about

Chris holds BMus, BMus (Honours), MMus and PhD degrees from Stellenbosch University. He is an Associate Professor at North-West University, South Africa, where he teaches Music Theory and supervises postgraduate research and Composition students. From 2016 to 2019, he served as programme leader for the BMus degree and has been the Director of the research entity Research and Creative Outputs in Visual Arts and Music (ViAMUS) since 2019.

His research focuses on the works of composers from Anglophone Africa, especially the British-South African composer Priaulx Rainier. Chris is also engaged in practice-based research in Composition. Chris has presented research papers at conferences in South Africa, Serbia, Ireland, Chile, the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany. He has published articles and reviews in South African Music Studies, Musicus, Critical Arts, Musicology Australia, Perspectives of New Music, the International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, the Österreichische Musikzeitschrift and the World New Music Magazine, and a book chapter in Ritualised Belonging: Musicing and Spirituality in the South African Context (Peter Lang Verlag).

Chris’s compositions have been performed locally and abroad, including Harvard University’s Paine Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at the World New Music Days in Johannesburg. In 2011, he won the North-West University Chancellor’s Trust Prize for Composition.

Chris represented NewMusicSA, the South African chapter of the International Society for Contemporary Music, as a delegate at their annual assemblies in Kosice, Bratislava, Vienna, and Wroclaw. He served as editor of NewMusicSA’s Bulletin from 2010-2015. Chris has been an Associate Editor for the US-based journal Perspectives of New Music since 2018, and guest edited an edition on Africa.

He has presented guest lectures and seminars at the University of Jävaskylä (Finland), the University of Lincoln (UK), Harvard University (USA), the University of Malawi in Zomba, and his alma mater, Stellenbosch University.