Joel Lester

Dean of Mannes College of Music in New York City. An accomplished scholar, violinist, and administrator, he has authored seven books on music: texts on harmony and 20th-century music, an award-winning monograph on 18th-century compositional theory, and his latest study, Bach’s Solo-Violin Works (Oxford University Press, 1999), which won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. He was violinist for 22 years in the Da Capo Chamber Players, winners of the Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1973. He is Professor Emeritus of The City College and Graduate School of the City University of New York, and has also taught at Eastman and Juilliard. He is President of the Society for Music Theory.