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Originally from British Columbia, I completed a BMus in Music History and Literature at University of Victoria, and an ARCT in piano performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music before embarking on an MA and PhD in Musicology from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook. Prior to my appointment at Laurier, I taught at SUNY Stony Brook and the University of Karlstad, Sweden.
My dissertation, Medieval Uncloistered: Uses of Medieval Music in Late Twentieth- Century Culture, examined the influences, interpretations and reconfigurations of medieval music in late twentieth-century music by Dead Can Dance and Enigma, contemporary concert music by Arvo Pärt and John Tavener and historically-informed performances of medieval music dating from the 1950s-1990s. I continue to work in the area of medievalism, editing, with Stephen C. Meyer, The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism (2020). I have also published articles on the ‘madwoman;’ on popular music; and film music. My latest interest is in the music of Carl Orff, working with theories of gender, sexuality and modernism.
Besides presenting my research at numerous international and national conferences including the American Musicological Society, the International Musicological Society, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and Studies in Medievalism, I was the president of the NYSSL branch of the AMS from 2015-2021. I was also the program chair for the national conference of the Canadian University Music Society, held with Congress at Laurier May 31- June 3, 2012.
At Laurier, I teach courses in music and modernism, women and music, public musicology, opera, as well as a series of seminars in musicology; cross-cultural intersections; music, culture and technology; music in popular culture; and medievalism. My courses incorporate critical theories from disciplines such as gender studies, postcolonialism, literary criticism and cultural studies in an effort to shed light on the role and meaning of music in both contemporary and historical times.
I am a member of the graduate faculty and am available to take on the role of supervisor, as well as be an outside reader within my areas of research or expertise.
I have just published (with Stephen C. Meyer) The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism, a collection of 33 essays on medievalism in music of the past two centuries. Topics range from romanticism, nationalism, and opera to film music, rock music and video games. My current research project is a book investigating the musical settings and texts in Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, Catulli Carmina, and Trionfo di Afrodite in the context of modernism in Germany between 1933 and 1951.
I have published articles on medievalism in a variety of musical settings. My articles on medievalism in the area of popular music have explored the alternative rock band Dead Can Dance; the heavy metal band Black Sabbath; and Corvus Corax from the German ‘mittelalter-Szene.’ I have also published widely on medievalism and the early music revival, specifically the New York Pro Musica; Sequentia and Anonymous 4; the Studio der Frühen Musik; Rondellus, among others. My interest in representations of the ‘Other’ is a thread that weaves through some of my work, most notably in the representation of ‘madwomen’ (in Linda Bouchard’s Black Burned Wood); and the portrayal of Muslims in Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven.
Edited Collection
- Meyer, Stephen C., and Kirsten Yri, Eds., The Oxford Handbook on Music and Medievalism (Oxford University Press), 2019.
Articles in Refereed Journals (selected)
- Review: “From Camelot to Spamalot, Musical Retellings of Arthurian Legend on Stage and Screen,” Arthuriana 32, no. 2 (2022): 11-13.
- “Black Sabbath Purgatus,” Special Issue on Medievalism and the Emotions in: postmedieval, Helen Dell, Andrew Lynch, Elizabeth Randell Upton, guest eds, Dec 2019.
- “Corvus Corax: Medieval Rock, the Minstrel, and Cosmopolitanism as anti-Nationalism,” Popular Music 38, no. 3 (Cambridge University Press), 2019.
- “Wandervogel and Lebensreform Ideologies in Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana,” Musical Quarterly 100, no. 3-4 (2017).
- “Review: The German Revival of Hildegard,” Early Music 44, No. 1, 157-159, 2016.
- “Crossover,” Encyclopedia of American Music and Culture, Jacqueline Edmondson, Ed. ABC-CLIO, 2011.
- “Thomas Binkley and the Studio der Frühen Musik: Challenging ‘the Myth of Westernness,’” Early Music 38, no. 2 (2010): 273-280.
- “Madness in Linda Bouchard’s Black Burned Wood,” Intersections, Canadian Journal of Music 29, no. 1 (2009): 49-69.
- “Remaking the Past: Feminist Spirituality in Anonymous 4 and Sequentia’s Vox Feminae,” Women and Music 12, Spring (2008): 1-21.
- “Medievalism and Exoticism in the Music of Dead Can Dance” Current Musicology (Spring 2008): 53-72. Reissued in Center for Digital Research and Scholarship at Columbia.
- “ECM (Editions of Contemporary Music) New Series and Arvo Pärt: Constructions of Contemporary Classical Music.” IAML-IAMIC-IMS Conference Papers, 2006,” Christopher Walton and Stephanus Muller, eds. South Africa: Unisa Press.
- “Noah Greenberg and the New York Pro Musica: Medievalism and the Cultural Front.” American Music 24, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 421-445.
Chapters in Books
- “The Modern Revival of Codex Buranus in Sound,” in Revisiting the Codex Buranus, Ed., Henry Hope, Boydell and Brewer.
- “Medievalism and anti-Romanticism in Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. In The Oxford Handbook on Music and Medievalism, Meyer, Stephen C., and Kirsten Yri, eds,.
- “Inverting the Epic, The Music of Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven,” in Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle, Stephen C. Meyer, Ed., London and New York, Routledge, 2016.
- “Recording Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame: From Modern to Postmodern,” in A Companion to Guillaume de Machaut—An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Master, Jennifer Bain and Deborah McGrady, Eds, Leiden and Boston: Brill NV, 2012.
My courses are influenced by my desire to contextualize music as broadly as possible, and to make music relevant to non-specialist audiences. By borrowing cultural and critical theories from the humanities, I will teach you to learn different ways to position and understand how music functions in society.