TOUR LECTURERS
Brian Mann
Brian Mann, a native of San Francisco, began his undergraduate education as a music major at UC Berkeley, and completed it at Edinburgh University (Scotland). He then returned to UC Berkeley and enrolled in the Department of Music’s graduate program. After completing his Ph.D. in historical musicology (1981), he taught for many years at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, until his retirement in 2021.
At Vassar, he served as chair of his department, and as Dean of Freshmen (in the mid-1990s). His teaching responsibilities ranged widely, from courses in the history of Western music and music theory, to non-major offerings in film music and the history of American jazz. He is also a jazz pianist, and over the years has given many concerts at Vassar, performing with a range of established artists from New York. He has traveled widely in Europe, and during his years at Vassar accompanied several Vassar Alumni Tours, in both France and Italy.
For Cal Discoveries Travel, he has been the lecturer for “The Provincial French Countryside” (2023); “Across Spain and Portugal with Paradores and Pousadas”(2024); and “Cruising the Heart of Europe: Amsterdam to Budapest” (2026). He enjoys sharing his knowledge of European music, as well as his love of European history more broadly.
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