Faculty and Staff

Associate Professor of Music

Ph.D., Brandeis University
M.F.A., Brandeis University
B.A., University of Richmond

Academic Areas: history of Western art music, world music, & popular music

Dr. Ryan P. Jones
123 Haas Fine Arts Center
Music & Theatre Arts Department
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
Eau Claire, WI 54702-4004

Phone: 715/836-4947
Email: jonesrp@uwec.edu

Ryan Jones is an associate professor of music in the Department of Music and Theatre Arts at UW-Eau Claire where he teaches courses in the history of Western art music, world music, and popular music. He received a B.A. in English from the University of Richmond and holds both a Ph.D. and an M.F.A. in Musicology from Brandeis University. Before joining the UW-Eau Claire faculty, Dr. Jones taught at Brandeis, the Walnut Hill School, and Gettysburg College.

Dr. Jones's areas of musicological interest range from symphonic and operatic histories to American art music, jazz, and rock. His dissertation presented the first extensive study of Aaron Copland's only full-length opera, The Tender Land (1954), outlining the potential the composer's final populist work holds both for understanding his aesthetic values and locating their place within American music history. His research has also investigated issues of authenticity in George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, traced the educational arc of Julian "Cannonball" Adderley's early training and career in music (Current Musicology, 2006), and examined the challenges of Stan Kenton's early Artistry in Rhythm Orchestra as its leader eschewed dance music from the receding swing era to embrace concert presentations of jazz (Jazz Research Journal, 2008). His most recent publication, "Copland on Wilder: Scoring Existential Theatre in Early American Film" in From Stage to Screen: Musical Films in Europe and the United States 1927–1961 (Brepols, 2012), analyzes the compositional process of Copland's film score for the 1940 cinematic adaptation of Thornton Wilder's original 1938 play, Our Town. Dr. Jones is also author of the Instructor's Manual for Jazz: Essential Listening (W.W. Norton, 2011) by Scott DeVeaux and Gary Giddins, co-author of the forthcoming Historical Dictionary of Rock and Pop (Scarecrow Press), and a contributor to the second edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music (Oxford University Press).

Additional projects concern the life and music of singer Jo Stafford, social activism in the music of Stevie Wonder, formative stylistic influences upon The Police, and the inventive approaches of Sun Ra. Dr. Jones has shared his work at meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Annual Leeds International Jazz Conference, the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, the Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association, Northeastern University, and Brandeis University.