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Western Music scholars present PCMT research at Ohio State University
via Don Wright Faculty of Music
In early October 2025, scholars from the Don Wright Faculty of Music shared their research at a conference on Practitioner-Centred Music Theory (PCMT).
The three-day conference was held at the Ohio State University to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the OSU School of Music. It examined the relationship between music theory and practice, with presentations and workshops on varied topics, including jazz, hip-hop, Western classical music, rock, twentieth-century experimentalism, salsa, and Balinese drumming.
Prof. Jonathan De Souza was one of the conference’s featured speakers. In his talk, he discussed a paradigm shift in twenty-first-century music theory, which has increasingly engaged with musical performance and practical knowledge. Throughout, he reflected on his experiences as a theorist and a violinist, and extended ideas from his book Music at Hand: Instruments, Bodies, and Cognition.
Current and former graduate students from Western also presented at the conference. McKenna Sheeley-Jennings, a PhD student in Music Theory, gave a paper titled “Pedal Schemas: A Harp-Centric Mode of Analysis”. She showed how the physical layout of harp pedals—and patterns in harpists’ footwork—shape harmonic organization in compositions for the instrument. Also, Western alum Rachel Gain (MA’19) co-presented a workshop, “Embodied Theory, Performed Lineage: Finding Music Theory in Rhythm Tap Dance Choreography and Pedagogy”. Gain is now a PhD candidate at Yale University, writing a music theory dissertation on tap dance.
For more information on the conference, see PCMT Conference at The Ohio State University.