SCSMT Meeting Wrap-Up, Spring 2026
The Annual Meeting of the South-Central Society for Music Theory was held from March 20-21 in Louisville, Kentucky, on the campus of University of Louisville. Attendance was better than last year (40 registrants), and 25 papers and lightning talks were presented. Many thanks to the members of the Program Committee for their work (John Latartara, Hu Ruixue, Zachary Lookenbill, Jacob Gran, and Anne Delfin), as well as Rebecca Long for local arrangements.
This year, we had one workshop and a keynote lecture, both of which were led by Nancy Yunhwa Rao. In the workshop, “How We Get Into Intercultural Analysis and How to Get Out From Under,” Rao showed different ways of notating and analyzing a Cantonese opera aria, and argued that part of getting into intercultural analysis was not being afraid to use Western or Western-derived analytical or notational apparatus on non-Western music. Of course, balance and ethical consideration are still needed, regardless of how one chooses to approach music. When venturing beyond a cultural repertoire, what is valuable is the ability to move fluidly between approaches, and not to be tied down to preconceptions or dogmatic assertions about which approaches should be applied to which repertoires.
In her keynote lecture, “Materiality, Thingness, and Opera Analysis — Tan Dun’s Tea: A Mirror of Soul,” Rao talked about the importance of materiality (what substance is producing sound, and how) in Chinese repertoires like traditional opera music, what it means when composers like Tan, who studied in both China and in the US, and who move between both cultures, try to reference those material aspects in their music, such as Tan does in his opera, Tea.
We congratulate Lilly Korkontzelos (Michigan State University) for winning the Student Paper Award for her talk, “From Beyond the Grave of Tonality: A Music Cognition Oriented Analysis of Alfred Schnittke’s Requiem (1975).” In that talk, Korkonzetlos argues that tension, release, and climax can be generated in neotonal music from idioms other than functional harmony. The program committee was impressed by her synthesis of several analytical layers to bridge the conceptual and the perceptual, in particular, a cognition-informed computing method for predicting perceived consonance and dissonance, and a timbre-texture mapping scheme explaining instrumental timbral similarity and grouping effects.
Honorable mention was also given to Samantha Carlock (Indiana University) for her talk, “Tight-Verse/Loose-Chorus: Country’s Crooked Chorus.” Inverting the typical rock music archetype, Carlock demonstrates how country music often projects metric irregularity, or “crookedness,” in choruses rather than verses of a song. Through historical analysis from the early- to late-twentieth century and a case study of Chris Stapleton, Carlock argues that rather than being an antiquated musical remnant from country music’s past, “crookedness” remains a vital resource that is actively used today to help convey the meaning and emotion of the song text.
At the Business Meeting on March 21st, we approved last year’s meeting minutes, and Douglas Rust (University of Southern Mississippi) was announced as Treasurer, with his term backdated to 2025-2028 due to an oversight at last year’s meeting that was rectified through a member poll a few weeks ago. Clare Eng (Belmont University) was re-elected as president for her second and final term, 2026-2028. (Many thanks to the election officer, Jason Jedlička!) In Spring 2026, the Executive Board also approved of an investment policy statement that allowed the society to invest surplus funds in low-risk instruments, like certificates of deposit. This would hopefully be a step towards securing SCSMT’s financial future, by giving the society a secondary income stream to supplement conference registration income and ad hoc donations.
In 2027, SCSMT will be meeting jointly with Music Theory Southeast at Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA) on March 19-20, 2027. The 2027 Program Committee will be chaired by Jacob Gran (Louisiana Tech University), and will include: Lauren Crosby (Stetson University), Andrew Powell (Auburn University), Brian Junttila (MTSE Student Paper Award Winner-Florida State University), and Lilly Korkontzelos (SCSMT Student Paper Award Winner-Michigan State University).
Looking ahead to 2028, we are still committed to holding a virtual conference, in that all talks will be presented using a webconferencing app like Zoom. But because at past business meetings, a significant body of SCSMT members would still like to gather in-person, we are looking for institutions within our geographic region that are willing to host an in-person gathering in 2028.
It takes a village to keep a society operating smoothly. The president would like to thank: the Executive Board for being so easy to work with—Secretary, Wesley Bradford (UL-Lafayette) and Treasurer, Douglas Rust (University of Southern Mississippi); the Technology Chair, Madison Stepherson, for her insights on hosting a virtual conference; the Webmaster Trevor de Clercq (Middle Tennessee State University) for his expertise and responsiveness; and the social media coordinators, Camila Canaviri Pacheco (University of Central Arkansas) and Zachary Lookenbill(University of Arkansas) for maintaining our modest social media presence.
For questions about SCSMT, please email us at scsmt@yahoo.com.