Kelsey Klotz

Appointed Fall 2023

Working at the crossroads between musicology, ethnomusicology, jazz studies, and popular music, Kelsey Klotz is especially interested in the relationships between music and identity: How does music make meaning for various individuals? How do various individuals use music and music-practices to create meaning? Whose music “counts” in historical narratives? What do inclusive musical histories look and sound like? These questions guide her research, teaching, public, and service work. 

Her book, Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness (Oxford University Press, 2023), is the first critical, book-length study of the role of whiteness in shaping jazz history. It uses jazz pianist Dave Brubeck’s mid-century performances of whiteness across his professional, private, and political lives as a starting point to understand mid-century whiteness, privilege, and white supremacy more fully. Drawing on archival records, recordings, and previously conducted interviews, Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness listens closely for the complex and shifting frames of mid-century whiteness, and how they shaped the experiences of Brubeck, his critics, and his audiences. Her previous articles have been published in the Journal of the Society for American Music, Dædalus: The Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, American Studies, the Journal of Jazz Studies, and Jazz Perspectives. She also special edited a double issue on gender and jazz for the Journal of Jazz Studies. Her work as a public musicologist has been featured in essays, concert talks, and adult education classes sponsored by NBC, the Common Reader, the Milken Archive of Jewish Music,  Washington Women in Jazz, the Duck Jazz Festival, and JazzArts Charlotte.

Klotz’s current book project, Jazz Patriarchy (under contract, Oxford University Press), examines the distinct mechanisms and values in place that have prioritized men within jazz across the genre’s history. Drawing on case studies throughout jazz history (including chapters on Abbey Lincoln, Esperanza Spalding, Alice Coltrane, and Leonard Feather), the book disentangles jazz’s often sexist framing by forefronting the voices and experiences of women, and disrupts the typical conflation of gender and musical approach. In doing so, Jazz Patriarchy contributes to the broader project instigated by the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, which asks, “What would jazz sound like in a culture without patriarchy?” I argue that future gender justice also requires a full accounting of jazz patriarchy’s past, and in particular, the ways in which jazz patriarchy’s values have entwined with white supremacy. 

Klotz’s goal in teaching is to create an inclusive and accessible classroom in which students are able to practice critical thinking and cultural competence through close listening. She teaches courses in the history of popular music and jazz, and through these genres, she encourages students to recognize the listening, performance, and analysis skills they bring to class while continuing to add new musical languages and methods of listening.

Prior to coming to the University of Maryland, Klotz was a lecturer in the Department of Music and Assistant Dean for Inclusive Excellence in the College of Arts+Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University. She earned her PhD in Musicology with a certificate in American Culture Studies from Washington University in St. Louis with a dissertation studying racial ideologies in 1950s cool jazz criticism, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Piano from Truman State University.