William Robin

Associate professor, musicology, UMD

William Robin is an associate professor of musicology at the University of Maryland's School of Music. His research and writing untangle the complex cultural and institutional histories of contemporary classical music in the United States. His first book, Industry: Bang on a Can and New Music in the Marketplace (Oxford University Press, 2021), examines the new-music festival Bang on a Can and their participation in major shifts in the 1980s and 1990s as the American avant-garde pivoted towards the marketplace. His second book, in collaboration with Kerry O'Brien, is On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement (University of California Press, 2023), a revisionist history of musical minimalism told through the presentation and contextualization of more than a hundred primary sources. As a public musicologist, Robin contributes to The New York Times, hosts the podcast Sound Expertise, and tweets as @seatedovation.