Sam Reenan (PhD) joins the faculty at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as Assistant Professor of Music Theory in Fall 2025. He holds a PhD and MA in music theory from the Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester) and bachelor’s degrees in music theory and biological sciences from the University of Connecticut.
As an educator, Reenan strives to facilitate students’ growth as engaged musical thinkers, communicators, and respectful collaborators. Prior to his appointment at CCM, Reenan served as Theory Coordinator and Director of Graduate Studies at Miami University, where he taught undergraduate and graduate courses across all stages of the music theory and aural skills curriculum. As part of an interdisciplinary faculty team, he was awarded the Roger and Joyce Howe Award for Excellence in Disciplinary Writing Instruction for his role in collaboratively designing an arts writing course open to all majors. He served as an elected member of University Senate, and has participated in numerous collaborative faculty development initiatives. He has also previously served on the music faculty at Hamilton College.
Issues of symphonic thought, genre mixture, large-scale form, and identity figure prominently in Reenan’s research program. His first book, Symphonic Spectacles: Form, Identity, and Hybridity in the Early Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2025) explores these issues across a range of Germanic, American, and British symphonic works. His writings on topics including modernist music, harmony, and teacher development are published in Music Theory Spectrum, Music Theory Online (2022, 2016), Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, and Music & Letters. He has presented at scholarly conferences across Europe and North America, including in Italy, Belgium, England, and France. Current research interests include several edited book chapters and article projects concerning formal interpretation in twentieth-century music, the symphonic music of Gustav Mahler (particularly the late symphonies), intersections between new music and ecosystems ecology particularly in the music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and the concept of musical fluency in undergraduate pedagogy.
Reenan is a co-organizer of the Composers of Color Resource Project and chairs the Society for American Music’s Education Committee. He served as editorial assistant with Music Theory Online from 2017–2021 and is a past co-editor of Intégral, where he led the journal’s transition to an online, open-access format. He is currently the Web Manager for the Music Theory Society of New York State.
