Derek J. Myler is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. He holds the PhD in Music Theory from the Eastman School of Music (2023), the MM in Music Theory from the University of Utah (2018), and the BM in Vocal Performance from Weber State University (2015).
A specialist on Charles Ives, Derek’s work has been featured at national and international symposia on Ives’s music, including Charles Ives’s “Concord Sonata” at 101 (UMKC, 2021) and Charles Ives in 2025 (and Beyond) (AMS/SMT 2025). In 2024, Derek was a scholar in residence at the sesquicentennial festival and celebration Charles Ives at 150: Music, Imagination, and American Culture, held at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, where he delivered public lectures and concert commentary, participated in interdisciplinary panels, and provided classroom instruction on Ives’s music. Derek’s dissertation, “Temporal Experience and the Music of Charles Ives,” received the 2025 Alfred Mann Dissertation Award from the Eastman School of Music; this project explores the experience of Ives’s listeners, recruiting a wide array of disciplines from music theory and analysis to cognitive science to the philosophy of time.
In addition to his work on Ives, Derek specializes in music for children’s media and in Polish folk musics and the mazurka in the long nineteenth century. He has presented his research on these and other topics regionally, nationally, and internationally, and recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy and SMT-V, the online video journal of the Society for Music Theory.
A dedicated teacher, Derek was awarded Eastman’s Teaching Assistant Prize for Excellence in Teaching in the first year of his PhD program and the University of Rochester’s Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student in his third year. Before pursuing a career as a professional theorist, Derek enjoyed working as a music director and vocal coach for community theatres, as a collaborative pianist, and as a piano tuner and technician. Outside the world of music, he enjoys kayaking and exploring North Carolina beaches with his wife Shelby and their three young children.