Aida Huseynova


Aida Huseynova is lecturer in music in general studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. She teaches the courses Music of the Silk Road, East-West Encounters in Music, and Music of Russia as well as music theory. Her research interests include Shostakovich, twentieth-century Azerbaijani music, and multiculturalism.
Since 2006, Huseynova has served as a research advisor for the Silk Road Ensemble under the artistic direction of Yo-Yo Ma, and in 2016 she became a research advisor for the Mark Morris Dance Group. She has toured with both ensembles throughout the United States and in Canada, France, and Qatar, giving pre-concert talks and participating in workshops.
Huseynova also has served as a research advisor for the Kronos Quartet and the group’s collaboration with Azerbaijani musicians. As a part of this project, she gave pre-concert talks and conducted workshops at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley in 2012. In addition, she collaborates with the Aga Khan Music Initiative and has been part of the residencies of Azerbaijani musicians at Dartmouth College and Brandeis Universities between 2010 and 2015.
Huseynova’s books, articles, and multimedia projects have been published in Azerbaijan, the United States, Bulgaria, Germany, France, The Netherlands, and Russia. She is the author of the monograph Music of Azerbaijan: From Mugham to Opera (Indiana University Press, 2016). Inna Naroditskaya, professor at Northwestern University, explained the value of Huseynova’s book thus, “Not only is the book interesting for anyone studying Azerbaijani music and culture, as well as to music theorists overall, but it might be relevant to scholars exploring questions of musical nationalism in newly independent states, the intersection of West and East, the different combination, mixture, fusion of oral and written, composed and improvised musical traditions.
Huseynova is a contributing author for Music of Central Asia (Indiana University Press, 2016), Cambridge Choral Reader (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Cultures (Brill, 2007), and German music encyclopedia Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Barenreiter-Verlag, 2003–2005).
Huseynova has presented lectures on many campuses in the United States and Europe, including Indiana, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Ohio State, Northwestern, Purdue, the University of California—Berkeley, Chicago, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin—Madison, and Dartmouth and at Cambridge and York in the United Kingdom.
In 2006, she was a musicologist-in-residence at the International Festival and Symposium of Contemporary Music's “Icebreaker III: The Caucasus” in Seattle. In 2005, Huseynova was a member of the advisors’ committee at the Sixth Annual San Francisco World Music Festival.
Her awards include an Andrew W. Mellon grant (2015), a Fulbright Fellowship (2007–08), and a fellowship from the Junior Faculty Development Program (2001–02) sponsored by the U.S. State Department. Huseynova is a member of the College Music Society (CMS), and she participated in the CMS panel discussion and webinar in 2015 and 2016. In 2017, she was elected to the CMS board of directors as the board member for general studies.