Department of Music

Kyle is a PhD candidate in the Critical and Comparative Studies program. His research explores how sound becomes an affective site for political expression, as well as how those expressions are strategized, regulated, and articulate power relations. His dissertation—“Speech, Affecting Sound, and the Dimensions of Protest in Charlottesville, VA”—is funded by an Arts & Sciences Dean’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship. While most of his scholarship is rooted in the realms of ethnomusicology and sound studies, Kyle is also concerned with classical music since the 1900s, American popular music, the avant-garde, historiography, and applied scholarship.

He has served as a William R. Kenan, Jr. Fellow of the Academical Village, as well as a Graduate Fellow of the Power, Violence, and Inequality Collective—an organization inspired by President Theresa Sullivan’s call for UVA to become a model institution in preventing and responding to structural violence. His work has appeared at, or is scheduled for, the ASLCH, IASPM-US, MACSEM, SCGMC, and SEM annual conferences.

Graduating in 2013, Kyle received dual bachelor degrees (magna cum laude) in Music and Music Composition from Chapman University in his home state of California. In his spare time, he hikes the Blue Ridge Mountains, watches PMQs, plays banjo, and enjoys Shakespeare. He also hosts a 20th/21st century classical music radio program on WTJU, where he has served as the Director of Classical Programming.