Meet Melissa Bialecki Miller

Please join us in welcoming Melissa (Mel) Bialecki Miller to the Classical 90.9 team. Mel is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying ethnomusicology with a minor in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Her dissertation research on Ukrainian popular music explores the variety of roles musicians play to support, disseminate, and perpetuate Ukrainian culture in the context of the Russian invasion. She is especially interested in how Ukrainian folk idioms are employed in popular music and how female musicians challenge and reshape ideas about gender during wartime. In 2023, she completed eight months of fieldwork in Warsaw, Poland, where she attended Ukrainian concerts and spoke with artists and diasporic audiences about the role of music during the war. She has received Foreign Language and Area Studies scholarships to study both Ukrainian and Russian and has studied Polish through the support of American Councils. For many years, she participated in UIUC’s Balkan music ensemble, Balkanalia. Additionally, she has served as co-chair of the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Special Interest Group for Musics in and of Europe (2023–25) and an editorial assistant for Slavic Review (2021–22 and 2023–25). 

Mel joins us as the next John Frayne Classical Music Graduate Student Fellow. “I’m excited for this opportunity to bring classical music to the local community,” she said. “My background is in academia, and what I’ve always found most rewarding about that work is education and outreach. Whenever I see a student enjoy a genre of music they might never have engaged with before, or realize something new about a piece they already enjoy, that’s when I feel I’ve really done my job. Working with WILL feels like a natural extension of that work. I love talking about music, I love telling stories, and I’m looking forward to learning to do all of that through the medium of radio.”

Although Mel possesses a strong background in classical music—having studied cello since she was ten years old, performed in university and professional ensembles, and taught music from kindergarten to the undergraduate level—radio presents new territory for her. “Classical radio is such an important and accessible means by which we bring this music to the community,” she said, “so I’m looking forward to learning more about what goes into that, and how to (eventually) do it well.”

She believes radio is one way we can counter the notion that classical music is an elitist art form. “You don’t need to buy a concert ticket or find time to attend the symphony—all you need to listen is a home or car radio or internet access,” she explained. “As someone from a small Midwestern town, I didn’t have many opportunities to attend the opera or symphony growing up, so radio was where I began exploring classical music. Now, I’m grateful to be in a position where I can continue that cycle by bringing that music to others.”

Mel recounted how classical radio was a lifeline for her as a young cello student trying to expand her musical horizons. When she got her first car (a beat-up 1995 Ford F-150 with no CD drive or bluetooth), she tuned into the local classical music station every day during her half-hour commute to school through the fields of southeastern Michigan. “When I started out, I couldn’t tell Mozart from Mussorgsky,” she recalled. “After a few months, I started recognizing certain pieces by ear. After a year, I could name some of them and take an educated guess at who the composer might be. All that listening helped me figure out my tastes, developed my ear, and really set the foundation for my career in music. I owe a lot to that classical station.”