Chris holds the degrees BMus, BMus Honours (Composition), MMus (Composition) and PhD (Music) from Stellenbosch University. He is an Associate Professor of Music Theory and Composition. From 2016 to 2019, he served as programme leader for the BMus degree and has since been the director of the research entity Musical Arts in South Africa: Resources and Applications (MASARA). Chris supervises postgraduate research and composition students. His research focuses on the works of South African and other African composers of art music (score analysis, critical theory and philosophy), with a particular interest in 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 States and the United Kingdom, and has published articles, reviews and book chapters in South African Music Studies, Musicus, Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, Musicology Australia, Perspectives of New Music, the Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, the World New Music Magazine, and Ritualised Belonging: Musicing and Spirituality in the South African Context. His compositions have been performed locally and abroad, including Harvard University’s Paine Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Chris completed short courses abroad in Analytical Approaches to World Music (University of British Columbia, 2012) and Digital Musicology (University of Oxford, 2023).

In 2015, he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Chris represented NewMusicSA, the South African chapter of the International Society for Contemporary Music, as a delegate at their annual assemblies in Kosice, Bratislava and Vienna (2013), and Wroclaw (2014). 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. He holds a Y2 rating from South Africa’s National Research Foundation.

[2024-07-12]