55th Annual Meeting

The MTSNYS Board is excited to announce our 55th annual meeting, which will take place at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York from April 11–12, 2026, featuring a keynote given by Michèle Duguay (Harvard University) and a workshop led by Catrina Kim (University of Massachusetts Amherst).  

Registration for the 2026 Annual Meeting is now open and you can become a member (or renew your membership) with links on this page today!

Travel information for the conference is copied at the bottom of this page.

Register at this link
Program Booklet coming soon!
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Conference Program

Complete Program Booklet coming soon

SATURDAY, APRIL 11

8:30–9:30 am: Registration, coffee, breakfast


9:30–11:00 am: Session 1A, Transformation and Space

  • Melodic Transformations and Levenshtein Distance in Johanna Beyer’s Early Music
    Alexandrea Jonker (Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam)

  • Geometric Representation of Rhythm and Transformation in A Dance of Fire and Ice
    Drake Eshleman (Indiana University)

  • Keyboard Distance: An Analytical Tool for Bridging Transformational Theory and Embodied Performance in Piano Music

    Zekai Liu (Eastman School of Music)

9:30–11:00 am: Session 1B: Emergent (Quasi-)Tonalities

  • (Semi)tonal Semitones: Qualia Emergence in William Alwyn’s Symphony No. 1 (1949)
    Ryan Krell (University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music)

  • The Ironic Implications of Bitonality on the Ursatz in Clara Schumann’s Fugue Op. 16 No. 2
    Madeline Finn (University of Georgia)

  • The Discrete Fourier Transform and Diatonicism in Dallapiccola’s Quaderno
    Brandon Qi (CUNY Graduate Center)

11:00-11:15 am: Break

11:15 am–12:15 pm: Session 2A: Empirical Approaches to Traditional Chinese Corpora

  • Unveiling the “Mysterious” Notes in Chinese Qinqiang Opera Through Computational Methods
    Johanna Devaney (Brooklyn College), Daniel McKemie (SUNY Oneonta), and Ten Zhang (CUNY Graduate Center)

  • Harmony in Diversity: A Taxonomy of Phrase Endings in Traditional Qin Music through Corpus Study
    Ruixue Hu (Eastman School of Music)

11:15 am–12:15 pm: Session 2B: Salsa

  • ‘¡Conversa, Conversa!’: A Parametric Analysis of Participant Interaction in Salsa Dura
    Irén Hangen Vázquez (McGill University)

  • ¿Nueva Salsa? Formal Hybridization of Salsa in the Digital Age
    Tori Vilches (Indiana University)

12:15–1:45 pm: Lunch Break

1:45–3:15 pm: Session 3A: Form and Familiarity

  • Tight-Verse/Loose-Chorus: Country’s Crooked Chorus
    Samantha Carlock (Indiana University)

  • Well-Worn Grooves: Selective Attention, Boredom, and the Musical Rewards of Excessive Familiarity
    Ryan Galik (Eastman School of Music)

  • When One Becomes Many: The Layered Single-Block Form as Process in Aka Music
    Alice (Bai) Xue (New York University)

1:45–3:15 pm: Session 3B: Performance Perspectives

  • Narrative in Concert: A Computational Analysis of Free-Form Stories Evoked During Live Performance
    Hannah Wilkie (Princeton University)

  • Invariant Instrumentation and the Effects of Shifted Vocal Performance on Screamed Deathcore Songs
    Zachary Simonds (CUNY Graduate Center)

  • Unexpected Sources of Interpretive Similarity and Variety: A Quantitative Study of 23 Performances of Bach’s Fourth Cello Suite Prelude
    Clare Monfredo (Hunter College)


3:30–5:15 pm: Plenary Events
3:30–4:00 pm: Business meeting
4:15–5:15 pm: Keynote lecture: Michèle Duguay (Harvard University), “Data, Capta, and Music Theory’s Embodied Turn”
5:15–6:00 pm: Reception
6:00–7:30 pm: Dinner break
7:30–9:30 pm: Conference Workshop, Catrina Kim (UMass Amherst), “Pedagogies of Care in an Age of Fascism and Genocide”

SUNDAY, APRIL 12

8:30–9:30 am: Registration, coffee, breakfast

9:30–11:00 am: Session 4A: Motive

  • Questioning Motive: Segmenting Flow in Melodic Rap Verses
    Devin Guerrero (Texas Tech University)

  • Barefoot Music: Analyzing Silvestre Revueltas’s Magueyes
    Tlacaélel Rafael Cáceres Santa Cruz (CUNY Graduate Center)

  • Sondheim, Styne, Schwartz and…Schoenberg?: Developing Variation and Generative Motifs in Musical Theater
    Kyle Hutchinson (Colgate University)

9:30–11:00 am: Session 4B: Set-theoretical and Timbral Trajectories

  • Bulgarian Closure Repurposed in Kate Bush’s The Sensual World with Trio Bulgarka
    Annie Beliveau (CUNY Graduate Center)

  • A History of Pitch-Class Set Labels
    Evan Martschenko (Eastman School of Music)

  • The Contours of Timbre in Rebecca Saunders’s Fury II
    Ash Mach (Eastman School of Music)

11:00–11:15 am: Break
11:15 am–12:15 pm: Session 5: Jazz Schematics

  • Emergent Middlegrounds in Tonal Jazz Improvisation
    Sean Smither (The Juilliard School)

  • The Major-Minor Gambit: A Compositional Schema in Jazz Standards
    Kevin Costello (Queens College)

Traveling to MTSNYS 2026

The 2026 conference will take place in Skinner Hall (the music building), 106-110 Raymond Avenue in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Lodging:

Please make your reservation as soon as possible, because there’s a campus event for newly admitted students and their families the same weekend as MTSNYS, and they will quickly fill up all available hotel rooms! 

Transportation: 

Planes: 

  • John F. Kennedy (JFK): This is my favorite option because of the excellent public transport. From JFK, take AirTrain to Jamaica Station ($8.50), then take the LIRR train to Grand Central ($5), then take the Metro North train ($21 – see below) to Poughkeepsie. 

  • LaGuardia (LGA): Equidistant with JFK, but no subway connection to Grand Central, so you’d have to take a bus/taxi/Uber to get to NYC (https://www.laguardiaairport.com/to-from-airport/public-transportation), then take the train to Poughkeepsie. 

  • Newark (EWR): I’ve never tried these options myself:

  • Stewart (SWF): No public transport to Poughkeepsie, so taxi/Uber/rental car 

  • Westchester (HPN): No public transport to Poughkeepsie, so taxi/Uber/rental car 

Trains: 

  • If you’re coming from NYC, take the Metro-North train from Grand Central to Poughkeepsie (take the“Hudson Line” and Poughkeepsie is the final stop). It takes <2 hours, and the cost is $21 one-way. I highlyrecommend downloading the TrainTime app for real-time schedules and digital ticket purchase.oOnce you arrive at the Poughkeepsie Train Station, there are taxis lined up outside the main entrance(east side of the building, upper level). It’s a 5-minute taxi ride to the Vassar campus, and it’ll cost $10–$20 (depending on time of day).

Automobiles:

There is a large parking lot right next to Skinner Hall (it’s called the “South Lot”) where you can park for free on the weekend. If that’s full for some reason, you can park for free on Raymond Ave, north of Skinner Hall where you see other cars parked. 

Local Arrangements Chair: Táhirih Motazedian