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Jonathan Eato
Senior Lecturer

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Biography

Jonathan Eato is a composer and saxophone player with interests in a wide range of contemporary musics, jazz, improvisation, South African popular music, interdisciplinary performance, music and postcoloniality, and music for dance.

In 2003 Jonathan formed the duo ev2 with Craig Vear to explore various ways of combining contemporary composition, interdisciplinary performance, and improvisation. ev2 has performed in the UK, Germany, Canada, and the Falkland Islands and their music has featured on BBC1 television's Countryfile (2006), the film shorts 5 Antarctic Solitudes by Craig Vear (2004), and with the interdisciplinary performance piece Stretch (2004-2007). ev2 recorded the album mucky blonde in 2003 and have recently finished work the forthcoming bingoise album.

Some of Jonathan's other performance credits include the world premiere recording of Michael Gordon's Trance (1996) with the contemporary music ensemble Icebreaker, horn section work with Cousteau for their album Sirena (2002), the BBC Cage Weekend at the Barbican (2004), and soloist in construction 3 by Tony Myatt and Peter Fluck – a multiple media concerto for digitally-enabled saxophone and high performance computers premiered in Berlin (2001).

As a composer Jonathan was a finalist in the 2004 Luxembourg International Prize with the orchestral piece Bling Bling Balaam (recorded by Luxembourg Sinfonietta Editions LGNM 404) and in 2006 a revised version for Århus Sinfonietta was broadcast on Danish Radio as part of the SPOR Festival. In 2006 he was commissioned by choreographer Jacky Lansley to compose a dance score based on the music of Jelly Roll Morton and the resultant piece, Anamule Dance (2007), was premiered at The Hall for Cornwall before transferring to the Clore Studio at the Royal Opera House in London. Jonathan was composer and music researcher for the Arts Council England funded performance research project Guests (dir. Jacky Lansley and Tim Brinkman, 2010). The Guests project was further developed in collaboration with Jacky Lansley, together with cellist Audrey Riley, into the full length contemporary dance piece Guest Suites (2012) which opened at the Clore Studio (Royal Opera House) before travelling to York Minster and the Barbican Theatre Plymouth.

Jonathan's interest in interdisciplinary performance environments has also continued through work as composer and sound designer for Hannah Bruce and Company with various projects including the site-responsive promenade performance piece The Look of the Thing (2012-13) and site-specific works such as The Claim (2014) for West Yorkshire Playhouse's Transform 14 festival and Cosi-Cosi (2014) for Cape Town's Infecting the City festival. This work has been supported by Arts Council England, specifically for the creation of the TlotT smartphone / iPod App that he designed and which was developed by Peter Worth and converted to Android by Theo Burt. Jonathan is currently working on A Collection of Small Choices with Hannah Bruce and Company for the reopening of Hoxton Hall in 2015. Small Choices utilises Bluetooth Low Energy technology to provide a unique approach to heritage interpretation.

From 2007-2008 Jonathan was a visiting research fellow at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, working on questions of performance practice in South African jazz. In 2010 he produced Black Heroes, a new solo piano recording by South African jazz legend Tete Mbambisa. Launch events were held in Johannesburg and Cape Town in April 2012 (see JISA Records Facebook page for more information). He recently contributed an essay on a newly available South African jazz archive for the book Keeping Time: 1964-1974 the photographs and Cape Town jazz recordings of Ian Bruce Huntley (ed. Chris Albertyn) and a chapter for the forthcoming volume Jazz and Totalitarianism edited by Bruce Johnson for the Routledge Transnational Jazz Series. Jonathan is co-applicant with Professor Stephanus Muller for South African Jazz Cultures and the Archive (2015-17), a two year British Academy Newton Advanced Fellowship designed to facilitate a critical engagement with archival initiatives in South African jazz.

Departmental roles

Contact details

Dr Jonathan Eato
School of Arts and Creative Technologies
University of York
York
YO10 5GB

Tel: +44 (0)1904 32 4792