He has degrees in composition and musicology from the University of North Texas. His work on Benjamin Britten has appeared in Music & Letters (2011), 19th-Century Music (2014), and in two recent essay collections (Cambridge Scholars, Boydell & Brewer, 2017). He has presented papers at a wide variety of conferences on topics ranging from Britten and music education to animé. Salfen is compelled by public musicology. He is a frequent program note annotator and has given many public lectures on a range of musical topics for the San Antonio and Dallas Opera, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Nasher Sculpture Center’s chamber music series, the San Antonio International Piano Competition’s Piano Series, and the McNay Art Museum’s public programming.