Ryan Ebright

Ryan Ebright completed his Ph.D. in musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and holds a M.M. in musicology and vocal performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. His research centers on opera, song, and intersections of music and drama, with an emphasis on 20th-century and contemporary opera, minimalism, and 19th-century Lieder. His current book project, Making American Opera after Einstein, examines the efforts of artists and institutions over the last forty years to redefine what American opera is and how audiences experience it.

Dr. Ebright presents regularly at regional, national, and international conferences. His writing has appeared in the New York Times and NewMusicBox, the journals American Music and Cambridge Opera Journal, and the book Rethinking Reich. Before coming to BGSU, Dr. Ebright taught at UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC Greensboro.

Personal Website

Recent Academic Writing     

“Doctor Atomic or: How John Adams Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Sound Design.” Cambridge Opera Journal 31, no. 1 (2019): 85–117.

“‘We are not trying to make a political piece’: The Reconciliatory Aesthetic of Steve Reich and Beryl Korot’s The Cave.” In Rethinking Reich, edited by Sumanth Gopinath and Pwyll ap Siôn, 93–109. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

“Philip Glass.” In Oxford Bibliographies Online, edited by Bruce Gustafson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

“‘My answer to what music theater can be’: Iconoclasm and Entrepreneurship in Steve Reich and Beryl Korot’s The Cave.” American Music 37, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 29–50. *2018 ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award winner*

Recent Public Writing

“Anthony Davis’s Revolutionary Opera: ‘X’.” New Yorker, 22 May 2020.

“Finally, a Stage for Female Composers from Iran.” New York Times, 18 May 2020.

“A ‘Stabat Mater’ for the 21st Century, Colored by a Composer’s Faith.” New York Times, 1 November 2019.​

“Hundreds of New Concertos Bring the World to the Concert Hall.” New York Times, 1 August 2019.​

“Japanese Theater Inspires a New Opera of Celestial Textures.” New York Times, 12 November 2018.

“Beethoven’s 200-Year-Old ‘Fidelio’ Enters Today’s Prisons.” New York Times, 4 May 2018.

“Celebrating Women’s Rights, ‘That Most American Of Operas’,” New York Times, 3 November 2017. 

Recent/Upcoming Presentations

“New Music Theater and American New Music Ensembles,” Annual Meeting of the Society for American Music (SAM), Minneapolis. March 2020

“Incubation and Integration: The American Music Theater Festival and Anthony Davis’s X.” Music Festival Studies: Current Perspectives, Future Directions, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. March 2020.

“Assembling ‘Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble,’ 1975-86,” Minimalism Extended: The Seventh International Conference on Minimalist Music, Cardiff University, Wales. August 2019.

“Incubating American ‘Opera-Theater’: Beth Morrison Projects, Los Angeles Opera, and Missy Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar,” SAM Annual Meeting, Kansas City. March 2018.

“Scoring the Body: Meredith Monk’s Atlas as Operatic Work,” National Meeting of the American Musicological Society (AMS), Rochester. November 2017.

Courses Taught

American Opera after Einstein
Minimalism: Theory, Culture, Praxis
20^th-Century Music Survey
DMA Multidisciplinary Seminar in Post-1945 Music and Culture
Chamber Music Literature
Symphonic Literature
Exploring Music