Gayle Murchison is Associate Professor of Music at the College of William and Mary. Her most recent publications include book chapters on Nadia Boulanger in the US, music in Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Woman, and Mary Lou Williams’s Girl Stars. She is the author of The American Musical Stravinsky: The Style and Aesthetic of Copland’s New American Music, the Early Works, 1921-1938 (The University of Michigan Press, 2012).
Prof. Murchison’s research interests focus on African American and African disaporic music ranging from Mary Lou Williams, William Grant Still, and the music of social and cultural movements (such as the Harlem Renaissance and Civil Rights Movements, and, the music of Zap Mama and Afro-European studies). She served as editor of Black Music Research Journal 2014-2019.
Prof. Murchison is currently writing a book on Mary Lou Williams in Europe, 1952-1954. She recently presented her work in progress on Mary Lou Williams, “Mary Lou Williams: Jazz, Race, Gender, and Iconography,” as a featured American Musicological Society/ Library of Congress Lecture.
The Musicology/Ethnomusicology Division thanks the Center for American Music for its generous support of this speaker.