About
British/South African guitarist, improviser and composer Jonathan Crossley plays in the ephemeral boundaries between styles and genres and was described as “the poster boy for modern guitar” by Guitar Moderne. Trained first as a classical guitarist, then later in jazz, free improvisation, and research into hyper-instruments, his musical outputs are carefully curated but stylistically diverse. He is Senior Lecturer in Music Technology at the University of Liverpool, where he teaches free improvisation with Ableton and “From Hardware-hacking to Hyper-instruments”. He is also Joint Director, with Dr Jenn Kirby, of Music, Technology and Interaction (MTI), a University of Liverpool research centre supporting practice-based research, creative technologies, performance, and experimental approaches to music-making.
The 2001 classical crossover debut album Dreams of Skilia on FMR Records was all acoustic, followed in 2015 by the chamber jazz album My Friends and I. In 2007 Funk for the Shaolin Monk moved into jazz-rock territories, with extensive touring of this and 2009’s follow-up, Got Funk Will Travel, with Czech saxophonist Ondřej Štveráček. In 2010, research into improvisatory practices and technological integration led to the Cyber Guitar project and a series of recorded works: 2011’s What If the Machines Spoke Back to You, 2017’s The Settlement and 2018’s Blipz all push the boundaries of creative practice using hyper-instruments and conceiving of technology as compositional technique.
2021 produced four albums under the son0_morph moniker: the piano duet album son0_morph 02 with Kathleen Tagg; the electroacoustic work son0_morph 03 with Cameron Harris; the solo classical crossover work son0_morph 04, harkening back to 2001’s Dreams of Skilia; and son0_morph 01 with bassist Carlo Mombelli and drummer Jonathan Sweetman.
In 2022 he released Inhale, again with Carlo Mombelli and Jonno Sweetman. Post-rock and math-rock tracks such as “Bounce”, “Inhale” and “In the Spring” sit alongside classical string quartet miniatures and angular compositions such as “First / Second Operations” and “There’s No Invasion”. All About Jazz wrote: “Opening track ‘Bounce’ is a whopper, worthy of the price of admission itself. A merrily schizophrenic assault that sounds almost like The Bad Plus with guitars.”
The 2022 Liverpool premiere was followed by performances in Johannesburg in January 2023 for Concerts SA and at the International Society for Contemporary Music festival in Johannesburg and Cape Town in late 2023. At this festival his EP Bree Street was released, featuring the trio of Crossley, Mombelli and Sweetman joined by trumpeter Marcus Wyatt and Slovak guitarist David Kollar.
More recently, Crossley’s research-focused creative outputs have included Avallus, a duo recording with Nick Branton, and Coalescence, developed with Miles Warrington and Cameron Harris. Two further major albums, St Augustine’s Remorse with Carlo Mombelli and Jonno Sweetman, and Solace with David Kollar, Lukas Ligeti and special guest Arve Henriksen, are forthcoming on 7D Media. These projects continue Crossley’s practice-based investigation into technologically mediated improvisation, collaborator-responsive systems, and the ways in which pre-prepared materials, live electronics and instrumental agency can operate as catalysts within improvised performance.
Other research areas include a multi-national investigation into traditional African instruments and Christian congregational music, drawing on work in the UK, South Africa and the USA. This research has recently been presented at the Christian Congregational Music conference and the British Forum for Ethnomusicology. Within MTI, Crossley is also involved in collaborative projects exploring bespoke musical interfaces, creative technology and music education, including the Chord Pathfinder project.