Mark Kligman

Mark Kligman is the inaugural holder of the Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music where he is a Professor of Ethnomusicology, Musicology, and Humanities. He is the former Chair of the Department of Ethnomusicology. He is on the Faculty Advisory committees of the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies and the UCLA Nazaarian Center for Israel Studies. He specializes in the liturgical traditions of Middle Eastern Jewish communities and various areas of popular Jewish music. He has published on the liturgical music of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn in journals as well as his book, Maqam and Liturgy: Ritual, Music and Aesthetics of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn (Wayne State University, 2009) notable selection winner Jordan Schnitzer Book Award. Maqam and Liturgy shows the interconnection between the music of Syrian Jews and their cultural way of life. His other publications focus on the intersection of contemporary Jewish life and various liturgical and paraliturgical musical contexts. Orthodox Popular music is the subject of his current work.

He is the academic Chair of the Jewish Music Forum and co-editor of the journal Musica Judaica. From 2014-2016 he was on the board of the Association for Jewish Studies. He is on the following boards: The Klezmer Institute; The European Centre for Jewish Music at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media; and the International Ernst Bloch Society.  Presently, he is the Chair of the Jewish Studies and Music Group for the American Musicological Society.

Professor Kligman was appointed in 2020 as the Director of the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience in the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. In Spring 2024 is the Thomas and Elissa Ellant Katz Fellowship, Research Fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University Pennsylvania.