Sullivan Will Present Keynote Address at U.K. Herrmann-Hitchcock Conference

Dr. Jack Sullivan, a professor of English and the director of the American Studies program at Rider, will present a keynote address at a conference entitled Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock: Partners in Suspense, from March 24 to 26, at the Events Centre, Royal York Hotel, in York, United Kingdom. The conference was organized by the Faculty of Arts at York St. John University in York.

“One of the most famous, tempestuous and productive creative relationships in Hollywood, Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock collaborated on some of cinema’s most memorable films, sequences and musical motifs,” according to the conference web site.

Held to coincide with what would have been Herrmann’s 100th birthday, this three-day conference will explore the relationship between Herrmann and Hitchcock and aims to bring together practitioners and academics working on a range of theoretical, analytical and historical perspectives.

Considered the preeminent United States scholar on the subject, Sullivan is the author of Hitchcock’s Music, which analyzes the way the master of suspense complemented his filmed images with equally gripping musical scores. The book, published in December 2006 by Yale University Press, earned him an award at the 40th ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards Ceremony at Lincoln Center in New York in 2008.

Hitchcock’s Music, which was also cited by the London Observer as the best film book of the year and merited an admiring, full-page review in The New York Times, hardly represents the sum of Sullivan’s academic interests, however. A scholar of 19th- and 20th-century literature as well as music, film and American culture, he has written for Opera, The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsday, USA Today and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Sullivan has also authored program notes for the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C., Carnegie Hall and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.