Dr Ed Cooper

Profile

I am a composer and writer. 

I am currently the Research Network Adminstrator for the AHRC-funded Inner Music and Wellbeing Network led by Freya Bailes and Kelly Jakubowski.

I hold a PhD in Music Composition and Aesthetics from the University of Leeds where I was supervised by Scott McLaughlin and Martin Iddon. This research was fully funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities. I passed my viva with editorial corrections and my thesis received a commendation of Research Excellence from the Leeds Doctoral College.

I use he/they pronouns.

Research interests

My compositional practice takes many forms, from solo repertoire to performance-installations, large-scale choral works to electroacoustic pieces. Broadly, I’m interested in aural limits, those that might be found both within and between so-called listening and hearing, language and sense, interiority and exteriority, or real and imagined sounds. As such, my work is usually disquiet and unsettled in character, often comprising heartbeats, field recordings, detuned guitars, poetry, autotune, and fragmented, plaintive melodies.

I have worked with artists including Apartment House, Marsyas Trio, Octandre Ensemble, Terra Invisus, Jack Adler-McKean, Ryoko Akama, Roxanna Albayati, Lotte Betts-Dean, Kate Ledger, Neil Luck, Heather Roche, Sockethead, and Kathryn Williams. My compositional work has been programmed by a wide range of art and music organisations including ame, BBC Radio 3, East Street Arts, IKLECTIK, Leeds Lieder, Left Bank, Light Night Leeds, University of Leeds International Concert Series, Trinity Laban (UK), CAMP (France), Darmstadt Summer Courses, Die Hochschule für Musik Freiberg, Hošek Contemporary (Germany), KSYME (Greece), TU Dublin Conservatoire (Ireland), rainy days festival (Luxembourg), PlayLab (Sweden), AżTak Festival (Poland), Staller Center for the Arts, and mise-en place (New York, USA).

My writing is generally concerned with contemporary 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, and appear in both English and German. I guest edited a special issue of Tempo published in January 2024 about composer Beat Furrer.

Qualifications

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

Professional memberships

• Royal Musical Association
• Performing Rights Society