BIOGRAPHIES
Dr Alan John Ainsworth is a freelance photographer and independent scholar based in London. He has been a photographer for over 40 years and has built up an extensive body of work in urban, architectural and jazz photography. Alan was Photographer in Residence at the University of Warwick Arts Centre between 2011-12 and has exhibited widely. As a writer Alan has published four books and many articles and reviews. His most recent book, Brussels Art Nouveau: Architecture and Design, was published in 2016 by Unicorn Press. Alan is currently writing a book about American jazz photography and has published a number of research articles on the subject.
Dr Noel Allende-Goitía is an independent scholar and researcher. At the Metropolitan Campus of the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, he coordinated the Puerto Rican Music Studies and Research Centre and the music graduate program. His has a B.M. in Voice from the Music Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico and a M.A. in History from the University of Puerto Rico. He made a postgraduate study in Musicology at the Centre of Studies and Development on Cuban Music (1992), in Cuba, with Zoila Gómez and graduated from Michigan State University with a PhD in Music with a major in composition and a minor in ethnomusicology He has published books in Puerto Rico music’s social and cultural history, music instruction and music historiography. His works in Music/Culture Social History have been presented at national and international conferences in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil, Uruguay, Spain, Perú, the United States, Mexico, and Ghana.
Tonny Araújo: Drummer, Historian and Master in Culture and Society. His dissertation is entitled: ‘Polyphony of voices and production of meanings in the press: a study on the discourses of Brazilian music critic about the influence of jazz on the Brazilian Popular Music (1962-1970)’. In addition to academic articles and journalistic articles on jazz and blues, he is the author of the book The Place of Jazz in the Construction of Brazilian Popular Music (1950-1956), published by the German publisher NEA.
Philip Arneill is a documentary photographer who, after spending almost 20 years living in Japan, is now based in Dublin, Ireland. He holds an MA in Photojournalism & Documentary Photography from University of Arts, London, and is interested in documenting urban landscapes and musical subcultures, as well as iPhone photography and the power of mobile publishing platforms such as Instagram. His work has been exhibited worldwide.
Ilona Auth is an audiovisual archivist based in New York City. Since 2016 she has overseen the digitization of audiovisual collections at the United Nations. Prior to her role at the UN, Ilona worked as a digital restoration artist for the Criterion Collection. She holds a BA in Film Studies from the University of Pittsburgh and a certificate in film archiving and preservation from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman Museum. A life-long lover of performing arts, Ilona maintains a personal creative practice through her ongoing study of tap dance.
Aurel Baele: As a historian I am interested in global history and cultural exchanges between the West and East-Asia, and in music. I obtained a BA in Japanese Studies and a MA in History (cum laude) at the KU Leuven in Belgium and I am currently a PhD candidate at the same university. My PhD-project focusses on the Japanese influential, transnational record company Nippon Victor. The aim is to investigate its agency in the dissemination of jazz in the Japanese Empire and its successor state Japan between 1927 and 1952.
Andrew Bain is one of the UK’s leading performers and educators. A graduate of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, he has performed with Wynton Marsalis, Natalie Cole, Kenny Wheeler, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, and many others. Receiving his MMus from the Manhattan School of Music, he was resident in New York from 2001-07. His latest project – No Boundaries – features trumpeter Peter Evans, saxophonist John O’Gallagher and sound artist Alex Bonney. The group will release their debut album on Whirlwind Recordings in November 2019. Andrew is Deputy Head of Jazz at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and Artistic Director of Jazz for the National Youth Orchestras of Scotland.
Adam Biggs is a jazz pianist and lecturer and have been head of jazz studies at Bath Spa University since 2012. I am Australian and grew up in Adelaide, South Australia. My BA in music was at the Elder Conservatorium (Jazz performance). In the 1990’s I travelled widely and in 2003 moved to the U.K. working as a freelance Jazz pianist. I gained my Masters in Performance from Bath Spa University in 2010-11 and have published a number of articles and works, including The Fabulous Baker Boys Songbook, Jazz as individual Expression: An Analysis of the music of The Fabulous Baker Boys Soundtrack, and presented at conferences including The Music of Mad Men (Television Series).
Matthew Bliss: Born 1997, originally from and currently residing in Solihull. Studied History and Politics at the University of Leicester from 2016-2019. Wrote dissertation on foreign musicians during the Musicians’ Union restrictions from 1935-1955, with an emphasis on its impact on British jazz and the context of anti-black racism in Britain.
Samuel Boateng is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and researcher from Ghana. He is a Ph.D. student in the Jazz Studies program at University of Pittsburgh and holds an M.A. in Ethnomusicology from Kent State University with a focus on women and Ghanaian popular music. His interests include transnationalism, modernity, sustainability, in shaping Jazz practices around the world. Samuel has performed at the John F. Kennedy Center, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, and Lincoln Center. He has toured several states in the U.S. and Indonesia. As a composer his works have been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra.
Martin Breternitz, born in 1987, studied musicology in Leipzig and Weimar (Germany), as well as jazz saxophone under various professional players. M.A. in musicology with specialization in history of jazz and popular music at Weimar Music School FRANZ LISZT 2015. PhD project on jazz in the GDR since 2016 in Weimar and Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena.
Christa Bruckner-Haring: PhD in musicology, specialization in Jazz and Popular music research: Gonzalo Rubalcaba und die kubanische Musik (Graz: Adeva, 2015). Since 2008 researcher at the Institute for Jazz Research of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz; in 2009 visiting scholar at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, Newark, NJ. 2010–2013 project associate on the HERA-funded research project Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures & European Identities. Since 2016 deputy director of the Institute for Jazz Research and co-editor of its publication series Jazz Research, Studies in Jazz Research and Jazz Research News. Main research focus on musical transcription, jazz and popular music analysis – particularly of American and Cuban music – and jazz cultures in Europe.
Dariusz Brzostek is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. His main research interests are sound studies, science & technology studies, science fiction, and horror studies. His current research project is concerned with early Polish electronic music (Polish Radio Experimental Studio), counterculture in Poland, Communist Era science fiction, and history of jazz. He published two books in Polish: Literature and Non-Reason: The Anthropology of Horror Story (2009) and Listening to the Noise: Sound Studies Between Expression and Experience (2014), and papers such as: The Polish Radio Experimental Studio as a Laboratory, [in:] Ultra Sounds. The Sonic Art of Polish Radio Experimental Studio, red. D. Crowley, Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2019, [co-author: Joanna Walewska]; Electronic Music, Socialism and Modernity. On Remastering the Archives of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio, [in:] Transcultural Music Traditions, red. R. Strohm, Intercultural Music Series, dir. by M. P. Baumann, Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, Berlin 2019. He is also fieldwork recordings in China, USA, Morocco, Jamaica, France and Portugal, and sound artist experimenting with electronic sounds.
Anthony Bushard is Associate Professor of Music History and Chair of the Theory-History-Composition Area in the Glenn Korff School of Music at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He is the author of Leonard Bernstein’s On the Waterfront: A Film Score Guide (Scarecrow Press, 2013), co-author of Music as Art, Discipline, and Profession (iBooks, 2013-2019), and co-editor of Anxiety Muted: American Film Music in a Suburban Age (Oxford University Press, 2015). His work has also been featured in numerous journals and he has lectured on both jazz and film music at regional, national, and international venues.
Dr Ramsey Castaneda (DMA) is a Los Angeles, California based educator, researcher, performer, and composer. He has performed in a variety of venues from Carnegie Hall to LA recording studios for television shows, music videos, commercials, and most recently on Michael Bublé’s 2018 album, Love. He has presented research at the Jazz Education Network Conference, the California All-State Music Education Conferences, and the 2019 Documenting Jazz Conference in Dublin, Ireland. His research interests include jazz representation in popular culture and philosophy of music. He received his DMA in jazz studies from the University of Southern California in May 2018.
Nicolau Clarindo: Guitarist, music teacher and researcher. Master student in Music in the research line of Theory and History at the State University of Santa Catarina (UDESC) graduated in Music Degree from the University of Vale do Itajaí (Univali) and Popular Guitar by the Conservatory of Popular Music of Itajaí (CMPI). Research music in Itajaí (SC) focusing on the history of jazz in Santa Catarina.
Mike Coates, currently the Chairman of The Duke Ellington Society of the United Kingdom (DESUK). A lifelong Jazz Fan, with a particular interest in piano jazz, and, of course, the contribution of Duke Ellington to Jazz Music. A practising Jazz Discographer with contributions to numerous magazines and other publications. Joint compiler of the yearly Jazz Catalogue volumes published by Jazz Journal.
Dr Glenda Cooper is senior lecturer in the Department of Journalism at City, University of London. She has been a journalist at national level for more than two decades, working as a staffer at the Independent, Daily Mail, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and Evening Standard. She was a health reporter for the BBC News Channel and a correspondent for BBC Radio 4’s World at One and PM programmes. A former columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, she still freelances. She was the 2001 Laurence Stern Fellow at the Post and also the 2006-7 Guardian Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. Her latest book is Reporting Humanitarian Disasters in a Social Media Age. 2018 Routledge. She is currently working on a study on the work of Alistair Cooke.
Chris Cottell is a musician, librarian and academic with an interest in jazz, memes and the internet. He read for a BA in Music at the University of Oxford and will be studying an MA in Musicology at Goldsmiths, University of London next year. In the intervening years he has been working as a librarian, at first at Christ Church, and currently in the Music section of the Bodleian library. He composes music based on memes (a recent piece called Darude – Recorderstorm), writes poetry and sometimes plays the drums.
Stephen Cottrell is Professor of Music at City, University of London. His research interests include: ethnographic approaches to musicians and music-making, particularly of classical music; the study of musical instruments, especially the saxophone; and the study of musical performance. Publications include Professional Music-making in London(Ashgate, 2004) and The Saxophone (Yale, 2012).
Dr Pedro Cravinho, researches and writes about Jazz, Media, and Archives. Currently, he is the Keeper of the Archives at the Faculty of Arts, Design & Media, and a Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. Cravinho research interests include the twentieth-century jazz diaspora social, political and musical history. As an author and editor advisor, Cravinho has collaborated in several international publications, such as Jazz and Totalitarianism (2017, Routledge), The History of European Jazz: The Music, Musicians and Audience in Context (2018, Equinox), and The Oxford History of Jazz in Europe (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). Currently is working in his monograph, Encountering Jazz and Television in Cold War Era Portugal (forthcoming, Routledge).
Adriana Cuervo is currently the Head of Archival Collections and Services at Rutgers–Newark. She is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Institute of Jazz Studies—the largest and most comprehensive jazz research facility in the world, located in the John Cotton Dana Library—as well as the newly established Rutgers – Newark Archives, a collection of materials documenting the history of Rutgers–Newark as an anchor institution in its host city. She is a member of the editorial board for The American Archivist—the peer-reviewed journal of the Society of American Archivists and the leading publication in the archives field—and has held different leadership positions in the Society of American Archivists, the Midwest Archives Conference, and the Music Library Association. She holds a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Laurent Cugny is Full Professor at Sorbonne Université since 2006. He is the author of several books about jazz, among them: Électrique – Miles Davis 1968-1975 (1993, reissue Dijon, Éditions Universitaires de Dijon, 2019), Histoire du jazz en France, 1. Du milieu du XIXe siècle à 1929 (Paris, Outre
Jenai Cutcher is the Executive and Artistic Director of the Chicago Dance History Project. Her creative practice includes dancing, choreographing, teaching, and researching histories of dance to present in a variety of media. She has written articles for dance publications, dance books for children, and Columbus Moves: A Brief History of Contemporary Dance. Her documentary, Thinking On Their Feet: Women of the Tap Renaissance, explores the work of the women who resurrected and revolutionized the art of American jazz tap dance. Cutcher has a BA in English and MFA in Dance, both from The Ohio State University, and was recognized for her work at CDHP with a 2019 Ruth Page Award.
Dr Lawrence Davies is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the International Centre for Music Studies at Newcastle University. His research focuses on the global transmission, reception, and performance of the blues. Before arriving at Newcastle, Lawrence was a Postdoctoral Researcher in Jazz and Popular Music at the Institute for Jazz Research, University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz, Austria. His research appears in Jazz Research Journal (2019), The Global South (forthcoming), and he has contributed a chapter on post-war jazz in England for the forthcoming Oxford History of Jazz in Europe.
John Ehrenburg is the Research Projects Manager at RIPM (Répertoire international de la presse musicale), where he works closely with the newly released RIPM Jazz Periodicals collection. He is a faculty member at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, and previously lectured at Frostburg State University. He holds degrees in music education, musicology, and a doctorate in trumpet performance from the Peabody Institute, as well as a master’s degree from Yale University. His research interests include historical jazz periodicals, jazz oral history, new organology, and sound studies.
William Ellis is a professional photographer specialising in jazz. His work is exhibited extensively at international level: it is held in private collections worldwide and those of major institutions including the National Portrait Gallery London, the ARChive of Contemporary Music in New York and the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City MO. His photographs have been used in the JAM (Jazz Appreciation Month) Outreach program in the United States initiated by the Smithsonian Institution.
Peter Elsdon is senior lecturer in Music at the University of Hull. His publications include a book on Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert (Oxford University Press 2013) and Watching Jazz, edited with Björn Heile and Jenny Doctor (Oxford University Press 2016). He is currently working on a project that examines technologies of listening by using ideas such as mediation, agency, and object-oriented ontology.
Dr Damian Evans is a double bassist and researcher who completed his PhD studies at Dublin Institute of Technology where he was awarded theFiosraigh Dean of Graduates award. A research associate of the Research Foundation for Music in Ireland, he has guest lectured at University ofDublin and has co-edited The Musicology Review (UCD). Evans has published in the Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland and the Association of Irish Composers New Music Journal. He established the Galway Jazz Club and Galway Jazz Festivals and chaired the 2019 Documenting Jazz conference in Dublin. He is book review editor for Jazz Perspectives.
Dr Petter Frost Fadnes is a Norwegian saxophone player, lecturer and researcher based at the University of Stavanger. With a PhD in performance from University of Leeds, Frost Fadnes was for many years part of the highly creative Leeds-music scene, and now performs regularly with The Geordie Approach, Mole and Kitchen Orchestra. Frost Fadnes has published on a wide range of performance related topics, such as jazz collectives, cultural factories, film scoring, jazz for young people and improvisational pedagogy. He is Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of Research at the Faculty of Performing Arts, and former principal investigator for the HERA-funded research project Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities.
Dr Roger Fagge is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Warwick. His publications include The Vision of J.B. Priestley (2012), and he was co-editor of New Jazz Conceptions: History, Theory, Practice (2017) He was co-director of the AHRC Network, ‘Jazz and Everyday Aesthetics’, and is co-editor of a forthcoming double issue of Jazz Research Journal on this subject.
Will Finch is a doctoral student at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Dr Guido Heldt. His PhD explores music in the BBC arts documentary series Arena – on the means by which Arena constructs ideas about music, and on the uses the series itself makes of music. Will’s research interests also include jazz on-screen and the role of music and sound in natural history documentaries.
Dr Mike Fletcher is a saxophonist, composer and postdoctoral research fellow at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire/Birmingham City University. He locates his practice within the fields of jazz and improvised music, and his main research interests are the creative processes and conceptual implications of composing for improvising jazz musicians.
Robert Fry is a senior lecturer in music history and literature at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, where he teaches courses in global music, jazz, blues, music in the American South, and music tourism. His current research focuses on music tourism and the role of fan culture in the production of a musical place.
Marilia Giller: Pianist, Composer and researcher Master in Ethnomusicology, and teacher in UNESPAR Campus II – Piano Jazz, Practice in Jazz, Seminars in Music: Jazz. Coordinates the Nucleo of Study in Paraná Music and observes in musical collections, archives and documents historical and sound jazz data in Paraná. She is a member of GTJAZZAL – Jazz Working Group in Latin America [IASPM-AL], coordinates GEJAZZBR – Jazz Study Group in Brazil, and the Extension Program – Cycle of Ideas: Transatlantic Jazz in Latin America CIJAL – UNESPAR.
Frank Griffith (DESUK Artistic/Academic Leader) As a renowned jazz saxophonist and clarinettist, Frank Griffith has been performing for over 40 years, primarily in New York and London. He has also achieved great acclaim as an arranger, composing for a number of well-known singers and musicians for over 30 years. More recently Frank has proved himself as a successful educator, teaching in both the USA and UK. Counting John Dankworth, Joe Henderson, Duke Ellington and Burt Bacharach as some of his main influences, Frank plays many forms of jazz including modern, mainstream and traditional alongside funk, soul and some crossover Classical. Now living in Liverpool, Frank continues to perform across the North West, UK and Europe.
Adam Havas received his PhD in sociology at Corvinus University of Budapest, Doctoral School of Sociology in 2018 December. Dr Havas is currently Chair of IASPM-Hungary, member of editorial board at Replika Social Science Journal and the Jazz Studies Research Group. Since December 2018 he serves as Head of Social Sciences Division at Milestone Institute. His is currently working on a European jazz research project which seeks to explore the role of musical socialization in the creation of late modern cultural distinctions in various cultural contexts.
Dr Matthias Heyman is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Antwerp, where he conducts a project on cultural values in international jazz competitions. In addition, he does research on historical recreation in popular music with a focus on Beatles tribute bands. In 2011, he led a research project on Belgian jazz heritage for CEMPER, and he remains invested in research on Belgian jazz.
Bernd Hoffmann, born in 1953, has worked for ARD (German Radio) and other German-speaking broadcasters in Europe since 1978. From 2002 – 2019 he was head of the jazz editorial department of Westdeutscher Rundfunk at WDR 3. He received his doctorate with the topic ’Der Reflex afro-amerikanischer Musik in deutschsprachigen Musik- und Rundfunkzeitschriften’ (The Reflex of Afro-American Music in German-language Music and Radio Magazines) and habilitated in the field of Popular Music/Jazz at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz (KUG) in 2003. He also teaches at various universities and technical colleges. In 2006 he founded the non-profit association ‘Radio Jazz Research’ and hosted more than 35 international meetings.
Brian Homer is a photographer, designer and writer. He was part of the original Handsworth Self Portrait project with Derek Bishton and John Reardon in 1979, with whom he also co-founded Ten8 international photography magazine. Homer has co-curated many self-portrait photography projects including 1000 images for the opening of the Library of Birmingham and the 50th Anniversary of Telford. Between 2012 and 2018 he was on the board of Birmingham Jazz, and currently is an active freelance photographer documenting the local jazz scene. His photographs and reviews have appeared in Jazzwise, London Jazz News and UK Vibe. Homer has also taken publicity photographs for jazz artists and projects such as Trish Clowes’ My Iris, John O’Gallagher and Pigfoot.
Nelsen Hutchison is a PhD student at UC Santa Cruz where his dissertation research will focus on the political economy of the San Francisco Bay Area jazz scene. He received his bachelor’s degree from the New School for Jazz and continues to perform throughout the Bay Area as a guitarist.
Dr Michael Kahr is a jazz pianist, composer/arranger, musicologist and artistic researcher, currently employed as Senior Lecturer at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz and serving as Dean at the Jam Music Lab Private University for Jazz and Popular Music in Vienna. He has also lectured at the state universities in Vienna, Salzburg and Sydney. His publications comprise the award-winning monograph Jazz & the City: Jazz in Graz von 1965 bis 2015, various book chapters, journal articles, CDs and musical scores. He is convenor of the international network of artistic jazz researchers and is currently preparing the edited volume Artistic Practice as Research in Jazz for Routledge. He composed for big band, string ensembles, choir and jazz groups and performed at festivals and in jazz clubs across the globe.
Dr Sigrun Lehnert is, since 2010, a scientific assistant in Hamburg. The same year, she took up her dissertation project at the University of Hamburg ‘Wochenschau und Tagesschau in den 1950er Jahren’ (about German newsreels and the first TV-News-show in the 1950s). She completed this project and earned her PhD in 2013. The following book was published by UVK Verlag, Konstanz. Her research interests comprise film and television history, film music, animation and film heritage.
Dr Katherine M. Leo (Ph.D., 2016, Musicology, The Ohio State University; J.D., 2015, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law) is an Assistant Professor of Music at Millikin University, where she teaches a variety of courses in music history and ethnomusicology. Dr Leo’s research investigates the intersection of American music and legal histories, with emphases on matters of authorship, ownership, and forensic similarity analysis in federal copyright litigation. She is a contributor to the Music Copyright Infringement Resource website and has recently published in Music and Politics, Darmstadt Studies in Jazz Research, and the Journal of Music History Pedagogy.
Dr Sean Lorre (Ph.D., Musicology, McGill University) is a lecturer at Rutgers University where he teaches graduate seminars and online courses on international jazz scenes, blues history, African American musical traditions, rock ‘n’ roll, and country music. His articles ‘Rhythm and Bluebeat: “Jamaican R&B” Live and on Record in Early-1960s’ London’, and ‘”Mama, He Treats your Daughter Mean”: Reassessing the Narrative of British R&B with Ottilie Patterson’ will appear in JPMS and Popular Music respectively in the coming year. He has presented his research at numerous international conferences including the AMS, the SAM, IASPM (US and Canada), and Rhythm Changes.
Cornelia Lund is an art, film and media theorist and curator living in Berlin. Since 2004, she has been co-director of fluctuating images, a platform with a focus on audiovisual production. She has been a research fellow in a DFG research project on German documentary film. And for many years she has been teaching design theory at various universities. Since 2014 she is a member of DokArt Hamburg. Cornelia Lund co-edited Audio.Visual – On Visual Music and Related Media (2009). She is also co-editor of The Audiovisual Breakthrough (2015) and lundaudiovisualwritings (2017). Her work as a curator includes numerous screenings and exhibitions.
Holger Lund works as an art, design, and music researcher and as a curator. Since 2011 he is a full professor of media design, applied art, and design studies at the Ravensburg University of Cooperative Education. Since 2004 he has collaborated with Cornelia Lund to lead fluctuating images. His research focuses on media art, design research and music visualization. Publications (co-edited): Audio.Visual – On Visual Music and Related Media(2009), The New People. Musik als Seismograph (2014), and lundaudiovisualwritings (2017). In addition he runs the music label ‘Global Pop First Wave’. Current research project: Turkish Pop Music Images.
Karen Campos McCormack (MA in Women’s Studies, BA in English and Classical Civilization), is a freelance translator, independent researcher and swing dance, music and history enthusiast. She translated Norma Miller’s biography Swingin’ at the Savoy: the Memoir of a Jazz Dancer into Spanish (La reina del swing, Ediciones Carena, 2018) and is the founder of Compostela Swing. She was the recipient of funding from the Frankie Manning Foundation to research the history of Lindy hop in Harlem (March 2018) and was a panel presenter at the Dance in the Age of Forgetfulness Royal Society for Dance Research Conference (London, April 2018) and Documenting Jazz (Dublin, January 2019).
Heidi Moyson, as a staff member at CEMPER, supports individuals and organisations in the care for their music archives and collections on a daily basis (collection management, digitization, etc.). For the past 18 months she has also been responsible for managing the large jazz collection of Juul Anthonissen, former concert organiser and jazz journalist, which is held by the municipality of Heist-op-den-Berg.
Dr Gayle Murchison, Associate Professor of Music at College of William and Mary, authored The American Musical Stravinsky: The Style and Aesthetic of Copland’s New American Music, the Early Works, 1921-1938 (2012). Her research focuses on African American and African disaporic music in the US and Europe. She explores intersectionality and socio-cultural movements (Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights, and Afro-European studies). Her ‘Mary Lou Williams’s Girl Stars and the Politics of Negotiation: Jazz, Gender, and Jim Crow’ appears in Jill Sullivan’s Women’s Bands in America: Performing Music and Gender in Society (2017). She served as editor of Black Music Research Journal.
Dr Patrick Olsen (Editor of Blue Light) is a professional musician that has worked in many music settings spanning jazz to traditional Irish folk music. He has been the solo flute player with The Irish Chamber Orchestra and The Irish Harp Orchestra, as well as the baritone saxophonist for a wide diversity of jazz ensembles. Patrick is based in Cambridge where he supervises undergraduate students for the Faculties of Education and Music at the University of Cambridge. [contact: olsen_patrick@hotmail.com]
Dr Iryna Paliy was born in Ukraine in 1983. She developed her interest in musicology and gained her PhD in Music (2012) at the Kotliarevskiy University Kharkiv, Ukraine. Her PhD thesis ‘Transduction as a Phenomenon of Musical Culture’ was based on diverse and crossover fields such as academic and non-academic music, psychology, philosophy, and linguistics. Iryna has completed a few more articles on various subject fields, having further developed the ideas introduced in her PhD thesis
Antony Pepper is a photographer based in the South East who joined Duke Ellington Society UK in 1997 and has attended all of the Duke Ellington Study Group conferences since. He was the lead organiser in London of Ellington 2008 and co-organiser of Woking’s Ellington 2012.
Eric Petzoldt graduates in Cultural Musicology and Social & Cultural Anthropology from Göttingen University, Germany, in summer 2019. His Master’s thesis, entitled ‘Sounds of Jewish Morocco: Present-Day Productions of 20thCentury Popular Maghrebi Music in Casablanca’, investigates how Jewish musical participation is performed, remembered and negotiated in Morocco today. In October 2019, Petzoldt started a PhD studentship at the University of Cambridge, Wolfson College, as a member of the ERC-funded research project ‘Past and Present Musical Encounters Across the Straits of Gibraltar’. His PhD project is entitled ‘Improvising Euro-Moroccan Intercultural Dialogue: The Role of Jazz Workshops in Present- Day Morocco’ (supervisor: Dr Matthew Machin-Autenrieth).
Dr Nicolas Pillai (Birmingham City University) was, in 2017, the recipient of an AHRC ECR Research Leadership Fellowship for a project entitled Jazz on BBC-TV 1960-1969. As well as conducting archival and ethnographic work, the project also generated two reconstructions of 1960s jazz television – Jazz 1080 (shot at BCU) and Jazz 625 Live (broadcast on BBC4). With Dr Katherine Williams, Pillai co-edits Jazz Research Journal. He is the author of the monograph Jazz as Visual Language: Film, Television and the Dissonant Image (I. B. Tauris, 2016) and has written numerous articles and book chapters on jazz, film and television. His first edited collection was New Jazz Conceptions: History, Theory, Practice(Routledge, 2017) and he is currently co-editing the collection Rethinking Miles Davis for Oxford University Press.
Dr Heather Pinson has degrees in interdisciplinary arts, music, and musicology and publishes predominately on popular music, jazz, aesthetics, and race theory. While serving in various administrative roles at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, PA, Heather teaches courses on art and music history and is the author of The Jazz Image: Seeing Music Through Herman Leonard’s Photography released by the University Press of Mississippi and is included in the University Press’s ‘American Music Series.’ Other publications include articles in Intersections: Canadian Journal of Music, Current Musicology, The Journal of American Culture, Rock Brands: Selling Sound in a Media Saturated Society, the Encyclopedia of the Blues, and the Encyclopedia of African American Music.
Dr Adiel Portugali is a researcher and lecturer at the department of East Asian Studies in Tel-Aviv University, and an associate postdoctoral fellow at Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, focusing on cultural and spatial aspects of popular music and jazz in contemporary China. Adiel is also a percussionist and the former drummer of the noise-punk band Ziknei Tzfat. In 2006-2010, he lived in China and worked as a percussion player and teacher (Pearl Percussion Centre), cultural attaché and translated Rony Holan’s Rhythm for All (2007). Currently, Adiel is working on his forthcoming book Jazz in Contemporary China: Shifting Sounds, Rising Scenes.
Dr Ari Poutiainen works as an Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research focus has recently been on improvisation, violin technique, jazz history and pedagogy. Poutiainen is also an established jazz violinist, composer and educator.
Lukas Proyer studied BA MA musicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG) and BA guitar at the Bruckner Universität Linz. In the Winter Semester 2017/18 he enrolled in the PhD-programme of the KUG. His research focuses on British jazz-rock of the 60s and 70s, with the aim of relocating bands being associated with the Canterbury scene in the context of jazz history. Since October 2018, he is a university assistant at the Institut für Jazzforschung/Institute of Jazz Research (KUG).
Amanda Quinlan is a professional photographer with a decade of experience photographing portraits, events, and fine art in Southern California. She has a background in communication studies and is currently a Master of Fine Arts student at California State University, Long Beach. Her research interests include the image as a communication tool, the Dusseldorf, and new topographer schools of photography and jazz enthusiast.
Justyna Raczkowska graduated musicology and romance studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań in 2015. The same year she started to work at the National Library of Poland in the Polish Jazz Archive. Since than she worked on the Zbigniew Seifert collection, which she described in the article published in 2019 in „Polish Libraries”, a journal of the National Library of Poland. She also contributed to the preparation of the catalogue of the Zygmunt Mycielski archive published in 2017. Currently she is involved in the works on two catalgues: of the Krzysztof Komeda archive and the archive of the Bacewicz family.
shady R. Radical is a PhD student in the School of Film, Media and Theatre at Georgia State University. She is co-founder of collective and band, theRadicals, a performance art team that seeks to de-stabilize oppressive structures in anti-black racism in southern American culture. Her research in visual culture and background in film and television informs her work on performance and contemporary black art practices. Her interdisciplinary approach uses ethnographic and archival methods to approach contemporary art practices and the black radical tradition. She has recently presented work at the 2018 A3C Hip Hop Music Conference and in the inauguration of Rhythms of the Exodus, a mobile music exhibition currently travelling the United States.
Dr Toni Sant is Director of the Digital Curation Lab at MediaCityUK with the University of Salford’s School of Arts and Media. He is also the Artistic Director of Spazju KreaWv, Malta’s National Centre for Creativity. He has published widely on media archaeology and digital heritage preservation. His most recent book Documenting Performance: The Context and Processes of Digital Curation and Archiving was published by Bloomsbury in 2017. An associate editor of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media published by Routledge, he is also a founding member of the Wikimedia Foundation affiliated user group Wikimedia Community Malta, supporting Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in Malta.
Thiago Santiago: Drummer, Historian Specialist in Amazonian History and Culture from the Integrated College Brazil Amazonia. History teacher at the public school in Santarém-PA, researches the performance of jazz in the capital of Para and in the city of Santarém in the state of Pará. He is part of the group ‘Muiraquitã Jazz Trio’ as a drummer.
Alyn Shipton is a research fellow in jazz at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He has published and broadcast on jazz subjects for many years, and still presents Jazz Record Requests on BBC Radio 3. He won the Marian McPartland/Willis Conover Award for lifetime achievement in Jazz Broadcasting in 2013 and a Parliamentary Jazz Award as broadcaster of the year in 2010. His New History of Jazz (Continuum, 2001; revised edition, Bloomsbury 2007) has become a standard work on both sides of the Atlantic and won the Jazz Journalists’ Association Book of the Year award. HIs 2013 biography of Harry Nilsson won an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for best research on Popular Music.
Laurisabel Silva: Flautist, composer, doctoral student in Ethnomusicology at the PHD Program in Music School at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador (BA), licensed in Music Degree by the same institution.
Macy Skipworth is currently pursuing her PhD in English at Texas Tech University with a specialty in Film and Media Studies. She also received her Master’s degree from Texas Tech. Macy is in the fourth year of her PhD, and is currently working on her dissertation which examines the relationship between jazz music and different forms of mass media during the early 20th century
Jacqueline Sinclair has been as a member of the Joel Hall Dancers for thirty years, performing in many of Hall’s world premieres. She served as Rehearsal Director and Assistant Artistic Director before becoming Artistic/Executive Director in 2018. After studying and performing the Joel Hall Jazz Breathing Floor Barre method throughout her career, she is excited to launch a teacher’s certification program through Joel Hall University. Sinclair holds a BA in Dance from Columbia College of Chicago, a secondary teacher’s certification from Northeastern Illinois University, and an MA in Theatre from Northwestern University.
Dr Alan Stanbridge is an Associate Professor in Music and Culture in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media, and also teaches in the Master of Museum Studies Program, at the University of Toronto. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on popular music and jazz history, and he is currently working on a book entitled Rhythm Changes: Jazz, Culture, Discourse, to be published by Routledge. In a previous life, Stanbridge pursued a 15-year career in professional arts management and music promotion in the UK, during which time he held the post of Director of the Glasgow International Jazz Festival.
Dr Tom Sykes is the Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) Popular Music at the City of Liverpool College, and also teaches at the University of Salford and Edge Hill University, England. Sykes current research interests are in jazz and popular music pedagogy and he is a jazz violinist and pianist.
Dr Jasmine Taylor: Gender and music were the main topics of the MA I took at the University of Middlesex. After completing that, in 2004 I went to study in New York and was able to attend seminars and lectures by the jazz writer Sherrie Tucker when she was appointed the Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor at Columbia University. Back to the UK I started a part-time PhD at Goldsmiths College which I completed in 2016. I am currently employed as a lecturer in the Music Department at the University of Westminster where my academic focus is on cultural studies and music and sociology.
Gustav Thomas is an artist-writer name of Dr William Edmondes who is an improvising performer, visual artist and researcher. Since 2004 Edmondes has been a full-time member of staff at Newcastle University’s International Centre for Music Studies where he teaches contemporary music practice and musicological courses on Jazz, Hip Hop and DIY subcultures.
Howard Tumber is Professor of Journalism & Communication in the Department of Journalism at City, University of London. He was Dean of the School of Arts and Social Sciences in 2011-2012; Dean of the School of Arts in 2008-2009; Dean of the School of Social Sciences from 1999-2004; and Head of Sociology from 1996-1999, and Professor of Sociology 1998-2010. He has published widely in the field of the sociology of news and journalism and is the author, co-author/editor of ten books. He is a founder and co-editor of the academic journal Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism. He is currently working on a study on the work of Alistair Cooke.
Dr Indrikis Veitners is a Latvian jazz history researcher, jazz saxophonist and clarinettist. Received his PhD in 2014 for his research on ‘Latvian jazz history 1920-1944’, as the first scientific research about Latvian jazz history. Author of book Latvijas džeza vēsture 1922-1940 (Musica Baltica, 2018). Contributed the article about Latvian jazz for The History of European Jazz (Equinox, 2018). Participated at several jazz research conferences in Denmark, Netherlands and Great Britain. In 2008-2009, he was a jazz history expert at Latvian Literature and Music museum. In 2013-2014 and 2017-2018 jazz expert at the Latvian Culture Capital foundation. And in 2013 he was also a member of Jury of the Grand Music Award of Latvia (the Latvian State Award for music). He is one of founders of Latvian professional jazz education – 2003 established first professional jazz education programme at Riga Dome Choir school. In 2008 he establishes and leads Jazz department at Latvian Music Academy as assistant professor, teaching jazz history and other subjects. Since 2015 quest lecturer for jazz history in Viljandi Culture academy, Estonia; and also a member of Big Bands, ‘Mirage Jazz orchestra’ and Dixieland ‘Dream Team 1935’.
Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies at Birmingham City University. He is author of Studying Popular Music Culture and his published work embraces articles on music cultures, their mediated experience and jazz-specific work on jazz collectives, David Murray, and Duke Ellington on the radio. He is currently researching the history of jazz on BBC radio and co-editing Rethinking Miles Davis.
Marcus Christoph Weberhofer (* 1991) completed several studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria: In 2016 he finished his BA in Music Education – Voice and Instruments – Folklore Music (main instruments: hammered dulcimer, diatonic accordion). In 2019 he obtained his MA in Music Education & Music Education – Instruments (main instruments: electric guitar, jazz vocals); the title of his diploma thesis was ‘Die Präsenz des Jazz im ORF’ (‘The presence of jazz in the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation’). Besides his teaching activities, Weberhofer is a freelance singer/musician in the Austrian jazz and folklore scene, and works as a presenter of concerts.
Dr Tom Williams is a jazz guitarist, lecturer and musicologist specialising in improvisation, cognition, jazz and pedagogy. His PhD ‘Strategy in Contemporary Jazz Improvisation’ (University of Surrey, 2017) created a detailed cognitive and contextual model of how expert level improvisers develop and use their craft. Tom is a senior lecturer at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford, Surrey.
Jen Wilson celebrated her 50th year in jazz during 2009 receiving the Arts Council of Wales Individual Award which she used to record The Dylan Thomas Jazz Suite: Twelve Poems, commissioned by the Dylan Thomas Centre. Wilson’s other achievements within jazz and related musics include being the Founder of Jazz Heritage Wales incorporating Women in Jazz and Women’s Jazz Archive; leaving a legacy to Wales of women‘s contribution to jazz music, as well as the history of Wales’s Black Cultural Heritage. Wilson was made Professor of Practice by UWTSD in 2016 and has developed, administered, taught and delivered courses in Jazz Studies, Big Band, Women’s History in Jazz, African American Music in Wales, Blueswomen, Women’s Media Studies, and Local History.
Rebecca Zola is from Lexington, Massachusetts, and received her B.F.A. in Jazz Vocal Performance, as well as her B.A. in Writing from The New School in New York City. She is currently a M.A. student at Hebrew University in Musicology with a focus on gender and jazz. She has performed internationally as a bandleader and side-woman on vocals and guitar. Rebecca has recently given lectures at the conference on Jazz and Hebrew Culture at Ben Gurion University, as well as on gender and jazz at the Tzlil Meudkan Contemporary Classical Music festival.