Jeana Melilli

Jeana Melilli is a PhD candidate in Historical Musicology at the University of Florida. Areas of study include Eighteenth-Century performance practice, gender studies, labor history and practice, and the confluence of theory and praxis. Her dissertation, “Unfootnoting Women: The Sociability of the Eighteenth Century Trio and Accompanied Sonatas,” reveals the genre’s reliance on the musical ability and patronage of women musicians and composers in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, especially Naples and Noto, Sicily.

Jeana has presented her research on the trio sonatas of François Couperin, Pietro Locatelli, and J. S. Bach at national and international conferences. She co-created Lux Solaris, an Eighteenth-Century music ensemble at the University of Florida. For the 2021-2022 academic year, she was a FLAS fellow in Italian at UF. The UF Center for European Studies and Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere each awarded her travel grants to finish her dissertation in Italy for the summer of 2023.

Jeana received her BM in Flute Performance from The Catholic University of America and an MM in Flute Performance from Northwestern University. As an orchestral flutist, Jeana is Principal Flute of the Savannah Philharmonic and Third Flute/Piccolo of the Greenville Symphony Orchestra Her chamber groups include the historical performance ensembles Savannah Baroque and the Vista Ensemble in Columbia, SC, as well as more modern chamber works with The Blue Heron Chamber Ensemble in Savannah, GA.