Wing Lau joined the University of Illinois Chicago as a lecturer in Fall 2023. Her research interests include rhythm and meter, text-music relations, performance analysis, musical humor, and aural skills pedagogy. Her article on notated and perceived meter changes as expressive tools in Brahms’s songs can be found in Music Theory Online. Her recent article in Music Theory Spectrum investigates how Brahms explores eighteenth-century metric practices in selected songs to communicate style and affect changes latent in the poem. Her forthcoming contribution to a collected pedagogic volume explores how compositional and performative distortions of expected intonation and rhythm in musical numbers suggest humor and sarcasm.
Wing’s current research examines the awkward tonal text setting and excessive juxtapositions of Eastern and Western references in movie music of the “nonsensical” style, popular in 1990s Hong Kong.
As a teacher, Wing strives to build a community with her students and encourages trial and error as part of the learning process. She finds joy incorporating different elements of musicianship training in the theory classroom, whether it is understanding voice-leading conceptually, improvising short motives aurally, or experiencing a simple chord progression kinesthetically.
Wing received her Ph.D. in Music Theory from the University of Oregon, MM in Piano Performance from Indiana University Bloomington, and her BA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before joining UIC, she taught at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville.
Wing is a beginner houseplant parent. In her spare time, she scours the internet to learn about different genera of houseplants and their care needs. She is happy to report that 90% of her houseplants survived the move to Chicago.
Links to articles:
https://doi.org/10.1093/mts/mtac020
https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.15.21.2/mto.15.21.2.lau.html