Brian Moon

BA Emory University (Guitar Performance)
MSM Emory University (Choral Conducting)
PhD University of Colorado (Musicology)

Brian Moon is a musicologist who specializes in America's music. He attended Emory University to earn a BA in classical guitar, and later a Master’s Degree of Sacred Music focusing on choral conducting. Moon was a fellow of the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado, where he earned his Ph.D. in musicology. He has taught at the University of Arizona since 2004, where he is the Coordinator of Music in General Studies, a position that feeds his passion for improving student learning, and reflects his extensive experience in both online and in person classrooms.

Moons research and creative endeavors are as varied as the courses he has taught, or the kinds of students he regularly engages. He has published and presented information about: the African American spiritual, the reception of the black spiritual among white southerners, the Harlem Renaissance, record stores, Capital Records, Nelson Riddle, Harry Burleigh, Frank Sinatra and the history of Rock 'n Roll. Moon has organized Arizona choral events and festivals, mostly in association with the Association for Unitarian Universalist Music Ministries. He regularly sings and performs music he writes in low stakes environments with his guitar. He has also published in journals, written a textbook, and a handful of online magazine articles that have received a significant amount of attention (e.g., Moon’s analysis of how Big Data shapes the music industry or his editorial The economic effect of student withdrawal rates haunt me).

More recently, Brian Moon has worked with Dan Kruse to create the Arizona Musical Memory Archive, and the Lifetimes of Listening Podcast. The project and podcast was featured at the University of Arizona's Wonder House at SXSW 2022. As a collection of musical memories, this project draws attention to the ways music brings people together, helps validate individual musical experiences by linking them to communal ones, and highlights the many ways people give meaning to their lives through music. These are tools that Moon regularly employs in his classrooms to engage students with the musical past, and how it relates to the musical present.  In other words, Brian Moon's approach to teaching and communicating about music are symbolized by Lifetimes of Listening.