��������Ƶ

Brian Casey is a jazz bassist, educator and researcher based in Colorado. Casey serves as associate professor of academic jazz at the University of Northern Colorado and earned a DMA in jazz studies from the University of Colorado Boulder where he taught courses in humanities, jazz studies and American music. Prior to moving to Colorado, Casey earned a MM in nazz studies from the University of North Texas where he played with the Grammy-nominated One O’Clock Lab Band and served as a teaching fellow in jazz bass under the direction of Professor of Bass Lynn Seaton. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Casey has performed and recorded with Eric Skye, Pink Martini, Weber Iago, Henry Butler, Anson Wright, Robert Johnson, Lillian Boutté and many others. Casey has presented original research in jazz-related fields at many national and international conferences including those of the College Music Society, the Jazz Education Network and the International Society of Bassists. He has recently published the entry for Miles Davis in the “Oxford Online Bibliographies in Music,” and a chapter on post war traditions Jerry Tolson’s textbook “African American Music: History and Heritage” published by Great River Learning. Casey’s research interests also include the intersection of jazz and American literature, politics, society and the role of jazz in the civil rights struggle in America, as well as jazz as a cultural phenomenon in New Orleans. 

Amir Davarzani, born and raised in Sabzevar, Iran, embarked on his musical journey at age 13, immersing himself in classical and flamenco guitar, later transitioning to the electric guitar. 

Davarzani earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in educational management, with his master’s thesis interweaving pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) with music. In 2020, he authored a book blending thrash metal guitar techniques with innovative pedagogical approaches.

Davarzani’s primary passion revolves around heavy metal music and its subgenres, encompassing thrash, death, nu and hardcore, alongside exploring their historical and societal implications. In 2023, Davarzani was invited to speak at Loyola University in New Orleans, where he discussed Slipknot’s music. Recently, he talked about the birth of heavy metal at the American Musicological Society conference.

Beyond music, Davarzani indulges in movies and explores various topics on the internet.

Jameson Foster is a second-year ethnomusicology PhD student at ��������Ƶ Boulder. He earned his BA in music from Keene State College in New Hampshire and his MM in musicology from Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore where he wrote his thesis I Folkton: Edvard Grieg’s Development as a Norwegianist Composer and His Influence in Belle Époque Paris. In the years between his degrees, he worked as a butcher at the local food co-op and as a farm educator at Stonewall Farm in Keene, NH. He is currently teaching the recitation sections for the Nordic Studies department’s classes on the Vikings and Norse Mythology.

Foster’s research interests as an ethnomusicologist lie in the relationship between music and politics throughout modern Norwegian history, as well as the dynamics of race and identity in Appalachian roots music. As a double bassist, he is experienced in jazz combo, Bluegrass and String Band settings, and is currently learning the ropes of Irish music performance on the mandolin. As a guitarist, he is well-versed in the Piedmont/Country Blues fingerstyle tradition of the Appalachians. When not playing music, you can find him fishing, hiking or birdwatching with his wife Alyssa.

Ubochi Igbokwe is a teaching assistant and third-year PhD ethnomusicology student at the University of Colorado Boulder. She holds a master’s and Bachelor of Arts in vocal music performance from the University of Uyo, Nigeria. In her research, she is fascinated with indigeneity, performance imagery, number symbolism and spirituality in musical arts, and performance of Western, African folk and art music repertory. As a student of African music, she has studied and researched different areas of African musical arts, resulting in sole authorship and co-authorship of articles in various academic journals. This process was partly furnished by her designing and teaching religion and history in high schools and active participant observation of and in many cultural and musical events. 

At the University of Colorado Boulder, the multidisciplinary approach to musicological studies shaped Igbokwe’s thought in writing a proposal for a project titled “Òkùkù Nwàamadī̠: Ritual Symbolism and Musical Arts Among the People of Ndoki,” which was accepted by the Program Committee of the 46th International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) World Conference. Parts of the research paper were presented at the New University of Lisbon (NOVA–FCSH), Lisbon, Portugal, in July 2022 and at the African Studies Association Music Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in November 2022. While her interest in performance imagery remains, her passion for exploring new frontiers inspired her in the summer of 2023 to embark on a pre-dissertation trip to Japan, where she discovered emergent cultural hybridity in African and Japanese fashion, food and popular music. 

Igbokwe’s article titled “The Significance of Ìrìráábú Musical Satire in the Ékpè Dance Festival Amongst the Obohia-Ndoki People of Nigeria” was published in the 2018 edition of the “Yearbook for Traditional Music.” She co-authored three articles published in the 2017, 2018 and 2019 editions of the Journal of Nigerian Music Education (JONMED), and the Journal of Association of Nigerian Musicologists (JANIM). JONMED’s article“Nigerian Music Education: Emerging Issues in Career Placement” focuses on how functional musicianship and versatility are endearing features for potential hires. And those in JANIM “Ìtú Ōtítí: Music and Gender in the Second Funeral Rites in Ndoki,” examines the Ìtú ōtítí as a ritual performance that secures for a deceased mother/woman a triumphant entrance into ancestral realm; “Music and Mathematics: Number Allegory in Ndoki Musical Arts” examines the worldview of the Ndoki people based on the certainty and spiritual importance of numbers in their musical arts.

Karl Isaac Johnson has a particular interest in the history of Gregorian Chant in North America, spanning from colonial-mission encounters to the present day. His academic work, which includes publications in Culture and Religion, Glossolalia, Antiphon, Journal of the Southwest, Sacred Music, and Études Grégoriennes, and presentations at meetings of the International Congress on Medieval Studies, American Musicological Society (twice), American Academy of Religion (twice), Society for Christian Scholarship in Music, and Society for Catholic Liturgy, has spanned research on Hispano and Native American Catholic devotionalism in New Mexico and Arizona, Mohawk First Nation Catholicism historically and in the modern day, French Romantic and Contemporary organ music, the Old Hispanic Rite especially in comparison with the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, ethnographic studies of modern-day Catholic liturgy and music in the U.S., and the origins of heavy metal. He also hopes to study the music of the Penitente societies of New Mexico and to explore the social politics of American country, bluegrass, and "old time" music. He hopes to write a dissertation on the creation and use of post-medieval chant expressions in early modern North America, particularly in French-Canadian and Jesuit Mission contexts.

Isaac has enjoyed a successful career as a church music director, organist, choral conductor, tenor, and composer, and has performed organ recitals in cathedrals, churches, and conferences across the United States and in Canada. He lives in Longmont with his wife, three children and cat, and serves as organist for St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Longmont, Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Denver, and St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Chapel in Boulder.

Laura Klein is a second-year PhD pre-candidate studying historical and performance practice musicology. Her research focuses on the music collection of Jane Austen and the impact music and playing had on her writing as a female author. Klein founded The Jane Austen Playlist in 2019, a research and performance program featuring music from Austen’s music manuscripts paired with dramatized narrations from her novels and writings. She is resident pianist for Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire, UK, where she frequently performs in virtual and live events, most recently as a Reimagine Resident in the spring of 2023.

An active performer, educator and researcher of music and performance practice, Klein earned her Master of Music in piano pedagogy and performance from Westminster Choir College with high honors and her Bachelor of Music in piano performance from Mars Hill University with a cumulative 4.0 GPA. She is an alumna of Brevard Music Center’s Summer Festival and the Juilliard School’s International Scholar Laureate Program. She has performed throughout the USA, Canada, Austria, the UK and the Czech Republic. In addition to playing the 1813 Clementi and Co mahogany square piano at Jane Austen’s House, a few highlights include performing with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the dramatic cast in her production of The Jane Austen Playlist at The Trust Performing Arts Center in Lancaster, PA. Her most recent performance was at Chawton House from a recently re-discovered manuscript belonging to Jane Austen. Upcoming performances and presentations include Pride and Prejudice and the Piano at the Jane Austen Society of North America AGM and The Jane Austen Playlist: Love and Music of Regency England at Mars Hill University (Mars Hill, NC). She will be touring the UK in the summer of 2024, presenting and performing on historic instruments at National Trust and English Heritage sites. Former faculty at Westminster Choir College, the American Boychoir School and Walla Walla University, she currently serves on faculty at Colorado Christian University. 

When she is not teaching, playing her gorgeous 1908 rosewood Steinway grand or reading Jane Austen (again), Klein spends her free time hiking, traveling, and DIY-ing her fixer-upper house in Park Hill with her husband, Matthew, and their daughter, Alyssa. 

ᎦᎵᎡᎵ ᏥᏕᎾᎸ, O Johnette Makamaeakahaio’kaho’oponoponookapunahelekupuo’kaaina Martin ko'u inoa. No Makawao koʻu ahupuaʻa a o Hāmākuapoko, Maui mai au. Noho wau i Kololako (Colorado). As an ᏣᎳᎩ and Kanaka Maoli, cis-gendered, heterosexual woman and musicologist, Johnette’s research interests range from film music to representation, misinformation, and identity in Indigenous music cultures, particularly of the Americas and Polynesia. Born and raised in Hawai’i Nei, she grew up immersed in traditional Native Hawaiian practices, once denied to her ancestors, including mea’ai, aloha ‘āina, spirituality, and mele (mele hula and mele oli). Being a musicologist is a passion that intensifies with her accomplishments in the scholarship and with the guidance of her fellow scholars and professors: past, present, and future. She started her collegiate music education with the goal of returning to her community to give back in the form of teaching academic art music. To this day, Johnette still aspires to contribute to her community as her kuleana or responsibility through teaching music and culture, but now including her Native Hawaiian and Cherokee cultures into the conversation of American Musicology. Her goals of inclusivity stretch from ethnic identity to gender, sexuality, and spiritual identity, i.e., the 2-spirited individual, pre-, and post-colonization. Johnette’s work also includes South Korean film music and pansori (South Korean folk music) as well as Mariachi vocals and pedagogy. 

As an undergraduate and a graduate master’s student, Johnette attended the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, successfully accumulating a BA in Music Education: Secondary Instrumental and an MA in Musicology, respectively, while volunteering for Nā Pua No’eau and Kamehameha Schools to aid in the cultural education of Native Hawaiian children. In her master’s program, she completed and defended her thesis with respect to feminism and film musicology, “Musical Aesthetics in Alex North’s Score for The Bad Seed.” Johnette has most recently worked as a teacher of Native Hawaiian culture at Mid-Pacific Institute, a private college prepatory K-12 school in Mānoa, Hawai’i. Johnette is currently in the Ph.D. Musicology program at the University of Colorado – Boulder and works in the Norlin Library / American Music Research Center music archives. ᏙᏓᏓᎪᎲᎢ. No ka lāhui.

Jessica Quah is a doctoral student in the musicology department at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she has also instructed and assisted in a variety of music courses. She earned a MM degree in musicology from Rice University and has held teaching positions across the school and collegiate levels in Texas. Her master's thesis situated the Yellow River and Butterfly Lovers concerti within their respective historical and political contexts, with especial focus on the manifestation of musical hybridity through instrumentation and texture. Quah's research interests include both art and popular musics, and tend to involve intersections, particularly those of culture and literature; music and language; style, form, and dramaturgy. She has recently presented on the presence of tonal contour in Mandarin rap, as well as on the significance of texture and timbre in Chinese metal music. Her current work concerns adaptations of Chinese historical and mythological narratives for the Euro-American operatic stage.

Brandon Stover is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology. He is currently working on his dissertation titled Transmitting Neiro: Teaching Timbre and Tradition in Online Shakuhachi Lessons which looks into the transmission of the Japanese shakuhachi online and how such online interactions alter the pedagogy of the tradition. As a shakuhachi performer, he earned his first shihan menjō or teaching license to teach the Seien-ryu school of shakuhachi from his teacher in 2022. He has presented research at the Society for Ethnomusicology annual meeting, the Southwest Chapter of the Society of Ethnomusicology, the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, and Borders/Boundaries/Fronteras: Rethinking American Music, a symposium hosted by Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal.

Stover has published in the Journal of Music, Health, and Wellbeing, Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal, the Hakodate Shinbun, and has a forthcoming article in the collection Stories from the Field. He has served as the Vice President of the Graduate Musicology Society where he was in charge of the bi-yearly newsletter.

He holds a BM in music education from Millikin University and an MA in ethnomusicology from Goldsmiths, University of London. Before coming to Colorado, he was a middle school music (band/choir) and social science teacher for nine years in Illinois. In his free time, Stover enjoys playing board games and traveling with his wife, Emily, and their baby boy.

Brandon Swing is a PhD pre-candidate in ethnomusicology. He holds a BM in piano performance from Union University and a MM in piano performance and piano pedagogy from the University of Memphis. Swing’s interests concern video games as social media in childhood and adolescence, and video games as nostalgia later in adult life.

Jason is a second-year PhD student in historical musicology. He received a BM in music history from the University of the Pacific and an MM in music from University of Northern Colorado. 

Thompson’s research interests include early music, music in early modern France, and gender and sexuality in music. While studying at University of the Pacific, Thompson worked on a reconstruction of some music in the Ballet Royale de la Nuit (1653) and wrote his capstone paper on Jean-Baptiste Lully’s setting of the Dies Irae sequence. His master’s thesis, “Queerness in French Baroque Opera: The Relationship Between Achilles and Patroclus in Lully’s Achille et Polyxène,” looks at the portrayal of the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus in Lully’s tragédie-lyrique Achille et Polyxène (1687). He presented his research on Achille et Polyxène at the Rocky Mountain Music Scholar’s Conference in 2022. 

In his free time, Thompson enjoys practicing harpsichord, designing and sewing clothes (historic and modern), going to museums and concerts and traveling with his partner, Jacob. 

Lydia Wagenknecht

Lydia Wagenknecht (she/her) is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado Boulder. A Fulbright Student and Fulbright-Hays fellow, her dissertation titled “Conciencias Antárticas: Music, Climate Change, and Polar Identities in Punta Arenas” examines intersections between climate change and music making in southern Chilean Patagonia. Her broader research interests include voice studies, ecofeminism, decolonial theory, activism, and public musicology

A Research Assistant at the American Music Research Center, Wagenknecht works on the NEH-funded “Soundscapes of the People” project in Pueblo, Colorado. She has also served as an Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholar, College of Music Lead Graduate Instructor, GPSG Music Senator, and president of the Graduate Musicology Society at ��������Ƶ Boulder. Currently, she works as the Student Relations Officer for the journal Rising Voices in Ethnomusicology. She received the Joann W. Kealiinohomoku Award for Excellence from the Southwest Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2020. 

Wagenknecht holds a B.A. in Wide-Range Music Education (Choral/General Music) from Wisconsin Lutheran College. She has taught music students from early childhood through adults. In her free time, Wagenknecht serves as a church musician, trains for ultramarathons, and enjoys spending time with her husband (Austin) and dog (Panqueque).

Charles Wofford is a Ph.D. student in historical musicology and critical theory. He received his B.A. in Music from Northern Arizona University in 2012, where he studied classical guitar under Tom Sheeley, a student of Manuel Lopez Ramos and Patrick Read. Charles’ research interests include musical improvisation, music as a utopian practice, the history of radical thought, the Enlightenment, and the ideologies around “classic rock.” His dissertation examines discourses of improvisation in the Led Zeppelin fan base. Charles has presented on Led Zeppelin, improvisation, and listening at both regional and national conferences of the American Musicological Society. He also maintains an active practice in both electric and classical guitar.

In Fall 2022, Charles was elected president of the Graduate Musicology Society (GMS), a recognized student organization that promotes performances of and scholarship around music. As president, Charles works to fund graduate music scholars' conference expenses. He is also working to reform the bylaws, and has formalized record keeping practices.

Charles has also advocated for student interests in an activist capacity: in 2017 he rallied resistance to an “Alt-Right” presence on campus, and in 2022 publicly advocated for expanded library hours. In recognition of these efforts he was granted the Scholarship and Collegiality Excellence Award by the Graduate and Professional Student Government (GPSG) in Spring 2023.

In his free time Charles enjoys reading, attending concerts, and rotting his brain on YouTube. His favorite author is Victor Serge and his favorite musician is Eric Clapton.

Read more about the recent activities of our graduate students in our newsletter!