Larry Starr has been on the University of Washington School of Music faculty since 1977. He specializes in 20th-century music and American music, and has lectured and published extensively on the music of Charles Ives, George Gershwin, and Aaron Copland in particular, and on American popular music and music theater.

Starr is the author of A Union of Diversities: Style in the Music of Charles Ives (1992), of The Dickinson Songs of Aaron Copland (a College Music Society Sourcebook in American Music, 2003), and of George Gershwin (a Yale Broadway Masters book, 2010). He is also the co-author, with Christopher Waterman of UCLA, of American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3 (now in its fourth edition, 2013), and, with Waterman and hip-hop scholar Joseph G. Schloss, of Rock: Music, Culture and Business (2012). His published articles have appeared in journals such as American Music, Perspectives of New Music, and The Musical Quarterly, and cover a range of topics, from the importance and influence of Debussy to the music of the Beach Boys.

Teaching has always been the central focus of Starr’s career. He has taught many different courses, including those for general students, as well as music majors. In 1995, the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington honored him with the title of Honorary Liberal Arts Professor to acknowledge his “outstanding contributions to undergraduate education.”

Starr earned a Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley.