Students and Alumni

Jonathan Kay is an internationally recognized improvising jazz musician and multi-instrumentalist (saxophones, esraj, bansuri, shakuhachi) hailing from Toronto, Canada. In search of non-western ways of musical knowing, Jonathan moved to Kolkata, India, and for 10 years traditionally studied North Indian Raga music, innovating its expression on the saxophone. He has also traveled on two occasions to learn Japanese shakuhachi music in Kyoto. Based on questions of cross-cultural translation and integration, Jonathan’s music is exploring transcultural possibilities through experimental and contemplative models of improvisation.

                Jonathan is a PhD student in the department of East-West Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco under the mentorship of Dr. Debashish Banerji. He has been studying East-West philosophy and psychology based on the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, and his dissertation research is focused on developing ideas about musical and transcultural hermeneutics. As a scholar-practioner in arts-based research, Jonathan is exploring the horizons between thought and sound based on the work of Gilles Deleuze and the non-standard philosophy of Francois Laruelle. www.jonathankay.ca