Sound Expertise Will Robin

Philip Ewell has, in recent years, become the most controversial music scholar on the planet. After his incisive work on music theory's white racial frame was unfairly attacked by fellow academics, he was suddenly thrust into the national spotlight, as right-wing news outlets targeted him as part of a broader backlash. A discussion about what it means to be caught up in the Culture Wars, racism in music scholarship, and how Dr. Ewell has grappled with it all.

Philip Ewell is professor of music theory at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

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Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation

Do we hear silence? John Cage certainly thought so, and so does Chaz Firestone, a scientist whose laboratory's recent study revealed that yes, we do hear silence. In this conversation, we discuss his new findings, what they mean for the fields of perception studies and philosophy, and how science and the humanities can work together to provide new answers to longstanding questions.

Chaz Firestone is Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Director of the Hopkins Perception & Mind Laboratory at John Hopkins

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Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation

In curating music and the performing arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, Dwandalyn Reece has one of the most important jobs one can have as a music scholar: providing a framework for the public to understand African-American culture, at a moment in which Black history is under a nationwide assault. In this conversation, Dr. Reece discusses her work at the Smithsonian, the process of acquiring important artifacts of Black musical life, and the museum's significance today.

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Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation

Mark Katz is John P. Barker Distinguished Professor of Music at UNC Chapel Hill;  Alim Braxton is a rapper on death row, who has been incarcerated in Central Prison in North Carolina since 1993. In 2019, they struck up a correspondence, and then a friendship, and are now writing a book. This is their story.
Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation 

The revival of Julius Eastman's work has transformed the world of avant-garde music, and in many ways can be attributed to a single individual. Since the late 1990s, the composer and performer Mary Jane Leach has collected manuscripts and recordings of Eastman's music, and helped bring about the current wave of "Eastmania." But the politics of Eastmania have become increasingly complicated, and Leach has found herself enmeshed in controversy around who can make claim to his legacy. A conversation about all that, and more.
Mary Jane Leach is a composer, performer, scholar, and co-editor of "Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music."

Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation 

In 2018, Douglas Shadle tweeted about systemic discrimination in American orchestral programming. His thread went viral, and he soon found himself doing what became known, around then, as public musicology. In this conversation, he talks about presenting his work outside the academy through advocating for marginalized composers, and what the Florence Price revival has meant for his scholarship (and, more troublingly, how Schirmer's acquisition of her music may actually prevent it from being heard).

Douglas Shadle is associate professor of musicology at Vanderbilt University.

Show notes and more over at soundexpertise.org!

Questions? Thoughts? Email soundexpertise00@gmail.com or tag Will on Instagram/Twitter @seatedovation