Nolan Gasser holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from Stanford University, where he has served as an Adjunct Professor, teaching courses on Medieval and Renaissance music history to undergraduate music majors. His forthcoming book, We’re All Musicians: Music, Science, and the Art of Living, is currently being promoted by famed literary agent John Brockman (see News for more info). An early version of this topic can be seen in his article on Music Appreciation in a recent edition of San Francisco Medicine Magazine (download his article, "Living With Music: One Musician's Perspective"), which has since been reprinted in Arts and Education in the News, published by the Dana Foundation. Although Nolan’s specialty as a musicologist is Early Music (his dissertation: “Marian Veneration and Sacred Polyphony in Renaissance Milan, 1470-1520”), he is fluid in all periods of music history, with considerable knowledge of Modern and Contemporary music, as well as Jazz and Rock music – on which he has taught several courses.

Nolan is the Chief Musicologist Emeritus for Pandora Media, Inc. (www.pandora.com), and the principal architect of the Music Genome Project that is the backbone of the wildly successful Pandora Internet Radio service. Among his more recent large-scale activities at Pandora, Nolan designed the latest and final Music Genome, the Classical Genome, whereby Pandora Classical was launched in early 2008, to rave reviews.  This completes his work in designing all six Genomes at Pandora (Pop/Rock, Jazz, Hip Hop, Electronica, World, Classical). Pandora is now the leading Internet radio provider, with over 80 million registered users, and among the most popular applications offered on Apple's iPhone and other mobile devices (including the iPad). Indeed, with its foray into multiple automobile audio systems (such as Ford’s Sync system), the company is well on its way to completely re-defining radio – with its goal of “Pandora Everywhere”. A detailed interview on Nolan’s work as architect of the Music Genome Project recently appeared in the technology journal Ars Technica. To view the Ars Technica article, click here.

Nolan likewise holds the position as Artistic Director of the Classical Archives website (www.classicalarchives.com), a position he has held since 2002. Classical Archives re-launched in May 2009 with a new service and interface, offering streaming and downloads of the full classical catalogues of the Major and Independent classical labels, along with an unmatched system of search and navigation, special features, and much more; further, an updated user interface will be released sometime around June 2010. Nolan’s musicological work at Classical Archives can be seen not only in his oversight of the musical database and the site’s musical presentation, but likewise in the many Exclusive Features created under his direction – including interviews with such musical luminaries as Hilary Hahn, John Corigliano, René Fleming, Paul Hillier, Joshua Bell, David Finckel and Wu Han, Alan Gilbert, and many others (see http://www.classicalarchives.com/features/) . Classical Archives is fast on its way to becoming the primary source of classical music online (download the article in the Wall Street Journal).

Nolan is receiving an ever-increasing number of speaking engagements for various meetings, events, and festivals – including at a recent joint meeting between the National Endowment of the Arts and the Department of Health and Human Services on arts education, held in March 2011 in Washington D.C. During the month of February 2011, Nolan was the Distinguished Fellow of the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind at UC Santa Barbara in February 2011, where he seriously developed the material for his forthcoming book. Among upcoming engagements is his appearance at the Petaluma Historical Museum on July 1, as part of the Smithsonian “Explore” exhibition (see Events).