EC2

In this episode, I chat with Professor Gundula Kreuzer. Professor Kreuzer is a musicologist and Professor at Yale University whose research spans the history and theory of opera, staging technologies, media archaeology, music in the Third Reich, and contemporary experimental opera. Her first book, Verdi and the Germans: From Unification to the Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 2010), won the Lewis Lockwood Award from the American Musicological Society and the Gaddis Smith International Book Prize, and her second, Curtain, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera (University of California Press, 2018), explores how composers shaped staged opera through specific theatrical technologies. She is a member of the Academia Europaea and recipient of the Royal Musical Association's Dent Medal, the Alfred Einstein Award, and multiple other honors. At Yale, she founded the YOST: Y | Opera | Studies Today conference series and leads the Opera Studies Today Working Group, fostering dialogue between artists, scholars, and administrators in the field.

In this episode, I chat with Professor Wolfgang Marx. Professor Marx is Professor of Historical Musicology at University College Dublin and a member of the UCD Humanities Institute, whose research centers on the representation of death in music, György Ligeti, post-truth and music, and the theory of musical genres. He has served multiple terms as Head of the UCD School of Music and has held editorial roles such as the Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland. An inaugural UCD Innovation Fellow, he is currently President of the Society for Musicology in Ireland and a general editor of Brill's series "Death in History, Culture, and Society." Before entering academia, he worked for a decade as a freelance author and product manager for major labels including Sony, Teldec, and BMG.

In this episode, I chat with Mr. Derek David. Mr. David is a composer, conductor, and educator based in Boston whose work spans dramatic chamber, vocal, and orchestral music as well as a deep commitment to Yiddish musical culture. He is currently Lecturer in Music at MIT and serves as musical director and conductor of "A Besere Velt," the largest chorus dedicated to the performance and preservation of Yiddish repertoire. His music has been commissioned by ensembles including the Juventas Ensemble, Verona Quartet, and Del Sol String Quartet, and featured at the LA Philharmonic's Noon to Midnight Festival and the Boston Festival for New Jewish Music. His honors include the American Prize in Composition (Chamber Music, 2015), the EAMA Nadia Boulanger Institute Prize, and a Morton Gould ASCAP Award, and he holds doctoral and master's degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music.

In this episode, I chat with Professor Oscar Bettison. Professor Bettison is a British-American composer and faculty member in the Composition Department at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he has taught since 2009. Described as possessing "an unconventional lyricism and a menacing beauty," his music bridges the worlds of concert music and beyond, and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and broadcast on radio and television across the U.S., Britain, Australia, the Netherlands, and Brazil. He has received commissions from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Alarm Will Sound, MusikFabrik, Bang on a Can All-Stars, and So Percussion, among others, and his honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize, and the inaugural BBC Young Composer of the Year Prize. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and studied previously at the Royal College of Music in London and the Royal Conservatorium of The Hague.

In this episode, I chat with Professor Forrest Pierce. Professor Pierce is a composer and Associate Professor of Composition at the University of Kansas whose music blends religious mysticism, contemporary virtuosity, and a deep affinity for the human voice. Sincere, often triadic, and blatantly tuneful, his work draws on non-western traditions, rock-era influences, and common-practice harmony to evoke a world of sacred unity and natural beauty. His catalog of over 50 vocal works has been performed internationally by ensembles including the BBC Singers, the Latvian Radio Choir, Volti, the Indianapolis Symphony, and the Boston Choral Ensemble, and he is the winner of the 2012 Barlow Prize in Composition, among other honors. Professor Pierce holds a doctorate from Indiana University and studied opera composition with Dominick Argento at the University of Minnesota, and he also serves on the faculty of the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Tuscany.

In this episode, I chat with Professor Kelly Bylica. Professor Bylica is a music education scholar and faculty member at Boston University whose research focuses on curriculum and policy, critical pedagogy, middle school music, and issues of diversity, access, and leadership in music education. Grounded in her experience as a middle school and K-8 general music and choir teacher in Chicago, her work encourages music educators to challenge assumptions and develop critically artistic dispositions through musical experience. She has published in journals including Music Education Research, British Journal of Music Education, Arts Education Policy Review, and the Journal for Popular Music Education, and contributed chapters to the Oxford Handbook of Music Composition and Oxford Handbook of Care in Music Education, among other volumes. She serves on the editorial committees of Music Educators Journal and Journal of Popular Music Education, chairs the Council for Research and Teacher Education for the Massachusetts Music Educators Association, and holds a Ph.D. in Music Education from the University of Western Ontario, where she was a Trillium Scholar.

In this episode, I chat with Professor Felipe Lara. Professor Lara is a Brazilian-American composer and Associate Professor of Composition at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, praised by the New York Times as "a gifted Brazilian-American modernist" whose music possesses "voluptuous, elemental lyricism." A 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his Double Concerto for esperanza spalding, Claire Chase, and orchestra, his works have been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles and orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Ensemble InterContemporain, Ensemble Modern, JACK Quartet, and the International Contemporary Ensemble, at venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Philharmonie de Paris. His honors include a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship from Harvard University, the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung commission, and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation commission, and three portrait albums of his music were released on Kairos (Vienna) in 2024 and 2025. He holds a Ph.D. from New York University and has previously taught at Harvard, the University of Chicago, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and NYU.

In this episode, I chat with Mr. Adam Boyles. Mr. Boyles is a conductor and vocalist who has been a prominent figure in New England's musical life for nearly two decades. He serves as Assistant Conductor of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and Director of Orchestras at MIT, and is Music Director Emeritus of the Brookline Symphony Orchestra. A versatile presence on the podium, Mr. Boyles made his Boston Pops debut in June 2024 stepping in for Keith Lockhart, and has guest conducted ensembles including the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, and Tucson Symphony Orchestra. He holds a Doctor of Music in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Texas at Austin and brings additional depth to his musical life as an accomplished singer, having performed in opera, professional choral ensembles, and musical theatre.

In this episode, I chat with Professor Miguel Zenón. Professor Zenón is a Grammy-winning alto saxophonist, composer, and Associate Professor in Music and Theater Arts at MIT, widely regarded as one of the most groundbreaking and influential musicians of his generation. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, he has released eighteen recordings as a leader, including the Grammy-winning El Arte Del Bolero Vol. 2 (2023) and the Grammy-nominated Golden City (2024), and his latest Vanguardia Subterránea: Live at The Village Vanguard (2025). A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Doris Duke Artist Award, Professor Zenón has been recognized as Alto Saxophonist of the Year multiple times by the Jazz Journalists Association and as Composer of the Year in 2023. His music, rooted in jazz and deeply informed by Puerto Rican musical traditions, has been commissioned by SFJAZZ, Chamber Music America, the MIT, and the Spektral Quartet, among many others.

In this episode, I chat with Mr. Elijah Smith. Mr. Smith is an American composer and electronic musician whose work spans orchestral, chamber, and multimedia genres, marked by dense textures, rhythmic ambiguity, and rich gravitational harmonies. His music has been described as "gnashing and relentless" by the Chicago Tribune, "seductive" by Gramophone, and "an ingenious study in clarity and distortion" by San Francisco Classical Voice, and has been performed by ensembles including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, JACK Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, Sō Percussion, and Yarn/Wire. He is Instructional Faculty and Manager of New Music Activities at the Curtis Institute of Music and Visiting Faculty at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Smith holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and his music is published by Project Schott New York.

In this episode, I chat with Professor Dan DiPiero. Professor DiPiero is a musician, writer, and Assistant Professor of Music at Boston University whose research explores affective connections between aesthetics and politics in U.S. improvised and popular music. He is the author of Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life (University of Michigan Press, 2022), a finalist for the International Association for the Study of Popular Music Book Prize, and Big Feelings: Queer and Feminist Indie Rock After Riot Grrrl, forthcoming with University of Michigan Press. His writing has appeared in Jazz and Culture, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other venues. A fierce advocate for popular music studies, Professor DiPiero serves as secretary of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (US) and co-founded the Music and Sound Studies Working Group at the Cultural Studies Association.n dipiero

In this episode, I chat with Professor Louis Epstein. Professor Epstein is a historical musicologist specializing in early twentieth-century French music, digital mapping, and the science of teaching and learning. His book The Creative Labor of Music Patronage in Interwar France examines collaborations between patrons and composers that shaped French classical music between the world wars. A recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the Whiting Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation, he has published in journals including Music & Politics, Journal of Musicology, and Journal of Music History Pedagogy. Professor Epstein co-founded Open Access Musicology and leads The Musical Geography Project, an interactive digital mapping initiative that earned him the 2016 American Musicological Society Teaching Award. At St. Olaf College, he previously served as Co-Director of the Center for Innovation in the Liberal Arts.

In this episode, I chat with Professor Colin Roust. Professor Roust is a musicologist and professor at the University of Kansas whose research focuses on twentieth-century music, film music, band music, and the intersections of music, politics, and other arts such as film, opera, and ballet. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and has been a leading advocate for music history pedagogy, serving as Chair of the AMS Pedagogy Study Group and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Music History Pedagogy and Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy. He is the author of Georges Auric: A Life in Music and Politics and co-editor of The Routledge Film Music Sourcebook, and he has presented his work at major national and international conferences. His current projects include critical editions of Early Music of Francis Johnson from the Phoebe Rush Manuscript and The Diary of Thomas Clarke Key, 357th Infantry Regiment Band, American Expeditionary Force.

In this episode, I chat with Dr. Sarah Iker. Dr. Iker is a music theorist and lecturer in the Music & Theater Arts section at MIT, where she teaches music theory, music history, aural skills, and seminars on topics such as dance, opera, and musical theater. She holds a Ph.D. in Music History and Theory from the University of Chicago and dual B.A. degrees in Piano Performance and Mathematics from Scripps College. Her research focuses on the historical reception and perception of Igor Stravinsky’s neoclassical music, using digital humanities methods to connect early twentieth-century listeners’ descriptions with contemporary analytical approaches. Beyond Stravinsky, her interests include musical theater, music perception and cognition, twentieth-century neoclassicism, and the digital humanities, and she presents her work at regional, national, and international conferences

In this episode, I chat with Mr. Garo Saraydarian. Mr. Saraydarian is a musician, educator, and researcher whose work spans jazz performance, music theory, and cross-cultural pedagogy. He teaches musicianship and music theory at MIT and serves as Assistant Professor in the Harmony department at Berklee College of Music, with additional teaching roles at Boston College and the Longy School of Music, where he has contributed to developing a more inclusive music theory curriculum. A versatile performer trained in violin, trombone, and oud, he has performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Birdland, and the Caramoor Jazz Festival with ensembles including the Ayn Inserto Jazz Orchestra and Mehmet Ali Sanlikol's WhatsNext?. His research interests center on historical, cognitive, and cross-cultural approaches to music education, and he is currently completing his Ph.D. in Educational Studies at Lesley University.

In this episode, I chat with Professor Evan Ziporn. Professor Ziporyn is a composer, clarinetist, and cross-cultural innovator whose music bridges Balinese gamelan, contemporary classical, and experimental traditions. He is the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music at MIT, where he serves as Inaugural Director of the Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST) and founded the gamelan ensemble Gamelan Galak Tika. A former founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, he has received a Grammy for his work with the Steve Reich Ensemble and has been commissioned by leading ensembles such as Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble, Kronos Quartet, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. His projects range from the opera A House in Bali to the Blackstar Concerto and the large-scale multimedia work EV6, underscoring his commitment to genre-defying, globally engaged musical creation.

In this episode, I chat with Dr. Elena Ruehr. Dr. Ruehr is a composer, Guggenheim Fellow, and award-winning faculty member at MIT, where she has taught since 1992. A graduate of the University of Michigan and the Juilliard School, her music (described by The New York Times as "sumptuously scored and full of soaring melodies" and by Gramophone as "unspeakably gorgeous") spans opera, orchestra, chamber music, and choral works. She has written five operas and five cantatas, with major recordings on BMOP Sound, Avie, and Albany, and her works have been commissioned and performed by ensembles including the Borromeo, Cypress, and Shanghai String Quartets. Currently composer-in-residence with the Lincoln Symphony, Dr. Ruehr brings to all her work a guiding artistic principle: "the idea is that the surface be simple, the structure complex."

In this episode, I chat with Professor Gareth Dylan Smith. Professor Smith is a drummer, scholar, and educator whose work spans the worlds of popular music performance and academic research. A professor whose scholarship focuses on drum kit studies, popular music education, and philosophical themes such as eudaimonia and punk pedagogies, he is the author of numerous books including I Drum, Therefore I Am, Magical Nexus: A Philosophy of Playing Drum Kit, and co-editor of The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music Education. He is founding co-editor of the Journal of Popular Music Education and has served as President of the Association for Popular Music Education. As a drummer, Professor Smith brings the same depth to his performing life, with over two decades of recording and touring experience across punk, rock, and theatre.

In this episode, I chat with Professor Peter B Child. Professor Child is Professor of Music and a MacVicar Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A composer whose mentors include William Albright, Arthur Berger, and Jacob Druckman, Professor Child earned his Ph.D. in composition from Brandeis University. His music has received awards and commissions from organizations such as the Fromm Foundation, Tanglewood, the New England Conservatory, and the League/ISCM, and has been recorded on the New World, Albany, CRI, Centaur, and Neuma labels. Recipient of the 2004 Levitan Prize in the Humanities at MIT, Child’s work spans orchestral, chamber, vocal, and cross-genre compositions characterized by their intricate structure and expressive clarity.

In this episode, I chat with Professor Roger Matthew Grant. Professor Grant is a music theorist and cultural historian specializing in eighteenth-century music, affect theory, and the history of music theory. He is the author of Peculiar Attunements: How Affect Theory Turned Musical and Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era, both of which have received major scholarly awards. A Guggenheim Fellow, Professor Grant currently serves as Deputy Provost and Dean of Arts and Humanities at Wesleyan University. His current research explores mission music in eighteenth-century Bolivia, and his work has appeared in leading journals including Critical Inquiry, Representations, and the Journal of the American Musicological Society.