This October, Professor Peter Schmelz returns to Georgia for the second time as a Fulbright Scholar. “Centring the Periphery in Unofficial Soviet Music in Georgia” is the subject of his study.
Peter J. Schmelz is Professor in the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature and affiliated faculty at the Peabody Institute (Conservatory) at Johns Hopkins University. He specializes in
twentieth and twenty-first century music and culture. His books include Such Freedom, If Only Musical: Unofficial Soviet Music during the Thaw (Oxford, 2009); Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso no. 1 (Oxford, 2019); and Sonic Overload: Alfred Schnittke, Valentin Silvestrov, and Polystylism in the Late USSR (Oxford, 2021). His work has received an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, two ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards, and the Otto Kinkeldey Award for best book from the American Musicological Society. He has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy in Berlin, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Fulbright Program (Georgia).