WAYNE ALPERN is the Founder and Director of The Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in Music Theory and Composition from the City University of New York, a J.D. from Yale Law School, a M.Mus. from the University of Michigan, and a B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude from Oberlin College. He is originally from Detroit, Michigan.

Professor Alpern is on the Techniques of Music Faculty at Mannes College of Music, The New School University in New York City, where he teaches Schenkerian Analysis and Intellectual History, Post-Tonal Theory and Analysis, and Jazz Performance, Theory, and History. He is the Founder and Director of the Society for Music Theory's innovative Graduate Student Workshop Program (GSWP), which conducts comparable interactive workshops for graduate students and emerging scholars in music theory and musicology across North America modeled after The Institute. He is responsible for raising all funds supporting both programs.

Professor Alpern is Legal Counsel for the Society for Music Theory and American Musicological Society, owner and President of Henri Elkan Music Publishing Co., Inc., and a former board member of the New York State Music Theory Society. He practiced civil litigation in state and federal courts in New York City for seventeen years and taught Intellectual Property Law, Philosophy and History for two years at Cardozo Law School as a Fellow of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy. His dissertation is on the conceptual relationship between music theory and jurisprudence. He advises individual scholars, teachers, and institutions on legal matters involving contracts, copyright, and defamation. His original musical compositions and jazz and popular musical arrangements are widely performed and he speaks and lectures frequently on a variety of topics in North America and abroad. His scholarly work appears in Theory and Practice, Music Theory Online, American Music Newsletter, Cardozo Law Review, and the New York Law Journal. He is married to the internationally renowned ballet mistress, Nancy Bielski, with two daughters at Vassar College. He lives in Manhattan.