53rd Annual Meeting
The MTSNYS Board is excited to announce our 53rd annual meeting, which will take place at Fordham University in New York, New York from April 5–6. Clifton Boyd (New York University) will give the meeting’s keynote talk and Kristi Hardman (University of North Carolina, Charlotte) will lead a workshop.
Register for the 2025 Annual Meeting and become a member (or renew your membership) with links on this page!
Conference Registration
Online registration for the 2025 MTSNYS Meeting is now open!
Registration Rates:
Individual: $30 before April 1 — $40 on or after April 1 (online & on-site only)
Graduate Student: $15 before April 1 — $20 on or after April 1 (online & on-site only)
Retired: Free
Undergraduate Student: Free
Local Arrangements
Music Department of Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus
April 5–6, 2025
Local arrangements coordinated by Sevin Yaraman
Dear Colleagues,
We are delighted that the Music Department of Fordham University will be hosting the Music Theory Society of New York State on April 5 and 6. The conference will take place at the Lincoln Center Campus in the Lowenstein Building, located at 113 West 60th Street, New York, NY. We will utilize Rooms 523 and 524 for two simultaneous sessions, one equipped with a grand piano and the other with an upright piano, both featuring audio-visual capabilities and excellent sound quality.
There are several hotels in the vicinity, and we recommend the Hotel Empire at 44 West 63rd Street, New York, NY, conveniently located diagonally across the street from the campus, for its prime location and reasonable rates.
For public transportation, the A, B, C, D, and 1 subway trains all stop at 59th Street/Columbus Circle, which is just one block from our campus. Additionally, local bus services, including the M5, M7, M10, M11, M31, M57, and M104, all stop near Columbus Circle or Lincoln Center.
As the date approaches, we will provide a list of recommended restaurants, including options for vegetarian, vegan, kosher, and halal diets.
We look forward to welcoming you all!
Best regards,
Sevin
Preliminary Program
SATURDAY, APRIL 5
8:00–9:00 am: Registration, coffee
9:00–10:30 am: Omar Special Session
Andrew Pau (Oberlin College & Conservatory), “‘Here We Have Our Place’: The Musical Construction of Omar’s African Identity”
Sylvie Tran (Oberlin College & Conservatory), “Musical Representations of Assimilation and the Antebellum South in Omar (2022)”
Christa Cole (Oberlin College & Conservatory), “The Role of the Chorus in Omar”
9:00–10:00am: Chappell Roan and Joni Mitchell
Ash Mach (Eastman School of Music), “A Contextual Queering of Chappell Roan’s ‘Pink Pony Club’”
Rebecca Moranis (CUNY Graduate Center), “An Analysis of Joni Mitchell’s Vocal Evolution”
10:45–11:15 am: Poster session
Richard Ashley (Northwestern University), “Cognitive Processes in Music Analysis: An Investigation through Protocol Analysis and Eye Tracking”
Sarah Case (Mannes School of Music), “Leitmotif and Structure in the Prelude to Act III of Wagner’s Siegfried”
Jonathan Lindhorst (Schulich School of Music, McGill University), “Tone-Clock Theory’s Expansion: An Analysis of Jenny McLeod’s Tone Clock Piece VIII”
Bai Xue (CUNY Graduate Center), “Form and Structure in Ewe Music”
11:15 am–12:15 pm: Musicals
Hunter Hoyle (Northwestern University), “Theorizing the Broadway Overture: A Formal and Cognitive Investigation”
John Lawrence (University of Chicago), “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Form: Sondheim’s Early
Deviations from the Sentence-Period Paradigm”
12:15–1:45 pm: Lunch Break
1:45–3:15 pm: AAWM
Stephen Guerra (University at Buffalo, SUNY), “Harmonic Speciation in Brazil”
Lina Tabak (Indiana University), “‘Rhythmic Venom’ or Comfortable Groove? On Microtiming in Colombian Currulao’s Isochronous Dosillo”
Ruixue Hu (Eastman School of Music), “Understanding Non-Lexical Vocables in Music”
1:45–3:15 pm: Meanings
Ryan Krell, “Transformation, Narrative, and Cyclical Form in The Arcadian Wild’s Principium”
Ryan Galik (Eastman School of Music), “A Framework for Tangled Diegetic Hierarchies Beyond Cinematic Music”
Cheng Wei Lim (Columbia University), “Pokémon, Interculturality, and Topic Theory”
3:15–3:30 pm Break
3:30–5:15 pm: Plenary Events
3:30 pm–4:00 pm: Business meeting
4:15 pm–5:15 pm: Keynote Presentation, Clifton Boyd (New York University), “Black Barbershop and Music Theory in the Age of Jim Crow”
6:00–7:30 pm: Dinner break
7:30–9:30 pm: Conference Workshop, Kristi Hardman (UNC Charlotte), “Considering Ethics in the Process of Analyzing Music”
SUNDAY, APRIL 6
8:30–9:00 am: Registration, coffee
9:30–11:00 am: Twentieth-Century Composers
Jacob R. Ludwig (University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music) and Evan Martschenko (Eastman School of Music), “Uncovering Howard Hanson’s Proto-Set Theory Pedagogy”
Aidan McGartland (McGill University), “Britten the Serialist: Twelve-Note Thinking in the Music of Benjamin Britten”
Stanley Ralph Fink (Drake University), “The Doppelgänger as Musical Complement in Julia Perry’s The Cask of Amontillado”
11:00–11:15 am: Break
11:15 am–12:15 pm: Form and Formalism from Lachenmann to Metal
Avinoam Foonberg (University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music), “Screaming Forms and Formal Screaming: Timbral Transformations in Extreme Metal Verse-Choruses”
Zachary Bernstein (Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester), “Playing with the Net Down: Formalism and the Dialectic in Helmut Lachenmann’s Music and Thought”