Matt BaileyShea received his Ph.D. in Music Theory from Yale University in 2003 with a dissertation on the music of Wagner. He has published on a variety of topics including form, gesture, agency, chromatic harmony, and recomposition. He recently published the book Lines and Lyrics: An Introduction to Poetry and Song (Yale University Press), which won the 2022 Wallace Berry Award from The Society for Music Theory. He is currently working on a book called Troubled Sleep: The Dark Side of Lullabies in Rock, Broadway, and Beyond.

Dr. BaileyShea has been teaching music in both the College Music Department and the Eastman School of Music since 2003. In 2006, he was the recipient of the G. Graydon Curtis ’58 and Jane W. Curtis Award for Excellence in Teaching and in 2010 he was voted “Professor of the Year” in the humanities. In 2019, he received the Goergen Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.