Harald Kisiedu

Harald Kisiedu is a historical musicologist, author and saxophonist who received his PhD in historical musicology from Columbia University. He also holds a graduate degree in political science and German studies from the University of Hamburg. His research interests include Afrodiasporic classical and experimental music, jazz as a global phenomenon, improvisation, music and politics and Wagner. His writings have appeared in The Wire, Grove Dictionary of American Music, Critical Studies in Improvisation, Journal der Künste, and Darmstädter Beiträge zur Jazzforschung, a. o. He has taught at the University of Music and Theatre “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Leipzig, the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück’s Institute of Music, the British and Irish Modern Music Institute Hamburg and the Darmstadt Summer Course. As a saxophonist, he has performed with Branford Marsalis, George Lewis, Henry Grimes, Jean-Paul Bourelly, Hannibal Lokumbe and Champion Jack Dupree, among others. Kisiedu has recorded with the New York-based ensemble Burnt Sugar, the Arkestra Chamber, led by Greg Tate and with composer and improviser Jeff Morris.

He is the author of “European Echoes: Jazz Experimentalism in Germany, 1950-1975” (Wolke) and the co-editor (with George Lewis) of “Composing While Black: Afrodiasporic New Music Today” (also Wolke Verlag).