Ph.D. in Music History, Princeton University, 1997.
M.F.A. in Music History, Princeton University, 1994.
M.A. in Music History, McGill University, 1993.
Diploma, Moscow Pedagogical Institute, 1992.
B. Mus. (cum laude) in Music History and Literature, University of Toronto, 1987.
Princeton University, Behrman Professor in the Humanities, 2026-29.
Princeton University, Department of Music, 1997–.
Professor, 2008–
Associate Professor, 2005–2008
Assistant Professor, 1998–2005
Lecturer, 1997–98
Princeton University, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, 2017–.
Professor
University of Southern California, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Spring 2019.
Visiting Professor
University of Pennsylvania, Department of Music, Spring 2011.
Visiting Professor
Harvard University, Department of Music, Spring 2010.
Visiting Professor
National & International
Hoover Institution Research Fellowship, 2024
Guggenheim Fellowship, 2011
American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 2001–2
Institute of Advanced Studies, Mellon Fellowship, 2001–2 (declined)
Alfred Einstein Award, American Musicological Society, 1999
AMS 50 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, American Musicological Society, 1996–97
University
Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities, 2022
Award for Excellence in Alumni Education, 2012
Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award, 2006
Arthur. H. Scribner Bicentennial Preceptorship, 2002–5
Charlotte Elizabeth Proctor Honorary Fellowship, 1995–96
BOOKS
1. A Village and a Kingdom: A One-Thousand-Year History of Moscow (Knopf, forthcoming).
2. Shostakovich in progress, contract with Norton
3. Tchaikovsky’s Empire. London: Yale University Press, 2024; paper, 2026.
Reviews:
Stephen Walsh in Literary Review, no. 532 (August 2024); David Gutman in Gramophone, 6 September 2024; Michael O’Donnell in Wall Street Journal, 23 August 2024; Néstor Castiglione in MusicWeb International 24 July 2024; Richard Morrison in The Times of London, 24 August 2024; Paul Kildea in The Spectator, 24 August 2024; Jim Kelly in Air Mail (“Editor’s Picks), 7 September 2024; Robert Blaisdell in Russian Life 68, no. 1 (Winter 2025); D. Arnold in Choice 62, no. 6 (February 2025); Robert Steven Mack in The New Criterion (“Music Before Melancholy”), 1 March 2025; George Hall in Opera, 31 March 2025.
Recognitions:
Richard Fairman, Financial Times, 18 November 2024 (“Best Books of the Year”). Presto Music Book of the Year 202
4. Mirror in the Sky: The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022; paper, 2024.
Reviews:
Shelley L. Rogers in MLA Notes 80, no. 2 (December 2023): 337-40; Alexa Marie Frederick, Music References Services Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2024), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10588167.2023.2297132; Maria Carlson in Foreword Reviews, September/October 2022.
5. Roxy Music’s Avalon. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
6. Bolshoi Confidential. New York: Liveright; London: HarperCollins; Toronto: Random House, 2016; Portuguese edition: Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record LTDA, 2017; French edition: Paris: Editions Belfond, 2019; Japanese edition: Tokyo: Hakusui-sha, 2021; Russian edition: Moscow: Exmo, 2023.
Television and film rights acquired by Amy Sherman-Palladino.
Reviews:
Booklist Starred Review; Booklist Editors’ Choice 2016; Kirkus Starred Review; Lucy Ash in The Guardian, 31 October 2016; Bob Blaisdell in The Christian Science Monitor, 10 October 2016; Deborah Bull in The Spectator, 10/17/24 December 2016; Rupert Christiansen in Literary Review, October 2016; Lee Christofis in Australian Book Review, January-February 2017; Debra Craine in The Times of London, 22 October 2016; Sarah Crompton in The Guardian, 10 October 2016; Catriona Kelly in Times Literary Supplement, 20 January 2017; David Jays in The Times of London, 16 October 2016; Daria Khitrova in The New York Times, 13 November 2016; Madison Mainwaring, New Republic, 14 October 2016; Mark Monahan in The Telegraph, 13 November 2016; Douglas Smith in The Wall Street Journal, 15 October 2016; Kathleen Wuyard-Jadot in Weekend Vif, May 27, 2025.
Finalist for the Pushkin House Prize 2016.
7. The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev. London: Random House, 2013; Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013; paper, 2014.
Reviews:
BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week; The Daily Beast [“Hot Reads”], 18 March 2013; Kirkus Starred Review; The New Yorker [“Briefly Noted”], 6 May 2013, 75; Publishers Weekly’s Top 10: Music; John Carey in The Sunday Times, 10 March 2013; Orlando Figes in The New York Review of Books, 6 March 2014; Amanda Foreman in The New Statesman, 21 March 2013; Paul Griffiths in Times Literary Supplement, 29 November 2013; Stuart Kelly in The Scotsman, 16 March 2013; Norman Lebrecht in The Wall Street Journal, 15 March 2013; Alexandra Popoff in The Boston Globe, 23 March 2013; Lettie Ransley in The Observer, 11 May 2013; Stephen Walsh in The Guardian, 29 March 2013.
8. The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009; paper, 2010.
Reviews:
Bradley Bambarger in Listen [“Back in the USSR”], May/June 2009, 75; Diego Fischerman in El Pais [“El hombre que regresó al frío”], 10 July 2009; Pauline Fairclough in Music & Letters 90, no. 4 (2009): 719–22; Sheila Fitzpatrick in London Review of Books [“Many Promises”], 14 May 2009; David Gutman in Gramophone, February 2009, 103; Michael Kimmelman in The New York Review of Books [“Bad Bargains for Russian Music”], 13 August 2009; Arlo McKinnon in Opera News 76, no. 6 (2011); Neil Minturn in Slavic Review 69, no. 1 (2010): 239; Stephen Press in Russian Review 71, no. 1 (2012): 132–33;
R. J. Stove in National Observer, Autumn 2009; Andrew Thomson in The Musical Times, Summer 2009, 110–14; Elizabeth Wilson in bookforum [“A Composer’s Notes”], June/July/Aug 2009.
9. Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement. Oakland: The University of California Press, 2002; second, revised edition, 2019.
Reviews:
Philip Borg-Wheeler in Classical Music, 24 May 2003, 25; Philip Ross Bullock in Slavic Review 64, no. 2 (2005): 476–77; Ellon Carpenter in The Russian Review 62, no. 3 (2003): 457–58; Pauline Fairclough in Slavonica 9, no. 2 (2003): 137–38; Marina Frolova-Walker in Journal of the American Musicological Society 59, no. 2 (2006): 507–13; Helen Galbraith in The Modern Language Review 99, no. 3 (2004): 849–51; Anatole Leikin in Journal of Musicological Research 22, no. 4 (2003): 409-13; Gerard McBurney in Times Literary Supplement [“At the Sign of the Queen of Spades”], 27 June 2003, 24; Anna Nisnevich in Cambridge Opera Journal [“Keys to the Mysteries”] 15, no. 2 (2003): 199–206; Karin Pendle in Choice, 40, no. 8 (2003); Elizabeth Yellen in Slavic and East European Journal 48, no. 1 (2004): 142–43.
EDITIONS
ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
1. “Prokofiev’s Gambler,” in Dostoevsky’s The Gambler: The Allure of the Wheel, ed. Svetlana Evdokimova (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2024), 257-76.
2. “L’Opéra inachevé Khan Buzay de Serge Prokofiev (forthcoming in À la recherche d'un texte: Prokofiev et la littérature, ed. Christina Guillaumier and Nicholas Moron).
3. “On the Bolshoi, and on Kirill Serebrennikov’s ‘Nureyev.’” In The Routledge Companion to Choreomusicology, ed. Samuel N. Dorf and Helen Julia Minors (Abingdon: Routledge, 2025), 217-28.
4. “Glière’s Light Style.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Middlebrow, ed. Christopher Chowrimootoo and Kate Guthrie (online edition, Oxford Academic, 19 December 2022), https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/45224/chapter/426215746.
5. “Still in Search of Satanilla.”19th-Century Music 46, no. 1 (2022): 3-38.
6. “Burning for You: Rachmaninoff’s Francesca da Rimini.” In Rachmaninoff and His World, ed. Philip Bullock (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022), 161-79.
7. “About that Chord, and About Scriabin as a Mystic.” In Demystifying Scriabin, ed. Vasillis Kallis and Kenneth Smith (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2021), 11-25.
8. “V poiskakh Satanillï, chast’ II.” In Iskusstvovedeniye v kontekste drugikh nauk v sovremennom mire: Parallelli i vzaimodeystviya: Sbornik trudov Mezhdunarodnoy nauchnoy konferentsii 21-26 aprelya 2019 goda, ed. G. R. Konson (Moscow: Rossiyskaya gosudarstvennaya biblioteka, 2020), 788-99.
9. “What Next? Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony as Sequel and Prequel.” Twentieth-Century Music 16, no. 2 (June 2019): 1-27.
10. “Galina Ustvol’skaya v istorii muzïki, vne yeyo i za yeyo predelami.” In NestandArt: Zabïtïye eksperimentï v russkoy kul’ture, 1934-64 гг., edited by Julia Vaingurt and William Nickell (Moscow: Novoye literaturnoye obozreniye, 2021): 243-72.
11. “Galina Ustvolskaya Outside, Inside, and Beyond Music History,” Journal of Musicology 36, no. 1 (2019): 96-129.
12. “The Golden Cockerel, Censored and Uncensored.” In Rimsky-Korsakov and His World, edited by Marina Frolova-Walker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 177-95.
13. “Prokofiev: Reflections on an Anniversary, and a Plea for a New Critical Edition,” Iskusstvo muzïki. Teoriya i istoriya 16 (2017): 6-20.
14. “Landed: Cole Porter’s Ballet.” In A Cole Porter Companion, edited by Don M. Randel, Matthew Shaftel, and Susan Forscher Weiss (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 57-69.
15. “‘Zolotoy Petushok’: zametki ob opere, kotoraya stala operoy-baletom i zatem baletom.” In Triumf russkoy muzïki. Rimskiy-Korsakov – okno v mir, ed. L. O. Ader (St. Petersburg: SPb GBUK, 2016), 67-76.
16. “Debussy’s Toy Stories.” Journal of Musicology 30, no. 3 (2013): 424–59.
17. “Koussevitzky’s Ghostwriter” and “Epilogue: The Silver Age and Tinseltown.” In Funeral Games in Honor of Arthur Vincent Lourié, edited by Klára Móricz and Simon Morrison. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
18. [with Nelly Kravetz] “The Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of October, or How the Specter of Communism Haunted Prokofiev.” Journal of Musicology 23, no. 2 (2006): 227–62.
19. “Russia’s Lament.” In Word, Music, History: A Festschrift for Caryl Emerson [Stanford Slavic Studies Volumes 29–30], edited by Lazar Fleishman, Gabriella Safran, and Michael Wachtel (2005): 657–81.
20. “Shostakovich as Industrial Saboteur: Observations on The Bolt.” In Shostakovich and His World, edited by Laurel Fay. 117–61, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
21. “The Origins of Daphnis et Chloé (1912).” 19th-Century Music 28, no. 1 (2004): 50–76.
22. [with Lesley-Anne Sayers] “Prokofiev’s Le Pas d’Acier (1925): How the Steel was Tempered.” In Soviet Music and Society under Lenin and Stalin: The Baton and Sickle, edited by Neil Edmunds (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), 81–104.
23. “The Semiotics of Symmetry, or Rimsky-Korsakov’s Operatic History Lesson.” Cambridge Opera Journal 13, no. 3 (2001): 261–93.
24. “‘Ognennïy angel’: tret’ya versiya.” Muzïkal’naya akademiya 2 (2000): 221–28.
25. “Skryabin and the Impossible.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 51, no. 2 (1998): 283–330; reprint, Journal of the Scriabin Society of America 7, no. 1 (2002–3): 29–66.
26.“Sergei Prokofiev’s Semyon Kotko as a Representative Example of Socialist Realism.” In Musik als Text: Bericht über den Internationalen Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongreß der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, edited by Hermann Danuser and Tobias Plebuch, vol. 2, 494–97. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1998.
SHORTER WRITINGS
ESSAY-REVIEWS
REVIEWS
ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES/BIBLIOGRAPHIES
TRANSLATIONS
1. Derevyannaya kniga/Wood Book. St. Petersburg: Vita Nova, 2009.
PUBLIC LECTURES
SELECT INTERVIEWS
1. CBC The Current, 26 December 2016 (on the Bolshoi Ballet)
2. BBC Radio 4 Start of Week, 12 December 2016 (on the Bolshoi Ballet)
3. NPR Marketplace, 27 October 2016 (on the Bolshoi Ballet)
4. WNYC Radio, 10 May 2013 (on Lina Prokofiev).
5. BBC Radio 3 (London), 21 April 2013 (on Lina Prokofiev).
6. BBC World News (London), 21 April 2013 (on Lina Prokofiev).
7. DR P2 (Copenhagen), 19 April 2012, broadcast on 21 April (program on Shostakovich).
8. Cornell University Chronicle Online, 15 March 2011.
9. BBC Radio 3 (Belfast), 3 August 2010 (“Scriabin in Colour”), broadcast on 21 August 2010.
10. WFMT Radio (Chicago), 12 April 2010.
11. Newsweek, 31 July 2009, article (“Hold Music’s Complex Science”), posted 13 August 2009.
12. Telekanal Zvezda (Moscow), 10 June 2009.
13. BBC Radio 3 (Cardiff), 10 August 2007 (for the “Real History of Opera” program), broadcast on 9 October 2007.
14. Princeton Alumni Weekly, 20 July 2007, article (“Searching for Prokofiev”) published 26 September 2007.
15. BBC World Service, 11 April 2007, broadcast on 14 April 2007.
16. WNYC Radio’s “Soundcheck,” 20 August 2004.
17. BBC Radio 3 (Cardiff), 3 July 2003, broadcast on 3 August 2003.
18. Princeton Weekly Bulletin, 19 June 2003, article (“Music Scholar Pursues Research from Russia to the Barre”) posted 4 August 2003.
BALLET/DANCE PRODUCTIONS
Satanella (in progress)
Within the Quota (2017)
Princeton University Ballet and Penguin Café (London) staging, on May 4, of Vince Greene and Simon Morrison’s restored and rescored version of a ballet-pantomime composed by Cole Porter for the Ballets Suédois in 1923.
Select Press Coverage
John Alden Carpenter’s Krazy Kat and Debussy’s The Toy Box (2010)
Prokofiev’s Music for Athletes/Fizkul’turnaya muzïka (2009)
Romeo and Juliet (2008)
I restored the scenario and, with Gregory Spears, the score of the original (1935) version of this ballet for the Mark Morris Dance Group. The project involved orchestrating act IV (featuring a happy ending) from Prokofiev’s annotations and rearranging the order and adjusting the content of acts I-III. This version of the ballet was premiered on 4 July 2008 and began an international tour the following September.
Select Press Coverage
1. “Cole Porter’s Pro-Immigration Ballet Gets A Trump-Era Revival,” NPR, 23 May 2017.
2. “Ballet Tackles Trump’s Travel Ban,” BBC News, 2 July 2017.
John Alden Carpenter’s Krazy Kat and Debussy’s The Toy Box (2010)
Prokofiev’s Music for Athletes/Fizkul’turnaya muzyka (2009)
Romeo and Juliet (2008)
I restored the scenario and, with Gregory Spears, the score of the original (1935) version of this ballet for the Mark Morris Dance Group. The project involved orchestrating act IV (featuring a happy ending) from Prokofiev’s annotations and rearranging the order and adjusting the content of acts I-III. This version of the ballet was premiered on 4 July 2008 and began an international tour the following September.
Le Pas d’acier (2005)
Select Press Coverage
THEATRICAL PRODUCTIONS
Eugene Onegin (2012)
Combined student and professional performance of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s Pushkin-based drama and Prokofiev’s 1936 incidental music as part of the international conference After the End of Music History, 9–12 February 2012, Princeton University.
Select Press Coverage
Boris Godunov (2007)
This student staging brought together Alexander Pushkin’s 1825 drama and Prokofiev’s 1936 incidental music.
Select Press Coverage
Select Interviews
For Undergraduates
Global Seminar (Moscow: Culture, History, Politics, held summers of 2017 and 2019 at the Institute for Art Research, Moscow, Russia), Introduction to Music, The Ballet, Music in the Romantic Era, Modernism, Music and Film, Russian Music, Tchaikovsky, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western Culture: Literature and the Arts
For Graduate Students
Abstraction, The Ballets Russes and Collective Creation, The Ballets Suédois, The Ontology of Music and Dance, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Russian Opera, Scandinavian Music, The Silver Age, Tchaikovsky.
International Symposium on Indigenous Communities and Climate Change, Princeton University, 6-7 December 2018; https://www.princetonisiccc.com.
After the End of Music History: An International Conference in Honor of Richard Taruskin, Princeton University, 9-12 February, 2012.
Faculty Leader, Humanities Council Fall Break Trip to Athens, 2023 and 2024.
Executive Committee for the Program in Journalism, 2023-.
Director of the Fund for Canadian Studies, 2016–.
Executive Committee for the Program in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, 2013–.
Faculty Representative to the Executive Committee of the Alumni Council, 2008–11.
Director of Graduate Studies, Music Department, 2006–7, 2010–11, Spring 2013, 2017-18.
Freshman Advisor, 2000-1, 2002–3, 2005–7, 2008–10.
Committee on Discipline, 2000–1.
Undergraduate Representative (Director of Undergraduate Studies), 2000–1, Spring 2003, 2004-5.
ACLS referee, 2025.
H. Robert Cohen/RIPM Award Committee, American Musicological Society, 2023-26.
Guggenheim Foundation, Referee (Fellowship Applications in Music Research), 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022.
Institute for Advanced Studies, Referee, 2022, 2023
National Endowment of the Humanities, Adjudicator (Fellowship Applications in Music and Dance), 2017, 2020.
[with Peter Schmelz], Series Editor, Russian Music Studies, Indiana University Press, 2016-24.
Organizing Committee for the International Symposium “Prokofiev in the 21st Century,” Glinka National Museum Consortium, Moscow, Russia, 2016.
Trustee of the Serge Prokofiev Foundation, 2010–15; President, 2011–15.
Communications Committee, American Musicological Society, 2017 –
Publications Committee, American Musicological Society, 2013–17.
Editor, Three Oranges: The Journal of the Serge Prokofiev Association, 2010–15.
Scholar in Residence, Bard Music Festival, Summer 2008.
Editorial Board, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2007–10.
Committee, AHJ/AMS 50 Dissertation Fellowships, American Musicological Society, 2006–9.
Reader reports provided for manuscripts and articles submitted to Boydell & Brewer Ltd., Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Indiana University Press, W. W. Norton & Sons, Oxford University Press, University of California Press, University of Rochester Press, Yale University Press, Acta Musicologica, American Music, Cambridge Opera Journal, Canadian Slavonic Papers, Journal of the American Musicological Association, Journal of Musicology, Music & Letters, Music & Politics, Musical Quarterly, Music Theory Online, Musicologica Austriaca, Russian Review, and Slavonic and East European Review.
PhD Advisees and academic placements
Reader reports provided for manuscripts and articles submitted to Boydell & Brewer Ltd., Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Indiana University Press, W. W. Norton & Sons, Oxford University Press, University of California Press, University of Rochester Press, Yale University Press, Acta Musicologica, American Music, Cambridge Opera Journal, Canadian Slavonic Papers, Journal of the American Musicological Association, Journal of Musicology, Music & Letters, Musical Quarterly, Russian Review, and Slavic Review.