Labeled “one of the best songwriters in the business” by Nashville’s MusicRow magazine, Victoria Banks has toured with artists from Reba to Wynonna, has released 4 self-penned, self-produced albums, has been nominated for 11 Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA) Awards, and was awarded 2010 CCMA Female Artist of the Year and Songwriter of the Year.

In her multi-decade tenure as a songwriter on Nashville’s Music Row, Victoria has penned ASCAP, SOCAN, CCMA and Covenant-award-winning songs, cuts by over 100 artists including Reba McEntire, Carly Pearce, Lauren Alaina, Terri Clark, Isaac Slade (of The Fray), and notable cuts including the solo-written “Saints & Angels” (Sara Evans), Jessica Simpson’s Billboard record-breaking “Come on Over”, and numerous songs by Mickey Guyton (including 2021 ACM Awards blockbuster “Hold On, and “What Are You Gonna Tell Her”, which made history as the first original song performed by a Black woman on 2020’s ACM Awards.)

Screen placements include Breakthrough, Nashville, American Idol, The Voice, and Dancing with The Stars. Victoria appeared on NBC’s Songland TV show, performed alongside the Nashville Ballet in a choreographed set of her songs called City of Dreams, and co-hosts the podcast The Table Women which explores the female experience in entertainment. She is an instructor of Songwriting at the historic Music Row campus of Nashville’s Belmont University.

Photo courtesy of Victoria Banks

Virtual Wavelengths Session: Pop and Jazz Music Theory with Dr. David Geary

J. Mike Kohfeld is an independent scholar and educator based in Seattle, Washington.

Mike’s doctoral research in ethnomusicology was a study on how drag artists use remix as a performative strategy to make critical space for their communities. Mike now works as a horticulturist, using a community-focused approach to promote local, sustainable urban agriculture.

Photo courtesy of J. Mike Kohfeld

Virtual Wavelengths Session: Gender, Sexuality, and Music with Dr. Megan Francisco

Jairo Moreno (Ph.D., Yale University) is Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Music, a member of the graduate faculty in the Department of Anthropology, a faculty associate with the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies, and a member of the Center for Experimental Ethnography. He has also taught at Duke University and NYU. 

The sonic geographies and aural histories he studies fathom sound and the challenging and productive entanglements with it as societies compose senses of being in and as sound. He has studied the production of knowledge of music and the sonic in modernity from a historic-speculative perspective, focusing on the history of listening (Musical Representations, Subjects, and Objects: The Construction of Musical Thought in Zarlino, Descartes, Rameau, and Weber (Indiana University Press, 2004), and aurality and modernity in trans-American musicking (Sounding Latin Music, Hearing the Americas (Chicago University Press, 2023). His book Sounding Latin Music, Hearing the Americas is an archival, critical, and ethnographic study of music’s precarious share in political practices during late capitalism. 

Dr. Moreno’s current project, Aurality, Midwifery, and Forms of Life: The Praxis and Poetics of Ontological Singularity, is a comparative ethnography of aural practices and “empirical metaphysics” among Afro-descendent midwives in the Colombian Pacific region and indigenous Pankararu midwives in Northeast Brazil. In collaboration with the Ponto de Cultura Indígena Pankararu, he produced a short film about Pankararu ritual singers, Canto é vida Pankararu (2023) and is currently working on a longer film about the relation of water, scarcity, and territory there.

He is co-editor of the Oxford University Press Series Critical Conjunctures in Music and Sound, and co-editor of Econophonia: Music, Value, and Forms of Life (Boundary 2, 2016). Awards include the Society for American Music 2005 Irving Lowens Article Award for Best Article (“Bauzá-Gillespie-Latin Jazz”), Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities (Yale), ACLS Fellowship (2009-2010), and National Humanities Center Fellowship (2012-2013). A former professional musician, he was a bassist in five GRAMMY award-nominated recordings with the late Latin and Jazz percussionist Ray Barretto (Blue Note, EMI-France, Concord, Fania labels: 1989-1997). 

Photo courtesy of Jairo Moreno

Virtual Wavelengths session: American Music hosted by Dr. Megan Francisco

Brian Hiatt is a Senior Writer at Rolling Stone who has written over 70 cover stories for the magazine. He is the host of the weekly Rolling Stone Music Now podcast.

He is also the author of Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs (2019).

Photo courtesy of Brian Hiatt

Virtual Wavelengths session: Modern Popular Music hosted by Dr. Elizabeth Clendinning

EMMY award-winner and three-time BAFTA-nominated composer Inon Zur is recognized as one of the most innovative and successful composers in the media industry today, internationally renowned for his emotionally dynamic original music scores for blockbuster video game franchises including FALLOUT, DRAGON AGE, PRINCE OF PERSIA, THE ELDER SCROLLS and the new sci-fi epic, STARFIELD.

Hailed as “One of the best sci-fi scores ever created” (New Musical Express), Zur’s latest opus, STARFIELD, is the first new universe in over 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of THE ELDER SCROLLS and FALLOUT series. Set hundreds of years in our future, STARFIELD is an epic about hope, our shared humanity, and answering our greatest mystery.

Inon composed over five hours of original score for STARFIELD, encompassing a classical symphonic palette, to echo the grandeur and mystery of space, together with crafted, organic electronic synth sounds, comprising minimalist elements from the environment, to build the soundscape of this epic sci-fi adventure. The philosophy was to encapsulate the contrast between the vastness of space and the human individual as the main drive for the score, whereby the music conjures emotions to reflect the mystery and new revelations of infinite outer space. Composition-wise, through live symphonic movements and electronic music suites, Zur created a STARFIELD musical universe with sonic shapes, harmonious and non-dissonant, that evoke a combination of human emotions but most of all curiosity of the unknown. The creative process started with a conceptual piece written very early on which inspired the Bethesda Game Studios team during the game’s development process and was the basis for the now recognized theme with a six-note motif from which the score evolved.

Zur’s iconic themes and avant-garde scores for the FALLOUT series have been described as “sophisticated and atmospheric” (Classic FM) and received two BAFTA nominations. His top-selling soundtrack for FALLOUT 4 was celebrated as one of the best original video game scores by BAFTA, The Game Awards, and Classic FM. Zur’s original score for FALLOUT 76 was also released to universal praise, described by critics as “superbly atmospheric music,” “hauntingly beautiful” and “an amazing ambient soundtrack,” with Game Informer (the world’s #1 video games magazine) hailing his latest score as “the best soundtrack for the series yet.”

Classically trained with a flair for powerful, melodic orchestral writing, Inon conducts and records with the world’s most prestigious orchestras and his music is performed in symphonic concerts worldwide. He has collaborated with artists such as Imagine Dragons (‘Children of the Sky: A STARFIELD Song’) and Florence + The Machine (DRAGON AGE II’s ‘Varric’s Theme’) and his debut major label album release with Sony Masterworks, Into The Storm, was selected among Classical KUSC’s best albums of the year. Inon also composed the ethno-classical score for celebrated comic artist/writer Benoît Sokal’s SYBERIA: THE WORLD BEFORE (DECCA Records), featuring performances by GRAMMY award-winning virtuoso pianist Emily Bear, and recently premiered his music for STARFIELD with the London Symphony Orchestra. STARFIELD was released on September 6, 2023.

Photo courtesy of Inon Zur

Virtual Wavelengths session: Video Game Music hosted by Dr. J. Aaron Hardwick

Ulka Anjaria is Professor of English and Director of the Mandel Center for the Humanities at Brandeis University. She is the author of Realism in the Twentieth-Century Indian Novel: Colonial Difference and Literary Form (2012), Reading India Now: Contemporary Formations in Literature and Popular Culture (2019) and Understanding Bollywood: The Grammar of Hindi Cinema (2021).

Photo courtesy of Ulka Anjaria

Virtual Wavelengths session: Music and Film hosted by Dr. Megan Francisco

CedarBough T. Saeji, PhD, is an assistant professor in Korean and East Asian Studies in the Department of Global Studies, Pusan National University.

Saeji has previously held positions at Indiana University, the University of British Columbia, Korea University, and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. A scholar of Korean performance who approaches issues from gender to cultural policy through examining everything from traditional mask dance dramas to the latest K-pop hits, Saeji’s most recent publications are “Building a K-Community: Idol Stars Challenging Foreign Fans to Learn Korean Traditions” in Acta Koreana and “Embodying K-Pop Hits Through Cover Dance Practices” in the edited volume Cambridge Companion to K-Pop. A book on invented tradition in Korea that Saeji co-edited was released in February 2022. A solo-authored monograph on Korean mask dance dramas and cultural policy in Korea is under review. Saeji tweets @TheKpopProf.

Photo courtesy of CedarBough T. Saeji

Virtual Wavelengths session: Introduction to the Music of World Cultures hosted by Dr. Elizabeth Clendinning

Alex Moukala is a composer for Videogames & Hollywood Movie Trailers, as well as a content creator known on several social medias for his breakdowns and remixes of video game music.

For almost a decade, Alex has also been running several YouTube channels, including one where he teaches people how to write and produce Orchestral Music with an emphasis on composing by ear.

Visit Alex Moukala to hear more of his upcoming projects.

Photo courtesy of Alex Moukala

Virtual Wavelengths session: Video Game Music hosted by Dr. J. Aaron Hardwick

Cindy Morgan is a singer/songwriter working with Little Green Bike Music. She has written for recording artists like Michael W. Smith, Ricky Skaggs, Point of Grace, Brandon Heath, Britt Nicole,  Francesca Batistelli, and American Idol Season 8 winner Kris Allen, among many others. Morgan has also been an adjunct instructor in the Belmont University songwriting department for the past 5 years.

Morgan’s latest solo effort, 2011’s critically-acclaimed Hymns & Spirituals: Some Glad Morning, features Americana and folk-inspired arrangements of historic songs of the faith. She is the co-creator of the charitable Hymns for Hunger Tour, helping to raise awareness and resources for local hunger relief organizations in over one hundred tour stops across the U.S.

Cindy has authored three books, Barefoot on Barbed Wire (Harvest House Publishers, 2001), Dance Me Daddy (HarperCollins, 2009), and How Could I Ask for More (Worthy, 2015). For more information visit her website.

Photo courtesy of Cindy Morgan

Virtual Wavelengths session: Pop and Jazz Music Theory hosted by Dr. David Geary

Lauren Leigh Kelly is an Assistant Professor of Urban Education in the Urban Social Justice Teacher Education program at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Education. She is also the director of the annual Hip Hop Youth Research and Activism conference.

Kelly taught high school English for ten years in New York where she also developed courses in Hip Hop Literature and Culture, Spoken Word poetry, and Theatre Arts. She also taught Hip Hop Literature at Five Towns College in New York, English Composition at Medgar Evers College, The City University of New York, and the Teaching of English at Teachers College, Columbia University. Additionally, Kelly provides professional development for teachers developing Hip Hop pedagogies in K-12 and college teaching across the United States

Kelly received her bachelor’s degree in English from Wesleyan University, her master’s in Adolescent Education from St. John’s University, and her Ph.D. in English Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, where her dissertation focused on teaching for social justice through critical Hip Hop literacy.

As a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Boston University, Kelly studied the development of critical consciousness amongst high school students. Her previous research investigated critical media literacy as a lens through which young people can better understand, navigate, and influence their social and cultural environments. Currently, Kelly’s research focuses on adolescent critical literacy development, Black feminist theory, critical consciousness, and the development of Hip Hop pedagogies. 

Photo courtesy of Lauren Leigh Kelly

Virtual Wavelengths session: Gender, Sexuality, and Music hosted by Dr. Megan Francisco