Eastman Theory Colloquium

The Theory Department runs a weekly colloquium series on Friday afternoons. These colloquia include lectures by renowned guest speakers—recent guests include Alex Rehding, Nancy Rao, Kofi Agawu, Janet Schmalfeldt, Sumanth Gopinath, Jennifer Iverson, and Megan Long—as well as various kinds of professional development workshops, student presentations, conference paper run-throughs, and discussion forums.

Friday, December 5, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“A perfect artist does not deliberate”: Towards a History of Habit and Musical Performance
Carmel Raz (Cornell University)

Thursday, December 4, 2025 from 3:30-5:00 PM ET in ESM 320
“What Does Music Theory Offer a Music Technology Student?”
Trevor de Clercq (Middle Tennessee State University)

Friday, November 14, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
Syllabus Workshop

Friday, October 31, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
SMT Presentation Run-Through Session
Ash Mach, “Tension and Effort Levels in Rebecca Saunders’s Dialogue for Viola and Percussion”
Maeve Gillen, “…And my (Trans?) Gender Analysis”
Lauren Irschick, “First Time Hearing: YouTube Reaction Videos and the Commodification of the Inexpert Listener”
Sam Falotico, “From End Credits to Endless Loops: Intermedial Palimpsests of Momoiro Clover Z’s ‘Nippon Egao Hyakkei'”
Ryan Jones, “Imagining Posthumanist Agency with George Crumb’s Music for a Summer Evening”
Hanisha Kulothparan, “Contrasting Verses in Indian Popular Music”

Friday, October 24, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
Dissertation Defense: Andrew Blake, “Complexity in Jazz Improvisation: Trajectories and Tradeoffs”

Friday, October 17, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Expanded Continuations in Belle Époque Instrumental Music”
Andrew Pau (Oberlin College & Conservatory)

Friday, October 3, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Music and the Aesthetics of the Asset Form”
Eric Drott (Butler School of Music – The University of Texas at Austin)

Friday, September 26, 2025 at 4 PM ET on Zoom
“The Immersive Music Fallacy: Thoughts on a Ludomusicological Obsession”
Julianne Grasso (Florida State University)

Friday, September 19, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
Undergraduate Thesis Presentation
Mary Jedynack
“Variation Form as a Continuous Narrative: Form and Voice Leading in Barrios’s Un Sueño en la Floresta”

Spring 2025

Monday, May 12, 2025 at 1 PM ET in ESM 305
Ryan Jones Dissertation Proposal Defense
“Enchantment and Musical Meaning: Fictioning with George Crumb’s Music”

Friday, May 2, 2025 at 4PM ET in ESM 305
Marina Lee
“Approximately Kaija”
Floris Van der Veken

Friday, April 25, 2025 at 4:10 PM ET in ESM 305
Undergraduate Thesis & Comps 1B Presentations
Brena Zhao
“Paths of Ambiguity: Mapping Wagner’s Harmonic Language in Fourier Space”

Friday, April 18, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Intertextuality in Protest Music”
Noriko Manabe (Indiana University)

Wednesday, April 16, 2025 4 PM ET in ESM 305
Ruixue Hu Dissertation Proposal Defense
“Harmony in Diversity: Theorizing Form, Performance, and Aesthetics in Traditional Qin Music”

Friday, April 11, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Listening to ‘Machine Listening’: Resistance and Reification in Contemporary Musical Practice”
Landon Morrison (Eastman School of Music)

Friday, March 28, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
Spring Conference Run-Throughs
Ruixue Hu
Ryan Galik

Friday, March 21, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“What is Music Theory?”
Robin Attas (Independent Scholar)

Friday, March 21, 2025 at 2-3 PM ET in MC 417
Workshop led by Robin Attas: “Possibilities for Decolonization and Indigenization of Music Theory”
Funded by Eastman Departmental Inclusion Initiative (EDII)

Friday March 7, 1 PM ET on Zoom
Dissertation Defense: Lukas Perry, “Function in Maurice Duruflé’s Modal Harmony”

Tuesday, March 4, 11 AM ET in Messinger Hall 1
Dissertation Defense: Lauren Irschick, “Fictional Music Theory”

Friday, February 28, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Charles Darwin vs. Herbert Spencer: Reconsidering an Historic Debate about the Evolutionary Origins of Music”
Miriam Piilonen (University of Massachusetts – Amherst)

Friday, February 21, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“A Taxonomy of Humor in Film Music and Sound”
Tahirih Motazedian (Vassar College)

Thursday, February 20, 2025 at 3PM ET in MC 1
Schenker Symposium
“The Einleitung Recapitulated: The Conclusion of Tristan und Isolde, Act One and the Double-Tonic Complex Reconsidered” – William Marvin
“Reconsidering Schenker’s Views on Mode: An Exploration of Modal-Tonal Properties in Three Fugues by Dmitri Shostakovich” – Sarah Marlowe
“Schenker’s Melodic Bass Lines and the Legacy of Caccini and Peri” – Matthew Brown
“Gradience in Prolongation” – Davy Temperley

Friday, February 14, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Canon and Symmetry”
Nathan Lam (Eastman School of Music)

Friday, February 7, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
Conference Proposal Workshop

Friday, January 31, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“How to Do Things with Words, to Words: Music Theory and Problematizing Lexicography”
Bryan Parkhurst (Oberlin College and Conservatory)