About author : MAHIET Damien

Damien Mahiet is assistant professor of music and director of orchestra at Denison University. He is also a faculty member in the international studies program. He served as the assistant conductor of the Cornell Chamber Orchestra in 2008 and 2009, and the director of the Cornell summer Orchestra in 2008.

A student of Chris Younghoon Kim (Director of orchestras, Cornell University), he has taken part in master classes with Kenneth Kiesler (University of Michigan), Alexander Polishchuk (St. Petersburg Conservatory), and Gerard Schwarz. He has also received private instruction from Daniel Boico (assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic).

As a scholar, he is interested in the part music has played and continues to play in the constitution of Western political regimes and lives. His Ph.D. dissertation, The Concert of Nations: Music, Political Thought, and Diplomacy in Europe, 1600s-1800s, focuses on the origins of the concept of international Concert in the art forms and musical experiences of the 17th and 18th centuries.

As a political phrase, the “Concert of nations” gained currency in the 19th century, and has remained in use till the present day.

Other interests include La Jeune France, a group formed in 1936 by Yves Baudrier, Daniel-Lesur, André Jolivet, and Olivier Messiaen with the proclaimed purpose of reforming society through music; Charles Burney’s political thought; the musical fabrication of Lafayette as a public figure of French and American liberalism in between the 1780s and 1830s; and musical education in liberal democracies.

With Jean-Michel Bardez, he is the co-editor of the series Musique/Pouvoirs, published by Delatour-France.

Damien holds a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in musicology from Cornell University, and a dual master's degree (2005) in government and political thought from the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po Paris). Damien began his musical studies as a choirboy at the Maitrise de Radio-France and as a piano student in the city conservatories of Paris; his piano teachers have included Veronique Roux, Jacques Rouvier, Jean-Marie Cottet, Eliza Garth, Brian Ganz, Malcolm Bilson, and Xak Bjerken.