Robert Adlington (United Kingdom), Associate Professor, University of Nottingham Adlington’s research interests include avant-garde music in the 1960s; music of the Netherlands; relationship between music and political/social movements; public subsidy and cultural policy. He is author of The Music of Harrison Birtwistle (CUP, 2000) and Louis Andriessen: De Staat (Ashgate, 2004), and editor of the volume Sound Commitments: Avant-garde Music and the Sixties (OUP, 2009). Adlington is currently writing a book on avant-garde music in 1960s Amsterdam, and editing a volume of essays on music and communism outside the communist bloc.
William Bares (United States), Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard University, New York Bares is a jazz pianist and ethnomusicologist specializing in African American music and popular music of the African Diaspora. He is currently working on his PhD Eternal Triangle: American Jazz in European Postmodern. His research focuses on the complex relationship between European, American, and African American identities in the evolving transatlantic jazz marketplace.
Lisa Barg (Canada), Professor at McGill University Barg’s research draws from modernist studies, jazz studies, and theories of race, gender, and sexuality. Her publications include an essay “Black Voices/White Sounds; Race and Representation in Virgil Thomson’s Four saints in Three Acts” (American Music, 2011). She has contributed an article on Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige to the volume Playing Changes: New Jazz Studies (ed, Robert Walser. Duke UP, forthcoming). Barg is currently writing a book on the subject of black internationalism, modernism and identity in the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
Ben Bierman (United States), Assistant Professor John Jay College, City University of New York Bierman has a Ph. D. in composition for the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His dissertation “The Music of George Handy” was nominated for the Barry Brook Dissertation Award. Among others, he published “George Handy Composes The Bloos” (September 2009) in Jazz Perspectives. Bierman also works as a composer, trumpet player, educator, arranger, producer, and bandleader.
Andrew John Blake (United Kingdom), Associate Dean at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of East London Blake is currently interested in the transformation of culture in the digital era, and has been working on the ways in which personal technologies changes the ways in which we think about music. Among his recent publications is Popular Music: the Age of Multimedia (Middlesex University Press, 2007)
Barbara Bleij (Netherlands), Lecturer in music theory at the Classical and Jazz Departments of the Conservatory of Amsterdam Bleij holds degrees in music theory and jazz piano performance. She has taught music theory at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague from 1993-2001. Barbara Bleij has published and presented papers on jazz analysis and jazz theory pedagogy. She was Editor of the Dutch Journal for Music Theory. Currently she is on the board of the Dutch-Flemish Society for Music Theory.
Rob Boonzajer Flaes (Netherlands), Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Amsterdam Boonzajer Flaes has published widely on visual anthropology and popular music. He has published Brass Unbound: Secret Children of the Colonial Brass Band (Royal Tropical Institute, 2000).
Rashida K. Braggs (United States), Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University As a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and visiting professor at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, Braggs has taught classes in jazz literature, introductory theatre and performance, race & gender in literature, and American literature & art history. Braggs has published in such journals as Nottingham French Studies, The Journal of Popular Music Studies and African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal. Currently, Rashida is writing a manuscript entitled Jazz Diasporas: Race, Music & Exile in Post-WWII Paris, which explores the transition of black music to global music and analyzes the migratory experiences of African American musicians from their American homeland to France
Darius Brubeck (South Africa/United Kingdom), Senior Research Associate, University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban Darius Brubeck is a pianist, composer, educator, bandleader, and historian currently living in London, England. Brubeck has written prefaces for Christopher Ballantine’s Marabi Nights and Jurgen Schadeberg’s Jazz, Blues and Swing and contributed articles to Jazz Educators Journal, The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz and the UK-based periodical, Jazz Review. As a pianist he leads the London-based Darius Brubeck Quartet.
Christa Bruckner-Haring (Austria), Ph.D. Candidate, University of Music and Performing Arts of Graz Bruckner-Haring obtained a B.A. in Piano Instrumental Study and a M.A. in Music Education at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz. She is currently working on her Ph.D. on Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, exploring his compositional techniques and his method of combining traditional Cuban and jazz elements in his own music. Bruckner-Haring is a member of the Rhythm Changes team.
George Burrows (United Kingdom), Senior Lecturer at the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media, University of Portsmouth Burrow’s academic interests are in psychoanalytical, sociological and philosophical understandings of interdisciplinary texts and practices involving music. In his work he aims at bringing new critical approaches to the study of music while also using music as a critical tool to explore other disciplines. He is founding editor of the journal, Studies in Musical Theatre (Intellect) and co-founder of the international Song, Stage and Screen conference.
Vincent Cotro (France), Senior Lecturer in Musicology at Université François-Rabelais, Tours Cotro worked for Jazz Magazine and Paris’s Cité de la Musique. He translated books by Ekkehard Jost and Lewis Porter and contributed to Les Cahiers du Jazz, Analyse musicale, Les Cahiers du CIREM, Les Cahiers de mediologie, La Revue de Musicologie and Jazzforschung. He is the author of Chants libres: le free jazz en France, 1960-1975 (Outre Mesure, 1999)
Pedro Cravinho (Portugal), Research Fellow at the Institute of ethnomusicology – Centro de Estudos em Música e Dança and CEJ, University of Aveiro Cravinho belongs to the research team of the project Jazz Messengers: The reception of Jazz and its promoters in XXth century Portugal, under the supervision of Susana Sardo (INET-MD and CEJ), supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. He is also a Jazz musician, performing double bass.
Scott Currie (United States), lecturer in music, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Currie’s research to date has focused on ethnographic studies of avant-garde practice in New York and Berlin, as well as historical/ethnographic studies of Ornette Coleman’s collaborations with Moroccan musician Jajouka.
Andrew Dewar (United States), Assistant Professor of Music, University of Alabama Dewar’s research interests include experimentalism in the arts, intercultural music, jazz and improvisation, music and technology, and 1960s intermedia arts. His article, “Searching for the Center of a Sound: Bill Dixon’s Webern, the Unaccompanied Solo, and Compositional Ontology in Post-Songform Jazz” appeared in a special issue of Jazz Perspectives. Current projects include a book on the seminal electronic music group the Sonic Arts Union, an article on the Buenos Aires-based 1960s intermedia ensemble Movimiento Música M’s, and the investigation of the ontological implications of the “re-performance” of jazz pianist Art Tatum’s improvisations.
José Dias (Portugal), Ph.D. Student Ethnomusicology, University Nova in Lisbon Dias’ main research interests include ethnomusicology, jazz and the sociology of music. In his essay “Playing Outside: Jazze Sociedade em Portugal na Perpectiva de Duas Escolas,” Dias focuses on the connection between jazz and the Portuguese society.
Jenny Doctor (United Kingdom), Research Fellow in Sound Recordings, University of York Doctor’s main field of interest is British culture in the twentieth century, particularly with respect to the development of sound technologies. She published The BBC and Ultra-Modern Music, 1922-36: Shaping a Nation’s Tastes (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and co-edited The Proms: A New History (Thames & Hudson, 2007), contributing an essay on the interwar period. At the same time, she and Nicky Losseff co-edited Silence, Music, Silent Music (Ashgate, 2007), to which she contributed the essay, “The Texture of Silence”. Current research involves an investigation of collaborations between Vaughan Williams and Adrian Boult in BBC broadcasts and the exploration of audiovisual recordings of jazz performances televised by the BBC in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
Andrew Dubber (New Zealand/United Kingdom), Reader in Music Industries Innovation, Birmingham City University Dubber is a member of the Centre for Media and Cultural Research. He researches music online, and is also a lecturer, author, consultant, public speaker, jazz broadcaster and blogger. His research interests include digital media cultures, online music enterprise, the mediation of jazz in the digital age, and music as culture. Dubber is the founder New Music Strategies and Music Think Tank, a board member of Un-Convention, as well as a member of the board of advisors for Bandcamp. His public lectures have included talks on the importance of copyright reform in the digital age; the act of blogging as storytelling; the evolution of media; the impact of technological change on music; music as cultural identity; broadcasting policy and music culture; radio in the digital age; specialist music radio and online fandom; jazz consumption practices in the digital age; the impact of digital technology on human cognition; as well as online strategies for marketing and distributing independent music. Dubber is a member of the Rhythm Changes team.
Byron Dueck (United Kingdom), Lecturer in Music at the Royal Northern College of Music Dueck’s research interests include indigenous music and dance in Canada, popular music in Cameroon, and jazz performance in the United Kingdom. His research interests include musical intimacies and imaginaries; rhythm, meter, and collective experience; and musical representations of multiculturalism. Dueck’s research on aboriginal music and dance will be highlighted in his forthcoming monograph Musical Intimacies and Indigenous Imaginaries: Aboriginal Music and Dance in Public Performance in Manitoba (Oxford UP). Dueck is a member of the What is Black British Jazz? project. He is also a member of the Experience and Meaning in Music Performance group.
Carlos Duque (Spain/United Kingdom), Ph. D. student, City University London Duque has studies analysis and composition with Carmelo Bernaola, Arturo Tamayo, and José Luis de Dels. He holds a B.A. in Anthropology of the Coplutende University in Madrid and an M.A. in composition from the City University London. He is currently doing research on the orchestral works by Roberto Gerhard.
Anne Dvinge (Denmark), Post Doctoral Fellow, University of Copenhagen Dvingea’s research activities lie in the interstices between jazz studies, American studies and cultural and literary theory. Dvinge is currently working on her research project “Jazz – A Cosmopolitan Vernacular: Transatlantic Narratives of Identity and Tradition.” This seeks to investigate narratives of national and transnational identities in the context of the transatlantic cultures. Dvinge is a member of the Rhythm Changes team.
Jonathan Eato (South Africa/United Kingdom), Lecturer in composition and jazz studies, University of York Eato’s main research interests include questions of performance practice in South African jazz. Among his current projects is the “Jazz in South Africa research Pages”, which aims to develop a critical understanding of jazz in South Africa that is informed by the thinking of the musicians who make the music.
Luis Figueiredo (Portugal), Ph.D. Candidate, the University of Aveiro Figueiredo currently conducts research about questions of musical identity in the playing by Portuguese jazz pianists. He works at the Centre for Jazz Studies at the University of Aveiro, where he is responsible for the management of the website and for the programming. Figueiredo also teaches the Jazz Chamber Music course at the same institution.
Petter Frost Fadnes (Norway), Associate Professor/Director of Studies (jazz), Department of Music and Dance, University of Stavanger Frost Fadnes was born in Stavanger, Norway in 1974. He has played regularly since the age of 16, performing within everything from heavy metal to ska, improvised music and jazz. In 1996 Frost Fadnes moved to the UK for a degree in jazz. He received his a PhD in Performance in 2004. Frost Fadnes has been active in and around the vibrant Leeds music-scene and co-founded Leeds Improvised Music Association (LIMA); now defining innovation in British jazz and improvised music. He currently performs with players from Norway and the UK. Frost Fadnes is a member of the Rhythm Changes team.
Krin Gabbard (United States), Professor of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook Gabbard is the author of Hotter Than That: the Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture (Macmillan, 2008), Black Magic: White Hollywood and African American Culture (Rutgers UP, 2004) and Jammina?? at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema (Chicago UP, 1996). He edited two anthologies, Jazz among the Discourse (Duke UP, 1995) and Representing Jazz (Duke UP, 1995).
Nick Gebhardt (United Kingdom/Australia), Lecturer in Popular Music, Lancaster University Gebhardt’s research interests include popular music in the United States, the entertainment industry, and jazz history and American ideology. He has published articles and reviews in wide variety of forums on the cultural history of popular music in the United States, including his book Going For Jazz: Musical Practices and American Ideology, (Chicago UP, 2001). Gebhardt is currently working on a book called Music is our Business: the Rise of the Popular Musician in American Culture, 1882-1929 (Chicago UP, forthcoming). Gebhardt is a member of the Rhythm Changes team.
John Gennari (United States), Director of the ALANA U.S. Ethnic Studies Program, University of Vermont Gennari has published widely on a great variety of topics in the fields Jazz Cultural Studies, Italian American Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, Popular Culture and the Expressive Arts and U.S. Cultural History. He published Blowin’ Hot and Cool; Jazz and its Critics (Chicago UP, 2006) and contributed chapters to Uptown Conversations: New Essays in Jazz Studies (eds. Robert O’Meally, Brent Edwards and Farah Jasmine Griffin, Columbia UP, 2004) and Miles Davis and American Culture (ed. Gerald Early, Missouri Historical Society Press, 2001).
Zbigniew Granat (United States/Poland), Assistant Professor of Music, Nazareth College, Rochester, New York. Granat has served as editor of a special issue of Muzyka devoted to “sonoristics” and “sonorism” (2008) and contributed an essay on the subject to Music’s Intellectual History (RILM, 2009). He is the author of a book chapter on Boulez in Music and Literary Modernism (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006) and has published in Grove Music Online, Muzyka, Down Beat, Jazz Forum, Notes, Jazz Research Papers, and Polish Review. Granat’s research interests include the history of twentieth-century music (especially the avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s, “sonorism,” music in the Cold War), musical aesthetics, history of music theory, and jazz.
James Hall (United States), Director of New College, University of Alabama Hall is specialized in the field of African-American cultural traditions. Previous research has focused on the jazz musician Mary Lou Williams documentary photography in the 1950s and early 20th century culture in Chicago. Hall has published Mercy, Mercy Me: African American Culture and the American Sixties (Oxford, 2001).
Charles Hersch (United States), Professor of Political Science, Cleveland State University Hersch’s interests include political theory, focusing on a political analysis of the arts, and public law, with an emphasis on American constitutional theory. In addition to articles on political theory and public law, he has written two books: Democratic Artworks: Politics and the Arts from Trilling to Dylan (State of University of New York Press, 1998) and Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans (Chicago UP, 2007).
Paul Hession (United Kingdom). Hession was born in Leeds in 1956. From the age of 7 he took guitar lessons and sang in a church choir. His first paid gigs were singing at weddings as a choirboy. At age 15 he took up drumming and was plunged into show business in the northern Working Mens’ Club scene. Largely selftaught, his drumming developed over the years and he is now known internationally for playing with many of the leading figures of the jazz and improv-scenes.
Elina Hytönen (Finland), postdoctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland Hytönen’s field is culture research and she has specialised in ethnomusicology. She is currently working on a project concerned with performance venues used in jazz, which is done in collaboration with the Faculty of Music, of the University of Oxford. Her PhD, which she received in June 2010, was concerned with jazz musician’s peak experiences, i.e. flow experiences, and the creation of optimal performance. Hytönen has written several articles in Finnish music journals.
Iván Iglesias (Spain), Professor of History and Musicology, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, University de Valladolid Iglesias’ research interests include Spanish jazz and jazz history. He is editor of the Spanish entries for the Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World (Continuum). Other publications include “Improvisando Aliados: el Jazz y la Propaganda Franquista de la Segunda Guerra Mundial a la Guerra Froa (in Actas del VII Encuentro de Investigadores sobre el Franquismo 2010); “(Re)Construyendo la Identidad Musical Espanola: El Jazz y el Discurso Cultural del Franquismo durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial”, in Historia Actual 21, 2010.
Bruce Johnson (Australia/Finland), Honorary Docent University of Turku (Finland) and formerly Professor, School of English, University of New South Wales (UNSW), with numerous visiting lectureships and professorships including at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Edinburgh’s Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Liverpool’s Institute for Popular Music, and the Department of Music at the Norwegian University fo Science and Technology (Trondheim). Bruce Johnson’s work focuses on the history of the modern era as an acoustic phenomenon: the role of sound in the confrontations which generated modernity as mapped through such demarcations as class, gender, nation state and race. Johnson’s full career publication list runs to nearly 400 items, from encyclopedia entries to major reference works including The Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz (Nominated “Outstanding Academic Book. 1988-89” by the academic review Choice), and The Inaudible Music: Jazz, Gender and Australian Modernity (Currency 2000).
Michael Kahr (Austria), Senior Lecturer and Researcher, University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz Kahr’s research interests comprise jazz theory, analysis, history and pedagogy of jazz and related styles of popular music, based on an analytical method which blends historic, sociocultural and archival research as well as investigations of form, harmony, melody and rhythmic structures. This interdisciplinary approach is reflected in his dissertation entitled “Aspects of Context and Harmony in the Music of Clare Fischer” and in articles which have appeared in journals such as Jazzforschung/Jazz Research.
Mikko Karjalainen (Finland/Netherlands), MA Student, University of Amsterdam Karjalainen’s main field of interest is African American Music. He is currently writing is thesis on the epistemology of cultural knowledge. By approaching cultural and musical change from an epistemological perspective, Karjalainen is exploring how epistemological differences effect the processes involved in cultural encounters.
Harald Kisiedu (United States), Ph.D. Candidate in Historical Musicology, Colombia University, New York Harald Kisiedu holds graduate degrees in political science and German studies from the University of Hamburg. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in historical musicology at Columbia University, where he is completing a dissertation on post-1965 jazz and improvised music in West and East Germany. He has published on the political reception of Wagner’s Meistersinger von Nürnberg in the National Socialist regime, on jazz and popular music in Terezan, as well as on Peter Brötzmann. As a saxophonist he has performed with Hannibal Lokumbe, Branford Marsalis, and George E. Lewis.
Leon Lhoest (Belgium), Lecturer of jazz harmony and analysis, arranging and ear training, Conservatory of Gent, Conservatory of Antwerp, Conservatory of Maastricht Leon Lhoest studied piano and composition/arranging at the Berklee College of Music, Boston USA. He received his MA in Jazz Composition & Arranging at the Brussels Royal Conservatory. Lhoest plays in and writes for different ensembles, and has published in the Belgian periodical Jazzmozaiek.
Mark Lomanno (United States), Doctoral Candidate, University of Texas-Austin Currently, Lommano is working on his thesis Improvising Difference: Constructing Canarian Jazz Cultures. Besides his research, Lommano works as a Jazz Pianist and Freelance Journalist.
Kristin McGee (Netherlands), Lecturer in popular music, University of Groningen Recently McGee has published Some Liked it Hot (Wesleyan UP 2009), and “Collectivities, Cosmopolitanisms and Mixed Mediations in Amsterdam’s Crossover Jazz Scene” (in Experiencing Mutuality: Music and Sociability in Urban Europe, edited by Wergin and Holt, Oxford University Press). McGee is interested in examining how cultural signifiers, including gender, race and ethnicity impact performance practice, especially in the fields of jazz, crossover and transnational popular music. She also examines globalization’s impact upon European popular musics and in particular upon the organization, promotion and musical reception of popular music festivals in Northern Europe.
Lucian McGuinness (Australia), Student at the University of Sydney. McGuiness’ research interests include the fields of critical theory, cultural studies, jazz pop culture, and popular music. For his master’s degree of Music Performance he wrote a thesis entitled A Case for Ethnographic Enquiry in Australian Jazz.
George McKay (United Kingdom), Professor of Cultural Studies, University of Salford McKay has written extensively about popular music, alternative cultures and lifestyles, protest, and festivals over the years. Among his most recent books are Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain (Duke University Press, 2005) and Radical Gardening: Politics, Idealism & Rebellion in the Garden (Frances Lincoln, 2011). His Shakina?? All Over: Rock, Pop and Disability is due for publication by University of Michigan Press in 2012. McKay is part of the Rhythm Changes team.
Haftor Mebdøe (United Kingdom), Jazz Musician in Residence and lecturer in composition at Edinburgh Napier University He has recorded four albums for Linn Records and Fabrikant Records with his eponymous group, performed at national and international music festivals and has scored soundtracks to numerous film and television productions. As an educator, Haftor has developed and delivered projects for a wide range of clients within the fields of higher education, adult learning and charitable organisations.
Milton Mermikides (United Kingdom), Lecturer in Music, University of Surrey Mermikides research interests include jazz, contemporary popular music, and electro acoustic performance, improvisation, composition, and analysis, with a special interest in time, feel and guitar performances. Previously, his activities covered music/science cross-disciplinary composition installation, and research projects. Mermikides also teaches jazz guitar at the Royal College of Music, London.
Celeste Day Moore (United States), Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago Moore researches American cultural history and the interplay of race and music in the U.S. and overseas. Her dissertation reconstructs the post-WWII network of musicians, writers, intellectuals, and activists in Paris who produced, consumed, and performed African-American culture. Moore has a background in documentary film research and community-based financial justice activism.
Eva Moreda (Spain/United Kingdom), Associate Lecturer, Open University, Milton Keynes Moreda research interests include political and social history of Spanish music during the first half of the 20th Century. She is currently working on her thesis The Musical Press in the Early Years of the Franco Regime (1939-1951): A Study of Perception.
Carol Muller (United States/South Africa), Professor of Music and Senior Ethnomusicologist in the Graduate Anthropology Group at the University of Pennsylvania. Muller is the author of Rituals of Fertility and the Sacrifice of Desire: Nazarite Women’s Performance; South African Music: A Century of Traditions in Transformation (second edition: Focus: South African Music); Musical Echoes: South African Women Thinking in Jazz, with Sathima Bea Benjamin. She has also edited four volumes of Symposium on Ethnomusicology and edited and introduced Shembe Hymns (translated by Bongani Mthethwa). She is currently working on three further books, Musically Connected; a book on the Penn field methods in ethnomusicology community partnership, co-authored with Tim Rommen; and The Power to Fly: Zulu Women Stories.
Rus Pearson (United Kingdom), lecturer in Performance Studies, Improvisation and Musicianship, Leeds College of Music Pearson was born in Wolverhampton 1981. In 2003 he graduated with a 1st class BMus in Jazz with Contemporary Music Honours degree and was awarded the Joseph Stones Award for Strings. Since then he has performed/recorded with Dave Liebman, Bob Mintzer, Soweto Kinch, Joanna MacGregor, Ken Vandermark, Ingebrigt Hoker Flaten, The Grand Union Orchestra, Don Weller, and Mike Walker amongst others. Rus has performed in Europe, the Middle East and North America, and has also appeared on television and radio. As a composer he has completed commissions for the BBC, Channel 4/E4 and various theatre and dance performances, and soundtracks for several independent films.
Dominik Phyfferoen (Netherlands/Belgium), Ph.D. Candidate, University of Amsterdam Phyfferoen is currently working on his research on traditional music and dance in Ghana, which entails a comparative study of the Music and Dance Cultures of Ghana with emphasis on the court music of the Dagoma of the Northern Region. He also works as researcher at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren.
Igor Pietraszewski (Poland), Lecturer at the Institute of Sociology, University of Wrocław Pietraszewski is a member of the Polish jazz society. His research interests include the history of jazz in Poland and nationalism in art. Besides his teaching activities Pietraszewski is an active musician, playing saxophone and clarinet. He is a member of the artistic board of “Jazz On Odra River,” one of the oldest jazz festivals in Poland.
Apostolos Poulios (Greece), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Poulios is a PhD student at the school of English, in the department of Language and Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His work is titled Construction of Social Identities in Talk: The Case of “the Elderly”.
Ken Prouty (United States), Assistant Professor of Jazz and Musicology, Michigan State University Prouty is a frequent presenter on jazz topics at scholarly conferences, including recent presentations for the Leeds International Jazz Conference, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Society for American Music, and the International Association for Jazz Education. He has published in Popular Music and Society, the Journal of Historical Research in Music Education, and the International Jazz Archives Journal.
Ronald Radano (United States), Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, University of Wisconsin-Madison Since joining the faculty in 1990, Ronald Radano has balanced his teaching between the programs in musicology and ethnomusicology and the Department of Afro-American Studies. His primary work is that of an Americanist with special interests in cultural theory, race, globalization, popular music, and the history of US black music. He is author of two, award-winning books, New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural Critique (1993) and Lying up a Nation: Race and Black Music (2003), and is co-editor (with Philip V. Bohlman) of Music and the Racial Imagination (2000), all published by the University of Chicago Press. Currently, he is completing a book on US black music and cultural ownership while co-directing, with Tejumola Olaniyan, the Madison-based research circle, Music-Race-Empire, sponsored by Global Studies and the International Institute. A 1997 Guggenheim Fellow, Professor Radano has held visiting appointments at Harvard and the University of Chicago, as well as research residencies at the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Pennsylvania (as a Rockefeller Fellow), the Institute for Research in the Humanities (Wisconsin), Harvard (W.E.B. Du Bois Institute), and New York University (Institute for African American Affairs). He is co-editor of two books series: Refiguring American Music (Duke University Press) and Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology (U Chicago Press). His course offerings include the “Music and Culture Workshop,” which draws together an interdisciplinary assembly of graduate students and faculty pursuing original research.
Bruce Raeburn (United States), Curator, Hogan Jazz Archive, Director of Special Collections, adjunct professor of History, Tulane University. Raeburn earned his doctorate in Cultural History from Tulane in 1991. He is fascinated by New Orleans jazz because it encompasses all facets of American history: race, class, gender, age, and ethnicity. He has published articles and liner notes in journals such as Louisiana Cultural Vistas, The Journal of American History, and Jazz Perspectives, as well as chapters in edited volumes. He is the author of New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History (Michigan UP, 2009).
Heli Reimann (FI/EE), Doctoral candidate, University of Helsinki Reimann’s research interests include the history of jazz in Estonian. Previously he has given papers on the construction of the Estonian Jazz tradition and on the meaning of the first experiences in self-stories of Soviet Estonian jazz musicians.
Claudia M. Rolando (Argentina, Italy, Spain), Ph.D. candidate, University of Valladolid, visiting scholar University of Amsterdam Rolando holds a Master in Performative Arts and Sciences from the University of the Basque Country (Spain), a Master in Spanish Music from the University of Valladolid (Spain), a degree in Classic Singing from the National Conservatory of Music, Buenos Aires (Argentina) and a degree in Music Arts, from the University Institute of Arts (Argentina). Her PhD research is focused on learning processes of vocal jazz. As of September 1, she is a visiting scholar at the University of Amsterdam, under the tutelage of Walter van de Leur.
Loes Rusch (Netherlands), Ph.D. Student in Jazz and Improvised Music, University of Amsterdam For her master thesis, Rusch investigated the institutionalization of jazz education in the Netherlands. In her current Ph.D. research project she engages with issues of identity, ideology and mediation in post-war Dutch jazz culture. Rusch is a member of the Rhythm Changes team.
Matt Sakakeeny (United States), Assistant Professor of Music, Tulane University Sakakeeny’s research explores the intersection of music with race, economics, and politics, particularly in the performance of African American music. His dissertation, Instruments of Power: New Orleans Brass Bands and the Politics of Performance, (2008) considers the brass bands as a powerful symbol of black culture. Sakakeeny’s article “New Orleans Music as a Circulatory system” for Black Music Research Journal 31 (2) is accepted for publication.
Michiel Schuijer (Netherlands), Head of Research and coordinator of the Classical Master’s Program, Conservatory of Amsterdam. A graduate of Utrecht University (Musicology) and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague (Music Theory), Schuijer has devoted himself to the advancement of music theory as a research discipline in the Netherlands. He was president of the Dutch-Flemish Society for Music Theory (1999-2006), and is currently chief editor of the Dutch Journal of Music Theory (Amsterdam University Press) His own research focuses on topics at the interface between music theory and historical musicology. His book Analyzing Atonal Music: Pitch-Class Set Theory and Its Contexts was published in 2008 by University of Rochester Press.
Floris Schuiling (Netherlands), Master student, University of Utrecht For his Master thesis, Schuiling researched the social interaction within performances by the Instant Composers Pool. From October, Schuiling will undertake his Ph.D., at Cambridge University supervised by Nicholas Cook. For his research he will engage with the concept of “creativity” in improvised musical performance.
Pierre-Emmanuel Seguin (Australia), PhD Candidate, Macquarie University, Sydney Seguin is currently working on his research project Historical and Analytical Approaches to Modal Jazz in Australia. His project is supervised by Bruce Johnson.
Alan Stanbridge (Canada), Associate Professor Visual and Performing Arts, University of Toronto. Stanbridge has published articles on popular music, jazz history, cultural policy, and cultural theory. He is currently working on a book entitled Rhythm Changes: Jazz, Culture, Discourse, to be published by Routledge. Stanbridge’s current interdisciplinary research project focuses on the manner in which a variety of discourses have shaped contemporary understandings of musical meaning and cultural value. These discourses have tended to become codified and naturalised, and have had a profound influence on the production, circulation, regulation, and reception of various forms of music. Drawing on a diverse range of musical examples from the early 20th Century to the present day, Stanbridge’s research explores the shifting value judgements that have served to circumscribe cultural artefacts, tracing the historical origins and contemporary trajectories of these evaluative discourses.
Tom Sykes (United Kingdom), Postgraduate Researcher, University of Salford Sykes has previously investigated the perception and reception of jazz in Britain since 1980. Currently, he is examining the impact of digital technology on the dissemination and consumption of jazz in Britain. Sykes is a member of the Rhythm Changes research team.
Catherine Tackley (United Kingdom), Senior Lecturer in Music, Open University, Milton Keynes Tackley’s research interests include historical and critical musicology with particular reference to jazz and popular music, early and European jazz, recording, jazz influenced music, and performance practice. She published The Evolution of Jazz in Britain 1880-1935 (Ashgate, 2005) and contributed chapters to Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe (ed Neil Wynn, University of Mississippi Press) and Recorded Music: Society, Technology and Performance (ed by Amanda Bayley, Cambridge UP). Catherine is a co-editor of the Jazz Research Journal (Equinox), and member of the editorial board of Studies in Musical Theatre (Interim Publications). She is currently completing a monograph on Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert (Oxford UP).
Jason Toynbee (United Kingdom), Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the Sociology Department, Open University, Milton Keynes In his research, Toynbee deals with issues of authorship in media and cultural production, and culture, race and ethnicity, and social theory. He published the books Making Popular Music (2000), Bob Marley: Herald of a Postcolonial World? (Polity Press, 2007) and was co-editor of the book The Media and Social Theory (Routledge, 2007). Toynbee deals with issue of copyright his forthcoming Copyright and Culture (Polity Press). He is leading the grant funded What is Black British Jazz? project.
Ioannis Tsioulakis (Ireland), Ph. D. Candidate, Queen’s University, Belfast Tsioulakis is primarily interested in urban music cultures and the impact of globality on local music scenes and networks. His research area is the Greek mainland. He is currently working on his research project Professional Musicians in Athens: Hybrid Identities and Globalised Imaginaries.
Walter van de Leur (Netherlands), Professor of Jazz and Improvised Music, University of Amsterdam and Conservatory of Amsterdam. Author of Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002; 2003 Society of American Music Irving Lowens Book Award for Distinguished Scholarship). His research for the Dutch Jazz Orchestra has led to six CDs with hitherto forgotten works by Strayhorn (1995 and 2002), Mary Lou Williams (2005), and Gerry Mulligan and Gil Evans (2008). As a member of the Rhythm Changes team, he is heading the September 2011 Amsterdam Jazz and National Identity Conference, hosted by the Conservatory of Amsterdam. Van de Leur is on the editorial boards of Jazz Perspectives, Music and Research (University of Oslo), and the University of Michigan Press’s Jazz Series. With Music Center Netherlands, he is currently working on the NL Real Book. Several other publications are forthcoming.
Indrikis Veitners (Latvia), Ph.D. Candidate, Latvian Music Academy, Riga Veitners is head of the Jazz department at the Riga Dome Choir School. Veitners teaches jazz history, saxophone and clarinet. He regularly writes about jazz in the magazine Music Sun.
Tim Wall (United Kingdom), Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies, Director of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University. Wall’s main areas of interest relate to popular music culture, the record industry and music radio. He is particularly interested in studies which combine political economy with cultural analysis, and which explore the implications of new technology. Currently, Wall is working on research into the place of the transistor radio in the US music culture of 1950s and on the way television represents popular music’s past. Wall is co-author of Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context (Pearson Longman, 2009) and author of his earlier book Studying Popular Music Culture (Arnold, 2003).
Tony Whyton (United Kingdom), Professor University of Salford Whyton has published widely on a great variety of topics, including jazz history, the politics of music education, the cultural influences of recordings and interdisciplinary approaches to music. In 2010 Whyton published Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths and the Jazz Tradition (Cambridge UP, 2010). His forthcoming Beyond A Love Supreme (Oxford UP), will be a cross disciplinary study of the musical and cultural influence of John Coltrane’s seminal album. Whyton is the Project Leader of the Rhythm Changes team.
Katherine Williams (United Kingdom), Ph.D. Candidate, Music university of Nottingham Williams previous research projects have included an analytical study of Charlie Parker’s blues improvisations, and an investigation in to the nature of jazz venues in London. Her undergraduate dissertation considered the use of dance music to normalize scenes of madness in opera, film, and song cycles. Williams’ current research project is entitled Classical Values in British Jazz from the 1950s to the Present Day.