Dr. PHEAROSS GRAHAM
musicologist | pianist
-private piano lessons-
Dr. Pheaross Graham is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities and Lecturer in the Department of Music at Stanford University. He is a musicologist and classical pianist whose research, situated at the intersection of theory and practice, unites artists’ idealist subject positions with close sonic and physical readings of recorded performances. His current projects focus intertextually on the recordings of African American pianist-composer Don Shirley and Russian pianist-composer Sergei Rachmaninoff.
He has presented his work at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society (national), Music and the Moving Image (NYU), the University of London, and other venues. He was a co-organizer and scholar-pianist at the UCLA Music Performance Studies Today Conference. At LA Opera, he served as a Teaching Artist and remains an affiliated scholar. His forthcoming scholarship on Liberace and Rachmaninoff will be published by the University of Illinois Press and Routledge, respectively.
Dr. Graham's pedagogical experience is extensive, having taught courses ranging from Western art music (survey for majors) to Beethoven, opera, interdisciplinary studies, music theory, Electronic Dance Music, the American Musical, film music, the Beatles, History of Rock & Roll, America in the 1960s, social justice and classical music, writing, and applied piano performance.
Besides his university teaching and research, Dr. Graham has well over a decade of experience teaching piano privately, uniquely drawing on his expertise as a musicologist vested in humanistic interpretation studies. His technical pedagogy emphasizes the biomechanics of coordinated motion, prizing efficient, healthy, and sustainable virtuosity.
Dr. Graham earned six degrees, including his Ph.D., C.Phil., and M.A. in musicology at the UCLA, M.F.A. in piano performance from UC Irvine (followed by further years of graduate piano study at UCLA), and B.A. in music and B.S. in microbial biology from UC Berkeley. Important formative experiences included studies at the Aspen Music Festival and School and Tanglewood Institute. He received two Dean's medals from UCLA, the UCLA Musicology Departmental Distinguished Teaching Award, the Cota-Robles Fellowship, the Arts Initiative Award, among many other honors.
CV provided upon request.