Mark Lomanno is an ethnomusicologist and jazz pianist who specializes in the music of the Atlantic world, including Latin America and the Caribbean, the African Diaspora, and the Eastern Atlantic region of Macaronesia (the Azores, Cape Verde, Madeira, and Canary Islands). Lomanno’s pedagogical, performance, and scholarly work all focus on “critical creative practice,” especially how improvised performance, academic studies, and community engagement intersect. His courses emphasize analytical and empathetic listening practices as gateways to experiential learning, creative experimentation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and advocacy.

A long-time collaborator with the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation and the E.U.-based Rhythm Changes project, Lomanno has conducted ethnographic, archival, and performance work on both sides of the Atlantic, presenting, publishing, and leading workshops throughout the United States and abroad. In the music industry Mark has been active as an artist, club manager, consultant, educator, and writer for the past 20 years, mostly in the New York City jazz scene. Before joining the Albright community, Mark taught previously at Swarthmore College (as a Mellon Foundation & Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow), St. John’s University in New York City, and Northeastern University. He earned a B.A. degree (magna cum laude, in music and Latin) at the University of Richmond, an M.A. in jazz history and research at Rutgers University Newark, and a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was awarded both the Livingston and Graduate Dissertation Fellowships for his work in the Canary Islands.

• (2018) Pianist and Arranger, Simbeque, v. 2 (winner, Best Jazz/Fusion Album and Album of the Year, 2018 Premios Canarios de la Música)
• (2014) Pianist. Green Horn in a Red State. Richard Oppenheim. Harriton Carved Wax Records.
• (2013) Pianist and Arranger. Celebrate Brooklyn II. Kike Perdomo. 96K Music.
• (2011) Pianist. Tales & Tongues. Katchie and Le Monde Caché. Harriton Carved Wax Records.
• (2010) Pianist. Companion CD track. Robin Moore. Music in the Hispanic Caribbean: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
• (2007) Pianist. Soundtrack to Cuba: Rhythm in Motion. Richmond: University of Richmond. DVD documentary.
• (2004) “The Mark Lomanno Afro-Cuban Project,” Richmond Jazz Society’s Guest Lecturer Series, Richmond, VA
• (2003) Santiago Music Festival, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba
• (2002) World Premiere Performance, “Lullaby” by Matthew McCabe (for solo piano and computer) at Second Annual Third Practice Electro-Acoustic Musical Festival, University of Richmond, VA.
• (2002) Santiago Music Festival, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba

LAS / MUS 201 Latin American Music
MUS 103B Commercial Music Ensemble
MUS 103C Jazz Combos
MUS 105C Gospel Choir and Praise Band
MUS 109M/209M Applied Theory and Improvisation Studio
MUS 111 Intro to Commercial Music Theory
MUS 121 Black Popular Music
MUS 135 Intro to Music Theory
MUS 203B Studio Band
MUS 211 Commercial Music Theory I
MUS 212 Commercial Music Theory II
MUS 221 Afrofuturism
SYN 362 Sound Ecologies
SYN 387 Improvisation

• (monograph under agreement) Translating Global Jazz and Other Sounds.
• (monograph under agreement) Practicing Piano. Practices series. Duke University Press.
• (forthcoming volume) Co-editor (with Daniel Fischlin), The Improviser’s Classroom: Pedagogies for Cocreative Worldmaking.
• (in press) “Modulating Flawed Bodies: Intimate Acoustemologies, Chronic Pain, and Ethnographic Pianism.” In Intimate Entanglements: Vulnerability in the Ethnography of Performance, edited by Sidra Lawrence and Michelle Kisliuk. Eastman/Rochester Studies in Ethnomusicology series. University of Rochester Press, 110-147.
• (under agreement) “Nomadic Timbres: The Xenophonic Rootstocks of Global Jazz.” In The Oxford Handbook of Jazz and Political Economy, edited by Dale Chapman. Oxford University Press.
• (forthcoming review) “Improvisation and Social Aesthetics, edited by Georgina Born, Eric Lewis, and Will Straw.” Ethnomusicology 66/2.
• (2021) “Comparing Commonalities and Articulating Differences in Recent Studies on Musical Creativity: A Review.” World of Music 10/1: 169-174.
• (2020) Co-editor (with Jason Robinson and Sandra Mathern-Smith), Critical Studies in Improvisation. Special issue on improvisation and the liberal arts. 13/1
• (2020) “The Rigors of Afro/Canarian Jazz: Sounding Peripheral Vision with Severed Tongues.” In Playing for Keeps: Improvisation in the Aftermath, edited by Daniel Fischlin and Eric Porter. Duke University Press. (April 2020).
• (2019) “‘Stay with It All the Way Down’: Michele Cinque Recounts Nick LaRocca’s Incurable Wounds. (Film Review).” Italian American Review 9/1: 135-140.
• (2019) “Book Review. The Improvisation Studies Reader. Edited by Rebecca Caines and Ajay Heble.” Jazz and Culture 1/2: 128-130.
• (2016) “Book Review. Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity. By Tsitsi Elli Jaji.” Africa—Journal of the International African Institute 86/1 (February): 182-184.
• (2016) Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography. Franklin W. Knight and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2016). Entries on “Alfredo ‘Chocolate’ Armenteros,” “Rubén González,” and “Chano Pozo.”
• (2015) “Review: Oxford Studies in Recorded Jazz.” Twentieth-Century Music 12/2 (September): 279-285.
• (2014) “Methodological Potentiality and the Untranslatable: Sounding Difference in the Translating Riff. A Response to Helga Zembrano.” Ethnomusicology Review. (December).
• (2014) “Book Review – The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop. By Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr.” Jazz Perspectives 8/1: 93-98.
• (2014) “Enunciating Power and Ex…Plosive Time: Cécile McLorin Salvant’s WomanChild and Undoing Silence.” Ethnomusicology Review. (March).
• (2013) “St. Brendan’s Island and Afro/Canarian (Jazz) Fusion: Emergence and the īnsula improvīsa.” Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 7/2: 106-120.
• (2013) “The Life of Trans-Atlantic Jazz. Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times. By Robin D.G. Kelley.” Journal of African History 54/2 (July): 286-288.
• (2013) Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd. ed., Charles Hiroshi Garrett, ed. (2013). Entries on “Justo Almario,” “Roy Ayers,” “Descarga,” “Abdullah Ibrahim,” “Ismael Miranda,” “Hafez Modirzadeh,” “Americo Paredes,” “Armando Peraza,” “Richie Ray,” “Roberto Roena,” “Steve Swallow,” “Stanley Turrentine,” “Hiromi Uehara,” “Carlos ‘Patato’ Valdes,” and “Yomo Toro.”
• (2012) “Ellington’s Lens as Motive Mediating: Improvising Voices in the Far East Suite.” Jazz Perspectives 6/1-2 (2012): 151-177.
• (2011) “Jazz in the Middle East.” In John Edward Hasse and Tad Lathrop, eds. Discover Jazz. New York: Prentice Hall (2011), 306-308.
• (2010) “Book Review: Making the Changes: Jazz in South African Literature and Reportage. By Michael Titlestad.” African Music 8/4: 130-136.

(2021) Curator, Wholly Earth: Black Feminist Ecologies for Sustainable Futures, Albright College.
(2018 – present) Associate Editor (Media), Jazz Perspectives journal
(2018) Curator, Jaimeo Brown residency, Northeastern University and Scullers Jazz Club
(2015) Curator, “Sound Breaks: Improvisation, Interdisciplinarity, and Social Advocacy,” Swarthmore College
(2014) Workshop Organizer, “Improvisation, Interdisciplinarity, and the Liberal Arts,” Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges
(2013 – 2017) Chair, Improvisation Section, Society for Ethnomusicology
(2012 – present) Founding Editor, “The Rhythm of Study” blog
(2008 – 2009) Student Representative, Society for Ethnomusicology, Southern Plains Chapter