Ed Cooper

I am a composer and writer.   

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. My monograph, titled Aural Liminalities in New Music, is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

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 in October 2024 and my thesis received a commendation of Research Excellence from the Leeds Doctoral College.  

My LAHRI postdoc will develop this research to investigate further the intersection of contemporary music and philosophy. Specifically, this project will utilise the Jean-Luc Nancy’s Listening (2007) to analyse music from the 1980s to present day that is concerned with perceptual liminalities. This includes works by composers such as Gérard Grisey, Luigi Nono, Morton Feldman, and Pauline Oliveros.  

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

I use he/they pronouns. 

Publications

Monograph

Aural Liminalities in New Music, Cambridge University Press, (Under contract, 2026)

Journal articles 

• ‘What Can Reading Do? On Postcritique and “The New Discipline”’, Tempo, 79. 313 (Forthcoming, July 2025) 

• ‘Jennifer’s Jokes: Contextualising ‘The New Discipline’’ / ‘Jennifers Witz: Ein Context für ‘The New Discipline’’, Positionen, February 2024, 24–25 (English online; German in print, trans. by Michael Steffens) 

• ‘Identity through Difference in Beat Furrer’s Lotófagos (2007)’, Tempo, 78.307 (January 2024), 8–19 

• ‘New Liminalities: Beat Furrer at 70’, Tempo, 78.307 (January 2024), 6–7 

• ‘Borderlands: Liminality, Bodies, and Listening’, Americas: A Hemispheric Music Journal, 31 (2022/3), 59–66 

• ‘The Strong Silent Type: Masculinity and Wandelweiser Music’, Tempo, 75.296 (April 2021), 21–33 

• ‘Listening from the in-between: The influence of sound on homelessness as a liminal space’, SoundEffects, 10.1 (2021), 91–106 

 Reviews 

• ‘Beat Furrer: Furrer 70’, Tempo, 79. 313 (Forthcoming, July 2025) 

•  ‘Jennifer Walshe: URSONATE%24’, Tempo, 79.312 (Forthcoming, April 2025) 

• ‘Oliver Leith: Last Days’, Tempo, 79.311 (January 2025), 97–99 

• ‘Ekmeles: We Live the Opposite Daring’, Tempo, 78.310 (October 2024), 84–85  

• ‘Daniel M. Karlsson: Mapping the Valleys of the Uncanny’, Tempo, 78.309 (July 2024), 108–109 

• ’Eden Lonsdale: Clear and Hazy Moons’, Tempo, 77.306 (October 2023), 124–125 

• ‘Andrew Greenwald: A Thing Made Whole’, Tempo, 77.304 (April 2023), 97–98 

• ‘Bryn Harrison: Three Description of Place and Movement’, Tempo, 77.303 (January 2023), 103–104

Conferences and Presentations

• ‘The Fountain (After Grace II) — Workshop with Trio Northumbria’, presented at BFE/RMA Students’ Conference 2023, Northumbria University, 10–12 January 2023. 

• ‘Borderlands of the Self: Liminality, Bodies, and Listening’, presented at Borderlands: Postcolonial Formations of Connection and Separation, University of Leeds, 9–10 June 2022. 

• ‘Bodies In-Between: an extract from our embodied listening/awareness workshop’, presented at Durham Castle Conference, University of Durham, 29–30 April 2022. 

• ‘Bodies In-Between Themselves and Each Other: Rethinking Musical Liminality for Guitar’, presented at The 21st Century Guitar, Ball State University, Indiana, 17–20 March 2022. 

• ‘Bodies In-Between Themselves: Rethinking Musical Liminality for the Clarinet’, presented at BFE/RMA Students’ Conference 2022, University of Plymouth, 6–8 January 2022. 

• ‘Excavating Thresholds on the Search for Precarity: Composing Multiphonics for Heather Roche’ presented at Vibrant Practices: Material Agency and Performative Ontologies, University of Leeds, 16–17 April 2021. 

• ‘Between Focus: Liminality as a Productive Site for Collaborative Improvisation’ presented at The Improviser’s Experience: Knowledge, Methodology, Communication, University of Huddersfield and Royal Music Association, 18–19 March 2021. 

• Composer participant as part of Scott McLaughlin’s paper and workshop titled ‘Composing for the Indeterminacy of the Clarinet’, presented at Royal Musical Association 56th Annual Conference, University of Goldsmiths, 8–10 September 2020. 

• ‘Clouded Transformation and Temporal Disorientation in Bryn Harrison’s Rise (2003)’ presented at Graduate Student Theory Conference, Manhattan School of Music, 29 April 2018. 

Teaching

Musicology; music composition; film music; aesthetics; practice research; interdisciplinary studies 

Qualifications

• PhD in Music Composition and Aesthetics 

• MMus Critical and Experimental Composition 

• BA Music (International) 

Professional memberships

• Royal Musical Association 

• Performing Rights Society