Leslie A. Tilley

Leslie A. Tilley serves as Associate Professor of Music at MIT, where she combines ethnomusicology with innovative analytical approaches to world music. After earning her B.Mus. from Acadia University (2000) and M.A. (2003) and Ph.D. (2013) from the University of British Columbia, she has established herself as a leading scholar in musical transformation and improvisation studies. Her book "Making It Up Together: The Art of Collective Improvisation in Balinese Music and Beyond" (2019) won the prestigious Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Music Theory in 2022, breaking new ground in cross-cultural music analysis. At MIT since 2015, she teaches courses including Rhythms of the World, Musics in Bali, and Introduction to World Music while leading the MIT Balinese gamelan. Her current research explores the creativity within constraint in popular music cover songs, continuing her career-long investigation of musical transformation. Through her work bridging ethnomusicology and music theory, she has helped break down traditional barriers in music research while developing new