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Bio
Adem Merter Birson is a Grammy-nominated Music Educator, scholar, and passionate teacher who puts his students at the center of everything he does. Whether designing inclusive curricula or mentoring students one-on-one, Dr. Birson is driven by the belief that music education can be life-changing. He is known for his tireless dedication to creating meaningful, transformative experiences for his students—both inside and outside the classroom—and will go to great lengths to ensure they feel empowered, seen, and inspired.
At New York University, Dr. Birson has led significant reforms in the music theory curriculum, integrating global music traditions and popular genres alongside the European canon. His approach prioritizes cultural diversity, aiming to dismantle outdated norms and expand the boundaries of what counts as “music worthy of study.” By weaving together repertoires from different cultures, histories, and social contexts, he encourages students to rethink what they know about music, community, and themselves. As a scholar, Dr. Birson challenges the status quo, advocating for the serious study of non-Western musical systems, popular music, and the music of women and historically marginalized communities. His work is both rigorous and politically conscious, bridging performance and theory, scholarship and pedagogy. His research in classical Turkish music focuses on modal theory (makam) within the Ottoman tradition, and his most recent contribution—a chapter on pitch prolongation in Ottoman repertoire—appears in Modeling Musical Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2024). He has also published a video essay, Understanding Turkish Classical Makam, in SMT-V (2020), and regularly performs on the ud, the Turkish fretless lute. His instructional YouTube channel, Turkish Ud Lessons, offers English-language resources on makam theory, ud technique, and Turkish music history, further extending his mission to democratize access to this rich musical heritage. In Western music studies, Dr. Birson’s scholarship explores chromatic harmony and form in the music of Joseph Haydn, with articles published in HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America (2014, 2020). His broader interests include exoticism, galant schemata, genre hybridity, and the global circulation of musical ideas. He currently serves as Secretary of the Haydn Society of North America. Dr. Birson’s pedagogical innovations have been recognized nationally. He was invited to the Harvard Radcliffe Accelerator Workshop, “A Music Theory Curriculum for the Twenty-First Century,” where he collaborated with leading scholars to envision a more equitable and representative future for music theory education. He is a guest editor for the forthcoming The Engaged Musician: Theory and Analysis for the Twenty-First Century (Norton, 2026), and has published on teaching and curriculum design in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy Online (2017). As a Graduate Teaching as Research/Teagle Fellow at Cornell University, he began developing his signature model of pedagogy: rigorous, inclusive, and responsive to the needs and aspirations of all students. Dr. Birson holds degrees from Cornell University and CUNY Queens College, and previously served as Assistant Professor and Director of the Conservatory at Ipek University in Ankara, Türkiye, and as an adjunct faculty member at Hofstra University in Long Island, New York. |