Dr. Jeff Meyer teaches courses in global music, music history, film music, and worship. He also directs the Concordia Gamelan, along with Pempamsie, a West African drumming and dance ensemble. He has led study abroad trips to Malta and the Mediterranean, Prague, Ghana, and Great Britain. Currently serving as chair of the Department of Art, Meyer came to Concordia in 2000 and has since been involved in Bush Foundation grants on formative evaluation, chaired the Graduate and Core Curriculum committees, and served as Secretary of the Faculty, Director of CREDO (the college honors program), and chair of the Division of Fine Arts. He has received four Centennial Grants: on the lutesongs of John Dowland, ethnic music in the Fargo-Moorhead area, the generative analysis of rhythm in world music, and new practices in teaching aural skills.
Meyer received a Bachelor of Music degree in ethnic music theory from Wheaton College (Illinois) and a Master of Arts degree in music theory and a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Minnesota. He has presented papers on the historically based analysis of early English music and the analysis of world music at the South-Central Renaissance Conference, American Musicological Society and College Music Society chapter meetings, the West Coast Conference on Music Analysis, the International Conference on Music Analysis, and the International Conference on Analytical Approaches to World Music. His research and writing is published in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, International Journal of Music and Performing Arts, and Seventeenth-Century News. His studies in global music have included north Indian tabla, Ghanaian drumming and gyil, Javanese gamelan, and fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. He is currently an active member of Sumunar, a Twin Cities based Javanese gamelan ensemble. His film music work has centered on the film scores of Ennio Morricone.
Beyond his academic work, Meyer is a church musician and worship leader, composer of congregational and sacred song, and an avid disc golfer, golfer, hiker, biker, tennis player, and skier.