Music Theory Student and Alumni Accomplishments

Recent Graduates

Here is a list of (now former) students with newly minted Ph. Ds from the Music Theory program at the CUNY Graduate Center, along with their current position:

  • Stephen Gomez, 2023 “Form in Hip-Hop: Techniques, Aesthetics, and Meanings.” (University of Alabama)
  • Charles Weaver, 2023 “The Solesmes Theory of Plainchant Rhythm: Its Sources, Methods, and Influence” (Juilliard)
  • Drew Fleming, 2022. “Beat Construal, Tempo, Metric Dissonance, and Transgressing the Groove in Heavy Metal” (Schirmer Publishers).
  • Kristi Hardman, 2022. “Experiencing Sonic Change: Acoustic Properties as Form- and Meter-Bearing Elements in Popular Music Vocals” (UNC Charlotte).
  • Ruka Shironishi, 2022. “Plainchant Accompaniment and Modal Harmony in Nineteenth-Century France” (Mannes, Juilliard, and Queens College).
  • Michèle Duguay, 2021. “Gendering the Virtual Space: Sonic Femininities and Masculinities in Contemporary Top 40 Music” (Harvard University).
  • Simon Prosser, 2021. “A Schema-Theoretic Approach to Hierarchy in Eighteenth-Century Tonality” (George Mason University).
  • Noel Torres-Rivera, 2021. “The Making of an Avant-gardist: A Study of Rafael Aponte-Ledée’s Early Life and Works (1957–1966) ” (University of Missouri Kansas City).

Student News, Summer–Fall 2023

Erin Johnston and Jong Wook Song co-presented the talk, Navigating the Future of Music Pedagogy Through Open-Source Collaboration,” at the Music Informatics & Music Theory Pedagogy Interest Groups’ joint session at the recent AMS/SMT meeting in Denver. Erin also delivered the presentation,  “OER Teaching Repositories as Supplement to Graduate Pedagogy Training,” at the Teaching Music History conference in June.

Christina Lee was recently appointed full-time instructor of Music Theory at Juilliard.

Rebecca Moranis co-authored the essay “Rhythm Contour Drives Musical Memory,” published in Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics (2023). She delivered the presentation entitled “Choreographing Orchestration: A Novel Method for Analyzing Orchestration through Ballet” at ACTOR Y5, Timbre 2023, the SMT Dance and Movement Interest Group meeting, and as an invited talk at McGill’s ACTOR/CIRMMT Symposium. Rebecca delivered (with Joseph Straus) the presentation, “Poetic Meter: A View from Music Theory” at the 2023 SMT conferences. She co-organized and performed flute on a concert called “Living New York” at the Graduate Center’s Elebash Hall in October 2023 featuring music by living women composers associated with NYC, and is co-chairing the GSIM conference in April 2024.

Demi Nicks serves as the Chair for the SMT Disabilities and Music Interest Group.

Vlad Praskurnin presented the paper “Block quotation in two chanson-masses by Orlando di Lasso” at the recent Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory in Denver.

Ben Schweitzer will be presenting the paper “A Play of Light: Temporal Cycles and Intercultural Dialogue in Toshio Hosokawa’s Utsurohi” at the upcoming meeting of MTSNYS. His composition, Basho Settings for soprano and chamber ensemble and Poem for flute and piano will be performed at an upcoming concert at the Graduate Center on February 23.

Lina Tabak was the program committee co-chair for the Analytical Approaches to World Music Conference in June 2023. She currently teaches at NYU, and next Fall will start as an Assistant Professor at Indiana University. She presented the paper, “The Effects of Stylistic Expertise on Metric Perception: Rhythmic Practices of the Colombian South Pacific” at the Baird Lecture Series at the SUNY Buffalo in October. At the recent SMT conference, she presented the paper “Long-Form Non-Isochrony and Implicit Music Theory,” and she also presented a paper at the Interculturalism Interest Group and chaired the session “Oral Cultures in the History of Music Theory.”

Jiyeoung Sim co-translated the book, Musicology: The Key Concepts by David Beard and Kenneth Gloag, published in 2023. This book has been selected as a “Sejong Outstanding Book of 2023” in the academic field by the Publication Industry Promotion Agency of Korea.

Stephen Spencer is a full-time Lecturer of Musicianship at Hunter College. This is a full-time Lecturer position.  An article he co-authored with Prof. Mark Spicer, “10cc, ‘I’m Not in Love’ (1975),” was part of the collection, Analyzing Recorded Music, which was honored with the SMT 2023 Mutli-Author Publication Award. He recently the paper, “Visualizing the relative brightness of concurrent textural layers in Ruth Crawford’s Music for Small Orchestra (1926),” at the SMT/ /AMS meeting in Denver.

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For a list of alumni since 1996, see here.

For a list of current students, see here.

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