Dr. Christina Giacona

Ethnomusicologist, Music Producer, Conductor, and Score Supervisor

Dr. Christina Giacona is a Lecturer on American and American Indian Musics at The University of Oklahoma, a Smithsonian Folkways-certified World Music Pedagogue, holds the Nancy and Mitch Llewellyn Chair as a clarinetist with the Fort Smith Symphony, and is the Executive Director and clarinetist of the Los Angeles New Music Ensemble. She is also one of the only female producers in the country who works on both classical and popular multi-tracked albums.  In addition, her writing, including her work Singing Redface: The Misappropriation of Native American Culture in American Popular Music,work to analyze and write about how classical and popular music can work within a new cultural norm that no longer easily tolerates cultural appropriation and misrepresentation. 

She recently published her textbook The Indigenous Music of Turtle Island: Native American Music in North America through Kendall-Hunt Publishing.

Christina Giacona is a voting member of the Recording Academy (GRAMMYs),  is the founder and Director of The Los Angeles New Music Ensemble, has produced and performed on a number of classical cross-over albums and performances including hip-hop/classical (More Than Music, New York City, March 2010), classical prog-rock (Good King Friday, Los Angeles, October 2011) mimalism/shoegaze (Princeton’s Remembrance of Things to Come, Los Angeles, February 2012), and premiered electro-acoustic and acoustic works based on utilizing and emulating popular music’s production techniques in the context of classical concert works (Retro Rhapsody for Clarinet and Live Electronics, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, March 2013; and Radiostatic for three Bb clarinets, International Clarinet Festival in Assisi, Italy, July 2013), and has produced and performed on classical albums (The Los Angeles New Music Ensemble, released Nov 1 through Centaur Records; CSAA (tentative title) with Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate and the Attacca Quartet, for release 2018  through Azica Records).