Steve Halfyard

Professor Janet K. Halfyard (more commonly known as Steve) is Head of BMus programmes at RCS. Their research is mainly focused on music in horror/ supernatural and superhero film and TV, and publications include Danny Elfman’s Batman: a film score guide (Scarecrow Press, 2004), Sounds of Fear and Wonder: Music in Cult TV (IB Tauris, 2016) and the edited collections Music, Sound and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Ashgate, 2010) and Music in Fantasy Cinema (Equinox, 2012). Music, Sound and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was awarded the Whedon Studies Association’s ‘Long Mr Pointy’ for the best book in Whedon Studies in 2010, and the chapter on music in Buffy in Sounds of Fear and Wonder won the ‘Short Mr Pointy’ for 2016. They co-edited the Palgrave Handbook of Music and Sound in Peak TV (2025) with Prof, Nicholas Reyland (RNCM), and is a series editor, along with Prof. Reyland and James Deaville, of the Palgrave Television Music and Sound series.

She has also published on extended vocal technique (which she performs as well as researches) and edited a collection of essays on Berio’s Sequenzas (Ashgate, 2007).  Performing as Steve Halfyard, she has collaborated with a number of composers on new works, including Joseph Hyde, Ed Bennett and Simon Hall, and was a founding member of Ed Bennett’s contemporary music ensemble, Decibel, with whom she sang until 2007.

Steve was Assistant Course Director on the BMus at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire from 2001-2008, and Director of Undergraduate Studies (Music) there from 2008 onwards, before joining RCS in 2019.

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