Marc Hannaford
Assistant Professor of Music
Bio
Marc Hannaford is a music theorist whose interests lie at the intersection of jazz and improvisation, identity (especially race, gender, and disability), and performance. The Society for Music Theory awarded him an Emerging Scholar Award for his article “Fugitive Music Theory and George Russell’s Theory of Tonality” in 2023. He also received the University of Michigan’s highest award for early- and mid-career scholars, the Henry Russel Award in 2025. His current book project examines a genealogy of music theory developed by African American musicians in the twentieth century.
He completed his PhD at Columbia University in 2019 with a dissertation on Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist, composer, and cofounder of the Association for the Advancement for Creative Musicians (AACM). His publications appear in Music Theory Online, Music Theory Spectrum, Women & Music, Sound American, and The Oxford Handbook of Public Music Theory.
As a committed pedagogue, Marc helps students develop personal engagements with music via the critical exploration of manifold approaches: theoretical, analytical, historical, and creative. He offers courses on jazz, twentieth century music, improvisation, performance, and Black experimental music, in addition to teaching core theory.
He is an improvising pianist, composer, and electronic musician who has performed and/or recorded with Tim Berne, Ingrid Laubrock, Tom Rainey, Tony Malaby, and William Parker. He is also a founding member of the Engaged Music Theory Working Group, which highlights scholarly work that confronts the centralized, historically Eurocentric and heteropatriarchal framing of North American music theory.
Originally from Australia, Marc discovered academic music theory through performance and his conservatory training as a jazz pianist. In 2010 he completed a research project that adapts composer Elliott Carter’s rhythmic language for improvised contexts. This convergence of contemporary composition, rhythmic complexity, and improvisation led him to the United States and remains a secondary research interest.
Between research, teaching, and performing, Marc enjoys cooking, walking his dog (Reggie), and outdoor activities such as soccer, and hiking.
Journal Articles
“Adventures in Tonal Gravity: George Russell’s Analysis of Maurice Ravel’s ‘Forlane’.” Music Theory Spectrum 46, no. 1 (2023): 150–74.
“Theory on the South Side: Muhal Richard Abrams’s Engagement with Joseph Schillinger’s System of Musical Composition.” Journal of the Society for American Music 17 (1)(2023): 43–67.
“Fugitive Music Theory and George Russell’s Theory of Tonal Gravity.” Theory and Practice 46 (2021): 47–81.
“Subjective (Re)positioning in Musical Improvisation: Analyzing the Work of Five Female Improvisers,” Music Theory Online 23, no. 2 (2017).
Book Chapters
“On the Inside: Jazz Liner Notes as a Music-Theoretical Medium.” In The Oxford Handbook of Public Music Theory, edited by J. Daniel Jenkins. New York: Oxford University Press.
“Affordances and Free Improvisation: An Analytical Framework,” in Making Music Together: Analytical Perspectives on Musical Interaction, edited by Garrett Michaelsen and Chris Stover (Oxford University Press), (forthcoming).
Other Publications
Review of Making It Up Together: The Art of Collective Improvisation in Balinese Music and Beyond by Leslie A. Tilley (Chicago University Press, 2019), Music Theory Online 26, no. 4 (2020).
“Stretching Boundaries: Improvised Interaction across Liminal Spaces,” Sound American, 23: “The Alien Issue” (2020).
“1984: John Zorn Completes Cobra,” Sound American 21: “The Change Issue” (2019).
Review of Negotiated Moments: Improvisation, Sound, and Subjectivity, edited by Gillian Siddall and Ellen Waterman (Duke University Press, 2016), Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 21 (2017): 202–8.
“The Challenge of Comparing Improvisation Across Domains,” American Music Review, Vol. XLV, no. 2 (Spring 2016) (co-authored with Andrew Goldman).