Dr. Harald Kisiedu

Historical musicologist, author, musician

Harald Kisiedu is a historical musicologist, author, and saxophonist who received his PhD in historical musicology from Columbia University. 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, the British and Irish Modern Music Institute Hamburg, and the Darmstadt Summer Course. As a saxophonist, Kisiedu has performed with Branford Marsalis, George Lewis, Henry Grimes, Jean-Paul Bourelly, and Hannibal Lokumbe and has recorded with the New York-based ensemble Burnt Sugar, the Arkestra Chamber, led by Greg Tate. He is the author of “European Echoes: Jazz Experimentalism in Germany, 1950 – 1975” (Wolke) and the co-editor (with George E. Lewis) of “Composing While Black: Afrodiasporische Neue Musik Heute/Afrodiasporic New Music Today” (also Wolke Verlag).