Feature Stories
“Philip Ewell: Guest Lecturer, Professor of Music Theory,” Walter Thomas-Patterson, The Oberlin Review, February 10, 2023.
Profile: “Philip Ewell ’01, the cellist shaping music theory’s racial reckoning,” Miranda Wollen, Yale Daily News, November 15, 2022.
“Can Music Theory Education Overcome Its Whiteness Problem?,” Current Affairs, Jeff Williams, March 18, 2022.
“Die Kolonisierung unserer Ohren” (The colonization of our ears), Hannah Schmidt, Die Zeit, May 11, 2021.
“Countering Allegations of Racism—in Court,” Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Education, January 28, 2021.
“Music, In Theory,” Jeffrey Arlo and Olivia Giovetti, Van Magazine, January 28, 2021.
“Scholar Philip Ewell aims to bring light to ‘the dark room’ of classical music,” Jeffrey Yelverton, Minnesota Public Radio, January 20, 2021.
“A Most Violent Year: Beethoven at the Brink,” Olivia Giovetti, Van Magazine, December 17, 2020.
CUNY TV, Urban U, feature story about music theory and race, October 8, 2020.
“Black Scholars Confront White Supremacy in Classical Music,” Alex Ross, The New Yorker, September 14, 2020.
“A Black Professor Pulls Back the Curtain on Racism in Music Theory,” Beth Harpaz, CUNY SUM, August 18, 2020.
“Music Education Has a Race Problem, and Universities Must Address It,” Jacqueline Warwick, The Conversation, August 9, 2020.
“Whose Music Theory?,” Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Education, August 7, 2020.
“Classical Music Tries To Reckon With Racism—On Social Media,” Anastasia Tsioulcas, National Public Radio, July 29, 2020.
Interviews, Podcasts, Guest Appearances
Information Morning Nova Scotia with Portia Clark, “Leading Scholar Describes His Work to Decolonize Music History in Academia,” September 14, 2023.
Our Body Politic podcast with guest host Celeste Headlee,” Can BIPOC Musicians Shape the Future of Classical Music?” September 1, 2023.
Music Ed Insights podcast with Steve Shanley and Alan Feirer, “Making Music more Welcoming for Everyone with Philip Ewell,” August 28, 2023.
Sound Expertise podcast with Will Robin, “Music Theory’s Racism Problem, with Philip Ewell,” August 2023.
New Books in Music podcast with host Kristen Turner, “On Music Theory and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone,” May 2023.
SMT-Pod, Episodes 2.7–2.11, on the June 2022 “Theorizing African American Music” conference that took place at Case Western Reserve University, March–April, 2023.
Her Music Academia podcast with host Lydia Bangura, “The Future of Music Theory,” February 20, 2023.
Early Music America, “Now We Listen” podcast, “The Colonialization of Music in Theory and Practice,” October 2022.
The Metropolitan Opera and WQXR’s Aria Code, “P.S. I Love You: Renée Fleming Sings Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin,” appearance with Renée Fleming, Tim Manley, and host Rhiannon Giddens, December 1, 2021.
Con Fuoco podcast, “How can classical music confront its own history of exclusion?” Interview with Daniel Cho, April 21, 2021.
Adjective New Music, Lexical Tones Podcast, Episode 153. Interview with Garrett Schumann, March 2021.
“How Do We Get There?: Accelerating Diversity in Slow to Change Humanities Fields.” Virtual roundtable discussion of the American Council of Learned Societies, December 17, 2020.
“Music Theory and White Supremacy,” interview with Adam Neely on his YouTube channel, September 7, 2020.
“5 Questions to Philip Ewell (Author, Music Theory and the White Racial Frame),” I Care If You Listen, interview with Lauren Ishida, July 23, 2020.
“A Racist Music,” BBC Radio 3, Sunday Feature, on the legacy of white supremacist American composer John Powell (1882-1963), November 24, 2019.
VICE Investigates: Russia’s War on Hip-Hop, Consultant. This VICE documentary aired on Hulu on November 2, 2019.
Blogs
“Erasing Colorasure in American Music Theory, and Confronting Demons from our Past.” RILM’s Bibliolore, March 25, 2021.
“Confronting Racism and Sexism in American Music Theory” (best to read in order).
- “The Myth of Race and Gender Neutrality in Music Theory,” April 3, 2020.
- “Race, Gender, and Their Intersection in Music Theory,” April 10, 2020.
- “Music Theory’s Quantitative and Qualitative Whiteness,” April 17, 2020.
- “Beethoven Was an Above Average Composer—Let’s Leave It at That,” April 24, 2020.
- “New Music Theory,” May 1, 2020.
- “Music Theory’s Future,” May 8, 2020.
Read blog in Portuguese (“A Estrutura Racial Branca do Campo da Teoria da Música: Confrontando o Racismo e o Sexismo no campo da Teoria da Música Americano”). Translated by Vincenzo Cambria, Pedro Fadel, Priscilla Hygino, Ferran Tamarit Rebollo, Daniel Stringini and Paulo Dantas.
In Memoriam
I made this video, “In Memoriam,” with my son Kazimir, in commemoration of the many black lives lost to police brutality in the United States. I shot this during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brooklyn, NY, with my iPhone XR, and dropped it on Juneteenth, June 19, 2020.