No better time to revisit Antigone than the present. Join us for a Symposium on Ancient Music and its Modern Performance this weekend in Cincinnati!

AS CALLED ON

UConn Huskies radio by Mike Crispino
Duke radio by David Shumate
Westwood One by Scott Graham

Also, check out the excellent articles in this volume of Mahler research by Hermann Danuser, Vera Micznik, and Franz Willnauer!

Mahler’s Symphonic World A new analysis of Mahler’s symphonies, placing each within the context of his musical way of being in and experiencing the world. Between 1888 and 1909 Gustav Mahler completed nine symphonies and the ...

Mahler's Symphonic World is the most recent interpretive account of Gustav Mahler's entire symphonic output. It is an important and timely contribution. I hope you'll take a chance to read my review, and that it will prompt you to order the book!

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

I'm pleased to share my review of Karol Berger's new book, Mahler’s Symphonic World: Music for the Age of Uncertainty. The review is published in Volume 78 of News about Mahler Research. You can order a copy here (www.gustav-mahler.org/en/nmr-78) (or just write to me if you'd like for a PDF!).

A photograph from 2020 tweeted by Alice H. Jones of a protest placard she made bearing the names of Black composers, the first of which is Vicente Lusitano (1520 - c.1561).

The cover of Vicente Lusitano, Complete Works, edited by Joseph McHardy and Arne Spohr, published by A-R Editions

From seeing a name on a placard to transcribing and co-editing the complete works! Proud and grateful to have played a part in bringing the works of the first composer racialised as Black to publish music in Europe to a modern scholarly edition.

Musical Pitch is Not "High" or "Low" Musical Pitch is Not "High" or "Low" Jon Silpayamanant DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.24002442 (v.2) published 8/31/2023; updated 11/28/2023 INTRODUCTION In much of the Western world pitches are conceived...

Jon Silpayamanant has a really incredible resource on the subject of pitch metaphors

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

NYU Theory Resources This site compiles resources used in the undergraduate music theory sequence at NYU Steinhardt. Click the icons below to naviage to each of the pages.

Music theory teachers! My department at NYU created an amazing free public collection of online resources and examples, including a huge body of pop examples. They want you to use it! sites.google.com/nyu.edu/nyu-...

I loved There’s Always This Year, and got to read it during a brief summer stay in Cleveland, which was apt

A few highlights from this year, all very different styles:
Isabella Hammad, Enter Ghost
Tananarive Due, The Reformatory
Cees Nooteboom, Rituals

Geno, our golden retriever, showing off his holiday haul

🎄

🎄

It Wasn’t Easy Being a Founding Father of the American Symphony

A little classical music history for the holidays. Remarkable performance of Bristow's "Niagara" Symphony (the first since its premiere in 1898) coming up next month!

Come work with me! Review of applications will begin on January 1, 2026.

I'm not on the committee but I'm happy to answer whatever questions I can!

jobs.uc.edu/job/Cincinna...

My article "Jazz and Commitment" which was published today!

Publication Day!!! My article "Jazz and Commitment: Sartre, Jazz, and Charles Mingus" was just published in Jazz and Culture. This article uses Sartre's theories of commitment to explain how Mingus's improvisations stake their political commentary! Super excited to see this out in the world!!!

Avril Coleridge-Taylor: Piano Concerto & Orchestral Works

IT’S HERE IT’S HERE IT’S HERE!!!! The very first album ever dedicated to Avril Coleridge-Taylor. This has been such a labour of love - please do listen to it, her music deserves to be heard @jkaconductor.bsky.social @tomedney.bsky.social open.spotify.com/album/6EroQD...

Today!

There's a new generation of folk protest singers on TikTok Amid a 24-hour news cycle and personalized algorithms, a wave of young artists are reviving bold, plainspoken protest music that cuts through the noise.

An NPR piece on Trump-era protest songs, covering Jesse Welles, Jensen McRae and Mon Rovia.

cover image of the chandos album Dame Ethel Smyth: The Prison

In The Prison, Smyth uses the symphonic medium as a venue for the subversive retelling of a personally significant narrative. Smyth’s compositional and textual decisions reveal aspects of her ideological conception of the woman’s voice.

cover image of 1958 Columbia album Duke Ellington and his Orchestra featuring Mahalia Jackson

In Black, Brown & Beige, Ellington composes, revises, and recasts his longest work over a 30-year period, making structural changes in order to engender more positive reception and intelligibility after its early panning in the press.

portrait of Duke Ellington

portrait of Ethel Smyth

In this colloquium, I’ll introduce the central themes of the book before presenting two case studies.

We’ll examine form, narrative, and reception in Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown & Beige and Ethel Smyth’s The Prison, both of which employ symphonic techniques mixed with other genre signifiers.

SMA Zoom Colloquium Please always check back here for the zoom link as we update before each event. 2025 Autumn The Society for Music Analysis is delighted to announce the continuation of its Zoom Colloquium series in…

This Wednesday, I’ll be joining the Society for Music Analysis for their Zoom Colloquium series.

We'll discuss my book, Symphonic Spectacles: Form, Identity, and Hybridity in the Early Twentieth Century. I hope you can join!

Details: 11/19, 1pm EST/6pm GMT

Zoom info: www.sma.ac.uk/sma-zoom-col...

AMS Petition 2025 Petition to Restore Transparent Governance and Accountability in the American Musicological Society To add your signature to the petition, please fill out the following form: https://bit.ly/Sign_AMS_2...

I urge all of you, friends & colleagues, to please consider signing this petition to restore transparent governance and accountability in the AMS -- with this action, we can make our voices heard & remind everyone of our mission as a member-led society docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Come on over, we have snacks!

Update: still cute, this is now a kitten account

Macaroni (aka Big Mac) wants to know how handsome he is

New job new cat

Check out this must-read article by @garrt.bsky.social on the 150th birthday of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor!

(And, as always, support NPR and public media!)

Really happy to see this video article published. Thanks to @theorymeg.bsky.social for her incredible feedback and encouragement throughout!

This is public-facing scholarship but I still wanted to raise some serious questions about the way jazz theory is done. I hope you enjoy it!

Since the Duke UP faculty board approved the final MS for Good Vibes Only for publication earlier this week, here’s the final(?) version of the book’s intro

Tl;dr - new form of biopower: no meat, just vibes

www.its-her-factory.com/2025/07/good...

Anna Thorvaldsdottir: ENIGMA - Mvt 3 YouTube video by Spektral Quartet

Enigma (2019), movement 3, performed by Spektral Quartet in 2020

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cojb...