Ellen Lueck
writer, musician
About
Ellen Lueck is a writer, musician, and researcher with over a decade of experience in the field. She is currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her writing has spent most of its time at the intersection of music and culture, and she has been particularly interested in how musicians maintain community both locally and globally. As a performer and a writer, she has developed her expertise in various World Music genres, including Balinese and Javanese gamelan, American shape-note singing, Bluegrass, and American New Music.
Part of her foundational work on the spread of American shape-note singing in Europe has been published by Routledge Press, and by The Sacred Harp Publishing Company. She has presented her acclaimed research and theoretical experiments to professional musicologists and social scientists across the United States and Europe. She has been an instructor of music and writing at the University of Connecticut and Wesleyan University.
Recently, Lueck’s writing has taken more of a personal approach, lending her voice to local music and cultural happenings in Northern California. She is working on a series of artist profiles, concert reviews, and research summaries for her blog, "Sounding Interzone". She looks forward to sharing more in her new blog and in local publications.
Lueck holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University. She can usually be found in the East Bay with her family, or at a local Sacred Harp singing.
CV
PUBLICATIONS
2015 “‘Through Every Land, By Every Tongue’: Sacred Harp Singing Through a Transnational Network.”A chapter in the edited volume, Congregational Music Making and Community in a Mediated Age,pp 123-139. Edited by Anna E. Nekola and Tom Wagner. Ashgate Publishing, December
2014 “The Old World Seeks the Old Paths: Observing our Transnationally Expanding Singing Community.”The Sacred Harp Publishing Company Newsletter,October
SELECT PERFORMANCES
2016 Weis Center for the Performing Arts, Lewisburg, PA, February 6
Performed traditional and new works with Gamelan Dharma Swara
2015 The Stone,New York, NY, December 13
Performed traditional and new works with Gamelan Dharma Swara
2015 Le Poisson Rouge,New York, NY, February 8
Performed traditional and new works with Gamelan Dharma Swara
2014 Crowell Concert Hall, Middletown, CT, May 4
Performed South Indian Vocals for Bharatanatyam dance
2014 World Music Hall, Middletown, CT, April 27
Performed on dizi (Chinese bamboo flute) in Wesleyan’s Chinese Orchestra
2014 Wesleyan University Chapel, Middletown, CT, April 14
Alto in Wesleyan’s Collegium Musicum ensemble
2013 Smithsonian Freer Sackler Gallery, Washington D.C., November 1
Javanese Gamelan instrumentalist and solo vocalist at Performing Indonesia festival
2011 Newseum, Washington D.C., December 11
Alto in performance of Neely Bruce’s “Bill of Rights”
2010 Arda Chandra Stage, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, July 8
Nationally televised gamelan competition (Pesta Kesenian Bali) with Gamelan Dharma Swara, the first group outside of Indonesia ever invited to compete
OTHER WORK
2017-2019. Academy of Art University, San Francisco, CA
Graduate Admissions Representative
2016-2017 College Essay Organizer, New York, NY
Data Researcher
2012-2016 World Music Archives,Wesleyan University,Middletown, CT
Archive the Andy Toth Collection of Javanese and Balinese field recordings—reels and cassettes
2012 Oddfellows Playhouse, Middletown, CT
Musical Director for A Civil War Christmas
2009-2010 The Dorothy & Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library,New York, NY
Administrative Assistant/ Research Assistant for Cullman Fellows
2009-2010 Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, New York, NY
Stage Manager and Office Assistant
2009-2010 City Lore, New York, NY
Photo Archive Intern
2008 Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Washington D.C.
Production and Marketing Intern
Education
PhD / Ethnomusicology / 2017
Wesleyan University
BA / Liberal Arts / 2009
Sarah Lawrence College