Faculty highlights 2026

The School of Music faculty is excited to announce this semester’s faculty highlights. With the world-renowned members of our faculty, their accomplishments are varied and compelling.

Chris Millett has been recognized as one of Yamaha’s 40 under 40. As the Assistant Professor of Music Therapy, Practicum Coordinator, and Board-Certified Music Therapist, Chris has shown his commitment to students and families from our community with pride. He says that “our mission is to make lives in Louisville richer and healthier through music, and we serve thousands of individuals, families and facilities every year with music-based experiences like songwriting, group musicking, improvising and more to improve health-related outcomes.”

This recognition from Yamaha celebrates excellence in music education, chosen after hundreds of nominations from students, parents, teachers or other community members. Each of the 40 under 40 have a remarkable story, like Chris. He has been with the University of Louisville School of Music since 2019 and has made a difference in our Music Therapy program and for our students in his classes. We are proud of the work he is doing and look forward to seeing the program's future. 

Read more here.

Matt Nelson has released his first-ever album of chamber music which rescues a long-forgotten figure from the shadows.

Charles Harford Lloyd (1849–1919) – organist of Gloucester Cathedral and the Chapel Royal, Oxford theologian and concert-organiser, music master at Eton and much more – was one of the most distinguished musicians of Victorian England. Lloyd knew how to make the clarinet sing, with one lovely, long-limbed melody after another.

Matt’s album explores this organist’s music through songs with soul. It includes chamber music for clarinet, cello and piano. We encourage you to listen to this album, whic also includes music from our own Chad Sloan and Anna Petrova. Listen on Apple Music or Spotify

Melissa Lloyd has been awarded the 2025-2026 Kentucky Music Educators Association (KMEA) State College/University Teacher of the Year Award.

She received the award for innovative teaching approaches that she uses with college students enrolled in her courses, such as incorporating trauma-informed practices. Dr. Lloyd says that this includes ”using more personable language, non-traditional office hours in the form of work study groups that meet in the library, ”Win Walls” to celebrate student ”wins” at the start of each class meeting and other intentional practices to help each class feel like a safe and supportive community of learners”.

Devin Burke has received the 2025 TILL Teaching Innovation Award from the University of Louisville. His Music History Globetrotting Project was cited for "reimagining how music history is taught through a multimedia, global timeline that centers music as an embodied and culturally situated human practice...This project challenges traditional narratives by encouraging students to explore music across time, place, and lived experience. It supports active learning, critical reflection, and empathy, while offering a flexible resource that can be adapted across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences." The project is accessible here, and more information about the award is available here.