Sound Inquiry
Performance, Composition, Scholarship
The Music program at MIT welcomes students to perform, compose, and study the theory, history, and culture of music.
Across classical, jazz, popular, and world music, students learn from award-winning composers, musicologists, performers, and Institute Professors. Students of all musical backgrounds and levels engage in rigorous study, from centuries-old traditions to contemporary composition and music technology.
Faculty Spotlight
Makoto Harris Takao
Assistant Professor of Music
Makoto Harris Takao works at the intersection of cultural history, religious studies, and musicology to map Japan’s international relations from the sixteenth century to the present day
Pascal Le Boeuf
Old Dominion Career Development Professor
Assistant Professor of Music
Pascal Le Boeuf is a GRAMMY-award winning composer, jazz pianist, and producer whose works range from improvised music to hybridizing notation-based chamber music with production-based technology.
Emily Richmond Pollock
Associate Professor of Music
Emily Richmond Pollock is an Associate Professor of Music at MIT. First trained as an oboist and composer, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Music from Harvard University in 2006. She subsequently earned her MA and PhD in music history and literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses particularly on conservatism, the historicization of modernist musical value, operatic institutions, and the relationship between modern musical style and convention.
Evan Ziporyn
Kenan Sahin (1963) Distinguished Professor
Professor of Music
Director of Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST)
Evan Ziporyn is a composer and clarinetist who has forged an international reputation through his genre-defying, cross-cultural works and performances. At MIT, Ziporyn is Inaugural Director of the Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST), founder of Gamelan Galak Tika, and Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music.
Press + Announcements
Visionary generosity, a model of impact
The late Neil Pappalardo’s care and love for MIT remain transformative.
Inaugural Music Technology Research Showcase celebrates work of new graduate program’s initial students
Associate Professor Anna Huang delivers the keynote address, “In Search of Human-AI Resonance,” to a capacity crowd.
Jazz in the key of life
Saxophonist Miguel Zenón, a GRAMMY-winning MIT faculty member, creates a distinctive blend of jazz and traditional Puerto Rican music.
The “delicious joy” of creating and recreating music
Leslie Tilley combines deep experience as a musician with cultural and formal analysis to see how people refashion music anew.