I am Professor of Music at Bath Spa University where I lead an interdisciplinary research group on Intercultural Communication through Practice.

One of my research areas examines creative processes across repertoires, genres and cultures, including composer-performer collaborations and rehearsal analysis. I am Co-Investigator on two projects funded by the European Research Council: Beyond East and West: developing and documenting an evolving transcultural musical practice (2015-2023); and Interactive Research in Music as Sound (2017-2023) where I lead an improvisation case study. I am also co-editor of a new book series with Routledge on Transcultural Musical Practices and humanities editor for the Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies.

Recent developments in my research involves intersections between nature and music. I lead an ESRC/AHRC research network between the UK and South Korea on Ecotones: Soundscapes of Trees (2022-23) that develops my work on Interspecies Listening (2021) and Hear Water: building environmental empathy through deep listening (2022).

My interests in the areas of performance and analysis, processes of composition, rehearsal and performance in contemporary music, especially in string quartets, stem from my PhD at the University of Reading on Bartók Performance Studies. Playing viola I am a regular member of the Brandon Hill Chamber Orchestra.

I am editor of The Cambridge Companion to Bartók (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Recorded Music: Performance, Culture, and Technology (Cambridge University Press, 2010) for which I received the Ruth A. Solie Award from the American Musicological Society in 2011. I was President of the Society for Music Analysis from 2004 to 2008. From 2007 to 2009 I led a collaborative research project with the Kreutzer Quartet and Michael Finnissy entitled: ‘From Composition to Performance: Innovations and Interactions in Contemporary String Quartets’ funded by a British Academy Larger Research Grant. One of the significant outputs of this research is the software DVD, Evolution and Collaboration: the composition, rehearsal and performance of Finnissy’s Second String Quartet, produced with Michael Clarke (University of Huddersfield) in 2011, an overview of which may be seen here:

Additional outputs relating to this collaborative research include the Kreutzer Quartet’s DVD Quartet Choreography and their recording of Finnissy’s Second and Third String Quartets, the latter being dedicated to me in 2009.