Victor Coelho

Musicologist and performer Professor Coelho is a specialist in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian music, as well as popular music. His areas of research include Renaissance and Baroque instrumental styles, popular music, interdisciplinary approaches, and cross-cultural perspectives. As a specialist on popular music, he is interested in Blues, rock history, improvisation, and performance issues, and has appears regularly in digital and print media.

He has held visiting appointments at the University of Wisconsin—Madison (1984–5), the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris (1990), the University of Melbourne (1992), and Cornell University (1995). In 2004, he was Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti in Florence. From 1986 to 2005, he taught at the University of Calgary, where he was named University Professor. From 2007-2011, he held the position of Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education at Boston University, and was the principal author of the University’s “One BU” report on undergraduate education. His books include Instrumentalists and Renaissance Culture (Cambridge, co-authored with Keith Polk), Music and Science in the Age of Galileo (Kluwer), The Manuscript Sources of 17th–Century Italian Lute Music(Garland), Performance on Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela (Cambridge), and the Cambridge Companion to the Guitar. Forthcoming books include the Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones. He is lutenist and co-director of the early music group “Il Furioso,” and his recordings as lutenist and director appear on the Stradivarius and Toccata Classics labels. He also tours regularly as a blues guitarist with the Rooster Blues Band. For further information, clips, concert schedule, and downloads, please visit his personal website.