Voices, Bodies, Practices - (Orpheus Institute) by Catherine Laws & William Brooks & David Gorton & Thanh Thuy Nguyen & Stefan Östersjö (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Who is the "I" that performs? The arts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have pushed us relentlessly to reconsider our notions of the self, expression, and communication: to ask ourselves, again and again, who we think we are and how we can speak meaningfully to one another. Although in other performing arts studies, especially of theatre, the performance of selfhood and identity continues to be a matter of lively debate in both practice and theory, the question of how a sense of self is manifested through musical performance has been neglected. The authors of Voices, Bodies, Practices are all musician-researchers: the book employs artistic research to explore how embodied performing "voices" can emerge from the interactions of individual performers and composers, musical materials, instruments, mediating technologies, and performance contexts.

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

In collaboration with Orpheus Institute

About the Author

Catherine Laws is a pianist, reader in Music at the University of York, and senior artistic research fellow at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent.

William Brooks is a composer, professor of Music at the University of York, emeritus professor at the University of Illinois, and senior research fellow and series editor at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent.

David Gorton is a composer, senior postgraduate tutor and associate head of research at the Royal Academy of Music, associate professor at the University of London, and associate researcher at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent.

Stefan Östersjö is a guitarist, chaired professor of Musical Performance in Piteå School of Music at Luleå University of Technology, and associate researcher at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent.

Thanh Thy Nguyn is a ðàn tranh player, a PhD candidate at Malmo Academy of Music at Lund University, and a ðàn tranh teacher at Vietnam National Academy of Music.

Jeremy J. Wells is an audio designer and senior lecturer in Sound Recording in the Department of Music at the University of York.