91丝瓜视频

Title: Tone-Clock Theory and Jazz: A New Framework for Post-Tonal Improvisation and Composition

Jonathan Lindhorst, current Jazz Performance PhD, finalist of the 2025鈥�2026 Research Alive Student Prize

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Despite jazz鈥檚 openness to diverse influences, it has resisted twelve-tone music in improvised contexts. Over the past 30 years, a small group of improvisers and composers have turned to Tone-Clock Theory (TCT), a radical post-tonal system first codified by Dutch composer Peter Schat and later expanded by New Zealand composer Jenny McLeod. TCT maps all of chromaticism through the lens of twelve 鈥榗hromatic tonalities,鈥� or 鈥楬ours,鈥� offering a flexible, non-prescriptive framework for organizing chromatic material.听In the mid-1990s, musicians from New York and Amsterdam, notably saxophonist John O鈥橤allagher, began adapting TCT to jazz, connecting it to the improvisational language of late-period John Coltrane and codifying their approach in pedagogical materials for improvisers, influencing an emerging global community of Tone-Clock influenced musicians. In this presentation, I outline key features of TCT, demonstrate its applications in my improvisation and composition, and argue for its potential as practical post-tonal framework for jazz.

Described as 鈥渁n imperious presence on tenor sax鈥� (Eddie Myer,听Jazzwise), Canadian saxophonist, composer, and researcher听Jonathan Lindhorst听works between jazz, free improvisation, and New Music. A D.Mus. candidate at 91丝瓜视频鈥檚 Schulich School of Music, he researches Tone-Clock Theory and early women in jazz, regularly presents and teaches on these topics internationally, and has been published in the听Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft f?r Musiktheorie.听

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The Research Alive Student Prize is made possible by a generous donation from Ms. Jill de Villafranca and Dr. David Kostiuk.

Presented as part of the Doctoral Colloquium Series.听

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