Jonathan Bellman

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Professional/Academic Experience

Jonathan Bellman is the Area Head of Academic Studies in Music, and Professor of Music History and Literature. He earned piano performance degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Illinois, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance Practices at Stanford University in 1990. He joined the UNC faculty in 1993.

His most recent book, Chopin's Polish Ballade: Op. 38 as Narrative of National Martyrdom, was published by Oxford University Press in fall 2009. His first two books, The Style Hongrois in the Music of Western Europe (1993), and The Exotic in Western Music (1998; a collection of essays by himself and others), were published by Northeastern University Press; his third book, A Short Guide to Writing about Music (2000; 2nd Ed. 2007) is a textbook published by Longman. His articles and reviews have appeared in, among other publications, the Journal of the American Musicological Society,Musical Quarterly,Nineteenth-Century Music, Early Music, Historical Performance, and The Journal of Musicology. His research interests include musical exoticism, the music and performance practices of Frederic Chopin, and the concert music of George Gershwin.

He also still performs occasionally; in spring 2009, he premiered (with Prof. Lei Weng at UNC and Prof. Kiyoshi Tamagawa at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX) the reconstruction of a piece jointly composed in 1833 by Felix Mendelssohn and Ignaz Moscheles, the Fantasy and Variations for Two Pianos and Orchestra on the Gypsy March from Weber's "Preziosa." Spring 2010 saw a performance of Beethoven's Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major, Op. 73 ("Emperor") with the Greeley Chamber Orchestra.

Prof. Bellman was the recipient of UNC's A.M. and Jo Winchester Distinguished Scholar Award for the year 2011.