Brita Heimarck
Associate Professor of Music, Ethnomusicology.
PhD, Cornell University; MA in Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles; BA Magna Cum Laude with Honors in Music, Brown University. Dr. Heimarck is an ethnomusicologist who specializes in the shadow play music of Bali, Indonesia. Recent publications include Balinese Discourses on Music and Modernization: Village Voices and Urban Views (Routledge 2003), and an article in Mrazek, “Puppet Theater in Contemporary Indonesia: New Approaches to Performance Events” (2002). Her second area of research is Indian classical music. Heimarck combines knowledge of music in its cultural and historical context with critical theory, non-Western discourses, and performance. Professor Heimarck has received numerous grants and awards for her work in ethnomusicology, including a Fulbright Award for music studies in Bali, Indonesia (1985–86), a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship for doctoral studies in ethnomusicology (1993–97), and a Jon B. Higgins Memorial Scholarship for studies of Indian flute music with the great master Hariprasad Chaurasia in Bombay, India (1993). She teaches graduate and undergraduate seminars in ethnomusicology, world music, and theoretical or interdisciplinary topics. Professor Heimarck’s current research involves transcribing Balinese shadow play music from the oral tradition into Western staff notation, and she will publish the first-ever music edition of this highly respected ancient tradition (A-R Editions).