My home in the School of Music is in the Ethnomusicology division, and my musical interests span the globe, but my activities cover all of the kinds of things musicians do: performance, composition, research, teaching and mentoring, analyzing, thinking and writing about music, promoting interest in music of all kinds, and envisioning what can be done to best shape our future world of music.

I grew up in New York City and studied at Yale University (BA 1978), then completed a PhD in music composition at University of California, Berkeley (1986). Since 1977 I have lived on and off for five years (or more) in Bali, Indonesia, studying gamelan traditions. In 1988-89 I learned drumming and singing in South India. I doff my hat to many treasured teachers: composers Martin Bresnick, Andrew Imbrie and Gerard Grisey, mrdangists Frank Bennett and N. Govindarajan, French ethnomusicologist Simha Arom, and too many Balinese musicians to name. From 1986-1996 I taught music theory and composition at Yale University, and since 1996 have been professor of music at UBC. In 1988 I married Pam Hetrick, an elementary music specialist. Our children are Molly, an artist with an MSW, and Maya, a ointemporarycontemporary dancer with a German company, born in 1990 and 1994.

Of the varied musical activities I’ve undertaken over the years, here are a few that have given me the most satisfaction. In 1979 I co-founded Gamelan Sekar Jaya in Berkeley, California, an organization that still thrives today. In the 1980s-2000s I composed a series of works in Bali for Balinese musicians integrating South Indian Rhythms into their language, works which over the long term have shown a considerable influence on the development of their tradition. Here in North America, my publications promoting the music-analytical study of a diverse range of world musics have helped encourage a growing movement to diversify music curricula generally. You can always find me seated at a drum directing a Balinese gamelan; the group I founded in Vancouver and at UBC in 1996 (Gamelan Gita Asmara) is a joy to be part of. And, just for myself, I love to practice jazz piano.

The older I get, the more teaching means to me. I’m privileged to be the professor for Music 128, Musical Rhythm and Human Experience—since 2019 required for incoming music students—which takes an expansive global historical view on music, as well as a critical perspective on how music is taught in our institutions. The syllabus was recognized in 2021 by the Society for Music Theory with its inaugural Diversity Course Design Award. So far I’ve directed a dozen PhD dissertations and three more are on the way as I write (December 2021). I maintain lifelong relationships with my wonderful advisees, most of whom are now university professors themselves.

WATCH: The Cudamani Arts collective of Pengosekan village, Bali, along with musicians from the Vancouver-based Gamelan group Gita Asmara, perform  Prof. Tenzer’s “Unstable Centre” at the Bali Arts Festival. Watch Part 2 here.

BOOKS

Balinese Gamelan Music

Author: Tenzer, Michael
Publication details: Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2011.

Jan 1, 2011

Analytical and Cross-Cultural Studies in World Music

Author: Roeder, John and Tenzer, Michael
Publication details: New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Jan 1, 2011

Analytical Studies in World Music

Author: Tenzer, Michael

Publication details: New York: Oxford. 434 pages.
Weblink: https://global.oup.com

Jan 1, 2006

Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of Twentieth Century Balinese Music

Author: Tenzer, Michael

Publication details: Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 492 pages.
Weblink: http://press.uchicago.edu

Jan 1, 2000

SELECTED ARTICLES

Meditations on Objective Aesthetics in World Music

Author: Tenzer, Michael
Publications details: Ethnomusicology 59, no. 1 (2015): 1-30.

Jan 1, 2015

One Fusion Among Many: Merging Bali, India and the West through Modernism

Author: Tenzer, Michael
Publication details: Circuit 21, no. 2 (2011): 77–100.

Jan 1, 2012

Identity and Genre in Gamelan Gong Kebyar: An Analytical Study of Gabor

Author: Roeder, John and Tenzer, Michael
Publication details: Music Theory Spectrum 34, no. 1 (2012): 78-122.

Jan 1, 2012

Generalized Representations of Musical Time and Periodic Structures

Author: Tenzer, Michael
Publication details: Ethnomusicology 55, no. 3 (2011): 369-86.

Jan 1, 2011

José Maceda and the Paradoxes of Modern Composition in Southeast Asia

Author: Tenzer, Michael

Publication details: Ethnomusicology 47/1: 93-120
Weblink: http://www.jstor.org

Jan 1, 2003

SELECTED COMPOSITIONS