Samantha Bassler (she/they) has taught music theory and music history at NYU Steinhardt since 2016. Samantha has Bachelor's degrees in piano and sacred music from Nyack College/Alliance University, a Master of Studies in Music (Musicology) from Merton College, the University of Oxford, a Master of Arts in Musicology and Music Theory from Rutgers University, and a PhD in Musicology from the Open University (UK). Samantha first trained professionally as a church musician, and then as a musicologist, music theorist, and private music instructor.
Samantha lives in Brooklyn, NYC, and owns Stellar Music Space in Clinton Hill, a private music school, where they also teach piano, voice, and strings, as well as aural skills, music theory, and prepares students for entry into arts high schools and music programs at universities.
As a scholar, their research interests focus on music and early modern England, especially the intersections of music, disability, and gender, and the reception history of early English music during the long eighteenth century. As a scholar-activist, they have presented on topics such as accommodations for disabled students and scholars in the university, neurodivergence, music, and queerness, trauma-informed pedagogy, and universal design.
Samantha’s scholarly articles appear in journals and collections such as Music Theory Online, postmedieval, The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, and Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy. With Katherine Butler, Samantha co-edited the book, Music, Myth, and Story in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, published in March 2019 by Boydell & Brewer Press, and with Katherine Butler and Katie Bank, co-edited the book Byrd Studies in the 21st Century, published by Clemson University Press in 2023. In 2024 and 2025, Samantha's work has been and will be published in numerous edited collections, on diverse topics such as music and trauma studies, pedagogy and universal design, gender, disability, and heavy metal, and the reception history of Palestrina in eighteenth-century England.
Outside of academic pursuits, Samantha is an avid yoga and Pilates practitioner, an avid meditator, and a Board Member and KidSchool teacher of her synagogue, the City Congregation of Humanistic Judaism in the Upper West Side.
Samantha currently teaches Aural Skills and Music History at NYU Steinhardt.