Martin Ross

Assistant Professor
Music Theory
Music Research and Composition Department

Biography

Martin Ross is a music theorist whose primary musical interest is in minimalist music. He has presented on several minimalist composers at conferences across North America and Europe. Martin currently serves as the Secretary for the Society for Minimalist Music, a role he has held since 2024.

As a theorist, Martin’s research explores the musical subject through various interpretive avenues, including semiotics, psychoanalysis, musical gesture, and narrativity. His recent scholarship includes a 2025 Music Theory Online article on gesture and semiotics in Steve Reich’s “augmentation-as-process” music. In his 2024 chapter in Music and its Narrative Potential, Martin investigates how the texture of build-up and composite patterns in Reich’s Music for Pieces of Wood (1973) suggests narrative potentiality. Martin has a forthcoming analysis of the video game Untitled Goose Game in SMT-V as well as a review in Journal of Music Theory.

Martin holds a PhD in Music Theory from Western University, a Master’s in Music Theory from University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and a Bachelor’s in Clarinet Performance from University of Nebraska-Lincoln.