Katherine K. Preston

Katherine K. Preston ( Imfeld, born December 7, 1950) is an American musicologist and educator. She taught on the faculty of the College of William & Mary from 1989 until 2018 when she retired and was named a professor emerita. She has authored biographies on composers Scott Joplin and George Frederick Bristow as well as books on traveling musicians and opera troupes in the United States during the 19th century. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, she is considered an authority on the music of early America and 19th century America.

Life and career Preston was born in Hamilton, Ohio, on December 7, 1950. At the latter institution, she emphasized in musicology where she was a pupil of Eugene Helm. She later studied musicology under H. Wiley Hitchcock at the City University of New York where she graduated with a PhD in 1989. In addition to her work at William and Mary, she was a visiting professor at Keele University (1998) and the University of Leiden (2009). From 1997 to 2002, she was Secretary of the Society for American Music. and Opera for the People: English-language Opera and Women Managers in Late 19th-century America (2017, Oxford University Press). Her biography on composer George Frederick Bristow was published by University of Illinois Press in 2020.