The word “Monkian” is frequently used in jazz discourse to describe the music of pianist Thelonious Monk. This study consolidates literature on Monk’s music to define the Monkian aesthetic as an integration of the following ...

This dissertation examines the Grateful Dead’s creation of a distinctively rock-oriented approach to open improvisation in the mid to late 1960s. In the first section of the dissertation, I draw on live recordings, presented ...

This dissertation is an investigation of the percussion used to accompany Chinese martial arts and lion dancing at Toronto, Canada’s Hong Luck Kung Fu Club. It is based on six years of participant-observation and performance ...

This dissertation performs analyses of and compositions in three musical traditions that have received little attention in the English-speaking literature: Russian vocal folk polyphony (as described by theorist Aleksandr ...

This dissertation is divided into two main areas. The first of these explores Jandek-related discourse and contextualizes the project. Also discussed is the interconnectivity that runs through the project through the ...

This dissertation examines the use of non-isochronous (NI) meters in jazz compositional and performative practices (meters as comprised of cycles of a prime number [e.g., 5, 7, 11] or uneven divisions of non-prime cycles ...

Since the mid-nineteenth century the Portuguese guitar has been connected to the fado genre. Both the instrument and the song genre have experienced significant transformations, at times related to aesthetic changes, at ...

This compositional thesis is a song cycle for baritone voice and small ensemble of upright bass, violin, and steel-string guitar, based on the poem “Homonculus” by MacKenzie Regier. In Part 1, I explore several sources ...

This thesis involves composing a dramatic work, David and Goliath: An Oratorio, for chorus and orchestra, with an emphasis on emulating eighteenth-century English oratorio style. A framework for writing compositions based ...

This thesis aims to integrate the author's major fields of musical training through a suite of compositions that combines compositional and aesthetic elements of those traditions, namely, Japanese taiko drumming, Karnatic ...