Meet the Creator

Ash Mach is a music theorist, violist, and digital humanist. They are pursuing a PhD in Music Theory and Certificate in Arts Leadership from the Eastman School of Music, where they research timbre and orchestration, critical organology, and Filipino art music. Passionate about how digital humanities methods can create innovative and engaging public music scholarship, they are currently creating a digital resource on Filipino composers called “Sounding the Philippines,” funded by the Paul R. Judy Center for Innovation and Research. They will also hold the University of Rochester’s Meliora Digital & Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship from 2026-2028.

Ash has presented research at conferences including the Society for Music Theory; Timbre and Orchestration in Popular Song (TOPS); Drawing the Line: Race, Gender, Ethics, and the Arts; International Conference on Timbre; Music Theory Society of New York State; and Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic. Their article,  "From Microformal Transformations to Macroformal Structure in Tristan Murail’s C’est Un Jardin Secret (1976)" is published in the Fall 2024 issue of the Journal of the American Viola Society. They served as a research intern for the Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration (ACTOR) Project in Summer 2025, culminating in a web-based research article titled “Chappell Roan’s Vocal Flips: Explained,” which will be published in the Timbre and Orchestration Resource in 2026. 

Ash has taught first-year theory at Eastman and previously taught at the University of Denver and Arapahoe Community College. They serve as the publicity manager and student staff member of Intégral: The Journal of Applied Musical Thought. As part of the Arts Leadership Certificate, they interned at ROCMusic in Fall 2025, an after-school program providing free instrumental instruction to kids and teens in the Rochester area. They are also the production assistant for the Institute for Music Leadership’s podcast, Careers in Crescendo. 

As a contemporary music performer, Ash made their solo debut in 2022, performing Ed Bennett’s “Strange Friction” with Domaine Forget’s New Music Ensemble. They have held performance residences at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs; University of Wyoming; and Regis University with both the Playground Ensemble and Nebula Ensemble. Ash appears on the album Sorabji: Vocal and Chamber Works, released by BIS Records in 2024. 

Ash holds an MA in Music Theory and an MM in Viola Performance from the University of Denver, as well as a BM with Honors in Viola Performance from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Outside of music, they enjoy being active through hiking, climbing, and more recently, running.