Marc Hannaford is a music theorist whose interests lie at the intersection of jazz and improvisation, identity (especially race, gender, and disability), performance, and embodiment, and an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. In 2019 he completed a dissertation on Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist, composer, improviser, and co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) at Columbia University, and he is currently developing a book project that examines an underground genealogy of music theoretical practice by black experimental and jazz musicians.
Marc has published Music Theory Online, Women & Music, The American Music Review, and Sound American and given invited talks at the University of California, San Diego, Brooklyn College, Yale University, Monash University, and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He has also presented papers at the annual conferences for the Society for Music Theory (SMT), the American Musicological Society (AMS), and the Society for American Music (SAM), as well as at various national and international conferences, and the Society for Music Theory’s Jazz Interest Group awarded him the 2019 Steve Larson Award for his paper, “Affordances and Free Improvisation: An Analytical Framework.” He is also a member of the jazz study group at Columbia’s Center for Jazz Studies and coorganizes the Comparing Domains of Improvisation and Diversity in Music Theory discussion groups.
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 taught courses in music theory and analysis, twentieth century music, jazz theory, and black experimental music, among others. The Department of Music and Graduate School for the Arts and Sciences both recognized his teaching and research with the Mason Fellowship in Music and Serwer Fund Award.