Sounding the Nation at 250 is an outreach initiative marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. From Morgantown to Montgomery, Los Angeles to Lawrence, and Tallahassee to Tuscaloosa, this project celebrates the nation’s diverse musical and artistic legacies with public lectures, recitals, and exhibits, engaging broad audiences with research on American music. Video recordings of all events and related materials are archived on this website.
Stay tuned! More SAM250 Projects will be archived here in the near future.
- American Music Centers and Institutes Unite for America250
- Andrew Granade and Christopher Kelts, Sounding Home: Orchestral Voices, the Pulitzer Prize, and American Identity at 250
- Ashley R. Wheat/Alabama Blues Project, How Music Brings People Together
- Cincinnati Sounds: Exploring a City’s Spaces, Places, and Sounds
- Cody A. Norling and Katelyn E. Best, Mountaineering Voices: Appalachian Primitive Baptists and Congregational Singing in West Virginia
- Elissa Harbert and Janani Sridhar, Singing the Revolution: Broadway Musicals and the Revolutionary War
- Elizabeth T. Craft, George M. Cohan’s Irish American Patriotism on Broadway
- Emily Ruth Allen, Sounds of the Mardi Gras Belt
- Emmie Head and Michele Yamamoto, Firebirth: Kindling the Sounds of Resilience in Los Angeles
- Gustavo Souza Marques, Tyler, The Creator’s Hip Hop Revolution: Beyond Gangsta
- John Spilker, Opportunities for Care, Repair, and Equity: Discovering Music in Research on Racial Injustice
- Julian Duncan, From San Juan to the Panama Canal – Music, Service, and Identity in the Life of Luis R. Miranda
- Marian Wilson Kimber, Eleanor Waltzes: Women’s Music and Poetry for Eleanor Roosevelt During the Great Depression
- Ryan Raul Bañagale, Listening for America with the New York Philharmonic
- The Montgomery Symphony Orchestra, A Time for Jubilee (Nkeiru Okoye)
- UVA University Singers present an America250 Celebration