Doug Shadle

Scholar in Residence (Cycle 12)

As a tenacious advocate of historically marginalized musicians, Douglas Shadle in an essential public voice in conversations about the role of symphony orchestras and orchestral music in American life.

His first book, Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise (Oxford, 2016), explores the volatile relationships between composers, performers, critics, and audiences throughout the nineteenth century and demonstrates why American composers rarely find a home on concert programs still today. The first comprehensive study of its kind, Orchestrating the Nation has been cited in several major press venues, including the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe.

Shadle is also leading expert on fellow Little Rock native Florence Price (1887–1953), the first African American woman to win international acclaim as a composer. He won a Southeaster Conference Faculty Travel Grant to study Price’s manuscripts in 2016, and his research on Price has been featured on radio stations around the globe as well as in the New Yorker, the New York Times, NewMusicBox, and I Care if You Listen. He wrote liner notes for the world premiere recordings of Price’s two violin concertos (Albany) and fourth symphony (Naxos) and has consulted on educational materials for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s “Music in Color” series.

Shadle is the winner of five major publication awards, including two ASCAP Deems/Taylor Virgil Thomson Awards (2015, 2017), the Society for American Music Irving Lowens Article Award (2016), the inaugural American Musicological Society H. Robert Cohen/RIPM Award (2018), and the Vanderbilt University Chancellor’s Award for Research (2018).

Shadle holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.M. in viola performance, summa cum laude, from the University of Houston. He is now Associate Professor of Musicology and Chair of the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at Vanderbilt University, where he mentors students on how to unleash their potential as they pursue meaningful lives in music.