2026 Lectures
“Metallica Never Sold Out: Style, Progression, and the Politics of Genre,” Stephen S. Hudson (Occidental College), October 15, 2026
What: Lecture titled “Metallica Never Sold Out: Style, Progression, and the Politics of Genre”
Who: Stephen S. Hudson (Occidental College)
Where: UNLV School of Music, Room 147
When: October 15, 2026, 5:30 p.m.
About the speaker:
Stephen S. Hudson is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Occidental College. He is an emerging expert on metal music, focusing on fans’ and musicians’ embodied experiences of rhythm, timbre, and song form. Prof. Hudson also has a secondary research agenda exploring multilayered harmony in R&B and advanced pop music, using tools from jazz theory. His monograph, Heaviness in Metal Music, was published by Oxford University Press in 2026.
About the lecture:
Fans and critics of Metallica have sometimes accused the band of “selling out”—cynically abandoning the metal genre’s style or values to sell more records. Metallica began their career championing a new style called “thrash metal” that was faster, heavier, and louder than previous heavy metal. Aspects of the sell-out narrative first began to emerge in reactions to Metallica’s ballads (starting with “Fade to Black” in 1984) which used acoustic or clean guitars and less aggressive vocal styles to depict feelings of frustration, powerlessness, and despair. But there was a much stronger backlash to the so-called “Black Album,” Metallica (1991), which is often described as having a radio-friendly or rock-oriented production style. One might assume that both are clear “genre breaches,” violations of the norms of the metal style—but Hudson argues that the opposite is true.
Hudson’s analysis of song form and lyrics shows how these two controversial parts of Metallica’s oeuvre, their ballads and the Black Album, not only lie within the bounds of established practice in metal, but they also uphold the genre’s core values—by delivering devastating and cathartic experiences heaviness, and providing opportunities for headbanging and moshing. If there was a genre breach at all, it was that Metallica’s ballads and Black Album did not extend thrash metal’s trajectory of ever-increasing speed and song-form complexity. It was not that Metallica betrayed the norms of metal; it was that they didn’t surpass those norms in the ways that the thrash metal partisans expected. Instead, they branched out to explore other kinds of heaviness. As a result, they became targets within the partisan extreme metal paradigm—victims of the monster they helped create—while, paradoxically, they carried the sounds and values of metal to broader audiences than anyone else. Hudson ends by reflecting on the consequences this story has for theories of genre, and the special historical problems posed by genres which are driven by ideologies or aesthetics or meta-narratives of progression.
“Whitney Houston and Black Genius,” Emily Lordi (Vanderbilt University), October 27, 2026
What: Lecture titled “Whitney Houston and Black Genius”
Who: Emily Lordi (Vanderbilt University)
Where: UNLV School of Music, Room 147
When: October 27, 2026, 5:30 p.m.
About the speaker:
Emily Lordi is a freelance arts critic, a writer at large for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, the author of four books on Black literature and culture, and a professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Her latest book, Holding Lightning, the first full-scale biography of Whitney Houston, was published in September.
About the lecture:
“Whitney Houston and Black Genius” underscores Whitney’s status as a genius—rather than an industry pawn with a gift—while arguing that she also expands the meaning of the term due to her investment in mentoring other artists and her deep faith.
2027 Lectures
“Afro-Puerto Rican Folklore, Jazz, Rock, and Funk,” Jose “Pepe” Jimenez (UNLV), February 11, 2027
What: Lecture titled “Afro-Puerto Rican Folklore, Jazz, Rock, and Funk”
Who: Jose “Pepe” Jimenez (UNLV)
Where: UNLV School of Music, Room 147
When: February 11, 4:30 p.m.
About the speaker:
Jose “Pepe” Jimenez has played drums professionally since the age of 16, and is known for his versatility in different musical styles. His musical journey has take him all around the world, to its most prestigious stages, including Carnegie Hall and the Montreux Jazz Festival.
Since relocating to Las Vegas, Pepe has performed and toured internationally with various artists, production shows and bands including Santana, Paul Shaffer, “Zumanity” and Criss Angel’s “Believe,” Greg Howe, Jason Robert Brown, Alan Menken, Disney’s “The Lion King,” the Latin Grammys, and the Nascar Awards Ceremony Live. He is in demand as a visiting artist and clinician throughout the country, and worldwide.
In addition to his teaching responsibilities with the UNLV Jazz and Commercial Music Division, Pepe currently performs with BAZ at the Palazzo Resort in Las Vegas, with Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns, and Dave Perrico’s Pop Evolution OrchestraHe also leads performances with his solo project, The Groove Culture Band, which is dedicated to promoting Afro-Puerto Rican folklore with contemporary music.
Pepe is an Artist and Clinician for DW Drums, Remo, Vic Firth and Sabian.
He’s product of the Escuela Libre De Musica in San Juan, Puerto Rico; the Musicians Institute of Technology in Los Angeles, California; and the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“The Sonic Past(s) in Video Games,” Karen M. Cook (Hartt School, University of Hartford), April 14, 2027
What: Lecture titled “The Sonic Past(s) in Video Games”
Who: Karen M. Cook (University of Hartford)
Where: UNLV School of Music, Room 147
When: April 14, 2027, 5:30 p.m.
About the speaker:
Karen M. Cook is Associate Professor at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School of Music. She specializes in the music, theory, and notation of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and also in medievalism in contemporary music & media, especially video games.
She has presented her work at numerous national and international conferences, including the annual meetings of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Music Theory, the annual Medieval-Renaissance music conference, the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, the 2015 conference on Philippe de Vitry, and the North American Conference on Video Game Music, for which she sits on the planning committee.
She is on the advisory board for the “Ars Antiqua Online: A Digital Edition of Thirteenth-Century Polyphony” and an executive committee member of the Society for the Study of Sound and Music in Games, and she recently became Associate Editor for the Journal of Sound and Music in Games. She also regularly streams with the “Ludomusicology Stream Team” on Thursday nights on Twitch.
PAST LECTURES
2025 Lectures
Jazz lecture: “A Story in Sound: Sidney Bechet’s Music and Writing,” Jessica Teague, April 30, 2025
What:
The Arnold Shaw Popular Music Research Center presents Jessica Teague (UNLV, Department of English) in a jazz lecture titled “A Story in Sound: Sidney Bechet’s Music and Writing.”
The New Orleans jazz musician Sidney Bechet is known as one of the early pioneers of the improvised solo on clarinet and soprano saxophone, and his autobiography Treat It Gentle (1960) is considered one of the best-written accounts of jazz’s early history. In this lecture, Teague will explore the narrative impulse of Bechet’s artistic output and consider what it might mean to call Bechet a writer. He was an improviser who told stories in song, but he was also a musician who imagined his music as part of a broader artistic project—one that was intrinsically narrative, dramatic, and multimodal. Through an exploration of dazzling archival finds and rare recordings brought from locales ranging from New Orleans to Paris, this lecture reveals the extent to which Bechet was committed to blending African American folklore, autobiography, and fiction into a story in sound.
When:
April 30, 5:30 p.m.
Where:
UNLV, Alta HAM Fine Arts (HFA), Room 147. See https://www.unlv.edu/maps/hfa
How much:
Free and open to the public. No tickets required!
Jazz lecture featuring Kenny Werner (Effortless Mastery Institute, Berklee College of Music, Boston), March 5, 2025
The Arnold Shaw Popular Music Center welcomes Kenny Werner (Berklee College of Music, Boston) for a lecture titled “Becoming the Instrument.”
What: Jazz lecture titled “Becoming the Instrument”
Who: Kenny Werner (Effortless Mastery Institute, Berklee College of Music)
Where: UNLV School of Music, Alta Ham Fine Arts Building, Room 147
When: March 5, 2025, 5:30 p.m.
About the speaker:
Kenny Werner has been a world-class pianist and composer for more than forty years. In 1996 he published his landmark book, Effortless Mastery: Liberating The Master Musician Within. Werner has since created videos, lectured world-wide, and authored many articles on how musicians, artists, or even business people can allow their “master creator” within to lift their performance to its highest level, showing us how to be spontaneous, fearless, joyful, and disciplined in our work and in our life. His natural instinct for improvisation led Werner to the Berklee College of Music (Boston) in 1970; he now serves as Artistic Director of that school’s Effortless Mastery Institute.
About the lecture:
In this transformative lecture, acclaimed pianist, composer, and educator Kenny Werner explores the profound concept of Becoming the Instrument—a philosophy that transcends technical mastery and enters the realm of effortless expression. Drawing from his groundbreaking book and decades of experience, Werner reveals how musicians can dissolve the barriers between themselves and their instruments, achieving a state of pure flow and creativity. Through practical insights, personal anecdotes, and deep wisdom, he guides artists toward a mindset where fear, self-doubt, and overthinking give way to true musical freedom. Whether you’re a performer, composer, or simply seeking a deeper connection to your craft, this lecture offers a path to unlocking your highest artistic potential.
2024 Lectures
The Arnold Shaw Popular Music Center Lecture Series is At the Movies!
Event 1
April 16, 5:00 p.m.
Robynn Stilwell (Georgetown University),
“Scoring America’s Sense of Self: Music, Ideology, and the Cinematic Western”
About the talk
Robynn Stilwell offers a lecture on music and the cinematic western.
Items to be discussed include Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) and The Native Americans (1994). Stilwell will focus on the role of the songs of Sebastian Robertson in these productions.
About the speaker
Robynn J. Stilwell is Associate Professor at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on the interaction of music and movement in film, video, television, dance, and sport. Publications include work on Beethoven and cinematic violence, musical form and drama in Jane Austen, psychoanalytic film theory and its implications for music and for female subjects, the boundaries between sound and music in the cinematic soundscape, whiteness and rockabilly, French film musicals, television sitcoms, and exoticism and sound design in The X-Files.
Event 2
April 23, 5:00 p.m.
Frank Lehman (Tufts University),
“Space Operas and Skywalker Symphonies: Listening to Film Music with Open Ears”
About the talk
Frank Lehman offers a lecture on the music to Star Wars and other cinematic blockbusters.
A long-standing attitude in film theory and criticism is that movie music should remain in the background, that it should be felt but unheard. But with more than a century’s worth of great music written for cinema, this bias is worth reevaluating. Movie soundtracks, film nights at the Hollywood Bowl, and especially the recent popularity of live-to-picture performances–what musicologist Brooke McCorkle tellingly calls “concert movies”–all suggest one thing: audiences are hungry to hear film music not as some suppressed adjunct to a movie, but on its own terms, as music. In this talk, Professor Lehman will walk through his own experience in consuming film music in this unusual way, and sketch a new model for film music appreciation: cine-symphonic listening. With the grand space opera cycle of Star Wars as his focus, he explores some of the benefits and challenges of this music-first mode of hearing. I look at some of John Williams’s scoring from both the best of the saga (the “Battle of Hoth” from Empire Strikes Back) and the worst (the love story from Attack of the Clones). But while his argument will involve attending closely to musical form and thematic development, one does not need any musicological training to have a rich and satisfying experience of a film score: all you need to do is listen to the movies with open ears.
About the lecturer:
Frank Lehman is an Associate Professor of Music at Tufts University, and holds degrees from Brown University and Harvard University. His research has explored a range of styles and repertoires, from Schubert to ambient music, with a special emphasis on music and the moving image. Lehman’s work has been featured in a number of media outlets, including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, The Chronicle of Higher Education, NPR, and too many podcasts to count. His books include Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2018) and (as editor) Studying the Score: Music Analysis and Film (Routledge, 2024).
2023 Lecture
The Arnold Shaw Popular Music Center
Lecture Series
presents
The Possibility Machine:
Music and Myth in Las Vegas
(University of Illinois Press, 2023)
A panel discussion by
Jake Johnson, Assistant Professor of Musicology, University of Oklahoma
Joanna Dee Das, Associate Professor of Dance, Washington University, St. Louis
Brian F. Wright, Assistant Professor of Music History, University of North Texas
November 17, 2023
5:00 p.m.
Harmon Auxiliary Building, UNLV, Room 110
1325 E. Harmon Avenue
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Free and open to the public. Parking free in front of H.A.B.
The Arnold Shaw Popular Music Research Center at UNLV hosts authors featured in this collection of essays. The book examines how music-making and soundscapes shape our city. Treating topics ranging from Cher to Cirque du Soleil, the contributors delve into how music and musicians factored in the early development of Vegas’s image; the role of local communities of musicians and Strip mainstays in sustaining tensions between belief and disbelief; the ways aging showroom stars provide a sense of timelessness that inoculates visitors against the outside world; the link connecting fantasies of sexual prowess and democracy with the musical values of Liberace and others; and the echoes and energy generated by the idea of Las Vegas as it travels across the country.
2022-2023 LECTURE SERIES
All lectures will be held on Wednesdays at 5:30 in the Alta Ham Fine Arts Building (HFA), Room 147, on UNLV’s campus.
Click on the links below for more information.
October 12, 2022, 5:30 p.m.
Damani Phillips (University of Iowa) — Lost Soul: Issues in Teaching Ethnically Derived Arts in Academia
October 26, 2022, 5:30 p.m.
Julia Simon (UC Davis) — Debt and the Blues: Sharecropping, Tenancy, and House Contract Sales
February 1, 2023
Marié Abe (Boston University) — Sounding Space and Sociality in Contemporary Japan
March 1, 2023
Spring 2022 SERIES
Click on the links below for more information.
April 11, 2022, 7:00 p.m.
Christopher Washburne (Columbia University) — “Latin Jazz: The Other Jazz”
May 3, 5:00 p.m.
Robert Fink (UCLA) — “Playlist Culture and the Art of Transition”
2020 Series
Click on the links below for more information.
- Elizabeth Lindau (CSU Long Beach)
- Kimberly Mack (The University of Toledo)
- Robin James (Princeton University)
- Jason E. Roberts (U Texas, Austin)
