Andrew Granade

Biography

S. Andrew Granade is a musicologist, educator, and academic leader in the UMKC Conservatory, where he serves as Associate Dean of Academic and Faculty Affairs and Professor of Musicology. He completed his Ph.D. in Musicology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2005, and holds a Master of Music from UIUC as well as Bachelor degrees in Piano Performance and in History from Ouachita Baptist University, Arkadelphia, AR.

An award-winning teacher and scholar, Granade is known for his engaging approach to complex ideas and his commitment to connecting scholarship with real-world listening experiences—inviting students and audiences alike to hear music not just as art, but as a powerful lens through which to view human creativity and culture.

Granade’s research explores American music, especially the work of composer Harry Partch, music in media, the American wind band tradition, and music history pedagogy, bringing fresh insight into how music reflects culture and identity. His book Harry Partch, Hobo Composer explores the impact of the hobo persona on Partch’s life, work, and reception, as well as the issues of exoticism that arise from it while his edited collection The Musical Identities of Harry Partch: History, Theory, Performance details how Partch’s sound-world challenges conventions, reshapes performance conventions, and continues to redefine the possibilities of musical expression. An avid collaborator, he is currently working on two projects with other scholars – a co-edited collection on music in Arkansas for Illinois Press and a collaborative book on Battlestar Galactica’s music for Palgrave Press. In addition to those works, his writings have appeared in the collections Scoring Peak TV, Christian Sacred Music in the Americas, Re-Locating the Sounds of the Western and Open Access Musicology along with the periodicals Journal of the Society for American Music, Music and the Moving Image, The Journal of Musicology Pedagogy, and American Music. With David Thurmaier he hosts the popular podcast Hearing the Pulitzers, which details the tangled history of the Pulitzer Prize in Music.