The Center for Musical Humanities is dedicated to advancing the interests of music and the humanities across the whole of UCLA, engaging its faculty, students, and surrounding communities in a series of events that will bring together scholarship, performance, and outreach.

The mission of the center is to foster the study of music within an interdisciplinary context by bringing together scholars and students in a variety of disciplines from around the nation and world to collaborate with scholars and students at UCLA and its associated communities, and to create an effective and vibrant face for the Herb Alpert School of Music by fostering public musical events inspired by its scholarly ventures, featuring faculty and students from across the school.

Conceived along the lines of other centers on campus—that is, dedicated to a constellation of interests shared across disciplines, and serving the needs of faculty, students, and larger community—the Center for Musical Humanities will provide support for a number of different kinds of events, including conferences, concerts informed by scholarship and other arts, or other collaborative ventures that include both scholarly and musical components. The Center is administered and funded by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, but works closely with the Division of Humanities and other academic units on Campus; faculty on its Advisory Board are drawn from all three Arts schools, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

Our programs are made possible by the Joyce S. and Robert U. Nelson Fund. Robert Uriel Nelson was a revered musicologist and music professor at UCLA, who, together with his wife, established a generous endowment for the university to make programs like this possible.