Paul Laird

Paul R. Laird (b. October 22, 1958) is an American musicologist originally born in Louisville, Kentucky.

Laird holds a Ph.D. in music from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include the Spanish and Latin American villancico, Leonard Bernstein, the Broadway musical, and cello. He has taught at State University of New York at Binghamton and the University of Denver.

He directs the Instrumental Collegium Musicum and is active as a Baroque cellist, performing with the Spencer Consort. In August 2002, he won a University of Kansas W. T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence.

His current projects include a book on Bernstein's Chichester Psalms for the College Music Society Sourcebooks on American Music series and an historical dictionary of the Broadway musical, which he is writing with William A. Everett.

As of 2006, Laird is the director of the Division of Musicology at the University of Kansas, where he has taught since 1994.

Publications

• Towards a History of the Spanish Villancico (Harmonie Park Press, 1997)
• Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research (Routledge, 2002)
• The Baroque Cello Revival: An Oral History (Scarecrow Press, 2004)
• Res musicae: Essays in Honor of James W. Pruett (Harmonie Park Press, 2001; co-editor)
• The Cambridge Companion to the Musical (Cambridge University Press, 2002; co-editor)

Laird has contributed to:

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.)
• Anuario musical
• Nassarre
• Revista de Musicología
• Early Music
• Australian Journal of Musicology
• CMS Symposium
• MLA Notes
• Historical Performance
• American Music
• American Record Guide
• Continuo Magazine