Armando Bayolo, visiting assistant professor of music, was announced as the 2008 recipient of the Brandon Fradd fellowship in music composition from the Cintas Foundation, a foundation dedicated to the promotion of Cuban and Cuban-American art. The Brandon Fradd fellowship is a $15,000 award to be used for career development.

Also this week, Bayolo directed the Great Noise Ensemble at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in performances of his chamber symphony, "Illusory Airs" as well as works by Barbara White, Blair Goins, Evan Chambers and the world premiere of Andrew Rudin's Concerto for Piano and Small Orchestra. Of Bayolo's Chamber Symphony, Stephen Brookes of the Washington Post wrote, "(it is a work) full of lush ideas and a kind of fierce grandeur, it unfolded with subtle, driving power -- a work worth hearing again."