The Brook Center is a scholarly facility associated with the doctoral program in music at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. Founded in 1989 by the renowned musicologist Barry S. Brook and renamed in his memory after his death in 1997, the Center’s objectives are to provide a setting for wide-ranging research and documentation activities in music studies in all its breadth and across disciplines, from music theory to music iconography, with focus on a global approach as well as the local phenomena of New York, one of the most ethnodiverse cities in the world. The Brook Center aims to disseminate the results of its activities to the scholarly community and to the general public through conferences and events, publications, and exhibitions. The Brook Center thus serves as a connecting point for The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York City, and all those who seek to visit it—local researchers and visiting scholars, writers and lecturers as well as interested audiences.

The Brook Center houses a number of valuable archives, including papers and sound recordings of Barry S. Brook, Gustave Reese, and Emanuel Winternitz.

Music as oral tradition, performing art,  social practice, and ritual is an intangible cultural heritage whose knowledge and practice ought to be preserved and made accessible through research and documentation. The Brook Center will focus on preserving and transmitting this heritage in the years to come.