Profile

Biography

Catherine Laws is a musicologist and a pianist specialising in contemporary music. Much of her research focuses on the relationship between music, language and meaning, with a special focus on the musicality of the work of Samuel Beckett and composers’ responses to his texts. She has published a range of articles on these topics and is currently completing a book on Beckett and music for Rodopi Press. Other research interests include: contemporary music performance practices; music theatre; the relationship between critical theory and contemporary musicology; music and gender.

From 1997 until 2008 Catherine was Associate Director of Music and head of performance at Dartington College of Arts, before spending two years as a freelance performer, researcher and lecturer. In addition to her current post at York, she is a Senior Artistic Research Fellow at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, with practice-based research projects focused on the performance of Morton Feldman’s late piano music, processes of composer-performer collaboration, and the relationship between physical and sonic gesture. Recent publications include ‘On Listening’, volume 15 no. 3 of the journal Performance Research, which Catherine guest edited, and ‘Feldman – Beckett – Johns: Patterning, Memory and Subjectivity’ in Björn Heile (ed.), The Modernist Legacy: Essays on New Music. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009).   Forthcoming publications include ‘Morton Feldman’s Late Piano Music: Experimentalism in Practice’ in The Practice of Practising (also edited by Catherine), a volume in the Collected Writings of the Orpheus Institute. Other publications are listed below.

As a performer, Catherine is interested in instrumental colour and interaction; the wide and subtle variations of touch, tone, dynamic and texture possible on the modern piano, and the innate drama of interactions between performer and piano, piano and other sounds (electronic or otherwise), and performer, instruments and audience. Her recent Arts Council England funded project Piano and Other Things (2009-10) was devised as a means to explore these interactions collaboratively with a number of composers. By turns explosive, playful and meditative, this performance explores the vibrant expressive power of the piano, sometimes in dramatic interplay with electronics or other sounds and sometimes alone, with an intense focus on subtle, quiet resonances. The programme is ‘curated’, with the first half, in particular, composed as an event in itself (rather than a series of discrete compositions). Four pieces were written specially, and for these Catherine approached composers who know her well as a performer. Damien Harron, Juliana Hodkinson, Edward Jessen and David Prior worked with the specific programming context and Catherine’s particular interests in piano sound, the physicality of performance, and the possible inclusion of other sounds in mind. The contrast in the responses is striking, and yet each composer thought carefully about the whole performance – the relationship between body and instrument, the atmosphere to be created, the details of colours and expression or its absence.

The resulting pieces are: Damien Harron: The Writing’s on the Wall (for piano and voice; 2010); Juliana Hodkinson: When the Wind Blows (for piano, toys and audio playback; 2009); Edward Jessen: Chambre 119 (for piano, amplified voice, toy piano, and cd; 2009); David Prior: Other Spaces (for solo piano; 2009). Also woven into the performance are two other pieces for piano and electronics. Within the rich harmonies and pounding rhythms of Donnacha Dennehy’s pAt, the pianist is pitted against a controlling recorded voiceover. In contrast, Yannis Kyriakides’ meditative  hYDAtorizon plays with the interaction between slowly sweeping pure electronic tones and the resonances of single piano notes, whether struck at the keyboard or plucked inside the instrument.

Much of Catherine’s performance work takes place in the context of two ensembles: the music theatre group Black Hair and amplified experimental ensemble [rout]. Black Hair is known for innovative and exciting performances, developed in close collaboration with composers, exploring the innate theatre of musical expression and the interaction between voices and instruments. The group is currently an ensemble in residence at the University of York. In 2008-9 Black Hair was one of Sound and Music’s ‘Cutting Edge’ ensembles, with a London performance followed by a tour. Most recently, Black Hair developed a performance of Roger Marsh’s Rising for York Spring Festival and a then for Axis Arts, Crewe. More information, including recorded clips, can be found at http://www.blackhairensemble.co.uk/

[rout] is a collective of composers and performers specialising in new music for amplified ensemble (usually violin/ electric violin, electric guitar, saxophone, double/ electric bass, keyboards, samplers, and other electronics). The group has a special interest in interdisciplinary work – collaborations with visual artists, writers and dancers have been a regular feature – and in performing in venues not normally associated with new music. [rout] have recorded for BBC Radio 3’s “Hear and Now”, and the CD [rout] one (Divine Art, 2005) contains compositions for [rout] by Paul Whitty, Paul Newland, and Sam Hayden. More recent recordings of are on the website http://www.routweb.com.

Publications

Selected publications

• Editor, Performance Research XV/3: On Listening  (London and New York: Routledge, 2010)
• ‘Beckett and Unheard Sound in Daniela Caselli (ed.), Beckett and Nothing (Manchester University Press, 2010), 176-191.
• ‘Feldman – Beckett – Johns: Patterning, Memory and Subjectivity’ in Björn Heile (ed.), The Modernist Legacy: Essays on New Music. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 135-158.
• Editor, Performance Research XII/1: On Beckett (London and New York: Routledge, 2007)
• ‘Aspects of Form and its Significance in Contemporary Music’, Performance Research, X/2: On Form (2005), 135-146.
• ‘Beckett and Kurtag’, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, XV (2005), 241-256.
• ‘The Music of Beckett’s Theatre’, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, XIII (2003), 121-136.
• ‘Beethoven’s Haunting of Beckett’s Ghost Trio’, in Ben-Zvi, Linda (ed.), Drawing on Beckett: Portraits, Performances, and Cultural Contexts (Tel Aviv: Assaph, 2003), 197-214.
• ‘Music in Words and Music: Feldman’s Response to Beckett’s Play’, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui XI (2001), 279-290.
• ‘The Double Image of Music in Beckett’s Dream of Fair to Middling Women’, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui IX (December 2000), 295-308.
• ‘Performance Issues in Composers’ Approaches to Beckett’, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, VIII (2000), 143-158.
• ‘Morton Feldman’s Neither’, in Mary Bryden (ed.) Samuel Beckett and Music, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 57-86.
•  ‘Richard Barrett’s Ne songe plus à fuir: Beckett in Musical Translation?’, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui VI (1997), 289-302.
• ‘The Problem of Donna Anna: ‘Risk-Free Identification’?’, Women: a cultural review V/3 (Winter 1994), 279-289.

 Forthcoming

• ‘Morton Feldman’s Late Piano Music: Experimentalism in Practice’, forthcoming in Catherine Laws (ed.) The Practice of Practising (Leuven University Press, ORCiM subseries publication 4), 2011.