This workshop guides participants through fundamental components of George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization ([1953] 2001). By grounding Russell’s theoretical concepts in active, creative music-making processes, it will facilitate a more complete understanding of the relationship between his music theory and embodied knowledge. The workshop will feature presentations of concepts, live demonstrations by the workshop facilitators, and audience participation. Specifically, we outline Russell’s central concept of “vertical tonal gravity” and some of its temporal and harmonic ramifications of thinking, feeling, and hearing vertically. We situate this argument alongside Stover’s (2021) theorization of affect as the opening of capacities for relationships, which includes creative possibilities opened by music theory.

The workshop also links music theory with social and political meanings. Russell’s “pan-genre” theoretical claims express his effort to transcend racialized boundaries of musical genre while also amplifying the Black American music tradition. “Vertical tonal gravity” implicitly critiques Western philosophies that emphasize linear progression, musical and otherwise; Russell connects music-theoretical emphases on musical linearity with paradigms of colonial/capitalist expansion, resource extraction, and unrelenting societal demands for productivity in ways that align with recent theories of decoloniality (Mignolo and Walsh 2018).

Russell’s musical philosophy is fundamentally pragmatic; it serves creative and joyous musical experimentation and aesthetic expansiveness, unites theoretical speculation and personal freedom, dissolves oppositions between writing and improvisation, and transcends differences in musical style and genre, as well as personal background and identity, to generate more welcoming musical, theoretical, and pedagogical spaces. As part of a larger network of Black American musical theory that has largely been eschewed by American academic music theory, Russell’s theory also suggests we rethink who counts as a music theorist and what counts as music theory in the first place (Hisama 2021). Recent scholarship argues for a more expansive understanding of music theory and music theoretical communities (Stover 2024; Hannaford 2021, 2023, 2025); our workshop grounds these arguments in processes of embodied music making.

Participants are not required to have experience with Russell’s work or improvisation in general. We welcome musicians of all abilities and outlooks who are open to experiencing Russell’s ideas.