Kris Shaffer, Ph.D. (Yale University, 2011), is Assistant Professor of Music at Charleston Southern University, where he teaches music theory and aural skills.
Kris recently completed his Ph.D. dissertation, “‘Neither Tonal nor Atonal’?: Harmony and Harmonic Syntax in György Ligeti’s Late Triadic Works.” Besides studying the music of twentieth- and twenty-first-century composers, his research interests include music cognition, schema theory, popular music theory and analysis, and computational analysis.
Kris has presented his research at the Music Theory Societies of the Mid-Atlantic and New York State, the Indiana University Symposium of Research in Music Theory, and the Cognitive Science Workshop at Yale (COGSWAY). He also co-led a special session on “Computational approaches to music theory and analysis” at the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory in October 2011, and has been invited to present his paper “Ligeti’s ‘stylistic caesura’? or Toward a history of harmony in Ligeti’s late works” at the Paul Sacher Foundation Colloquium in Basel, Switzerland, summer 2012. He has received fellowships and funding from Charleston Southern University, Yale University, and the Paul Sacher Foundation for archival study in the Foundation’s Ligeti Collection.
From 2005 to 2008, Kris served as the editor of Am Steg, an online community and resource for young music theorists and composers, which included co-authoring a blog on music cognition and co-hosting a podcast interviewing composers, theorists, and discussing significant topics for graduate students in music.
Kris is also an active performer and church musician. He currently freelances in the Charleston area, performing with the Charleston Symphony, Opera Charleston, and popular artists such as Jay Clifford. From 2008–2011, he directed the Sunday morning music ministry at Trinity Baptist Church in New Haven, Conn. He has also performed with the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra (Williamstown, Mass.), the Illinois Symphony (Springfield, Ill.), and the Green Bay Symphony (Wis.).
In addition to the Ph.D., Kris holds a Master of Philosophy and a Master of Arts in music theory from Yale University, a Master of Music in orchestral performance from the Chicago College of Performing Arts, and a Bachelor of Music in performance (with an honors thesis in music theory) from Lawrence University in Wisconsin.