Jim Tabaka

Dr. Tabaka holds a Ph D. in Musicology from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, a Master’s degree in Music History from the University of New Hampshire and a Bachelor of Music degree from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His musicological interests range from art and film music to pop and rock. Dr. Tabaka’s dissertation presented the first extensive study concerning the cultivation of string trios by composers, critics, listeners, performers, and publishers during Beethoven’s tenure in Vienna. His research highlights the interaction of these parties' which were central to defining the unique cultures of chamber music arising at this time. Through his research, Dr. Tabaka has gained fresh insights into publishing and marketing, performance venues and practices, review culture, listening theories and practices, and composition in Vienna during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Lately, his research has focused on parodistic tendencies in the works of Erik Satie.

He is the recipient of various awards including a Marsden Grant Doctoral Scholarship in Musicology from the University of Auckland, a Fellowship from the University of New Hampshire to fund research regarding problems of authenticity and attribution in the guitar works of François Dufaut (1604-1672). He was also awarded a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board for the reproduction of a Nineteenth-Century guitar.