Lidia Chang is a flutist and musicologist whose work examines the intersection of gender, literature, print culture, organology, and music performance practices in Europe during the long eighteenth century. Her current work focuses particularly on the performance of “gentlemanliness” through music praxis in England’s Georgian era, studying the complicated nexus of class, gender, and nationality within that musical culture. Her other scholarly work is concerned with the gendering power of musical instruments, as well as questions of aesthetics, sound ideals, technology, reception history, and historical performance practices that influenced musical styles. She joins Colorado College from Paris, where she worked as a freelance flutist and research fellow at the Musée de la Musique of the Philharmonie de Paris.
A versatile musician and well-rounded scholar, Lidia Chang double majored in Flute Performance and Music History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She went on to earn a Master's in Historical Performance on the Baroque flute at McGill’s Schulich School of Music, a second Master’s in Historical Musicology at the University of Massachusetts, and a PhD in Musicology from the City University of New York. Lidia has performed with a number of period instrument ensembles including Arcadia Players, Dorian Baroque, and Ensemble Musica Humana, of which she is a founding member. She has released two albums of Regency era dance music (Twelve Cotillions by Giovanni Gallini, 1770 and Country Dances by Thomas Skillern, 1781), which can be heard on the BBC’s adaptation of Poldark. She has served as the managing editor for Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture and has presented her research at the Jane Austen Society of North America’s annual and regional meetings, the American Musical Instrument Society, the Galpin Society, the American Musicological Society, the North American British Music Studies Association, and at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Lidia has taught courses in music history and appreciation at Brooklyn College, Queens College, and at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She also serves as the flute instructor and resident musicologist at the South Shore Conservatory’s Summer Music Festival (Boston, MA), and as the Baroque flute instructor at the World Fellowship Center’s Early Music Week (Conway, NH).
