I am a professor of music theory at Hunter College of the City University of New York, where I served as Director of Graduate Studies from 2016 to 2022. My research specialties include race studies in music theory, Russian music theory, Russian opera, modal theory and history, twentieth-century music theory, and hiphop and popular music—see the “research” tab above for links to some of my work. As a public music theorist I have appeared in Adam Neely’s YouTube channel, the BBC, the CBC, Daily Beast, Die Zeit, The Economist, New York Times, New Yorker, Our Body Politic, The Times (London), and WQXR’s Aria Code, among other outlets—see the “media” tab above for more feature stories concerning my work. You can also read about my race scholarship in “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame,” and my six-part blog, “Confronting Racism and Sexism in American Music Theory.”

My monograph, On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone, is currently available from the University of Michigan Press. In it I take an explicitly antiracist and antisexist stance toward music theory and academic music while offering thoughts for the future. I am under contract at W. W. Norton to coauthor a new undergraduate music theory textbook, The Engaged Musician: Theory and Analysis for the Twenty-First Century, which will be a modernized and inclusive textbook based on recent developments in music theory pedagogy with a projected publication date in 2025. I am also under contract at Routledge for the edited collection American Antiblackness, which I am co-editing with sociologist Joe Feagin. I am the series editor for the Oxford University Press book series, Theorizing African American Music, which launched in Fall 2022—our first titles should appear in Fall 2024.

I frequently give lectures, workshops, interviews, and keynotes—don’t hesitate to contact me to discuss a potential collaboration. And thanks for visiting my website!