Ed Cooper

Profile

I am a composer, artist, and researcher based in Leeds, UK. My practice considers the listening body as an intermediary, simultaneously acting as both a boundary and transmitter to itself, exploring various musical liminalities. As one listens, one strains towards an understanding of their body, but, through this act, limits or changes what might be known, such that the body is itself a threshold of internal and external sounds themselves and to each other. In practical terms, this manifests as creating compositions in which the aural attention (of performers or listeners) is constantly disrupted, through physically cumbersome, extremely quiet performance techniques or unusual ways of listening, such that a sense of suspension within one’s self is felt.

My music has been performed across North America and Europe and I have worked with international ensembles and artists such as Apartment House, Reanimation Orchestra, Jack Adler-McKean, Ryoko Akama, Heather Roche, and Kate Ledger. In 2019, my piece places/place was featured on BBC Radio 3 and I was awarded the Berkofsky Arts Award for my sound installation Experiencing Time/Timing Experience. In 2016, I attended the Irish Composition Summer School to work with John McLachlan, Gráinne Mulvey and The Robinson Panoramic Quartet. I am currently studying a PhD at the University of Leeds, supervised by Scott McLaughlin and Martin Iddon; this is fully funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, through the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH).

I have published writings in TEMPO investigating Wandelweiser music and masculinity, and in SoundEffects examining homelessness and sound studies.

I teach on a variety of undergraduate modules at the University of Leeds. I also sing tenor in The Clothworkers Consort of Leeds.

Research interests

• composition
• new music
• experimental music
• liminality
• time in music
• listening
• (musical) bodies
• Pauline Oliveros
• homelessness
• Wandelweiser
• masculinity

Qualifications

• MMus Critical and Experimental Composition
• BA Music (International)