DaphneLeong
- Chair, Music Theory
- Professor of Music Theory
- MUSIC THEORY
Daphne Leong’sresearch interests include rhythm, analysis and performance, the music of 20th- and 21st-century composers, and theories of cross-disciplinary collaboration.Her book—Performing Knowledge:Twentieth-Century Music in Analysis and Performance(Oxford Studies in Music Theory, 2019)—wassupported by a Kayden Research Grant, 鶹ѰLEAP and GCAH grants, and a subvention from the Society for Music Theory.Her articles appear in theJournal of Music Theory, Perspectives of New Music, Music Theory Online, Theory and Practice, Գé, Contemporary Music Review, and Revue musicale OICRM, among others, and inedited collections with topics ranging from dance to music theory pedagogy.Representative chapters andarticles are “A Metric Puzzle in Sibelius’s Violin Concerto,” in Encountering Music Analysis (2025),“Performed Rhythm at the Center of Bartók’s Fifth String Quartet” (with the Takács Quartet), in Performing Knowledge(2019); “Time’s ‘Suchness’ in Robert Morris’s ‘Clear Sounds,’ĝ Perspectives of New Music(2014); “Generalizing Syncopation,” Theory and Practice (2011); and “Humperdinck and Wagner: Metric Spaces, Statesand Symmetries,” Journal of Music Theory (2007). She co-edited a special issue “Rhythm and Meter since 1900: Views from Theory and Practice” for Revue musicale OICRM (2025).
In 2023, Leong served as Distinguished Visiting Professor and Dean’s Chair in Music at McGill University in Montréal, Canada.In fall 2022, she led a week-longseries of workshops at the Sibelius Academy, Finland. She haspresented on the plenary session of the Society for Music Theory, given keynotes such as for Indiana University’s Special Symposium on Performance and Analysis and the Rocky Mountain SMT/AMS, and presented invited papers and lecture-recitals at the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts, Brăiloiu Institute of Ethnography and Folklore in Bucharest, Israel Musicological Society, the Eastman School of Music, Harvard University, University of Toronto, University of Kansas, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Victoria, and other national and international venues.
Leong has twice been a fellow at the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory (in “Rhythm and Temporality” and “Transformational Theory”)and has undertaken source studies at the Sacher Institute in Basel, Switzerland, the Bartók Archives in Budapest, the Hungarian Ethnographic Museum in Budapest, and the Brăiloiu Institute of Ethnography and Folklore in Bucharest.
Leong is also an active pianist and chamber musician, performing in recent years in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, England, Romaniaand Hong Kong. Her repertoire ranges from Bach to premieres of current music; three recent concert programs are May’s Treacherous Marbles(written for her),Ravel’sMa Mère l’OyeandMessiaen’sVisions de l’Amen(2008); Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat, Schoenberg’sSechs kleine Klavierstücke, Op.19 and Mozart’s Quartet for Piano and Strings in E-flat (2006); and the complete Chopin Études Op. 25 (2014). In fall 2013, she premiered Morris’s Clear Sounds among Hills and Waters(dedicated to her) on a program that included Andriessen’s Hout and Shende’s Throw Down or Shut Up!She is a founding member of the quartetThrow Down or Shut Up!which presents new music in traditional and non-traditional formats (concert halls, jazz clubs, interactive concerts for children),and whichissued its premiere in 2020.Leong’s principal teachers were David Burge, Douglas Humpherysand Robin Harrison.
In 2021, Leong led a workshop on “cross-disciplinary collaborations” for the international symposium Dialogues: Analysis & Performance (Toronto), and in 2019, a graduate student workshop on “twentieth-century music in analysis and performance” for the Society for Music Theory. In 2018-19, she directed “Linking Music Theory and Practice,” a year-long collaboration between the 鶹ѰBoulder music theory department and five performance studiosculminating in the presentation of five undergraduate research projects. She received the 2013 Excellence in Teaching Award of the 鶹Ѱ Faculty Assembly.
Leong is currently organizing an international symposium At Play: Performance, Analysis, and Artistic Research (Boulder, 2027); she has previously organized two multidisciplinary international conferences Rhythm in Music since 1900 (Montréal, 2023 and Boulder, 2019). She has served as electedvice president of the national Society for Music Theory, as well as on the SMT’s Executive Board, Publication Awards Committee, Program Committee,Nominations Committeeand International Relations Committee; she chaired the SMT Interest Groups Task Force.She was founding chair of the “Performance and Analysis” Interest Group of the SMTand curated its online Pedagogy Resource. Leong has organized three special sessions on performance and analysis for SMT national conferences. She has also served on the Kraehenbuehl Prize Selection Committee for the Journal of Music Theoryand acted as Program Chair of the Nancarrow Centennial Online Symposium.
Leong earned a PhDand a master’s in music theory, as well as aMaster of Music in piano performance, from the Eastman School of Music.