Ed Cooper

Profile

About

I am a composer and writer based in Leeds, UK.

My compositional practice takes many forms, from solo repertoire to performance-installations, large-scale choral works to electroacoustic pieces. These are often disquiet in character, frequently comprising heartbeats, field recordings, and distant, half-forgotten melodies. As such, I invite disruptions between interiority to exteriority in my music, thinking of bodies as existing as and at their own thresholds.

My music has been performed across North America and Europe and I have worked with international ensembles and artists such as Apartment House, Octandre Ensemble, Reanimation Orchestra, Jack Adler-McKean, Ryoko Akama, Heather Roche, Kathryn Williams, Neil Luck, Roxanna Albayati, and Kate Ledger. 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).

My writings are generally concerned with new music, covering issues such as gender, musical bodies, listening, and homelessness, and composers such as Jennifer Walshe, Beat Furrer, and members of the Wandelweiser collective. These texts have been published in wide variety of journals, academic and otherwise. I guest edited a special issue of Tempo about composer Beat Furrer published in January 2024.

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)