John R Covach Email Address

Professor of Theory, Eastman School of Music; Director of the Institute

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John Covach is a guitarist, scholar, teacher, and university administrator whose musical specialties are the analysis, theory, and history of popular music, as well the study of twentieth-century music, twelve-tone music and theory especially. He is the founding Director of the University of Rochester Institute for Popular Music and Professor of Theory at the Eastman School of Music. His talks, conference presentations, consulting, and performances have taken him across North America and Europe and he is frequently featured as an expert in the media for organizations such as the BBC, CNN, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and others. His MOOC courses on Coursera have enrolled more than 300,000 students in over 165 countries worldwide, with this number increasing every day. His college textbook, What's That Sound? An Introduction to Rock and Its History (W.W. Norton) is the world's most-used textbook on the topic. John remains active as a performing and recording guitarist.