoral Fellowships

Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship, 2012-2013
AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice and Faculty of Music, Cambridge University
Project: "Sociocultural Enablers and Inhibitors of Musical Creativity: A Cross-Cultural Comparison"

Fulbrights CIES Fellowship, 2011
Folk Music Department, Sibelius Academy, Finland

Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, 2007-2008
Ethnomusicology Department, University of Bamberg, Germany

University of California Postdoctoral Faculty Fellowship, 2005-2006
Music Department, University of California, Santa Barbara

Pre-Doctoral Fellowships

Fulbright IIE Fellowship, 2003-2004
Folk Music Department, Sibelius Academy, Finland

Dissertation Fellowship, 2004-2005
Ethnomusicology Department, University of California, Los Angeles

Federal Language and Area Studies Fellowship Title VI, 2002-2003
Helsinki University Language Center and University of California, Berkeley

Departmental Fellowship, 1999-2000
Ethnomusicology Department, University of California, Los Angeles

Selected Grants and Awards

Erasmus Staff Training and Teaching Exchange Grants, 2011
International Education Office, University College Cork, Ireland

Research Support Fund Grant, 2011
College of Arts, Celtic Studies, and Social Sciences, University College Cork, Ireland

Summer Research Grant, 2004
Quality of Graduate Education, University of California, Los Angeles

Sibelius Academy Grant, 2004

Lois Roth Endowment Fund Grant for research in Finland, 2003

Predissertation Field Research Grant, 2002
International Studies and Overseas Program, University of California

Will Rogers Memorial Scholarship, 2002

Gluck Fellowships (2) for public performances, 2001, 2002

ArtsBridge Scholarships (3), 2000, 2001
School of the Arts and Architecture, University of California, Los Angeles

High Honors, Wesleyan University, 1998

Leavell Memorial Prize in Music, highest award in music, 1998
Wesleyan University

Thorndyke Fellowship for honors thesis writing, 1997
Wesleyan University

Dana Grant for field research in Ecuador, 1997

Field Research

Finland, plus research trips to Sweden, Estonia, and Russia (30 months, 2002-2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011)

Ecuador (9 months, 1996-1997)

US (intermittently 1999-2007)

Hungary/Romania/Bulgaria (short research trips in summers of 2000 and 2005)

Performance Background

Juniper started studying music at the age of seven. Growing up in Los Angeles, she trained in Western art music on the clarinet, studying with Deborah Baker, Yehuda Gilad at the USC/Colburn School of Music, and Curt Blood, and performing with the Pacific Youth Symphony, the Pasadena Youth Symphony Orchestra, and various All-State and honor bands and orchestras. As an undergraduate at Wesleyan, she became heavily involved in free jazz and experimental music, studying and recording with Anthony Braxton. She then delved into various types of world and folk musics, including South Indian Carnatic vocal music (with T. Viswanathan), Arabic nai (with Ali Jihad Racy), West African singing and dancing, klezmer clarinet (with Hankus Netsky), Irish pennywhistle, and pan pipes. Initially self-taught and improvising her own music on the pan pipes, she went to the Andes where she learned traditional pan pipe techniques from mestizo and indigenous musicians in the Ecuadorian Highlands, and returned to the US to teach and lead her on pan pipe ensemble. Moving back to Los Angeles, Juniper became heavily involved in American traditional musics, particularly old-time (on tin whistle, banjo, and voice) and shape note singing, and in Bulgarian singing, studying and performing with Tsvetanka Varimezova in the SuperDevoiche Bulgarian Women's Choir. Her next passion became Nordic music, and she went to Finland where she studied Finnish contemporary folk music on traditional flutes with Leena Joutsenlahti and on voice with Anna-Kaisa Liedes at the Folk Music Department of the Sibelius Academy. While living in Germany, she took jodeling lessons from Ingrid Hammer. Currently, she is especially interested in the use of the voice as an instrument, both in extended vocal techniques and diddling/lilting/mouth music traditions. She continues to be an avid singer and teacher of American shape note music from the Sacred Harp tradition. She also enjoys Nordic and American folk dancing as well as modern dance and contact improv.