Penn Music Colloquium Series

The Department of Music's main Colloquium Series showcases new research by leading scholars in music and sound studies and composers both in the United States and internationally.  All Music Colloquia takes place in Room 101 of the Lerner Center on Tuesdays at 5:15 PM.

Fall 2023

October 3: Nina Eidsheim, Professor of Musicology and Humanities, UC Los Angeles

October 24: Brian Kane, Associate Professor of Music and Film and Media Studies, Yale University

November 28: Alessandra Ciucci, Associate Professor of Music, Ethnomusicology, Columbia University

December 12: George Lewis, Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music, Composition & Historical Musicology, Columbia University

Spring 2024

February 13: Gavin Steingo, Associate Professor of Music, Princeton University

March 13: Myrta Santana, Assistant Professor of Integrative Studies, UC San Diego

April 9: Mark Burford, R.P. Wollenberg Professor of Music, Reed College

Upcoming Events



New Music and the Heterogenous Sound Ideal

Colloquium Lecture by George Lewis
Dec 12, 2023 at - | Penn Music Building - Lerner 101, 201 S. 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104

Join us for a presentation by George Lewis, American composer, musicologist, computer-installation artist, and trombonist. Lewis’s central areas of scholarship are exemplified by his widely read book, "A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music" (University of Chicago Press, 2008) which received the American Book Award and the American Musicological Society’s Music in American Culture Award.



Mark Burford

Apr 9, 2024 at - | Penn Music Building - Lerner 101, 201 S. 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104

Mark Burford is R. P. Wollenberg Professor of Music at Reed College. His published writing includes articles on Sam Cooke, Johannes Brahms, Alvin Ailey, gospel music, and opera. He is the author of Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field and editor of The Mahalia Jackson Reader, both published by Oxford University Press. In 2022, he was awarded the Dent Medal by the Royal Musical Association for outstanding contribution to the field of musicology.

Past Events



Sentinel Musicians of the Ethiopian American Diaspora

Colloquium Lecture by Kay Kaufman Shelemay
Dec 5, 2023 at - | Penn Music Building - Lerner 101, 201 S. 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104

Kay Kaufman Shelemay comes to the Lerner Center to discuss the experiences of Ethiopian musicians during the 1974 Ethiopian revolution, their forced migration abroad, and their roles in helping found new communities in the Ethiopian American diaspora. 



The “Tea Tray:” Nass el Ghiwane, Popular Music, and the Sound of Protest in Morocco (1970s-1990s)

Colloquium Lecture by Alessandra Ciucci
Nov 28, 2023 at - | Penn Music Building - Lerner 101, 201 S. 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104

Alessandra Ciucci presents her current project where she posits that in order to understand the effectiveness of the songs of Nass el Ghiwane it is critical to examine their musicopoetic assemblage with its rich web of citations and intertextual references, and to acknowledge the force of the band’s sound that Moroccans heard as “revolutionary” (thəuri) and with a “protest tone” (nəbra ḥtjajiya).



Birmingham and the Voice of Al Hibbler

Colloquium Lecture by Brian Kane
Oct 24, 2023 at - | Penn Music Building - Lerner 102, 201 S. 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104

Hibbler’s idiosyncratic use of the voice presents a challenge to the orthodoxies of “voice studies.”



Nina Eidsheim

“Presence within Presence:” Camille Norment’s Intermaterial Vibrational Practice
Oct 3, 2023 at - | Penn Music Building - Lerner 101, 201 S. 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104

Join us for a talk with Nina Eidsheim, Professor of Musicology and Humanities at UC Los Angeles, as she considers artist, composer, and musician Camille Norment’s solo shows at Dia Chelsea (2022) and Bergen Kunsthall (2023).



Dr. Ioanida Costache

Hearing Romani-ness: Affect, Subjectivity, and Musical Histories
Apr 4, 2023 at - | Penn Music Building - Lerner 101, 201 S. 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104

Dr. Ioanida Costache is an ethnomusicologist and sound studies scholar specializing in Romani artist practices. Her work explores the legacies of Romani historical trauma, and the feminist and de-colonial critiques of the present, inscribed in Romani music, sound, and art.



Huda Fakhreddine

Umm Kulthum and the Arabic Qasidah: Selection, Curation, and Performance
Mar 28, 2023 at - | Penn Music Building - Lerner 101, 201 S. 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104

In this lecture, Dr. Huda Fakhreddine will discuss Umm Kulthum, the celebrated Egyptian singer who is one of the most successful re-animators of the Arabic qas̩īda in the twentieth century.



Marcos Balter

Recent Compositions
Feb 28, 2023 at - | Penn Music Building - Lerner 101, 201 S. 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104

As part of the 2022-23 Penn Music Colloquium Series, the Penn Music Department presents Marcos Balter, Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University, to discuss his recent works.