TEACHING

2016-2023 Assistant Professor of Performance Studies, UCLA

Courses Taught at UCLA

Post-graduate performance major seminars:

• MUS 261D Performance Practice in the Classical Era
• MUS 202 Analysis for Performers

Large Undergraduate 200-student GE class:

• M15 Art of Listening

Practical teaching:

• Camarades chamber music coaching
• Flux New Music Ensemble coaching

My courses that span music theory, performance practice, and general education have all been developed with anti-racist goals and initiatives to diversify and decenter Western music and their theoretical systems. In MUS 202 Analysis for Performers, students critique analyses of vastly different musics throughout the quarter, including analyses of hip hop, pop music videos, works by East-Asian composers in Western musical tradition, groove and improvisation in jazz, amongst others. I encourage students to pursue for their final projects music within their listening habits, not necessarily from the Western musical tradition. As such, analytical projects have more often than not been outside of classical music tradition. Likewise, in MUS261D Classical Era Performance Practice, students focused their final projects on composers of diversity, to create a diverse and enriching understanding of the Classical Era that departs from a narrow, canonic understanding of historically-informed performance. The decentering of the white male canon not only gave students an opportunity to study undervalued music; without the baggage of common practice for canonic composers, it also gave students the scholarly (and creative) license to openly experiment with historically-informed performance on these mostly unrecorded works.

At the undergraduate level, I taught a 200-student GE course M15, “Art of Listening,” where I invited weekly guest artists and collaborated with colleagues across the Departments of Ethnomusicology and Music to discuss different listening frameworks and create an inclusive listening experience. During these visits, I, as the host, engage in live conversations with my guests about various frameworks of listening. In this course, I used an interactive, energetic style of lecturing, employing strategies such as think-pair-share and asking students move or clap in large groups within the lecture hall to illustrate cross-rhythms, for instance. I provided weekly mentoring to my 5 teaching assistants, guiding  them on effective peer-learning and flipped classroom strategies for course content delivery in their sections.

Other duties at UCLA include: supervision of doctoral dissertations; serving on the Graduate Committee overseeing all academic matters related to Master’s and Doctoral performance students, including grading placement exams, student admissions, approving graduate students’ degree recital programs, reviewing doctoral proposals and annotated bibliographies, setting and grading doctoral exams; serving as member of Faculty advisory boards for UCLA Center for Music Innovation and UCLA Center for Musical Humanities.

2014-2016 Adjunct Professor of Music Theory, Adelphi University

Courses Taught at Adelphi University

Core theory music sequence:

MUA 111 Theory and Harmony II

MUA 210 Theory and Harmony III III,

MUA 310 Form and Analysis 


MUA 410 Composition

MUA 104 Basic Keyboard Skills

My goal as a music theory pedagogue is to equip students with a diverse array of analytical tools, research methodologies, and critical thinking skills, enabling them to approach any piece of music with analytical ears throughout their careers. While teaching the core theory sequence, my aspiration goes beyond imparting analytical competency. I aim to help students develop an embodied, affective understanding of the material, seamlessly integrating theoretical concepts with their practice-based learning techniques. In the realm of composition, I am committed to cultivating a nurturing and exploratory environment that empowers students to develop their unique voices. My approach is personalized, drawing on a diverse range of repertoire examples tailored to each student’s needs, fostering creative freedom, and promoting self-reflective understanding of their compositional processes.