Dylan Crosson is a PhD candidate and graduate teaching associate in Musicology at The Ohio State University, where he also served as a graduate teaching associate in Music Theory. Dylan came to Ohio State with a Master of Arts in Musicology from Pennsylvania State University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Worship Arts from Spring Arbor University. During his time at Spring Arbor and Pennsylvania State, he studied the intersection of musical modernism and the genre of finger-style guitar — especially the music of Michael Hedges. 

Dylan’s current research focuses on the connection between music-making and spiritual formation in contemporary worship music (CWM), and how philosophies of this connection influence musical practice and aesthetic ideals within this tradition. Dylan has presented research on this topic to academic audiences at national and international conferences, as well as to public audiences through invited talks at universities and houses of worship. His dissertation, “Sonic World Without End: Foregrounding Reverb in Contemporary Worship Music,” explores this connection by weaving together fieldwork, musical analysis, interviews, conceptual metaphor theory, and the study of material culture to better understand CWM’s musical objects, the inner machinations of the tradition itself, and the socioreligious contexts in which it operates. 

In addition to his work on CWM, Dylan’s research interests also include the history of Christian musical thought, Transcendentalism, American classical music of the twentieth century, music consumption, and the religiosity of sports.