Two experiments in rhythmic perception show how music psychology and performance science can add to our knowledge of human perception and cognition.

In 1973, the newest railroad in the United States brought its first cargo into Iowa City. Born from the ashes of the Rock Island, the businessmen and farmers of the Central Iowa Railway Company (CIRC) made a valiant, if futile, attempt to keep the towns in the Amish heartland of Iowa connected to each other and the world beyond.  Mark Rheaume’s composition, titled That’s the Way the Railroad Went (2023), seeks to rekindle those connections by unearthing and preserving the multiplicitous...

A conversation about the George and Ira Critical Edition Series, Sounding Spirit scholarly editions of U.S. vernacular sacred songbooks, and the critical editing of music in the 21st Century. We will be joined by Dr. Andrew S. Kohler, the Alfred and Jane Wolin Managing Editor of "The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition," and Dr. Jesse P. Karlsberg, Editor-in-Chief and Project Director of the Sounding Spirit Collaborative and Senior Digital Scholarship Strategist at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship.

Prof. Todd Decker (Washington University in St. Louis) will speak about his quantitative study, which accounts for the racial casting practices evident in every musical production mounted in a Broadway theater between 1970 and 2020. This data reveals the shifting opportunities for performers of color as found in the production history of three central subgenres of the commercial musical stage: jukebox musicals, film adaptations, and revivals. The digital humanities methods behind this paper are...

Abstract Music serves as a tool to promote National unity in Nigeria. One notable figure at the forefront of this endeavor is Onyeka Onwenu, a renowned Nigerian singer and activist. Her role as a “mother” who reaches out to different ethnic groups affords her merit to create a song to commemorate Nigeria’s centenary since its inception. Through the song, Onwenu assumes the role of the mother in reflecting on the country and encapsulating its present circumstances while offering a vision for a...

Analysis and interpretation of Richard Strauss, Caroline Shaw, and J. S. Bach.

Panel on working at a smaller school, featuring Joshua Albrecht (Assistant Professor of Music Theory, the University of Iowa), Kati Meyer (Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Theory, the University of Iowa), and Jama Stilwell (Professor of Music, Cornell College).

Fugal Realization and the Pedagogical Implications of Bernardo Pasquini’s Sessanta Versetti

How do amateur musicians carry out research in the day-to-day and ordinary things they do to make their music?

A less-than-fortunate failing relationship, pending unemployment, fear of enlistment in the army, and sinus issues brought Leonard Bernstein to Key West in late August of 1941 for a 10-day vacation that changed the trajectory of his compositional career. While Bernstein’s successes with his “Clarinet Sonata for Piano,” Fancy Free, On the Town, and West Side Story are tied to his positionality in New England, the sunny and sailor-filled paradise of Key West, Florida, also played a monumental role...

Melvis Santa is a female African Cuban pianist and vocalist who moved from Havana to New York City in 2014 where she runs a studio program called Afro-Cuban Voice Therapy (ACVT). She combines elements of Santería song, dance, and sacred stories, her formal classical training at the Cuban conservatory in piano and voice, and elements of neo-spiritual movements increasingly common in the United States like kinesthetic and vocalization exercises drawn from Yoga and Hinduism. Collectively, these...

Between 1898 and 1925, Linda Bell Free Wardwell sold 30,000 booklets entitled Plan of Study on Musical History. Designed to facilitate programming by members of the National Federation of Music Clubs, Wardwell’s pamphlets were adopted by women’s organizations from Magnolia, Arkansas; to Silver City, New Mexico. Her offerings contributed to the canonization of European music in the United States, but they also supported the Federation’s advocacy of American composers. This talk positions Wardwell...

Ramin Roshandel and Jean-François Charles demonstrate sētar and electronics