Faculty

I believe that composing, performing, writing, listening, and discussing are interrelated ways of engaging with music, and I work to cultivate this way of thinking among my students. I am a scholar of American music, race and ethnicity, immigration, Iranian and Central Asian repertoires, and Jewish musical life around the world. I am the author of three books; my most recent book, Steve Lacy: The Life and Music of a Jazz Composer, will be published by University Press of Mississippi in 2027. I also wrote Damaged: Musicality and Race in Early American Punk (2020), an in-depth exploration of early punk's musical style as well as the ways in which punk was shaped by racial formations in the 1970s, and Greeted with Smiles: Bukharian Jewish Music and Musicians in New York (2014), a study of the musical life of Jewish immigrants from Central Asia at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I am a saxophonist, drummer, and composer, and my classes often combine making music and seminar discussions. I am also dedicated to civic engagement, and I have developed several courses in partnership with the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, bringing New School students together with artists from New York's Haitian, Colombian, Bukharian Jewish, and Sri Lankan communities. 

PhD, Music (Ethnomusicology), CUNY Graduate Center MA, Music, CUNY BMus, (Jazz Composition), Oberlin Conservatory of Music

“Bukharian Jewish Weddings and Creative Uses of the Central Asian Past.” In The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Studies, edited by Tina Frühauf, 531–49 (Oxford University Press), 2023.

Damaged: Musicality and Race in Early American Punk (University Press of Mississippi, 2020)

Greeted with Smiles: Bukharian Jewish Music and Musicians in New York (Oxford University Press, 2014) 

“Repertoire and the Lives of Jewish Professional Musicians: Ezro Malakov from Uzbekistan and Al Drootin from Volhynia.” Musica Judaica 22, 2018/2019

“International Popular Music Styles and Contemporary Bukharian Jewish Identity.” Journal of Jewish Identities 10(1), January 2017

"Prosodic Rhythm in Jewish Sacred Music: Examples from the Persian-Speaking World," Asian Music 47(1), January 2016

“Hearing Punk as Blues.” Popular Music 33(1), January 2014 “New York: Ethnic Music.” The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed., edited by Charles Hiroshi Garrett (Oxford University Press, 2013) “Performance Styles of a Bukharian Singer.” In Garment and Core: Jews and their Musical Experiences, edited by Eitan Avitsur, Marina Ritzarev, and Edwin Seroussi, 101–112 (Bar Ilan University), 2012 “Bill Finegan’s Gershwin Arrangements and the American Concept of Hybridity.” Journal of the Society for American Music 2(4), November 2008 Critical Minded: New Approaches to Hip Hop Studies, co-edited with Ellie M. Hisama (Institute for Studies in American Music), 2005