William A. Everett is Curators' Distinguished Professor of Musicology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He holds degrees from Texas Tech University (B.M., music theory), Southern Methodist University (M.M., music history, instrumental conducting), and the University of Kansas (Ph.D., musicology). At UMKC, he teaches graduate courses in medieval music, American musical theater, music and national identity, research and bibliography in music, and other topics. He also teaches in UMKC’s general education program and regularly leads pre-concert discussions throughout the Kansas City area.
Dr. Everett is the author of multiple books, including British Piano Trios, Quartets, and Quintets: 1850-1950: A Checklist (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2000), The Musical: A Guide to Research (New York: Routledge, 2004; 2nd ed. 2011), Sigmund Romberg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), Rudolf Friml (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), and Music For the People: A History of the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra, 1933-1982 (Kansas City, MO: Rockhill Books, 2015). He is contributing co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Musical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; 2nd ed., 2008; 3rd ed., 2017) and The Palgave Handbook of Musical Theatre Producers (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and co-author of The Historical Dictionary of the Broadway Musical (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2008; 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). His book on operetta composer Sigmund Romberg received the 2008 Certificate of Merit for Outstanding Research on Recorded Classical Music from the Association of Recorded Sound Collectors (ARSC). His work has appeared in American Music, Opera Quarterly, Journal of the American Viola Society, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Studies in Musical Theatre, Journal of Croatian Studies, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and elsewhere. Dr. Everett served as a commissioning editor for musical theater for the New Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd ed. (2013). He has presented papers at conferences and symposia throughout North America and Europe. Dr. Everett’s current projects focus on the musicals that played at Daly’s Theatre in London during the 1890s, multi-national operetta traditions at the turn of the twentieth century, and film operetta.
He has received multiple awards for his teaching and scholarship, including the Muriel Ewing Kauffman Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003 and 2013, a 2008 UMKC Trustees Faculty Fellowship, the 2008 N.T. Veatch Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity, a 2014 Phi Kappa Phil Love of Learning Award, and the Muriel Ewing Kauffman Award for Excellence in Scholarship/Artistry in 2009 and 2017. From 2008 to 2010, he served as a Faculty Fellow in UMKC’s Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching (FaCET).
Dr. Everett served as chair of the Conservatory’s Division of Composition, Music Theory, and Musicology from 2006 to 2009 and as associate dean for graduate studies from 2010 to 2013. He oversaw the Conservatory’s NASM reaccreditation report while associate dean. He was treasurer of the Society for American Music (1996–2001), president of the Great Plains Chapter of the College Music Society (2002–04), reviews editor for College Music Symposium (2000–06), chair of the program committee for the 2009 CMS International Conference, national vice president of the College Music Society (2011–13), and local arrangements chair for the 2018 national meeting of the Society for American Music. He currently chairs the College Music Society’s International Initiatives Committee and the Kansas City Lyric Opera Guild’s Education Committee.
