biographical information

Alison Conard is a multi-faceted musician with extensive experience in production, composition, music theory, songwriting, performance, and pedagogy. Her ability to perform such a wide variety of musical tasks was born of necessity: she was raised in the rural West Texas town of Sweetwater, where she found very few musical partners.

After receiving an undergraduate degree in music from the University of North Texas, she moved to Portland, Oregon, where she formed the band Voodoo Economics with drummer Justin Gibbon and bassist Jeremy Prouty. In 2005, they moved to Philadelphia, where Alison obtained a Master’s degree in Music Theory from Temple University.

She currently teaches music theory at Temple, remains the producer / frontwoman / multi-instrumentalist for Voodoo Economics, regularly produces projects for local bands, and composes and produces music in a wide range of styles and genres in the traditions of both Western art music (which she affectionately calls WAM) and popular music.

Alison will begin a Ph.D. in music theory at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec in Fall 2009 and will supplement her study of music theory with cognitive psychology and neuroscience. She hopes that research in these fields, coupled with her abiding love for philosophy, will help her unfold some of music's more abstract and mysterious qualities. In particular, she will look at cognitive processes as models for various aspects of the musical phenomenon, including form, temporality, meter, and harmony.*

*She also hopes to learn to write in the first person while pursuing her Ph.D.