Research Collaborator

University of Guelph

Dr. Spring is an ethnomusicologist who focuses on the music of the Circum-Atlantic, jazz history, improvisation, jazz and dance, and music of the twentieth century. He has published research on the beginnings of swing jazz in New York during the late 1920s and early 1930s and the history of the relationship between social dance and jazz, as well as analyses of the improvisational style of seminal jazz electric guitarist Charlie Christian. Dr. Spring is also a jazz guitarist and teacher. He holds a PhD in musicology (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and a MFA and BFA in sociology (York University).