Bill Bauer

William R. Bauer, Ph.D. teaches music full time at City University of New York’s College of Staten Island and is a member of the CUNY Graduate Center’s musicology faculty. Before joining CSI in 2002, he served on the undergraduate and graduate faculties of Rutgers/Newark. He holds advanced degrees in composition from Columbia University and from the CUNY Graduate Center, and has studied composition with Robert Starer, Fred Lerdahl, and Tom Manoff. He also holds the Dalcroze certificate and license, earned in studies with Robert Abramson and Dr. Ruth Alperson at the Manhattan Dalcroze Institute.

Dr. Bauer gives workshops in eurhythmics and jazz improvisation, and has served on the Summer Dalcroze Institute faculties of Carnegie-Mellon University and The Longy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Recently he has led workshops for Star Island’s Star Arts and LitFest conferences, at the International Society for Improvised Music conference, for Dwight Englewood School’s String Society, and at Christ Church in New Brunswick, NJ.

Dr. Bauer’s research on popular music and jazz studies focuses on understanding styles of vocal and instrumental improvisation in their historical and cultural context. In 2002 The University of Michigan Press published his book Open the Door: The Life and Music of Betty Carter. His essays on jazz singing have appeared in the pages of Jazz Perspectives, Current Musicology, and the Annual Review of Jazz Studies.