Creative Musical Practice
Our experts are researching how creative music-making and sonic innovation, past and present, can engage with and shape communities, deepen understandings and improve lives.
We’re publishing research and building collaborations on topics including:
- Music composition and improvisation
- Performance practice
- Sonic creativity
- New modes of audience engagement
- Collaborative, experimental and networked performance
We are taking the lead in the University’s Creative and Digital research, championing creative practice, providing strategic leadership and driving critical and creative engagement with emerging technologies.
Explore our innovative research
- The Solfeggio Tradition - how new understandings of musical creativity in the 18th century can transform performance and teaching practices today
- Ensemble 1604 - performance-based research into the interstices between contemporary and early music
- The Digital Score - investigating the transformation of the music score through computational technologies
- Orasaigh - a geolocative acousmatic soundwalk composition inspired by the Outer Hebrides, nominated for an Ivor Novello Award
Find out about more of our funded research projects.
Spotlight on: Music commissioned for BBC Proms celebrates city’s lace heritage
A Nottingham academic has been commissioned to write a new orchestral composition for Nottingham’s inaugural BBC Prom. Entitled "Lace Machine Music" the score takes inspiration from Nottingham’s industrial past and the city’s lacemaking industry.
Our research community
Research in this area emerges from a vibrant community of staff, research students and partnerships.
- Christiana Hill
- Scott McHurley (with Nottingham Playhouse)
- Shannon-Latoya Simon
- Ella Townsend (with Theatre Royal Nottingham)
- Chen Xi
- Mo Zhou
- Academia de' Dissonanti
- BBC Concert Orchestra
- Coastal Symphony of Georgia
- Dunedin Consort
- Leicestershire Music Hub
- Mixed Reality Lab
- Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Music Hub
- Orchestras Live
- Sinfonia Viva
- Stile Galante
- Streetwise Opera
- Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre
- Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham
- Villiers Quartet
Join us
Our staff welcome initial enquiries about research supervision at both Master’s or PhD level, or about sponsorship for externally-funded postdoctoral positions.