Project at HIAS

Cultural Hybridity in Global Art-Song: History, Meanings and Repertoire

At HIAS, Natasha Loges will explore 20th-century piano-accompanied art-song from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and East/South-East Asia. Through case studies of composers such as Sun-Ae Kim, Akin Euba, and Nazife Güran, her project explores cultural hybridity in post/colonial musical contexts. Drawing on archival research and performance-based insights, the project aims to expand definitions of art-song and contribute to a more inclusive understanding of classical music’s global reach.

Her Tandem Partners are Louis Delpech, Professor for Music at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg and Oliver Huck, Professor for Historical Musicology at the University of Hamburg.

Biography

Natasha Loges is Professor of Musicology at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. Previously, she was Head of Postgraduate Programmes at the Royal College of Music in London. She has given guest lectures internationally in institutions such as King’s College London, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Shanghai Conservatory and the Schola Cantorum Basel. A committed public musicologist, Natasha broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 3 and has also broadcast for Südwestrundfunk and Bayerische Rundfunk. She writes for BBC Music Magazine and leads events for major festivals and venues including the Southbank Centre, Wigmore Hall, the Oxford Lieder Festival and Leeds Lieder in the UK, Liedfestival Zeist in Holland, Heidelberger Frühling, the Internationale Hugo-Wolf-Akademie Stuttgart and SongFest California. She is a member of the UK-based Equality and Diversity in Music Studies network.

Natasha Loges’ research interests include voice and keyboard repertoire, concert culture, gender and performance studies. Her books are Brahms and His Poets (2017) and a forthcoming biography, Pauline Viardot (2026). She has coedited the essay collections Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall (2014), Brahms in Context (2019), Musical Salon Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century (2019), and German Song Onstage (2020). Three collections are forthcoming: Global Perspectives on Women Pianists and In a New Key: Studies of Women Pianists, as well as a collection of essays on global art song. Natasha Loges’ research has been funded by the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the American Musicological Society, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Royal Philharmonic Society, among others.  

Loges’ HIAS Fellowship is funded by the Hapag-Lloyd Stiftung and by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the federal and state funds acquired by the University of Hamburg in the framework of its Excellence Strategy.