Majel Connery is the host and producer of two podcasts: A Music of Their Own on NPR/CaP radio and Reverberations for New Amsterdam Records. On the podcasts, she interviews contemporary composers and performers, and unpacks their music in simple analyses that can be grasped by a broad listenership. In this talk, she argues that podcasting is an effective way of taking musicology to a national audience, channeling traditional academic approaches into a modern form of popular education.

Presenter: 

Majel Connery is a composer, vocalist, and musicologist. Her voice has been called “superb” by the New York Times and her music “thoroughly Schubertian” by the Wall Street Journal. Connery’s work has appeared on Radiolab, Kennedy Center Live, and New Sounds radio. As a composer, Connery writes music for the environment. Her song cycle, The Rivers are our Brothers, is on tour with Grammy-winning choir Chanticleer, and her new song cycle, Elderflora, debuts at Seattle Symphony/Octave 9 September 2024. Connery has taught as an artist and professor at Stanford, Berkeley, Wellesley and Princeton. She currently teaches music in prisons with Musicambia. Connery is the host and producer of two podcasts, A Music of Their Own, on NPR, and Reverberations, with New Amsterdam Records. She holds an AB in Music from Princeton and an MA/PhD in Ethnomusicology/Musicology from the University of Chicago.