MUSICOLOGY FACULTY
Howard Pollack, Musicology Coordinator

Paul A. Bertagnolli, musicology
Doctorate in musicology, Washington University; studied music criticism, McMaster University in Canada; review and feature articles to daily newspapers in Connecticut; performance degrees in clarinet, Yale University and University of Wyoming.

Matthew Dirst, musicology; Director, Collegium Musicum
PhD in musicology, Stanford University; Fulbright scholar to France. First American to win major international prizes in both organ and harpsichord: first prize, American Guild of Organists National Young Artist Competition; second prize, Warsaw International Harpsichord Competition. Publications include a number of articles on the music of J. S. Bach; author, Bach and the Public Sphere: Early Advocacy and Performance of the Keyboard Music (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

Larisa Jackson, musicology (email)
Has served as a Lecturer in the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston since 2001. Her interest range from 19th-century music and Russian music of the 19th and 20th century to history of music theory. In addition to standard curriculum courses Dr. Jackson has offered special topic seminars that included “Analysis of Russian Masterpieces,” “Shostakovich and Prokofiev,” “Tchaikovsky and the Russian Five.” Dr. Jackson received her B.A. from Leningrad Musorgsky Music College, and her M. A., M. Phil., and Ph. D. from Columbia University.

Barbara Rose Lange, ethnomusicology
Ph.D, University of Washington; research areas include Hungary, Roma (Gypsies), and the music of folk religion. Articles in Ethnomusicology, Journal of American Folklore, the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, and other publications. Author, Holy Brotherhood: Romani Music in a Hungarian Pentecostal Church (Oxford, 2003). Research awards include a Mellon Fellowship, Fulbright CIES and IREX grants, and others. Lange's current project concerns free improvisation and the avant-garde music scene in Houston and other American cities.

Howard Pollack, musicology
B.M., piano and music history, University of Michigan; M.A. and Ph.D, musicology from Cornell University; specialist in 20th century and American music; author of numerous articles, reviews, and five books, including most recently, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man (1999) and George Gershwin: His Life and Work (2006); recipient of an NEH Fellowship, Irving Lowens Award, ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, a Newberry Library Fellowship, and other grants and awards.

Tracy Russell, musicology
Ms. Russell has a lengthy career as an oboist, educator and freelance musician and has played with symphony orchestras in Duluth, Minnesota, Seattle, Washington and Manizales, Colombia. She has served as Professor of oboe at the University of Caldas in Manizales, Colombia where she also coached chamber ensembles and taught courses in world music. In Colombia she has been a featured soloist at the Popayan Music Festival and premiered several electroacoustic works in Bogota, Colombia. She has soloed on many occasions with the Caldas Chamber Orchestra with whom she also recorded the Marcello Concerto for Oboe for Colombian Public Television. Ms. Russell is currently pursuing a Doctoral Degree in Oboe Performance at the University of Houston where she teaches classes in popular and world music.

Jeffrey S. Sposato, musicology
MM and BM in vocal performance, New England Conservatory; BA in German studies, Tufts University; PhD in musicology, Brandeis University; author, The Price of Assimilation: Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-Century Anti-Semitic Tradition (Oxford, 2006) and William Thomas McKinley: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood, 1995), and articles and reviews in Musical Quarterly, Notes, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (second edition), and the collection Historical Musicology (Stephen Crist and Roberta Marvin, eds.).