Patrick Warfield Named Director of the School of Music at the University of Minnesota

Warfield led UMD’s campuswide Arts for All initiative, pioneering new programs and new curricula, and served as associate dean for arts and programming in ARHU.

By ARHU Staff

Professor of Music Patrick Warfield will be leaving his position as associate dean for arts and programming and director of Arts for All in the University of Maryland's College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) to become the director of the School of Music at the University of Minnesota. His appointment is effective June 26, 2023.

Warfield joined the faculty of the School of Music at the University of Maryland in 2009 and has held a number of administrative roles since 2013, when he was appointed director of graduate studies in the School of Music. He has also served as associate director for Academic Affairs and associate director for Graduate Studies and Strategic Initiatives in the School of Music and is a fellow of the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s Academic Leadership Program.

Warfield is an award-winning author who studies the broad history of American music. Known as musicology’s primary expert on the music and life of John Philip Sousa, Warfield is the author of “Making the March King: John Philip Sousa’s Washington Years, 1854-1893,” published in 2016 by the University of Illinois Press. The distinguished musicologist John Graziano called it an “eye-opening reappraisal” that “brilliantly explains how Sousa consolidated the various threads of his multiple talents to become one of the most famous figures in American music,” while Kenneth Kreitner praised the book as “brave and wise” calling it an “extraordinary piece of scholarship and writing.” Warfield has published widely on Sousa and other elements of American music; he’s at work on a new monograph for the University of Illinois Press entitled “Capital Flourishes: ‘The President’s Own’ United States Marine Band.” Warfield holds affiliate appointments in the Department of American Studies and the Department of African American Studies.

A dedicated pedagogue and public musicologist, Warfield was a founding member of the editorial board of The Journal of Music History Pedagogy and has taken part in roundtables at the Teaching Music History Conference and the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society. He has also provided musical commentary for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Washington National Opera, the Smithsonian Institution and the French Embassy, and has curated and narrated concerts with the United States Marine Band, the Washington National Opera Young Artists Program and the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra.

During his time in the ARHU Dean’s Office, Warfield has skillfully led President Darryll J. Pines’s Arts for All initiative as it seeks to partner the arts with the sciences, technology and other disciplines to develop new and reimagined ways of thinking about creativity and innovation. The initiative aims to make Maryland a national leader in leveraging the combined power of the arts, technology and social justice to address the grand challenges of our time.

“Warfield has been the lifeblood and energy behind getting faculty, staff, students, alums and friends interested in all things that are artistic,” said President Pines. “He has made a huge impact and essentially has become the face of the initiative. I am simply grateful for his service to the School of Music, the College of Arts and Humanities and to the university.”

Warfield has successfully pioneered new programs, new curricula and new initiatives that have advanced Arts for All beyond the confines of campus to significantly affect our communities. An advocate for innovation and social justice, he brilliantly communicates the power of the arts to manifest real change across all areas of society.

“Patrick is an inspirational and compelling leader whose skills and talents  will be greatly missed in ARHU but greatly prized, I’m sure, at Minnesota,” said ARHU Dean Stephanie Shonekan. “Even more than that, Patrick’s just a fantastic colleague and a joy to work with; I wish him all the success he deserves in his new adventures.”

Photo by David Andrews.