The editorial staff at A-R Editions is a team of musicologists with varied interests and specializations, which allows us to publish a wide range of music in our editions. The editorial staff evaluates proposals for all of our music publications and then works closely with the volume editors throughout the publication process. The editors provide a comprehensive copyedit of the manuscripts and then oversee the project through the proof production and printing stages to ensure that each edition meets our high standards of quality. A-R Editions takes great pride in being able to offer this high level of expertise and service.
David Birchler received a B.A. in music history from the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire and an M.A. in music history and philosophy and Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He focused on music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in his graduate studies and wrote his dissertation on the theory and practice of nature evocation in the music of Mahler. An editor at A-R since 1994, he has found his job to be an interesting mix of editing and musicology, giving him the opportunity to work with many fine authors on their editions of music of the baroque, classical, and romantic eras. Out of the office he can be found running and walking on road, trail, or treadmill, and practicing yoga of the hot or non-hot varieties.
Alexander Dean received a Ph.D. in Musicology from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in 2009, and also holds a master’s degree in classical guitar performance from The University of Akron. He has taught classical guitar, music history, and music theory at The University of Akron, the Eastman School, Nazareth College, Hamilton College, and Syracuse University. Alexander’s research interests include the intersection between oral and written traditions in seventeenth-century Italian song, and he has published articles in Recercare, Musica Disciplina (with Anthony Cummings), and Early Music. He has been an editor at A-R Editions since October 2011, where he has worked on a range of projects including Renaissance madrigals, Balinese shadow play music, and twentieth-century Czech opera. He enjoys solving puzzles, deciphering scribbles, reading, and writing science fiction.
Esther Criscuola de Laix holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a B.Mus. in organ performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She specializes in the cultural history of music in the late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century German-speaking lands, and her dissertation, which received the Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 fellowship award from the American Musicological Society, investigates musical print culture in Hamburg in the early seventeenth century. She maintains an active scholarly presence in the field of musicology, continuing to publish and present papers on these topics. Esther has enjoyed applying the full range of her musical and scholarly training to her editorial work at A-R; since starting in August 2011, she has edited a wide variety of projects involving music from the Renaissance through the mid-twentieth century, traditional music from various cultures, scorings from solo keyboard through large orchestra, and at least twelve different languages. Outside of A-R, she remains active as an organist, and enjoys, among many other things, cooking, practicing traditional Okinawan karate, writing very esoteric Star Wars fan fiction, and spending time with her husband and son.
Alex Widstrand holds degrees in bassoon performance and pedagogy from the University of Iowa (D.M.A., M.A.) and the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire (B.M.), with minors in music theory and technical writing. Prior to his work at A-R Editions, Alex served on the music faculty at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa. Alex remains an active researcher of music from the Soviet Union and its former territories. His recent projects include a critical edition of the bassoon concerto by Lev Knipper and a survey of bassoon music from the Baltic States. As a frequent contributor to The Double Reed, Alex strives to shed light on underappreciated repertoires and composers. Beyond his work at A-R, Alex is an avid cook and baker, and a frequent cross-country skier and cyclist. He continues to play bassoon and piano, study languages, and occasionally dabble at composition.