Kay Lipton

Before moving to Ohio, Dr. Kay Lipton taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate music history and performance related courses at colleges and universities in both southern California and Texas. For the past two years, she has served as an adjunct lecturer in music history in the School of Music at Cleveland State University. Lipton received a Bachelor of Music from the University of Colorado, a Master of Arts from California State University, and a Ph.D. in historical musicology from UCLA.

As a researcher, Lipton is best known as an opera historian, with particular focus on late-eighteenth-century opera buffe in Vienna by Mozart’s (mostly Italian) contemporaries. She has devoted special attention to the phenomenon of pasticcio practices in these works, as well as on the multiple performance traditions in them in Vienna versus those in Italy.

Lipton is the author of several articles in the comprehensive The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians; other articles appear in journals and books. Additional scholarly endeavors include a number of editorships, notably for the Mozart Society of America, among many others.

Engagements outside academia include those as guest lecturer for the nationally renowned Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, as well as for the Minnesota Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra and Opera San Antonio.

As the recipient of several coveted teaching awards, Lipton takes pride in her multivalent approach to teaching and learning, one that is rooted in performance and one that underscores her passionate commitment to facilitating students as they discover how music history can exponentially enhance their experiences as performers, conductors, composers and educators, which reaffirms her belief that music history and performance operate within the same domain.