Natalie L. Haslam College of Music

Chih-Long Hu

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
330 Natalie L. Haslam Music Center
Knoxville, TN 37996-2600
Phone
865-974-0624

Chih-Long Hu

Keyboard Area Coordinator & Sandra G. Powell Endowed Professor of Piano

A native of Taiwan, pianist Chih-Long Hu‘s performance career was launched after receiving honors including the Taipei National Concert Hall Arising Star, the Chi-Mei Artist Award, and prizes from the Mauro Monopoli International Piano Competition in Italy, the Concurs International De Piano D’Escaldes-Engordany in Andorra, the Takamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan, and San Jose International Piano Competition in California.

An active performer, Hu performs extensively in Asia, Europe, and America appearing as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. His recent performance highlights include concerto performances of Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody, Mozart Concerto No.9, Schumann’s Concerto in A, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, solo and chamber recitals in China, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, Ireland, Canada, and throughout the U.S. Hu’s performances have been broadcast in “Performance Today” through NPR stations across the U.S. as well as in Taiwan, China and Japan. His CD albums “Formosa Caprices”, “Complete Rachmaninov Etudes-Tableaux”, and “Goldberg Variations” have received critical acclaims.

Recipient of the UT Chancellor’s Excellence in Teaching Award and named “Teacher of the Year” by Tennessee Music Teachers Association, Knoxville Music Teachers Associations, and Appalachian Music Teachers Association, Hu is a committed and passionate teacher. He strives to cultivate and inspire curiosity in human expressions and to help his students discover their individuality through the music.  His students have won numerous prizes from international and national competitions, and have been accepted to prestigious universities and conservatories after studying with him.

Hu involves with the community and has served in various professional organizations and committees. He is frequently invited to give lectures and masterclasses in various venues, as well as to judge international and national competitions. Hu has served as the Artistic Director of St. Andrews Piano Academy and Festival International in New Brunswick, Canada.

Hu holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts in piano performance from the University of Michigan, a Master’s degree from Taipei National University of the Arts, and a Bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from National Taiwan University. His piano teachers include Arthur Greene, Hung-Kuan Chen, and Tai-Cheng Chen. Hu is currently the Sandra G. Powell Endowed Professor of Piano and the keyboard area coordinator at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Education

DMA, Piano Performance – The University of Michigan
MFA, Piano Performance – Taipei National University of the Arts
BE, Civil Engineering – National Taiwan University

Music Samples

Miroslav Hristov

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
326 Natalie L. Haslam Music Center
Knoxville, TN 37996-4040
Phone
865-974-7535

Miroslav Hristov

Area Coordinator of Strings, Professor of Violin

Violinist Miroslav Hristov was hailed by Fanfare Magazine for his “razor sharp technique” and a “full palette of tonal colors.” He presents master classes and performs extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. As a soloist and chamber musician, he has performed in several international festivals and concert series, including the Musical Treasures series in Carnegie Hall, the Interharmony International Music Festival in Arcidosso, Italy, the Sofia Music Weeks International Festival, the Balabanov House Music Days, the Big Arts Concert Series in Florida, and the Fredell Lack Series in Houston, Texas. Recent performances include solo and chamber performances in the national recital halls of Taiwan and Singapore. Hristov was First Prize winner of the Dobrin Petkov International Violin Competition and a prize winner for the MTNA Collegiate String Performance Competition.

Hristov has recorded for Centaur Records, Romeo Records, Blue Griffin Records, the Divine Arts Record label, Bulgarian National Radio and WUOT Knoxville. His recordings have been broadcast on NPR stations across the country. As part of the internationally-acclaimed Kaleidos Duo with pianist, Vladimir Valjarevic, Dr. Hristov’s recordings and performances have received rave reviews from The Strad Magazine, Fanfare, DUMA (Sofia, Bulgaria), and Lucid Culture (New York).

Hristov has presented his research on Eastern European pedagogical methods for violin at conferences around the world, including the International College Music Society Conference, the American String Teachers Association National Conference, and the Music Teachers National Association Conference. A dedicated teacher, his students have won numerous competitions, and many hold prestigious scholarships and professional appointments. Recent teaching awards include the 2014 Tennessee Music Teachers Association Teacher of the Year, the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts Outstanding Teacher Award, and the University of Tennessee School of Music’s Faculty Distinguished Teaching Award.

Miroslav Hristov is also Founder and Director of the University of Tennessee’s Ready for the World Music Series, which brings renowned artists to perform and talk about musical styles and literature from diverse regions around the world, emphasizing each region’s contribution to western classical music.

For more information about Hristov, please visit his website at www.miroslavhristov.com.

Education

DMA, Violin Performance – University of Kentucky
MM, Violin Performance – Southeastern Louisiana University
MM, Violin Performance – State Academy of Music “Pantcho Vladigerov,” Bulgaria
BM, Violin Performance – State Academy of Music “Pantcho Vladigerov,” Bulgaria

Hillary Herndon

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
327 Natalie L. Haslam Music Center
Knoxville, TN 37996-4040
Website
https://www.hillaryherndon.com/
Phone
865-974-0317

Hillary Herndon

Professor of Viola

Violist Hillary Herndon has earned a national reputation for her brilliant playing, insightful teaching and creative programming. She has been heard on NPR and PBS and has collaborated with some of the world’s foremost musicians, including Carol Wincenc, James VanDemark and Itzhak Perlman, who described Hillary as “having it all… a gifted teacher and an excellent musician.”

Ms. Herndon teaches at The University of Tennessee, Montecito Music Festival and the Viola Intensive Workshops.  She has recently been elected to serve on the American Viola Society Executive Board and has published teaching articles in the American String Teacher Association Journal and the Journal of the American Viola Society.  Ms. Herndon’s 2-CD set of recordings by women composers, La Viola, is on the MSR Classics label.   Ms. Herndon holds degrees from Eastman and Juilliard.

Hillary Herndon website:  www.hillaryherndon.com

Education

MM, Viola Performance – Juilliard School (2002)
BM, Viola Performance – Eastman School of Music (2000)

Music Samples

Kathy Hart

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
Natalie L. Haslam Music Center, Room 204
Knoxville, TN 37996-4040

Kathy Hart

Lecturer of Strings

This is Kathy Hart’s twenty-seventh season conducting the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra Association’s Sinfonia Orchestra. She is also the General Manager for the Youth Orchestra Association.  During her tenure, the ensembles have grown from three orchestras serving 120 students to six orchestras serving over 300 students.  As a high school student, she was a violinist in the KSYO when her family moved to Knoxville in the 1980’s.

Kathy began her music connection with the Suzuki Method in Western New York State.  Her environment was filled with a great deal of love and support from family and teachers.  She graduated from the University of Tennessee with a concentration in Suzuki Pedagogy.  Hart-Strings, her private violin studio has over 50 students ages 3-18 who perform several times in the community each year.  Many Hart-Strings violinists are KSYOA members.

She created the youth orchestra’s annual music camp program with 15 string students and one assistant.  Music Camp has served over 3600 students since 1994.

Kathy is an adjunct lecturer at the University of Tennessee where she teaches the String Methods courses and assists string education majors in field experience and observation. She has volunteered with several school string programs, and was instrumental in bringing the orchestra program back to Bearden High School in 1998.  Kathy has also been a guest conductor for ETSBOA, had students selected in the National Youth Orchestra of the USA and has been recognized eight times with an Outstanding Teacher Award from the state of Tennessee Governor’s School of the Arts.  In 2020, she was honored as a finalist in the YWCA’s Tribute to Women.

Jon Hamar

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
252 Natalie L Haslam Music Center
1741 Volunteer Boulevard
Knoxville, TN 37996-2600
Website
https://jonhamar.com/
Phone
865-974-3615

Jon Hamar

Associate Professor of Jazz & Classical Double Bass

Professor Jon Hamar is a versatile artist whose ability to find a tasteful, unique voice in any musical situation has made him a staple in the music scene.

Jon earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Classical Double Bass Performance from Eastern Washington University under the tutelage of Russian bassist Roma Vayspapir. While in Spokane Hamar performed with the Spokane Symphony and the Bob Curnow Big Band. Hamar continued on to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York where he graduated with a Master’s degree in Jazz and Contemporary Media in 2001. While at Eastman Jon studied with Jeff Campbell,  James VanDemark, Harold Danko, Fred Sturm and Clay Jenkins.

In 2012 Jon joined the faculty at the Centrum Jazz Workshop under Artistic Director John Clayton and in 2015 joined the faculty at the University of Tennessee. Hamar is currently Associate Professor of Bass, Jazz and Classical at the Nathalie L. Haslam School of Music at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Jon began performing with the Jeff Hamilton Trio in July of 2018 and in the same year joined the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra under the direction of John Clayton, Jeff Hamilton and Jeff Clayton.  Jon Has performed with the CHJO extensively in Europe and the United States.

Rachel May Golden

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
235 Natalie L. Haslam Music Center
Knoxville, TN 37996-4040
Phone
865-974-8054

Rachel May Golden

Area Coordinator & Professor of Musicology

Rachel May Golden is Professor of Musicology in the College of Music. She was inaugural chair of the interdisciplinary program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality and is a former co-chair of the Medieval and Renaissance interdisciplinary program. She is also affiliate faculty in Religious Studies.

Her research embraces experiential and cultural aspects of medieval music of the twelfth century, including issues of monastic devotion, the cult of the Virgin Mary, songs of the Crusades, gendered expression, socio-religious politics and worldviews, and words-music relationships. She also works in contemporary music, where her research addresses opera, oratorio, and film; intersections among music, drama, and text; multimedia and technology; gender, identity, and performativity. Her current project explores how particular uses of pre-existing pop and rock songs in early-twentieth-first-century horror films express post-9/11 disorientations and anxieties. She has been an American Council of Learned of Societies Fellow and an NEH Summer Scholar.

Her teaching and advising reflect her expertise in these various areas, including topics pertaining to medieval and Renaissance western music; twentieth-century musics; voice and opera; gender, sexuality, and music; performance studies and performance art; music and identity, music and politics, and music and religion.

Education

PhD, Musicology – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2000)
MFA, Musicology – Brandeis University (1996)
BA, Mathematics – Cornell University (1992)

Research & Creative Endeavors

Books

  • Mapping Medieval Identities in Occitanian Crusade Song.  Oxford University Press, 2020.
    • In medieval Occitania (southern France), troubadours and monastic creators fostered a vibrant musical culture. In response to the early Crusade campaigns of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Christians of the region turned to producing monophonic, poetic song, encompassing both secular and sacred genres. This book demonstrates the profound impact the Crusades had on two seemingly discrete musical-poetic practices: the Latin, sacred Aquitanian versus, associated with Christian devotion, and the vernacular troubadour lyric, associated with courtly love. I investigate how such Crusade songs distinctively arose out of their geographic environments, asserting shifting regional identities and worldviews and exploring devotional practices and religious beliefs.  Further, I reveal how these songs reflect both the outer world and interior lives, and often their conjunction, giving shape and expression to concerns with the Occitanian homeland, spatial aspects of the Crusades, and newly emerging positions within socio-political history. 
    • See https://global.oup.com/academic/product/mapping-medieval-identities-in-occitanian-crusade-song-9780190948610?cc=us&lang=en&
  • Gender and Voice in Medieval French Literature and Song, co-edited by Rachel May Golden and Katherine Kong. University Press of Florida, 2021. https://upf.com/book.asp?id=9780813069036
    • This volume interprets the voices of medieval French and Occitan literature, lyric, and song as articulations of gendered identities.  As medieval texts were often voiced—that is, either read or sung aloud—voice is a central rubric for understanding the performance, transmission, and reception of textual and musical work across varied genres.  Voice also functions on a diegetic and symbolic level: as an instrument for asserting authority and agency, voice profoundly inscribes texts with meaning and signification, articulating subjective positions, facilitating dialogue, and enacting silence.  This collection reads and listens to selected medieval French texts and musical works, and includes literary, musical, and historiographical analysis for an interdisciplinary readership. Construing gender broadly, our essays include feminist readings, investigations of masculinity, queer theory, and intersectional approaches.
    • See https://upf.com/book.asp?id=9780813069036

Representative Articles and Essays

  • “Gendered Grief, Temporality, and Reinvention in Two Northern Crusade Songs,” in Gender and Voice in Medieval French Literature and Song, co-edited by Rachel May Golden and Katherine Kong (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2021), 121-150.
  • “Beyond this Mist: Uncovering Material Multiplicities in Amis, amis,” in Female-Voice Song in the Middle Ages, edited by Anna Kathryn Grau and Lisa Colton, Companions to the Musical Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2021).
  • “Across Divides: Aquitaine’s New Song & London BL, Add. 36881,” Chapter 3 of Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context, edited by Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
  • “Polyphonies of Sound and Space: Motet, Montage, Voices of Light, and La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc.” Musical Quarterly 9, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 296-330.
  • “Music and Pilgrimage.” In Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, ed. Larissa Taylor, et. al., 463–468. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
  • “Two Paths to Daniel’s Mountain: Poetic-Musical Unity in Aquitanian Versus.” Journal of Musicology 23, no. 4 (Fall 2006): 620–646.
  • “Striking Ornaments: Complexities of Sense and Song in Aquitanian Versus.” Music & Letters 84, no. 4 (November 2003): 527–556.
  • “‘As Were We Born Today’: Characterization and Transformation in Samuel Barber’s Vanessa.”  Opera Quarterly 17, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 235–249.

Nathan Fleshner

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
117C Natalie L. Haslam Music Center
Knoxville, TN 37996-4040
Phone
865-974-4977

Nathan Fleshner

Interim Associate Dean of Research & Facilities, Associate Professor of Music Theory

Nathan Fleshner’s research focuses on the portrayal of mental illness, trauma, and the therapeutic process in music. He is interested in songs used as medical narratives to describe artists’ psychological and therapeutic experiences and has published and presented on songs by Adele, Tori Amos, Eminem, Linkin Park, Dave Matthews Band, Maren Morris, Prince Paul, Malvina Reynolds, Robert Schumann, Townes Van Zandt, and Kanye West. He is also interested in conscious and unconscious thought processes: in particular, the therapeutic, music analytic, and creative processes and how they interact. An avid Seinfeld fan, he has written two book chapters on music in the show.

He has presented papers at national and international music analysis and other disciplinary conferences, including the Society for Music Theory, the Society for Music Analysis, the International Association for Analytical Psychology in Zurich, Switzerland, the Eighth European Music Analysis Conference in Leuven, Belgium, the Ninth European Music Analysis Conference in Strasbourg, France, the Second International Conference on Music and Consciousness in Oxford, England, and Tracking the Creative Process in Music in Lisbon, Portugal. His research has been published in multiple journals and the edited volumes, Music Video Games: Performance, Politics, and Play, The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Music, and For the Sake of the Song: Essays on Townes Van Zandt.

He authors the column, “Do You Hear That Too? Music and the Medical Humanities” for the website, The Polyphony, associated with the Institute for the Medical Humanities at Durham University, UK. The column explores musicians and their music through the lens of mental health and the broader field of medicine, including analyses of specific works and connections between fields of music and medicine.

Education

PhD, Music Theory – Eastman School of Music (2012)
MM, Music Theory – Baylor University (2005)
MM, Cello Performance – University of Houston (2001)
BM, Music Education – Baylor University (1999)

James Fellenbaum

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
212 Natalie L. Haslam Music Center
Knoxville, TN 37996-4040
Phone
865-974-0316

James Fellenbaum

Associate Professor of Conducting, Director of Orchestras, Area Coordinator of Conducting

James Fellenbaum enjoys an extraordinarily diverse career as a conductor, equally at home with Symphonic music, Chamber Orchestra repertoire, Pops, Ballet, Opera, Choral-Orchestral, and Film with Live Orchestra.

James is the Director of Orchestras at the University of Tennessee, a position he has held since 2003. He oversees and conducts the Orchestra Program, which includes the Symphony Orchestra – the most prominent collegiate ensemble in the state – the Chamber Orchestra, founded in 2004, the Contemporary Music Ensemble, founded in 2006 and dedicated to music written since 1950, and UT Opera Theater, where he oversees orchestral administration, and has conducted past productions such as Don Giovanni, La Traviata, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, The Turn of the Screw, Sweeney Todd, Susannah, Cosi fan tutte, Little Women, and more. Orchestral performances at UT have grown in size of ensemble, depth of repertoire, and quality of performances, resulting in invitations to perform in state-wide and regional concerts, receiving critical acclaim such as “…the UT Symphony has developed, at an amazing pace, into an ensemble that rivals the professional orchestras in many communities.” Additionally, the Orchestra Program been chosen for two different PBS recording projects, performing as the classical soundtrack for Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People, narrated by Sissy Spacek, and part I of The Truth about Trees.

James is the Resident Conductor of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, having completed his 13th season with the organization. He conducts a variety of concerts with the KSO, and has lead the orchestra in a wide array of repertoire, ranging from the complete Brandenburg Concerti to orchestral music from Wagner’s The Ring Cycle. His performances on the Masterworks and Chamber Classics series have garnered such praise as “…a remarkable performance, one that was clean, focused, and razor-sharp in its control, yet passionate and warm in its display.” and “one of the most compelling performances of a Beethoven symphony I have yet heard in Knoxville.” As a frequent conductor on the Knoxville News-Sentinel Pops series, he has collaborated with such renown artists as Kenny G, Chris Botti, The Texas Tenors, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Jim Witter, Ann Hampton Calloway, The Indigo Girls, and The Midtown Men, along with tributes to Bob Denver, The Beatles, Elvis, as well as the popular Cirque de la Symphonie. He also excels in Film with Live Orchestra concerts, including recent presentations of The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Mary Poppins. As part of the KSO’s Education and Community Partnership Program, he conducts performances throughout the city of Knoxville, as well as regional communities in east Tennessee and southwest Virginia. He also conducts the educational programs, including Side-by-Side concerts with local high school orchestra programs, as well the KSO’s annual Young People’s Concerts, which are seen by 10,000 elementary students each year.

Since 2010, James Fellenbaum is also the Music Director of the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra Association. The KSYOA consists of 6 orchestras, lead by the Youth Orchestra, which he conducts. In March of 2018, the Youth Orchestra was selected to compete in the National Orchestra Festival in Atlanta, sponsored by the American String Teachers Association, where they won 1st Prize in the Youth Orchestra Division. The Youth Orchestra was also awarded 3rd Prize in The American Prize competition–Youth Orchestra division, for their 2017-2018 season. In June 2020, the Youth Orchestra will take their first-ever tour to Europe, and will perform in Prague and Vienna. He has been a guest Music Director of the Symphony of the Mountains Youth Orchestra (TN), and was previously the Music Director of the Suburban Youth Symphony in Illinois. He has conducted the American Youth Philharmonic, Texas Honors Orchestra, and has led many regional and all-state orchestras, as well as hundreds of workshops and clinics.

The 2020-2021 season marks James Fellenbaum’s the third year as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Brevard Philharmonic, NC. Concerts include Classical, Holiday, Pops, and Music in the Schools programs, and have been met with critical and popular acclaim. He has conducted orchestras nationally and internationally, including recent guest conducting engagements with the Amarillo Symphony (TX), Brevard Philharmonic (NC), Erie Philharmonic (PA), Springfield Symphony Orchestra (MA), Asheville Symphony Orchestra (NC), the Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra (OR), Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Orange County Symphony (CA), and several others. He was invited to the 2006 First International Gennady Rozhdestvensky Conductors Competition, where he was one of 20 conductors chosen to compete out of 112 applicants from 26 countries around the world, and finished as a Finalist – the only American to reach that round.

James Fellenbaum holds a Bachelor of Music degree in violoncello performance from James Madison University, and holds a double Masters degree in violoncello performance and orchestral conducting from Northwestern University. His primary conducting teachers were Victor Yampolsky and Cliff Colnot in Chicago, David Zinman and Murry Sidlin at the Aspen Summer Music Festival, and Pinchas Zukerman and Jorma Panula as part of the Conductors Programme with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Canada.

Education

MM, Orchestral Conducting and Violoncello Performance – Northwestern University (1994)
BM, Violoncello Performance – James Madison University (1991)

Eileen Downey

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
325 Natalie L. Haslam Music Center
Knoxville, TN 37996-4040
Phone
865-974-0318

Eileen Downey

Distinguished Lecturer of Collaborative Piano and Vocal Coach

Eileen Downey is currently Vocal Coach and Distinguished Lecturer of Collaborative Piano at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she also works frequently in collaboration with the Knoxville Opera Company. This year, Downey will be performing at the College Music Society National Conference in Washington, D.C., teaching a residency at Vanderbilt University, and coaching and performing as a faculty member of the Adult Chamber Music Intensive with the Knoxville Chamber Music Society.

During the 2022-23 season, Downey was a featured performer at the African American Art Song Alliance Conference, a guest clinician for events with the National Association of Teachers of Singing at the University of South Carolina and Austin Peay State University, and performed in Opera Roanoke’s production of Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied. She joined the faculty of SongFest at Vanderbilt in Nashville, TN, and returned to her position as opera coach at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.

Downey was chorusmaster, vocal coach, and Music Director for the Janiec Opera Company at the Brevard Music Center for six summer seasons between 2013 and 2019, and is frequently contracted to be a pianist for the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition and the Opera Birmingham Vocal Competition.

Downey is an alumna of the Merola Opera Program and has participated in numerous other programs including Opera North, SongFest, Aspen Opera Theater Center, Project Canción Española, and the Opera Theatre and Music Festival of Lucca, Italy. Downey received a Bachelor’s degree in Piano Performance and a Master’s Degree in Collaborative Piano from Michigan State University.

Education

MM, Collaborative Piano, Michigan State University, 2008
BM, Piano Performance, Michigan State University, 2006

Dale Disney

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ADDRESS
University of Tennessee
College of Music
131 Natalie L. Haslam Music Center
1741 Volunteer Blvd.
Knoxville, TN 37996-2600
Phone
865-974-7087

Dale Leah Disney

Lecturer of Musicology, Coordinator of Online Programs

Dale Leah Disney, lecturer of musicology, is a researcher and percussionist based in East Tennessee. She holds a Doctorate in Music Education from Boston University, a Masters in Musicology from The University of Tennessee, and a Bachelor of Music Education from Tennessee Technological University. She specializes in topics related to music and gender, and the late medieval period.

Dale also directs online learning for the Natalie L. Haslam College of Music, including coordinating with Digital Learning and assisting with course management and design.

Education

DMA, Music Education – Boston University (2018)
EdS, Supervision and Administration – Lincoln Memorial University (2011)
MM, Musicology – The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2008)
BM, Instrumental Music Education – Tennessee Technological University (2005)

Research & Creative Endeavors

“Musicology in the Ensemble Setting.” School Band and Orchestra 15, no. 12 (2012).