Officers, Committee Chairs

President: Philip Stoecker (Hofstra University), 2023–25

Philip Stoecker is Professor of Music and Department Chair at Hofstra University, where he has been teaching since 2008. His research interests include the music of Thomas Adès, Alban Berg, George Perle, and Arnold Schoenberg. He co-edited Thomas Adès Studies (CUP) with Edward Venn, and this collection of essays by leading scholars on the music of Adès won the 2022 Outstanding Multi-Author Collection Award of the Society for Music Theory (SMT). He has presented papers at meetings of SMT, Music Theory Midwest, Music Theory Society of New York State (MTSNYS), the Arnold Schönberg Symposium, and other regional and international conferences. His articles and reviews have appeared in the Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center, the Journal of Music Theory, the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy,Music Analysis, Music Theory and Analysis, Music Theory Online, Music Theory Spectrum, and Theory and Practice.

Vice President: Peter Silberman (Ithaca College), 2022–24

Peter Silberman is an associate professor of music theory and chair of the Department of Music Theory, History, and Composition at the Ithaca College School of Music, Theatre, and Dance.  He also serves as coordinator of music theory and electives at Ithaca College’s Summer Music Academy, a residential camp for high school musicians.  His research interests include music theory pedagogy, the theory and analysis of neotonal music of the twentieth century, and the analysis of rock music’s avant-garde.  His articles and reviews have appeared in the Journal of Popular Music Education, College Music Symposium, Gamut:  Online Journal of the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic, Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, Music Theory Online, The Horn Call, and in the anthologies The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis:  Expanding Approaches and Musical Currents from the Left Coast.  He holds a B.Mus. degree in French horn performance and music theory from Oberlin Conservatory and an M.A. and Ph.D. in music theory from the Eastman School of Music.  Peter previously served MTSNYS as treasurer (2008-2012 and 2014-2016) and as a board member (2012-2014).

Secretary: Sarah Marlowe (Eastman School of Music), 2021–25

Sarah Marlowe is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music. Her current research projects focus on DEIA efforts in music theory pedagogy and the analysis and promotion of music by women composers. Her research on music theory pedagogy, Schenkerian analysis of fugue, and work by J. S. Bach has been published in Theory and Practice, Music Theory Online, Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, The Norton Guide to Teaching Music Theory, and Bach: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute. Sarah was the 2013 recipient of the Patricia Carpenter Emerging Scholar Award, and she has received three prestigious teaching awards from the Eastman School of Music and NYU Steinhardt. She previously served as a board member for MTSNYS (2013–2016) and was co-editor of Theory and Practice (2016–2019). In addition to her service as secretary for MTSNYS, Sarah currently serves as editor of the SMT newsletter.

Treasurer: Benjamin Baker (Eastman School of Music), 2020–24

Ben Baker is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music. His research focuses on cross-pollinations between jazz and popular music, with a broader interest in forging links between models of musical structure and interpretive issues related to intertextuality, improvisation, agency, and affordance. He has received the Patricia Carpenter Emerging Scholar Award, Eastman’s Alfred Mann Dissertation Award, and multiple teaching awards, and his work appears or is forthcoming in Music Theory Online, Theory & Practice, the Oxford Handbooks series, and the Eastman Case Studies series. Ben is also an experienced pianist and an avid runner, and he previously served on the MTSNYS Board of Directors (2017-19). He holds degrees from Eastman, NYU, and St. Olaf College.

Táhirih Motazedian (Vassar College), 2022–24

Táhirih Motazedian is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Vassar College.  Her book, Key Constellations: Interpreting Tonality in Film (2023, University of California Press) explores key and pitch relationships in film soundtracks.  She has published (and forthcoming) articles and chapters on a range of topics, including Eisenstein’s Soviet production of Wagner’s Die Walküre, the “heartstring schema” in film and nineteenth-century music, Holst’s Planets, Shostakovich’s second violin concerto, and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake in the film Black Swan.  She also serves as a member of the SMT Information Technology Committee.

Alice Xue (CUNY Graduate Center), 2022–24

Bai (Alice) Xue is currently teaching at Hunter College while finishing her PhD in Music Theory at CUNY Graduate Center. Previously, Alice has taught at Temple University and Hofstra University. She has a diverse range of research interests. Her current focus is on form and structure in the music of Western and Southern Africa. She has presented her essay “The Nostalgic Modernists: Tradition and Pop in Por Por Music of Accra, Ghana” at the Society for Music Theory’s 2022 conference.

Nathan Lam (Eastman School of Music), 2023–25

Nathan Lam is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music. He holds a BM in clarinet performance from Queensland Conservatorium (Australia) and a PhD in music theory from Indiana University. Before joining Eastman, he taught music theory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nathan’s research focuses on Western modal theories and Chinese compositional theories from historical and mathematical perspectives. He is preparing a monograph titled Diatonic Modes from Plato to Pokémon and a full-length album titled Canonic Variations that began life as musical examples for his theory classes. Photo credit John Schlia Photography.

Stephanie Venturino (Yale University), 2023–25

Stephanie Venturino is an assistant professor of analysis and musicianship at the Yale School of Music. She holds a Ph.D. in music theory and a B.M. in saxophone performance from the Eastman School of Music. Her research focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century French music, the history of music theory, and music theory and aural skills pedagogy. She regularly presents her work at regional, national, and international conferences. Stephanie has contributed scholarship to Theoria, as well as to edited collections from Cambridge University Press and Routledge.