Biographical note

Born in 1949 in Somerset, KY, Ann Sears received a B.M. at the New England Conservatory of Music, a M.M. at Arizona State University, and a Ph.D. at Catholic University of America with the dissertation "The Art Song in Boston, 1880-1914" (1993). A member of the Music Dept. at Wheaton since 1980, Sears teaches courses in African American music, American musical theater, European and American art song, and piano.

Sears' recordings include:

Swing Time: The Songs of Will Marion Cook,” two-disc recording with tenor William A. Brown, Albany Records, 2006.

“’A Certain Strangeness”: The Songs and Spiritual Arrangements of Harry T. Burleigh,” Journal of Black Music Research, Vol. 26, Summer, 2006.

Fi-yer! A Century of African-American Song, William Brown, tenor, and Ann Sears, piano, compact disc, Albany Records, TROY 329, l999.

Deep River: Songs and Spirituals of Harry T. Burleigh, Oral Moses, bass, and Ann Sears, piano, compact disc, Northeastern Records, 1995; reissued by Albany Records, 1999. Three tracks ("Deep River," "Stan' Still, Jordan," and "Wade in the Water") used in PBS documentary film about Dvorak in America, first aired June, 2000.

A few of Sears' publications include:

“Political Currents and Black Culture in Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha”, in Blackness in Opera, ed. Naomi André, Karen Bryan, and Eric Saylor, University of Illinois, 2012.

"Rodgers and Hammerstein, " and "Imitators of Rodgers and Hammerstein" written with Thomas Riis, The Cambridge Companion to the Musical, ed. William A. Everett and Paul Laird, Cambridge University Press, 2002. 2d edition, 2008.

International Dictionary of Black Composers, biographical and/or works essays on Basile Barés, Thomas Greene "Blind Tom" Bethune, John William "Blind" Boone, Edmund Dédé, Charles-Lucien Lambert, Lucien-Leon Lambert, Sidney Lambert, Samuel Snaër, and Henry Williams, ed. Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999.

"Oklahoma!;" "Rodgers and Hammerstein;" "Rodgers and Hart;" "South Pacific;" and "The Sound of Music" in the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, St. James Press, 1999.

"Ruth Lynda Deyo and Her Grand Opera, The Diadem of Stars," in An American Composer Looks at Egypt, exhibition catalog, Watson Gallery, Wheaton College, February 3-28, 1999.

"An American Composer Answers the Call to Egypt," in the Sonneck Society for American Music Bulletin, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, Spring, l997, pp. 8-10.

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