Dr. Noel Torres Rivera

Dr. Noel Torres Rivera is a new adjunct music theory faculty member at George Mason University, teaching graduate analytical techniques in the Fall 2025 semester. Previously Dr. Torres Rivera has taught at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. 

Dr. Torres Rivera's research centers Puerto Rican, Spanish, and Latin American histories and repertoires, and his methodological lenses include music and meaning (topic theory, semiotics, hermeneutics), music and politics, historiography, decolonial/postcolonial studies, avant-garde/experimentalisms, microhistories, and performance. He has presented his research at the annual meetings for the Society for Music Theory (SMT), the American Musicological Society (AMS), and the Society for American Music (SAM), as well as at conferences and symposiums in Puerto Rico, México, Argentina, Brazil, and Spain. In the field of public scholarship, he has presented concert talks in Germany and Puerto Rico, written and translated content for various online platforms and blogs, and currently serves as the program annotator for the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and the Festival Casals de Puerto Rico. 

Dr. Torres Rivera is currently working on a monograph (under contract with Oxford University Press) on the early work of Puerto Rican composer Rafael Aponte-Ledée (b.1938). By centering five works, this monograph explores issues of politics, esthetics, pedagogy, and technology in various contexts in Spain and Argentina. He has articles published or forthcoming at the Journal of American Musicological Society and American Music. Dr. Torres Rivera's ongoing publication projects include an edited volume of essays on Puerto Rican music studies and a second monograph on avant-garde music in Puerto Rico in the late 1960s, and is also working on an essay centered on Auschwitz (1968), a poly-artistic work by Francis Schwartz (b.1940). 

Inside and outside of academia, Dr. Torres Rivera has worked in the production of various artistic and academic events. Most recently at UMKC-Conservatory he directed “América Festival,” a Latin American music/academic event in collaboration with the Mizzou New Music Initiative, Classical KC, and the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. An active pedagogue, he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, City College of New York (CUNY), New Jersey City University, and University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory. He holds a BM in Violin Performance from the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, a MM in Music Theory from Temple University, and a PhD in Music Theory from The Graduate Center, CUNY. 

Adjunct Faculty

• Graduate Music Theory

Degrees

• PhD, Music Theory, The Graduate Center, CUNY
• MM, Music Theory, Temple University
• BM, Violin Performance, Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico