In her book Singing Like Germans. Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, Kira Thurman tells the sweeping story of Black musicians in German-speaking Europe over more than a century, bringing to life the incredible musical interactions and transnational collaborations among people of African descent and white Germans and Austrians. Through this compelling history, she explores how people reinforced or challenged racial identities in the concert hall and looks at the tension between the supposedly transcendental powers of classical music and the global conversations that developed about who could perform it. Taking an interdisciplinary and transatlantic perspective, Thurman suggests that listening to music is not a passive experience, but an active process in which racial and gendered categories are constantly made and unmade.

Kira Thurman is a historian, musicologist, and classically trained pianist. Raised in Vienna, she earned her PhD in history from the University of Rochester with a minor in musicology from the Eastman School of Music. Her research focuses on two topics that occasionally converge: the relationship between music and national identity, and Central Europe’s historical and contemporary relationship with the Black diaspora. Thurman is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Fulbright fellowship to Germany, the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin, and a residential fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Her book Singing Like Germans has won several awards, including the Marfield Prize and the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award.

In English.
Admission is free; registration is required.

In cooperation with the German-American Fulbright Commission