• rs73@andrew.cmu.edu

Robert Skavronski, Director of Operations, has a Master of Arts Management degree from Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School. He also holds degrees in double bass performance from Carnegie Mellon School of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music. 

Mr. Skavronski has worked with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as an intern for their personnel department. He also worked as Personnel Manager for the New World Symphony prior to joining the staff of the School of Music in 1995. Mr. Skavronski remains extremely active as a classical double bassist. He has played with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Wheeling (WV) Symphony and is a current member of the Pittsburgh Opera Orchestra, where he has played since 1987.

• laspacagna@cox.net

• terrysteele623@cmu.edu

Terry Steele received his BME degree from Wichita State University, taught public school music, then attended the University of North Texas where he earned an MM degree in Classical Saxophone Performance in addition to performing with the acclaimed 1:00 Lab Band. After 33 years teaching at Slippery Rock University, he retired as a Professor Emeritus and joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University as the Instructor of Saxophone.

Mr. Steele remains active as a performer in both classical and jazz genres, having premiered original chamber works for saxophone in the classical style as well as maintaining a diverse career in the jazz idiom. He has performed with Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and Aretha Franklin in addition to hundreds of performances with entertainers. shows and musicals. Mr. Steele is the saxophonist with the Pittsburgh Symphony and has toured the United States and Europe with the orchestra. As an educator, he taught for a decade in the summers at the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts and has served three terms of office as the state president of the International Association for Jazz Education.

• rms@ece.cmu.edu

Most current speech recognition systems do not yet perform well in difficult acoustical environments, or in different environments from the ones in which they had been trained. This research is concerned with improving the robustness of SPHINX, Carnegie Mellons large-vocabulary continuous-speech recognition system, with respect to acoustical distortion resulting from sources such as background noise, competing talkers, change of microphone, and room reverberation. Several different strategies are being used to address these problems. These include: improved noise cancellation and speech normalization methods, the use of representations of the speech waveform that are based on the processing of sounds by the human auditory system, and the use of array-processing techniques to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the speech that is input to the system.
Signal Processing in the Auditory System

This research includes both psychoacoustical measurements to determine how we hear complex sounds, and the development of mathematical models that use optimal communication theory to relate the results of these experiments to the neural coding of sounds by the auditory system. Much of this work has been concerned with the localization of sound and other aspects of binaural perception.

Stephen Story earned his Master’s Degree in conducting from Carnegie Mellon University in 2009. While at CMU he studied wind music with Denis Colwell, vocal music with Dr. Robert Page, and composition with Nancy Galbraith. Stephen’s musical focus is modern wind music, with a heavy emphasis on American composers. Before graduate school he taught music in public schools in both North Carolina and Pittsburgh. Stephen also has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in bassoon performance from CMU, where he studied with Phil Pandolfi of the Pittsburgh Symphony. He is currently the Associate Director of the Wind Ensemble at Carnegie Mellon and the Band and Orchestra teacher at The Ellis School. 

• strouse@andrew.cmu.edu

Lewis Strouse is widely recognized for his work in conducting pedagogy. He serves as Chair of the Music Education Division at Carnegie Mellon. Prior to his appointment at Carnegie Mellon, he served on the faculty of Ball State University. An honor graduate of Wilkes College, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, his teaching career began in the public schools of Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, where he taught instrumental and vocal music at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels. Strouse obtained his graduate training in instrumental conducting at Indiana University-Bloomington (M.M.) and Ball State University (D.A.). He also holds the M.S. degree in secondary education from Indiana University. His multi-faceted professional activities have included numerous journal articles and national conference presentations in conducting, interpretation, and teacher education. His work in pedagogy has been recognized by the Association of Teacher Educators and the American Association for the Advancement of Core Curriculum. His professional affiliations include membership in the National Association for Music Education, Pennsylvania Music Educators Association, Association of Teacher Educators, Pennsylvania Association of Colleges & Teacher Educators, Phi Delta Kappa, Pi Kappa Lambda, and Pi Lambda Theta.

• perrylake@verizon.net

Sullivan was appointed Principal Trombone of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra by maestro Mariss Jansons. Canadian born, raised and trained, Mr. Sullivan came to Pittsburgh following a long and fruitful tenure as Solo Trombone with the Montreal Symphony under maestro Charles Dutoit.

Mr. Sullivan has performed as a soloist on many occasions with several orchestras including the Pittsburgh and Montreal orchestras. In 2006 he will perform the world premiere performance of Jennifer Higdon’s Trombone Concerto with Sir Andrew Davis and the PSO. In 2007 Peter will be the featured soloist with Canada’s National Arts Center Orchestra.

Apart from his activities in Pittsburgh, Mr. Sullivan performs regularly across North America, Europe and the Far East as soloist and chamber musician alongside the world’s leading brass players. He is a regular visitor to Japan playing and teaching at venues such as the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, the Suntory recital hall in Tokyo, the Hamamatsu Summer Academy as well as solo recitals in Osaka. In China, Peter is involved with the Canton International Summer Music Academy and will be performing and giving master classes at the Tian Jin and Beijing Conservatories in April of 2006.

Aside from countless orchestral performances in the great concert halls of Europe, Peter has performed with the Orchestra Internationale d’Italia and was featured in Christian Lindberg’s Trombone Concerto in Bunol, Spain with the composer on the podium. Peter was also the first prize winner in the 1990 Umea International Solo Competition in Sweden.

Here at home, Mr. Sullivan has given concerts and clinics from coast to coast including master classes at the Juilliard and Manhattan schools in New York City, the Glen Gould Academy in Toronto, coaching at the New World Symphony and the Banff School and tours with the Summit Brass and the Music of the Baroque in Chicago. He has been heard across Canada in recital on CBC radio and on NPR with his colleagues in the Pittsburgh Symphony Brass.

Presently, Mr. Sullivan serves on the faculties of Duquesne and Carnegie Mellon universities in Pittsburgh following 15 years as adjunct professor at McGill University in Montreal. For the past few years, he has been working with the Yamaha Corporation on the development of their new line of orchestral trombones, the prototype of which he plays.

• tms@ece.cmu.edu

Research Interests

Though there is currently no funded research at CMU in this area, Dr. Sullivan's interests lie in the areas of signal processing for audio and music systems.

Audio Signal Processing

As the professional recording industry has grown, so has the complexity and quality of sound recording equipment. Research in audio signal processing serves the advancement of digital audio recording. From the need for lossless data compression, to higher quality filtering for A/D and D/A conversion, to better error correction coding for digital hard disk and magnetic tape systems (and compact discs), the research areas where electrical engineers can aid the entertainment industry are great.
Music Signal Processing

Signals from musical instruments are very complex waveforms. As the professional recording and performance industries demand higher quality synthesis of existing musical instruments, the study of new methods of instrument synthesis has increasing importance. In addition, the greater quality of films and television have increased the need for more realistic generation of sound effects. The use of digital sampling in the creation of music and sound effects merges the music and professional audio signal processing areas.

In addition, there is increasing desire for the control of music synthesizers by other existing musical instruments and new, non-standard "instruments" or "controllers". Pitch and expressive tracking of these instruments are vital to obtaining information from a performer that is capable of giving the performer high-level control over a music synthesizer.

• Mt3f@andrew.cmu.edu