Jonathon Stuart Crompton

Jonathon Crompton is a saxophonist, composer, improviser, and graduate student in music theory at Columbia University. Originally from Australia, Crompton received a Bachelor of Music Performance from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. Since moving to New York City, he has completed a Master of Music in jazz performance and a Master of Arts in music theory at Queens College, CUNY. 

Crompton’s research interests include the perception and cognition of music, particularly within the constraints and affordances of genre and generic paradigms, especially in the context of jazz–classical crossover music. As he develops his ideas concerning hybrid or crossover musical spaces, Crompton is developing a growing enthusiasm for critical theory, including Alex Honneth's work on recognition, Rahel Jaegghi's work on learning and alienation, and Theodor Adorno's dialectics. Crompton is also interested in the music of Beethoven and Haydn, and has a stubborn predilection for Schenkerian analysis as it applies to their work. Finally, Crompton is interested in the history of music theory, with a focus on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century polyphony and treatises, and is an active counterpoint pedagogue.

Crompton's latest work as a composer, Cantata No. 1: An Island Seen and Felt (2025), is a musical portrait of the beaches of his homeland, Australia. Supported by a commission from the Australian Federal Government via the Australia Council for the Arts, the cantata has been described as "raptuous and transporting" (Roots Magazine), "a breathy, tremulous meditation on the shores of his native Victoria " (The Saturday Paper), and as "a satisfyingly exquisite experience … infused with a strong sense of wonder, a reverence for the beauty of both music and nature." (Elijah Wood, New York City Jazz Record).