Chet Stussy

Bio

Chet Stussy is a PhD candidate in musicology at UC Santa Barbara and serves as co-chair (2025–2027) for the Organology Study Group of the American Musicological Society. Chet has been awarded a predoctoral fellowship from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to conduct research in the museum’s Department of Musical Instruments from September 2026 through August 2027.

Chet’s research focuses on music and material culture of the 19th and 20th centuries, with primary interests on the history of musical instruments, sound-recording technologies, and cultures of collecting. His work has been published in the Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society. Chet’s dissertation examines the construction, marketing, reception, and ultimate obsolescence of novel instruments used within the orbit of the early phonograph industry (ca. 1890–1930). Heavily informing his musicological research, Chet has worked for the university’s Department of Special Research Collections, digitizing hundreds of early cylinder recordings for public access on the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive. At UCSB, Chet has also worked extensively with the Henry Eichheim Collection of Musical Instruments, a collection of over 300 objects collected by the American violinist and composer Henry Eichheim (1870–1942) during five expeditions to Asia between 1915 and 1937. Chet is currently working on a project which traces the histories of two dung-chen (Tibetan long trumpets) in the collection, examining the trumpets’ dynamic changes in function and value at major nodal points along their spatial and temporal journeys.

 Chet has presented his work at national and international conferences, including those hosted by the American Musical Instrument Society and the Galpin Society. Following undergraduate studies at the New England Conservatory of Music, he received his BA in Music from Westmont College and his MA in Musicology from UCSB. He is a three-time recipient of the William E. Gribbon Memorial Award from the American Musical Instrument Society (2024; 2025; 2026). He is also an active accordionist and recorder player.