Biography
Katherine Brucher received her PhD in musicology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also earned an BA with a dual concentration in music and English literature from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Bruchers interests include music of Portugal and the Portuguese diaspora, wind bands, community music making, American folk music, jazz, and issues of identity, migration, and place. She is currently working on a book about community wind bands in rural Portugal and their role in establishing musical and cultural ties to Portuguese immigrant communities abroad. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Portugal and the United States and presented her research at regional, national, and international conferences including the European Seminar in Ethnomusicology, the International Council for Traditional Music. Society for American Music, and the Society for Ethnomusicology. Her publications include Viva Rhode Island, Viva Portugal! Performance and Tourism in Portuguese-American Bands (Kim Holton and Andrea Klimt, eds. Fashioning Ethnic Culture: Portuguese-American Communities Along the Eastern Seaboard [North Dartmouth, MA: Center for Portuguese Studies, forthcoming]). She also has a research project that examines the automaker Henry Fords sponsorship of folk music and dance during the 1920s. She has studied oboe and saxophone and currently plays in a Javanese gamelan with the Friends of the Gamelan.
