A recent transplant in Chicago, Connor Sanders-Fast has been researching and teaching in Oregon for the last 6 years. He was an instructor at the Portland Youth Philharmonic–the country’s oldest youth orchestra–teaching written music theory and aural skills. While attending the University of Oregon, he honed his pedagogical practice as a teaching assistant, leading lab sections and aiding in the instruction of the entire undergraduate music theory core.
Connor holds an undergraduate degree in saxophone performance. His experience emphasizes pit orchestra performance in musical theatre and wind ensemble, and he was an original member of the Portland Saxophone Ensemble. Connor has always blended his relationship with performance and music theory. His research and venture into music theory started by studying performance practice and theoretically informed performance, as explored in his undergraduate thesis, “Preparing to Perform: Brillance, by Ida Gotkovsky.”
His current research is on polytonality and the new-formenlehre area of “closure,” particularly in the music of 20th century French composers and mid-century black American composers. He explicated polytonal closure in his thesis, “Polytonal Closure in the music of Darius Milhaud and Howard Swanson.” His upcoming research focuses on converging musical agency theory and theories of identity construction in the areas of gender, queerness, and race.