Ellen Bakulina is a Russian-Canadian music theorist. With a complex cultural and geographic path, she has degrees in music theory from the College of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory (music theory and musicology), the Moscow Conservatory (program only), McGill University, Montreal (BMus and MA), and CUNY Graduate Center, New York (PhD 2015). Dr. Bakulina joined the UNT faculty in the fall of 2016.

Her areas of scholarly interest include several fields, the most important of which are form and meter in Viennese Classical repertoire, Schenkerian analysis, theories of tonality, Russian music theory, and Russian sacred music. Her doctoral dissertation explores tonal disunity in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil, was under the guidance of William Rothstein. Her articles have appeared in Intersections, Music Theory Online, and the Journal of Music Theory. She was also a recipient of Canada’s SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) doctoral grant, the Enhanced Chancellor’s Fellowship at CUNY, and the Schulich scholarship at McGill. Ellen is a founding member of SMT’s recently established Russian Music Theory interest group.

Dr. Bakulina has taught music theory and aural skills at various levels, from primary-school children to the graduate level. Pedagogical experience includes solfège at children’s schools of music in Russia, teaching assistantship at McGill (modal counterpoint, tonal harmony, Classical form, and ear training, with a Teaching Award in 2009), tutorship in English academic writing at CUNY Medgar Evers College, instructorship at CUNY Brooklyn College (ear training, tonal harmony and form, post-tonal theory, music appreciation, and a graduate seminar in Schenkerian analysis), and coordinating the musicianship program at Yale. She is a professional pianist and a choral singer with many years of performance experience, including three years as a soprano with the chorus of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.