Ethnomusicologist and saxophonist Robert F. Reigle established the music bachelor’s program at the University of Papua New Guinea and created the first ethnomusicology doctoral program in Turkey, at Istanbul Technical University, where he taught from 2002-2017. Several of Dr. Reigle’s students have gone on to distinguished careers in Turkey, Sweden, Germany, United Kingdom, and the United States. He initiated the world’s first interdisciplinary music-timbre conference and the second Papua New Guinea Music Conference, publishing their proceedings. He has published articles on Kurdish recordings, octave perception, ethnomusicological philosophy, and composers John Sheppard and Harley Gaber. Together with theorist and composer Jeremy Woodruff, he developed a master’s level World Music Theory course.
Dr. Reigle studied musics in the United States, Papua New Guinea, Korea, India, and Turkey. In addition to studying jazz at Berklee College of Music, he participated in two workshops given by Kyoto Prize laureate Cecil Taylor. After living in a Papua New Guinean village for three years, he wrote the core of his dissertation in his fieldwork language in order to enable the village to read it, then translated it into English.
Some of Robert’s concepts have been adopted by other scholars. “Eurogenetic” is used especially in Music Information Retrieval, “majority musics” by percussionist Gustavo Aguilar, “radical ascent” by composer Dirk Stromberg, and “spectral world musics” by several authors.
Robert established improvisation ensembles in Lincoln, New York, Los Angeles, and Istanbul, sometimes collaborating with dancers and visual artists. He led tribute concerts to Albert Ayler in Seattle, and with Steven Koenig, at St. Peter’s Church in New York.
As saxophonist, he was a member of the improvising group Islak Köpek (Wet Dog), and has premiered compositions by Christian Asplund, Ana-Maria Avram, Iancu Dumitrescu, Giacinto Scelsi (New York premiere), and Onur Türkmen. Estonian composer Toivo Tulev’s award-winning composition Black Mirror was written for improvising trio Hoca Nasreddin (Nikolai Galen, Serkan Şener, and Reigle) with symphony orchestra. Robert’s album, Solo Saxophone, earned praise from John Litweiler in a Down Beat review.
Ph.D. Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles; M.A. Music Composition, Queens College, City University of New York; Teaching Certificate (Music), University of Nebraska, Lincoln; B.S. Business Administration, University of North Dakota.
