In Memory of our Colleague and Friend Charles Hiroshi Garrett (1966-2024)

[AMS Office]

With great sadness, the Department of Musicology of the University of Michigan notes the passing of Charles (Chuck) Hiroshi Garrett (1966–2024) on July 18.

Professor Garrett joined the University of Michigan faculty in 2004. His research and teaching centered on music and musical cultures of the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with special interest in popular music, jazz, technology, sound studies, digital culture, nationalism, and race and ethnicity, among other facets of identity. The university honored him with a Faculty Recognition Award in 2014 and the John H. D’Arms Faculty Award for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities in 2023.

Professor Garrett was an outstanding teacher and advisor. He taught thousands of students at the University of Michigan and advised a large number of dissertations. He also distinguished himself as chair of the Department and director of graduate students and was a beloved mentor to many of his colleagues and students.

Professor Garrett edited and authored several notable works. His book, Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century (2008), received the Irving Lowens Memorial Book Award (Society for American Music) and an honorable mention for the Woody Guthrie Award (IASPM-US). He co-edited the collection Jazz/Not Jazz: The Music and Its Boundaries (2012) with David Ake and Daniel Goldmark and co-edited Sounding Together: Collaborative Perspectives on U.S. Music in the 21st Century (2021) with Carol J. Oja. He served as editor-in-chief for The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd edition (2013). He also served in key leadership roles for music-centered scholarly societies, including as president of the Society for American Music and as a director-at-large on the board of the American Musicological Society.

We are shocked and saddened by this loss and deeply grateful for Chuck’s important contributions to the Department of Musicology. We express our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.