Hello, welcome to my website. Here you’ll be able to learn about me and my career. You’ll also find links to some of my publications and performances. Should you wish to contact me, don’t hesitate to do so via the “contact” tab of this website. Follow me on Bluesky at @philewell. If you’re wondering how to pronounce my name, click here.
I am a professor of music theory at Hunter College of the City University of New York. My research specialties include race studies in music theory, Russian music theory, Russian opera, modal theory and history, twentieth-century music theory, and African American music—see the “research” tab above for links to some of my work. My work as a public music theorist has appeared in Adam Neely’s YouTube channel, the BBC, the CBC, Daily Beast, Die Zeit, The Economist, New York Times, New Yorker, Our Body Politic, The Conversation, and WQXR’s Aria Code, among other outlets—see the “media” tab above for more feature stories concerning my work. In November 2019 I gave a plenary talk, “Music Theory’s White Racial Frame,” which had a significant impact on the field. You can also read about my race scholarship in “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame,” and my six-part blog, “Confronting Racism and Sexism in American Music Theory.” I’m a cellist who enjoys playing acoustic and electric cellos—see the “performance” tab above for links to some of my performances.
In my monograph, On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone, I take an explicitly antiracist and antisexist stance toward music theory and academic music while offering thoughts for the future. I am co-authoring a new undergraduate W. W. Norton music theory textbook, The Engaged Musician: Theory and Analysis for the Twenty-First Century, which will be a modernized and inclusive textbook based on recent developments in music theory pedagogy with a projected publication date in 2026. I am under contract at Routledge for the edited collection American Antiblackness, which I am co-editing with sociologist Joe Feagin. I am the founder and series editor for the Oxford University Press book series, Theorizing African American Music, and I am the founder and co-editor of the online open-access peer-reviewed journal Black Music, in Theory.
I frequently give lectures, workshops, interviews, and keynotes—don’t hesitate to contact me to discuss a potential collaboration. And thanks for visiting my website!
Selected Honors and Awards
Memorial University, Newfoundland (Canada), Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media, and Place (MMaP), scholar-in-residence, March 9–14, 2026.
Wallace Berry Award, Society for Music Theory, for On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone, November 8, 2025.
DeKalb Music Boosters Virtuoso Award (honors DeKalb High School graduates who distinguished themselves in music), 2024–2025.
AP Music Theory, College Board, Development Committee, 2024–2027.
PROSE Award, Association of American Publishers, for On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone, “Music and Performing Arts” Category, March 5, 2024.
Williams College, Class of 1960 Scholars and Fellows Program, February 28–29, 2024.
Visiting Fellow, Program in Course and Exam Development for AP Music Theory, The College Board, 2023–2024.
Dalhousie University, the David Schroeder Music & Culture Series lecture, September 14, 2023.
Alice Tully Hall, Mannes Symphony Orchestra, Orchestration of Pilgrim Overture (1867) by John Thomas Douglass, March 8, 2023. Program Notes. Partial PDF of the score. (Contact me if you’d like to program with your orchestra.)
Yale University, Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, October 10, 2022. Presented by the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Yale Graduate School Alumni Association, the Wilbur Cross Medal is the highest honor that Yale Graduate School bestows on its alumni.
Atlantic Center for the Arts, Mentoring Artist-In-Residence, May 15 to June 4, 2022. Former such ACA Mentoring Artists have included, for instance, Milton Babbitt, Merce Cunningham, Allen Ginsberg, Elvin Jones, Audre Lorde, Pauline Oliveros, and Robert Rauschenberg.
Longy School of Music of Bard College, Commencement Speaker, May 14, 2022.
Dartmouth College, the Leonard J. Reade Distinguished Lecture in Music and Racial Justice, May 6, 2022.
University of Houston, the Martha Suit Hallman Lecture in Music, April 11, 2022.
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Carolina Symposia in Music and Culture, the James W. Pruett Keynote, April 9, 2021.
American Council of Learned Societies, Susan McClary and Robert Walser Fellow, 2020–2021.
City University of New York, CUNY Graduate Center Award for Excellence in Mentoring, 2020–2021.
University of Pacific, Virtual Scholar in Residence, Conservatory of Music, 2020–2021.
Hunter College, Presidential Award for Excellence in Creative Work, 2019–2020.
City University of New York, Felix Gross Award, in recognition of outstanding research in the humanities or sciences, for the article “Rethinking Octatonicism: Views from Stravinsky’s Homeland” (Music Theory Online 18.4), February 2013.