Daniel R. Melamed is professor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and has taught at Yale University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and at Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Harvard University and an M.A. in choral music and early music performance from Stanford University. He has published articles on J. S. Bach, the Bach family, and Mozart opera; and has edited musical works from the early 17th to late 18th centuries. He served as editor of the Journal of Musicology and as vice president of the American Bach Society, and is now that society's General Editor. He is the author of Hearing Bach's Passions (updated paperback 2016) for general readers, and of J.S. Bach and the German Motet; co-author (with Michael Marissen) of An Introduction to Bach Studies; and editor of the essay collections Bach Studies 2 and J. S. Bach and the Oratorio Tradition. His new book for general readers, Listening to Bach: the Mass in B Minor and Christmas Oratorio, will appear in 2018 from Oxford University Press.

He is adviser to the Bloomington Bach Cantata Project, which presents Bach’s church cantatas in performances modeled on his own, and plays bass guitar in the 80s cover band Don’t Call Me Betty.