Dr Richard Powell
Lecturer

Profile

Biography

I am a teacher and researcher in the areas of music education, musicology and music analysis. I studied at the University of York as both an undergraduate and a postgraduate; with my doctoral thesis Articulating Time: Listening to Musical Forms in the Twenty-First Century I explored the ways in which composers across the last two centuries – contemporary and canonic – have engaged with issues of temporal perception through structural approaches to sound.

In my recent teaching, I have become particularly active in the area of music education. Since 2016, I have taught on the MA in Music Education: Instrumental and Vocal Teaching, and in January 2022 I took over leadership of the programme from its founder Dr Elizabeth Haddon, holding this role until September 2025 academic year. I have previously led undergraduate modules focusing on critical approaches to nineteenth-century music, and on the exploration of critical musicology and its applications to listening and performance. I currently contribute to the undergraduate core module Analyse This! Critical Approaches to Music 2 and teach regularly on various critical and analytical topics for the MA Musicology. I will be assuming programme leadership of the BA in Music from the start of the 2025/26 academic year, and I will also be running a new undergraduate module ‘Dancing about architecture’: Writing about music.

As a researcher, I am currently exploring ways in which the use of analytical strategies might inform and enrich pedagogical approaches, and the relationship between the language used in instrumental teaching and tutor books. I am a co-author for three chapters in Instrumental Music Education (ed. Haddon, forthcoming with Bloomsbury). My work on the music of John Adams has been published in Contemporary Music Review, and with Professor Tim Howell I co-authored a chapter on timescale and environment in the music of Hans Abrahamsen and Kaija Saariaho for The Nature of Nordic Music (ed. Tim Howell, 2020 with Routledge), a book project for which I also acted as assistant editor. My most recent work includes a contribution considering symphonic works by Thomas Adès and Sibelius for Thomas Adès Studies (ed. Edward Venn & Philip Stoecker, Cambridge University Press, 2021), and an article exploring Adès’s orchestral work Dawn (2020) for TEMPO (due 2021).

In addition to working as a freelance violinist and instrumental teacher, I also regularly produce concert programme notes for a variety of ensembles and organisations around the UK.

Departmental roles

● Programme Leader, MA in Music Education: Instrumental and Vocal Teaching (2022–25)
● Programme Leader, BA in Music (from September 2025)
● Co-leader of Contemporary Practices research cluster
● Contemporary Music Research Collective co-convenor
● School of ACT Marketing Committee