+44 (0)161 295 7245
t.whyton@salford.ac.uk

 

Tony Whyton is Professor of Jazz and Musical Cultures in the School of Media, Music and Performance.  Tony’s work deals specifically with music and its place within the cultural and creative industries, from the packaging of popular music to the iconic representations of jazz artists. Tony has published widely on a variety of related topics, including jazz history, the politics of music education, the cultural influence of recordings and interdisciplinary approaches to music. His research has been disseminated internationally within university settings including Yale University, McGill University Montreal, Charles University Prague and the University of Jyvaskyla Finland and, in May 2007, he was invited to the University of Melbourne as a visiting research fellow at the Victorian College of Arts.

Tony's first book, Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths and the Jazz Tradition, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. As the founding editor of the international journal The Source: challenging jazz criticism, Tony created the first peer reviewed interdisciplinary journal for jazz studies and he now co-edits the internationally peer-reviewed Jazz Research Journal with Equinox publishing. His latest book project, Beyond A Love Supreme, will be a cross disciplinary study of the musical and cultural influence of John Coltrane's seminal album, to be published by Oxford University Press as part of the Studies in Recorded Jazz series.

In 2010, Tony was awarded just under €1 million to lead a three-year, pan-European project entitled Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities. The ground-breaking project, the first and largest of its kind for jazz in Europe, was funded as part of the Humanities in the European Research Area's (HERA) theme 'Cultural Dynamics: Inheritance and Identity', a joint research programme funded by 13 national funding agencies to 'create collaborative, trans-national research opportunities that will derive new insights from humanities research in order to address major social, cultural, and political challenges facing Europe' (see www.heranet.info). As an interdisciplinary research project, Rhythm Changes (www.rhythmchanges.net) is examining the inherited traditions and practices of European jazz cultures, developing new insights into cultural exchanges and dynamics between different countries, groups and related media.

Tony joined the School of Media, Music and Performance in September 2007 after 10 years at Leeds College of Music. In his work at Leeds, Tony was responsible for the creation, management and strategic development of the Centre for Jazz Studies UK. Tony's work champions the relationship between theory and practice and encourages performers, composers and musicologists to engage critically with music as a discursive cultural practice. He teaches popular musicology and jazz studies.

Follow Tony’s work at http://salford.academia.edu/TonyWhyton

 

Select Publications

Whyton, T., Beyond A Love Supreme (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)

Whyton, T. (ed.), Jazz (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011)

Whyton, T., Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths and the Jazz Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Book Chapters and Articles

Whyton, T., ‘Europe and the New Jazz Studies’ in Cerchiari, L., Cugny, L., and Kerschbaumer, F., (eds.), Jazz and Europe (Northeastern University Press, [in press])

Whyton, T., [trans. Vincent Cotro], ‘Four for Trane : le jazz et la voix désincarnée’ in Vincent Cotro (ed.), John Coltrane : L’œuvre et son empreinte  (Paris: Éditions Outre Mesure, 2011, pp.149-163

Whyton, T., ‘Jazz Research in Britain’ Jazzforschung/Jazz Research 42, (November 2010), pp.131-146.

Whyton, T., 'Acting on Impulse! Recordings and the Reification of Jazz' in Mine Dogantan-Dack (ed.), Recorded Music: Philosophical and Critical Reflections (Middlesex: Middlesex University Press, 2008), pp.155-171.

 

To view Tony’s full research profile, visit Seek