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Kristin WendlandTeaching Professor Emerita of Music Theory

Education

  • PhDCity University of New York1991

About

Kristin Wendland is a Teaching Professor Emerita in the Department of Music, where she taught all levels of undergraduate music theory; gave courses in Argentine tango music; and arranged, coached, and mentored the students of the Emory Tango Ensemble.

Wendland’s professional activities included working with the College Music Society  www.music.org, where she  served as a Board Member for Music Theory and on national and international program committees.  Her research interests include the music and dance of the Argentine tango, music theory pedagogy, and connections between music and yoga.

She has read papers, participated in panel sessions, and led demonstration workshops on these topics for the College Music Society, the Society for Music Theory, and the Society for Ethnomusicology (see papers and publications link). She has organized, co-directed, narrated and performed on Argentine tango programs at Emory University’s Emerson Concert Hall, the Georgia State University Rialto Theater, the Latin American Association, and numerous milongas in the Atlanta area.

Wendland travelled to Buenos Aires annually for over twenty years since 2000 to explore and study the world of tango. She received a Fulbright Lecture and Research grant in 2005, where she taught a seminar in Schenkerian Analysis at the Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires and pursued her research in Argentine tango music for seven months.

Wendland planned and organized several tango-related events, including the professional development institute, “Argentine Tango in Theory and Practice” through the College Music Society in conjunction with the Academia Nacionál del Tango in Buenos Aires in July 2007, and the second CMS institute in Buenos Aires in July 2009. She also taught the history and analysis classes for the intensive three-week Emory Tango Music and Dance Summer Study Abroad Program in July 2011, and a tango workshop at Emory in June 2014. 

Her tango research with Kacey Link has yielded two books Tracing Tangueoros: Argentine Tango Instrumental Music (Oxford University Press, 2016) and The Cambridge Companion to Tango (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and its Companion Website. Most recently the research partners planned and implemented the NEH-sponsored Tango in the Humanities Conference and the Emory TangoFest (November 2024).

Wendland's music degrees include the B.M. in Theory from Florida State University, M.M. in Composition from the College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati, and the Ph.D. in Composition from the City University of New York.

Scholarship and Performances

Recent Work





  • Invited program notes for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra tango concerts, November 18-21, 2021 in the November Symphony program (pp. 28-31) and audio version on soundcloud; and special chamber series booklet (pp. 28-29).

Teaching on Coursera