University of Chicago

He is Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, where he is also an Associate Faculty Member of the Divinity School and Artistic Director of the New Budapest Orpheum Society, and he is Honorary professor at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover. 

He holds a BM in piano from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he took his MM and Ph.D. in Music (Ethnomusicology) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1984), and he received a Doctor honoris causa from the Romanian National University of Music Bucharest (2019). His research addresses issues at the intersections of music with race, nationalism, and colonial encounter. 

Among his recent books are Song Loves the Masses: Herder on Music and Nationalism (with J. G. Herder; University of California Press, 2017), Wie sängen wir Seinen Gesang auf dem Boden der Fremde! (LIT Verlag, 2019), World Music: A Very Short Introduction (2nd, rev. ed.; Oxford University Press, 2020), Wolokolamsker Chaussee (2021), and with the New Budapest Orpheum Society the 2015 Grammy Award-nominated CD, As Dreams Fall Apart: The Golden Age of Jewish Stage and Film Music, 1925–1955 (Cedille, 2014). For his books he has received the Derek Allen Prize, the Bruno Nettl Prize, and the Ruth Solie Prize. 

He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He is the recipient of the 2022 International Balzan Prize in Ethnomusicology.