I’m a music professor, musician, and YouTuber.

I graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in Music and Physics in 2017 and received my PhD in Music Theory from Columbia University in Spring 2024. I am currently an Adjunct Professor of Music at Columbia and Fordham. My research interests include popular music (especially extreme and progressive metal), rhythm and meter, musical form, and transcription. My dissertation explores moments of tactus transformation in metal from music theoretical, cultural, performance, and cognitive perspectives. I also have a YouTube channel where I share my metal research for a general audience, and I write and record music as the metal project Florid Ekstasis. I play guitar in the NY death metal band Aphelion Entity, I teach guitar in Manhattan, and I do freelance transcription work—feel free to contact me about any of these things!

I also coach and compete in weightlifting and CrossFit.

calderhannan@gmail.com