GMSF Graduate Research Symposium: Representations

The Stanford Graduate Music Studies Forum is excited to announce Representations, a Graduate Research Symposium taking place May 17, 2025 at CCRMA. We are interested in fostering trans-disciplinary conversation through research on music and sound in response to a set of provocations:

Are there sonic phenomena that resist representation? How does musical representation capture, fix, or delimit—and can we imagine a representation that releases? Do we encounter the present distinctly from the re-present—the immediate from the mediated, the sound from the model, the performance from the recording? How can research/practice in sound and music help us answer the questions: is meaning always representational? Is representation always meaningful?

Presenters from musicology and ethnomusicology, computer-based music theory and acoustics, and composition will offer a diverse range of formats, including paper presentations, performances (live or fixed media), and demonstrations/workshops in response to these questions. The symposium will close with a keynote address from Dr. Ken Ueno, Professor of Music at UC Berkeley.

This symposium was made possible through the generous support of the Stanford Department of Music and the Vice Provost for Graduate Education.

Let us know if you'll be attending!