Jeff Yunek
Jeff Yunek’s research interests include the late music of Alexander Scriabin, mashups, 20th-century Russian harmony, and music theory pedagogy. His work has been presented at regional, national, and international music theory and musicology conferences. In 2017, Jeff was invited to study Scriabin's late manuscripts and compositional notebooks at the Glinka Museum in Moscow and the resulting research is published in Music Analysis, Music Theory Online, and as a chapter in the book Minding the Gap. More recently, his work on DJ Earworm was published in Music Theory Spectrum and the Journal for the Society for American Music.
From 2012–2016, Jeff served two terms as President of the South Central Society for Music Theory. He has also served as Vice President, Secretary, program chair, and local arrangements chair, as well as serving on the program committees for the LSU colloquium and the joint MTSE-SCSMT conference in 2016.
Jeff teaches freshmen and sophomore music theory and aural skills courses, form, contemporary music, and an introduction to Russian music theory. Jeff has made many changes to the music theory and aural skills curriculum by incorporating flipped pedagogy, multi-tier compositional projects, and the inclusion of repetoire by woman and BIPOC composers. Most significantly, Jeff and Benjamin Wadsworth won two grants totaling $16,100 to create a free, online music dictation and sight-singing textbook.
Jeff earned his PhD in Music Theory from Louisiana State University, where he focused on uniting Scriabin’s philosophical beliefs with his late harmonic practice. Prior to LSU, he received his M.M. in Music Theory at Florida State University and his BA in Music Education at Concordia College – Moorhead, MN. Throughout his training, Jeff has remained an active choral conductor and has served as choir director at multiple churches.
