EducationBA Brown University
PhD University of Michigan
About
Katherine Brucher received her PhD in musicology from the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also earned an BA with a dual
concentration in music and English literature from Brown University in
Providence, Rhode Island.
Bruchers interests include music
of Portugal and the Portuguese diaspora, wind bands, community music
making, American folk music, jazz, and issues of identity, migration,
and place. She is currently working on a book about community wind bands
in rural Portugal and their role in establishing musical and cultural
ties to Portuguese immigrant communities abroad. She has conducted
ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Portugal and the United
States and presented her research at regional, national, and
international conferences including the European Seminar in
Ethnomusicology, the International Council for Traditional Music.
Society for American Music, and the Society for Ethnomusicology. Her
publications include Viva Rhode Island, Viva Portugal! Performance and
Tourism in Portuguese-American Bands (Kim Holton and Andrea Klimt,
eds. Fashioning Ethnic Culture: Portuguese-American Communities Along
the Eastern Seaboard [North Dartmouth, MA: Center for Portuguese
Studies, forthcoming]). She also has a research project that examines
the automaker Henry Fords sponsorship of folk music and dance during
the 1920s.
She has studied oboe and saxophone and currently plays in a Javanese gamelan with the Friends of the Gamelan.