Sound Expertise

The African-American pianist Hazel Harrison played with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1904, and was promptly forgotten. But Kira Thurman remembers. Her incredible book Singing Like Germans tells the rich, textured stories of Black classical musicians who performed in Germany, which provided a safe haven from American segregation, even though they still faced racism.  A conversation about the paradoxe...

Writing a biography isn't easy, especially when it's of a living person, and especially when that living person is an epochal, oft-mythologized musician like Joni Mitchell. But Ann Powers, one of my absolute favorite music critics, has been doing the work. For our Season 3 debut, a deep conversation with Ann about her in-progress Joni Mitchell book, the complexities and anxieties behind...

Finally, Sound Expertise returns! Season 3  begins on May 16, and it's our biggest and most ambitious to date: a full summer of interviews with music scholars about their research, and why it matters. Check out  past episodes at soundexpertise.org and get ready for our season premiere next week: an interview with the amazing Ann Powers about her in-progress Joni Mitchell book! #hotmusicologys...

We're almost back -- Season 3 will debut in just a few weeks! Before then, one final bonus episode: our great producer D. Edward Davis interviews Will and co-author Kerry O'Brien about their new book "On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement," which University of California Press will release on April 25. We talk about our histories with musical minimalism, putting the boo...

Another bonus episode! A conversation with composer Matthew Aucoin , whose opera Euridice had a run at the Met last month, and who just wrote a new book about the history and culture of opera, The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera . More over at soundexpertise.org ! Questions? Thoughts? Share them with Will on Twitter @seatedovation

Check out this episode of the great podcast Phantom Power , on the life and work of composer R. Murray Schafer. You can check out more info on the episode here , and its second part here .  We'll have another bonus episode up before the end of the year, and Season 3 will happen at some point in 2022! More over at soundexpertise.org ! Questions? Thoughts? Share them with Will on Twitter @seate...

Eighteen music scholars describe their experiences of the pandemic. "On the Banks of the Wabash" was arranged and performed by D. Edward Davis. More over at soundexpertise.org ! Questions? Thoughts? Share them with Will on Twitter @seatedovation

For our Season 2 finale, a wide-ranging conversation with the eminent musicologist Richard Taruskin. We talk about his trajectory, from playing early music and studying Russian opera to writing the Oxford History of Western Music and penning polemics in the New York Times; his deep-set belief that musicologists should be skeptics and contrarians; what he hopes for the future of music scholarship;...

How did Cold War money shape the musical avant-garde? What were the roles of experts, elites, and the Rockefeller Foundation in shaping the cultural politics of new music––in the era of serial tyranny and Milton Babbitt's "Who Cares If You Listen?" An interview with musicologists Michael Uy and Eduardo Herrera about their research on funding new music in the Sputnik moment, in both...

How does one come to study a topic that is on the margins of an academic discipline? What does it mean to do ethnographic fieldwork amidst the intimacies of the dance floor––and what are the challenges of doing so in queer spaces? A wide-ranging conversation with ethnomusicologist Luis-Manuel Garcia, on his scholarly journey from early music to rave culture to  gay fetish parties in Berlin. Luis M...

Algorithms run our lives these days, from Netflix binges to predictive policing. And that includes algorithmic  recommenders––like Spotify's Discover Weekly and Pandora––that shape how we consume music. How does algorithmic music recommendation work and, perhaps more importantly, who makes it work? After all, algorithms are made and tweaked by people, who work at tech companies and have their...

When a modern opera debuts, normally the stakes aren't very high. But when it's composed by Benjamin Britten and premieres in England after World War II, that's a different story. Britten's high-profile operas––whose performances were attended by Queen Elizabeth II––were seen as a reflection of British postwar identity. An interview with musicologist Imani Danielle Mosley on ho...

Since pretty much the beginnings of our field,  musicologists have gone digging for lost music, bringing old pieces back into the world after centuries of neglect. But it's not just about finding some new scores: it's also about building an understanding of the culture that created and preserved them. When we find music in Renaissance manuscripts, what meaning can, and should, we make fr...

In 2013, the music librarian David Hunter found the name George Frideric Handel in a printed list of investors in one of Britain's official slave trading companies. Since then, Dr. Hunter has researched Handel and his patrons' investments in the slave trade, as well as the broader relationship between slavery and the history of classical music. What does it mean that profits from the bru...

Way back in 2011, Rebecca Black's music video "Friday" went viral because it was widely considered to be one of the worst songs of all time. But what does that actually mean––for music to "go viral," and for music to be so widely criticized as "bad"? A conversation about gender, genre,  and musical virality in the 2010s with musicologist Paula Clare Harper. Paula...

Though often overlooked in mainstream histories, the voices of Black women were central to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963. And those voices included some of the greatest musicians of the time: Odetta, Mahalia Jackson, Camilla Williams.  These women, and the political significance of the spirituals they sang, are the subject of this week's episode: a conversation w...

When we think about music and deafness, it's often through the lens of Beethoven: the mythological figure who overcomes his hearing loss to compose great music. But members of the d/Deaf community often talk less about hearing loss than about deaf gain .  And we can gain a lot from understanding the wide range of methods through which d/Deaf people engage with, create, and listen to music. A...

Maybe you teach music history, and maybe you don't, but pedagogy is a part of your life: we have all been teachers, and we have all been students. This conversation, with musicologists Andrew Dell'Antonio and Sara Haefeli, is about how they have innovated in their classrooms, but it is also about teaching itself as a practice, as an art, and as a form of research. What does it mean to ab...

Music theory has long been a space in which white male scholars analyze music  by white male composers. But many music theorists are actively trying to change that, and our guest today, Professor Ellie Hisama, is foremost among them. In this conversation, we discuss her pioneering work on women modernist composers; diversifying the music theory classroom; her recent scholarship on gender discrimin...

What happens, musically and spiritually, when a congregation sings gospel ? How can we analyze music that moves not just the mind, but also the body and the soul? A conversation with Braxton D. Shelley, whose scholarship fuses theology and musicology to understand how musical techniques like vamps and "tuning up" lead to transcendent religious experiences. Braxton D. Shelley is Stanley A...

We're back! The first episode of Season 2 features Susan McClary: one of the most influential, and controversial, musicologists of our time. We talk about her lifelong pursuit of analyzing music in its cultural context, from madrigals to Madonna; the early rejections that set her on a path towards becoming a groundbreaking feminist scholar; the intense criticism to which her scholarship has b...

We're back next week! Season 2 of Sound Expertise begins on Tuesday, March 23. Host Will Robin will interview fellow music scholars about their research, and why it matters, in a new season of weekly episodes that'll take us into the summer. Check out our past episodes at soundexpertise.org and get ready for our season premiere next week: an interview with the amazing Susan McClary!

And we're back! Well, kind of. Season 2 of Sound Expertise launches on March 23, but for now here's a bonus preseason episode. Our intrepid producer, D. Edward Davis, interviews host Will Robin (University of Maryland) about his book "Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace," out with Oxford University Press next week. We talk about the role of the festival Ban...

What does it mean to create music that is valued as a national emblem, but also be part of a community that is marginalized within that nation? What is jazz manouche, and how does this musical tradition reflect the complicated status of its Romani creators in France? A conversation with Siv B. Lie , assistant professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland. Show notes and more over at s...

How can ethnomusicology help us understand the value of music in a capitalist society? When we view music as a commodity, what might it reveal about how people make meaning (and money) from art across different cultures? A conversation with Timothy Taylor, professor of ethnomusicology at UCLA's Herb Albert School of Music. Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org Questions? Thoughts? Sh...