# Toru Momii Assistant Professor of Music ![Toru Momii](/sites/g/files/omnuum12086/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/2025-08/Toru%20Momii.jpeg?itok=9h52a99W) location\_on Music Building 307N email *On leave Spring 2026* **Toru Momii** (he/him) is a music theorist who specializes in issues of musical interculturality in post-war Japan, the racial and colonial politics of U.S./Canadian music theory, Asian/American performance, popular music. His current book project, *Performing Against the Grain: Musical Interculturality and the Politics of Japaneseness*, project explores how post-war Japanese and diasporic Japanese musicians have navigated, responded to, and at times refused racialized cultural narratives of Japaneseness through performance. His writing appears or is forthcoming in *Music Theory Online, Music Theory Spectrum*, *Journal of Music Theory*, *Journal of Musicologial Research*, and *Circuit.* His article “A Transformational Approach to Gesture in Shō Performance” (2020) was awarded the 2021 Outstanding Publication Award from the Society for Music Theory. His research has been recognized by the SMT-40 Dissertation Fellowship from the Society for Music Theory and the Junior Fellowship in Japan Studies from the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Toru is co-founder of the Engaged Music Theory Working Group, which develops resources on the intersections between music theory and issues of cultural politics. He currently serves as a faculty affiliate of Project Spectrum, a coalition of graduate students of color committed to addressing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in music studies. He has served on the Society for Music Theory’s Committee on Race and Ethnicity and currently serves as a member of the American Musicological Society Council. At Harvard, he is a faculty affiliate of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Toru holds a Ph.D. in music theory from Columbia University (2021), an M.A. in music theory from McGill University, and a B.A. in music and economics from Vassar College (Phi Beta Kappa). Toru has previously taught music theory and aural skills at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and Columbia University. Prior to pursuing graduate studies, he worked in the investment banking industry in Tokyo, Japan. In his free time, Toru enjoys singing with the Boston Choral Ensemble, cooking, and watching baseball. - ## Person Categories [Faculty](/person-categories/faculty)