November 17, 2023 | 3:30PM
Fulton Recital Hall, Goodspeed Hall 4th floor
“Two Keys at Once?”: Andrew Hill’s Speculative Music Theory
Marc E. Hannaford
Assistant Professor of Music Theory, University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
Iconoclastic jazz pianist and composer Andrew Hill (1931–2007) created a body work that reflects the depth and breadth of Black American music. From his breakout small-group recordings for Blue Note in the 1960s such as Point of Departure and Lift Every Voice, to his large-ensemble modular compositions of the 2000s, documented on A Beautiful Day, Hill’s music reflects a personal intertwinement of tradition and innovation, as well as creative freedom and compositional craft. Hill was usually opaque about his creative process in interviews with journalists, but his pedagogical work in universities on both coasts of the United States demonstrates that he was a dedicated pedagogue with clear ideas about musical structure. This talk explores materials from Hill’s archive to discuss his personal music theory and how it may have informed his creative practice. Drawing on Hill’s appearance on Marian McPartland’s show, Piano Jazz, on NPR, as well as unpublished book fragments, scores, and sketches, I argue that Hill developed and deployed music theory as a productive part of his creative and pedagogical work. This perspective also repositions music theory as a generative component of Black creative music making. Thought in these terms, music theoretical abstraction opens up new creative possibilities, while also indexing broader resonances on music’s social and political planes.
About Marc E. Hannaford
Marc Hannaford is a music studies scholar who investigates performance, identity, and music theory. His publications appear or are forthcoming in Theory & Practice, Music Theory Spectrum, Music Theory Online, The Journal of the Society for American Music, The Oxford Handbook of Public Music Theory, Women & Music, and Sound American. He is also cofounder of the Engaged Music Theory Working Group, which works toward greater justice and equity in music theory. He is an improvising pianist, composer, and electronic musician who has performed internationally and/or recorded with Tim Berne, Ingrid Laubrock, Tom Rainey, Tony Malaby, and William Parker.