Kevin Karnes
Professor of Music and Associate Dean for the Arts, Emory University
Visiting Professor of Musicology, Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music
Kevin C. Karnes is a historical musicologist who studies sounding expressions of identity, difference, and belonging in eastern and central Europe from the nineteenth century to the present. His work explores archives and ethnomusicological fields, engaging projects in such domains as sound studies, art history, anthropology, philosophy, Jewish studies, and Baltic studies. He is the author of four books, most recently Sounds Beyond: Arvo Pärt and the 1970s Soviet Underground (University of Chicago Press, 2021), and editor or co-editor of seven volumes, including Korngold and His World (Princeton University Press, 2019). He is presently working on a new book, tentativesly titled Electric Future: Berlin, Techno, the USSR, and the Dream of a New Europe. From 2020-2022 he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and before that as series editor of Oxford Keynotes, published by Oxford University Press.
Visiting Professor of Musicology, Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music
Kevin C. Karnes is a historical musicologist who studies sounding expressions of identity, difference, and belonging in eastern and central Europe from the nineteenth century to the present. His work explores archives and ethnomusicological fields, engaging projects in such domains as sound studies, art history, anthropology, philosophy, Jewish studies, and Baltic studies. He is the author of four books, most recently Sounds Beyond: Arvo Pärt and the 1970s Soviet Underground (University of Chicago Press, 2021), and editor or co-editor of seven volumes, including Korngold and His World (Princeton University Press, 2019). He is presently working on a new book, tentativesly titled Electric Future: Berlin, Techno, the USSR, and the Dream of a New Europe. From 2020-2022 he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and before that as series editor of Oxford Keynotes, published by Oxford University Press.
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Books by Kevin Karnes
Mining archives and oral history from across the former USSR, Sounds Beyond carefully situates modes of creative experimentation within their late socialist contexts. In documenting Pärt’s work, Karnes reveals the rich creative culture that thrived covertly in the USSR and the network of figures that made underground performances possible: students, audio engineers, sympathetic administrators, star performers, and aspiring DJs. Sounds Beyond advances a new understanding of Pärt’s music as an expression of the aesthetic and religious commitments shared, nurtured, and celebrated by many in Soviet underground circles. At the same time, this story attests to the lasting power of Pärt’s music. Dislodging the mythology of the solitary creative genius, Karnes shows that Pärt’s work would be impossible without community.
articles and chapters by Kevin Karnes
Mining archives and oral history from across the former USSR, Sounds Beyond carefully situates modes of creative experimentation within their late socialist contexts. In documenting Pärt’s work, Karnes reveals the rich creative culture that thrived covertly in the USSR and the network of figures that made underground performances possible: students, audio engineers, sympathetic administrators, star performers, and aspiring DJs. Sounds Beyond advances a new understanding of Pärt’s music as an expression of the aesthetic and religious commitments shared, nurtured, and celebrated by many in Soviet underground circles. At the same time, this story attests to the lasting power of Pärt’s music. Dislodging the mythology of the solitary creative genius, Karnes shows that Pärt’s work would be impossible without community.