Max Erwin is a musicologist and composer originally from Tennessee. His research is primarily focused on musical avant-gardes and their institutional networks. His writing has been published in Tempo, Music & Literature, Twentieth-Century Music, Perspectives of New Music, Revue belge de Musicologie, Nuove Musiche, and Cacophony. His concert music has been performed in North America, Europe, and Australasia, and he has scored more than 30 film, TV, video game, commercial, and multimedia projects. He has collaborated with leading composers and performers, including Johannes Kreidler, Volker Heyn, Michiko Saiki, Michael Spencer, and Kathryn Williams, who recorded the flute work Inventory on Huddersfield Contemporary Records. His monograph, Herbert Eimert and the Darmstadt School: The Consolidation of the Avant-Garde, was published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press.

Max Erwin completed his PhD at the University of Leeds, funded by a Leeds Anniversary Research Scholarship, in 2020. He is currently Lecturer in the Department of Music Studies at the University of Malta.