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Student Snapshot: Zuzu Black ’25

Zuzu Black '25 is a double major in music and English, and she's combined her majors in fascinating ways. For her senior music thesis, she wrote a song cycle, a form that combines music and text. For her English thesis, she wrote about a poetry collection centering on Black musicians. As the recipient of the 2025 Weiss Prize for the Creative Arts, she will present her original composition in a live performance featuring Dickinson singers and musicians on Friday, March 28.

Hometown:

Nashville, Tenn.  

Majors:

Music and English.

Clubs:

Music Society, College Choir, WDCV-FM and Jam Space.

Honors/scholarships/awards:

The Emil R. and Tamar Weiss Prize in the Creative Arts.

Best thing about my Dickinson experience:

Winning the Weiss Prize and organizing a concert around my senior composition has given me so much practical experience that will carry over into my work as a composer. It’s been so rewarding to see a community come together over something I wrote.  

Best thing about my major:

The best thing about my two majors are the surprising intersections between music and language that constantly pop up across my studies. Studying both influenced me to write my music thesis about music-text relationships in my senior composition “My House Has a Name,” and my English thesis on a poetry collection that centers on Black musicians in the 19th century. Going to Dickinson and studying these two disciplines simultaneously allowed me to make these connections across my work and bring different skills to each.  

Favorite professor (and why):

Greg Strohman, contributing faculty in music, who teaches Music Theory and Composition. No matter what you’re going through, he always has a story that helps you put things into perspective.  

Most important thing I’ve learned so far:

Everything is a learnable skill. There is nothing that can’t be approached with an open mind and heart!  

ºìÐÓÖ±²¥app my research:

For my senior composition, I wrote a song cycle about the history of the house I grew up in. I chose to use the form of the song cycle to tell these stories so that each moment in time could be enclosed in an individual musical moment while still being part of a larger work. This song cycle speaks to the ambiguity of the lives of the house’s past residents and centers the importance of the house as the defining place when contextualizing these lives. I chose to center these stories in my composition so I can provide space for these stories in a written history and think about my own life in connection to the lives of other people who’ve lived there.

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Published March 25, 2025