Improvisation, Systems & Extended Guitar
My research into improvisation and interactive musical systems develops from a sustained practice with extended guitar, electronics and collaborative performance. Beginning with the Cyber-Guitar System developed through my doctoral research at the University of the Witwatersrand, this work explores how technological systems can extend the instrumental environment without predetermining the musical encounter. The PhD, The Cyber-Guitar System: A Study in Technologically Enabled Performance Practice, was completed in 2017 and developed an augmented guitar as a practice-research instrument.
A central concern is the relationship between technological mediation and collaborative improvisation. Rather than treating electronics as an additional layer placed over acoustic performance, I develop materials and systems in response to the particular practices of the musicians involved. Loops, textures, generative processes and electronic behaviours are prepared with specific collaborators in mind, but remain open enough to be transformed through performance. The system therefore functions less as an autonomous instrument than as a changing environment for interaction.
Across projects including son0_morph, Inhale, Avallus, Coalescence and Solace, this practice has increasingly focused on questions of intersubjectivity, empathy and musical responsiveness. What happens when performers with markedly different musical histories enter an improvised space together? How might technologies encourage listening and adaptation rather than simply increase individual control? Analysis of these performances considers how musical materials are offered, adopted, resisted and transformed between collaborators, and how technological choices shape those relationships.
This research explores key themes including the Cyber-Guitar and extended instrument systems, technologically mediated improvisation, intersubjectivity and empathy in collaborative practice, and the analysis of improvised performance.
Selected artistic outputs
son0_morph 01: Trio — 2021
With Carlo Mombelli and Jonathan Sweetman. A fully improvised recording exploring generative electronics, extended guitar and responsive technological environments. Listen on Bandcamp
son0_morph 02: Duo / Piano — 2021
With Kathleen Tagg, extending the same systems-led approach into an acoustic piano/electronic guitar dialogue. Listen on Bandcamp
son0_morph 03: Duo — 2021
With Cameron Harris, exploring electroacoustic improvisation and interaction between two technologically mediated practices. Listen on Bandcamp
Inhale — 2022
With Carlo Mombelli and Jonathan Sweetman. Composed materials, live electronics and improvisation move between post-rock, experimental and open-form practices. Listen on Bandcamp
Avallus — 2025
A duo recording with Nick Branton, bringing saxophones and clarinets into dialogue with extended guitar, generative systems and electronics. Listen on Bandcamp
Coalescence — 2025
Recorded live in Pretoria with Miles Warrington and Cameron Harris. Two extended improvisations in which form emerges through collective decision-making and technologically mediated interaction. Listen on Bandcamp
Solace — 2026
With David Kollar and Lukas Ligeti, with Arve Henriksen on the title track. The album brings together extended guitar systems, prepared materials and collaborative improvisation across markedly different individual musical practices. Listen on Bandcamp
St Augustine’s Remorse — 2026
With Carlo Mombelli and Jonathan Sweetman, with contributions from David Kollar and Keenan Ahrends. The project continues the research through a more contemplative body of work in which composed frameworks and improvisation remain deliberately porous. Research-output listing
African Instruments, Worship & Cultural Memory
My research into traditional African instruments examines questions of cultural memory, coloniality and musical identity within Christian congregational music. The project grew from creative work undertaken in Johannesburg, where attempts to integrate traditional instruments into contemporary worship practices eventually developed into Crown Him: Hymns from Around the World. The album retained the familiar words and melodies of hymns while placing them within arrangements drawing on instruments and musical practices from Africa, the Middle East and other territories. These encounters raised a wider question: why are some sounds readily understood as appropriate for Christian worship while others remain culturally or spiritually contested?
A central collaborator in this work is South African multi-instrumentalist Mpho Molikeng. Our collaboration began with The Settlement, an immersive performance project developed from archaeological LiDAR imagery of a historic southern African settlement. The image became a form of score: its physical structures and Molikeng’s imagined narratives of life within the settlement shaped the improvisation, spatial design and immersive audio environment. The project subsequently became the album The Settlement and remains available in audio and video form.
Our collaboration continued in Crown Him, where Molikeng’s performance on the Lesotho Mamokhrong, together with the Malipompo, radically reframed the familiar hymn Doxology. Listener responses — ranging from enthusiasm and emotional recognition to discomfort and anger — became one of the starting points for the subsequent research.
The project has since developed into a multi-national mixed-methods study involving Christian congregations in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. It asks how traditional instruments are understood across generations, territories and theological traditions; whether histories of colonial exclusion remain audible in contemporary practice; and whether there is an appetite to reintroduce these instruments into congregational music. Emerging findings have opened broader questions around cultural amnesia, globalised Christian Contemporary Worship music, and the ways commercial and institutional systems can gradually redefine what communities understand as their own musical heritage.
Selected artistic outputs
The Settlement — Jonathan Crossley & Mpho Molikeng, 2018
An immersive practice-led collaboration using archaeological imagery, improvisation and traditional southern African instruments as the basis for an exploration of place, memory and imagined histories.
Crown Him: Hymns from Around the World — 2022
A practice-research recording project in which familiar Christian hymns were recontextualised through instruments, metres and musical practices associated with different geographical and cultural locations. The project includes the collaboration with Mpho Molikeng on Doxology that subsequently became central to the survey research.
Crown Him project page – Every Nation Music
Selected research outputs
Investigating the Exclusion of Traditional African Instruments in Worship
Practice-led research examining the historical exclusion of traditional instruments and their contemporary reception in African and African-diaspora Christian communities. The work combines creative practice with mixed-methods survey research across differing territories, generations and theological traditions.
Liquidating Localities: Christian Contemporary Worship as Cultural Colonialism
Developed for the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, this strand considers the relationship between globalised Christian Contemporary Worship, cultural memory and the displacement of local musical practices. It develops the survey findings into a broader critique of the systems through which particular musical forms become normalised as culturally or spiritually “neutral”.
From Chords to Control: Harmonic Uniformity as a Mechanism for Abuse in Worship Teams
A related strand examining musical homogeneity, organisational structures and volunteer labour within contemporary worship environments, asking how standardised musical practices intersect with institutional and economic power.