Sam Mullooly is a music educator, scholar, composer, and performer from Milwaukee, WI, USA. He holds a Master of Music degree in Music Theory from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Composition from Illinois Wesleyan University. He was inducted into the Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honor Society in 2015. From 2021-2023 he was an Associate Instructor of music theory at IU Jacobs School of Music. He now teaches music theory and musicianship at the collegiate level around the Milwaukee area.
Mullooly’s scholarly research interests include pop/rock music analysis, public music theory, and forensic musicology. He is particularly interested in the development of musical style in rock music between 1960-1979, the evolution of punk as a musical genre, the music of Regina Spektor, the cognitive science of musical taste, and how music analysis can interact directly with music appreciation and the modern music industry. He has written several analytical and research papers on these topics while a graduate student in music theory, and continues to perform independent research.
Mullooly is also a self-published composer/songwriter. He has composed a number of large works, not the least of which was his first full-length opera, American Spring, which premiered in Milwaukee in 2017. The libretto was written by his father. American Spring was nominated for the 2016 IWU Phi Beta Kappa award for outstanding work in the Liberal Arts and was selected to be part of IWU’s Ames Library collection of musical scores. Other notable works that Mullooly has composed include A Balance (an electroacoustic piece), Requiem (for SATB choir), Symphony No. 1 (for String Orchestra), Missa de Profecto (for SSATB choir), The Hunters and The Cat Bowl (two one-act operettas), and A Salient Name (a song cycle for Mezzo and Piano). He has also written and recorded two solo albums, Beyond the Treehouse and To Let An Essence Live. His EP Songs of Absence was professionally recorded and released by the Milwaukee based label Sickle Moon Recordings in 2021.
As a vocalist, Mullooly is a bass-baritone who enjoys performing early music and German lieder. As the Co-President of the Illinois Wesleyan Consort ensemble in 2015-2016, he performed as a soloist and organized small ensembles to perform a variety of Medieval and Renaissance choral works. Since 2018, Mullooly has been a member of Milwaukee’s leading early music vocal ensemble Aperi Animam, where he also served as Vice President for a year.
From 2015-2020, Mullooly worked as a choral editor at Hal Leonard, the largest music publishing company in the world. He was the editor and production manager for both the Shawnee Press school division and the Henry Leck Creating Artistry series. He has also been teaching private lessons in piano, voice, and music theory since 2016. On the side, Mullooly founded a music review blog titled Album Analysis in which he reviews and critiques new albums based on an original method. Although not currently an active blog, you may read his archived reviews on Medium.