Careers Through Musicology

Hannah Chan-Hartley is a public musicologist who specializes in communicating about music to broad audiences in engaging, rigorous, and innovative ways. Often acting as a bridge between the classical music industry and academic settings, she is active as a writer, editor, publications consultant, speaker, content producer, and instructor working with major arts organizations. Her clients include Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Detroit Opera, and the Canadian Opera Company, among others. She has been the Musicologist-in-Residence at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland and the Festival’s UNLTD creative lab. Hannah is the creator of the Visual Listening Guide (VLG)—a new kind of graphic listening guide for symphonic music.

Hannah holds a Bachelor of Music Honours in violin performance from McGill University, a Master of Philosophy in musicology and performance from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in musicology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Hannah’s research interests include the social and cultural history of music and music institutions, focusing on the Europe–North America transatlantic context from the 19th century to the present day, as well as the performance and reception history of opera and orchestral music, about which she has written and presented at major conferences.

Anna Grau Schmidt is the Music & Performing Arts Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she is a member of the Teaching & Learning Team. She serves the Music Library Association as chair of the Instruction Subcommittee. She also has extensive experience as an instructor of music history, research methods, and librarianship. Anna holds an MS/LIS from the University of Illinois and a PhD in music history from the University of Pennsylvania and publishes on French music and culture of the Middle Ages as well as information literacy in the arts.

Nick Smolenski is an Independent Scholar currently based in Portland, Maine. His research focuses on the intersections of sound, acoustics, liturgy, and politics in seventeenth-century Anglican worship spaces. Since completing his PhD in musicology (Duke University, 2023), Nick has been working in arts administration (Bowdoin International Music Festival) and academic publishing (Yale Journal of Music & Religion) while also participating in “early music” performance (St Mary Schola) and sharing his scholarship at conferences and guest lectures.