CMRC Seminar (Summer Week 7): Audrey Riley Is It Ok to Wander? The challenges of practice-based research
Event details
Is It Ok to Wander? The challenges of practice-based research
This short presentation shares a personal practice-based research experience, exploring the tension between linear and prescribed research milestones, and the meandering, circular experience of an arts and humanities student as they make and reflect on work. The experiential nature of my learning and understanding as a musician with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company led to unique challenges as I underwent a doctoral research study intended retrieve and explore my practice.
Touching on:
- Personal experiences and challengesThe role of transformative events
- Too hard, too soft, just right: finding your own voice
- Finding help in unexpected places
- Being prepared to improvise
Meeting ID: 974 1147 1887
Passcode: 030134
Audrey Riley
Audrey Riley is a cellist and improvising musician. She has been actively performing and commissioning contemporary music since the early 1980s, working in a wide range of music. Audrey has worked with Gavin Bryars since 2003, as a guest musician in his Ensemble, and is a dedicatee of several works. Between 2001 and 2011 she was a musician for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performing works by Cage, Wolff, and Bryars with Takehisa Kosugi, Christian Wolff, and the musicians and composers of the Company. The experience instigated a subsequent doctoral research project at the Music, Technology, and Innovation Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester. Her PhD “In Pursuit of Non-Knowledge: Perspectives on Performing with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company” was passed in 2021.
Her research lies in the area of music performance practice. She is interested in environments and processes for experimental performance, involving safe spaces for improvisation and exploring ‘non-knowledge’ or a no-mind in performance. The adoption of a transpersonal stance in a self-determined experimental practice (whether working with a written score, or through co-creativity) is a particular interest. Following the example of Takehisa Kosugi’s approach to Cage, she is interested in the revealing of immaterial realms as a means to transcend. She is currently developing a post-doctoral performance project to explore these ideas, and is connected to the Orpheus Institute, Ghent where she is preparing her thesis for publication as a monograph.
Audrey is an educator with many years’ experience of masterclasses and teaching at various universities and colleges. She is currently a senior lecturer in composition and ensemble skills at the Institute for Contemporary Music Performance in London.