William Robin

William Robin is an Associate Professor of Musicology at the School of Music, University of Maryland, appointed in Fall 2016. His research focuses on institutional structures shaping contemporary classical music in the United States, with additional interests in early American hymnody, Stravinsky, and postwar European avant-garde.

• Education: PhD in Musicology (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2016)
• Doctoral dissertation: Analysis of American new music through "indie classical" lens
• Bachelor’s in Saxophone Performance & Musicology (Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music)

Research Expertise:

• Contemporary classical music institutional frameworks
• "Indie Classical" terminology analysis
• Bang on a Can collective’s market participation
• Transatlantic 19th century sacred music reform
• Stravinsky’s musical objectivity rhetoric
• Neoliberalism’s impact on music ensembles

Scientific Contributions:

• Author of Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace (Oxford University Press, 2021)
• Co-editor of On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement (UC Press, 2023)
• Peer-reviewed publications in Musical Quarterly, Journal of the American Musicological Society, and Journal of the Society for American Music

Awards & Recognition:

• ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award (2014) for NewMusicBox article
• University of Maryland Research Communicator Impact Award
• DAAD Study Scholarship recipient (Berlin, unfinished opera projects of Bernd Alois Zimmermann)