Creativity & Collaboration: A bonus conversation with Professor Margaret Barrett & Professor Stacy Holman-Jones

Born in the Illawarra, Dharawal Country south of Sydney in 1957, Jim Denley has been active with experimental and improvised musicking since the 1970s, known for his improvisations on wind instrument and electronics. His radio work Collaborations produced by the ABC Radio National won the 1989 Prix Italia. Jim Denley is interested in what his music instinct might learn from language. His book, Towards Ecological Musicking: 'As Weather' Improvisation, explores an improvisational musical practice rooted in ecology that orients audio perception and expression alike to non-human elements like animals, energy, and place.The theme music for Creative Conversations: Research in Music is "Gleam" by Helen Svoboda.Links:Toward Ecological Musicking: 'As Weather' is available for pre-order from Bloomsbury PublishingFind out more about the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music & Performance at Monash UniversityFollow us on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Violinist/composer, zoömusicologist, and author Dr. Hollis Taylor performs her (re)compositions of avian songs on violin alongside her environmental field recordings, and she also reimagines pied butcherbird repertoire for other human instruments and voices. She has held research appointments at The Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the Institute for Advanced Study (Berlin), the Museum of Natural History (Paris), the University of Technology Sydney, and Macquarie University. She received the 2025 Richard Gill Award for Distinguished Services to Australian Music. In addition to her CD Absolute Bird, she is author of Is Birdsong Music?, Post Impressions, and Music from Another Species: Australian Birdsong Transcriptions.The theme music for Creative Conversations: Research in Music is "Gleam" by Helen Svoboda.Links:Works discussed in this episode can be found at www.hollistaylor.comFind out more about the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music & Performance at Monash UniversityFollow us on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Sonya Lifschitz is an award-winning Ukrainian-Australian pianist, performance-maker, pedagogue, artistic researcher, and cultural leader at the forefront of classical and contemporary art music. Recognised with a 2024 Australian Women in Music Excellence in Classical Music Award, and praised internationally by the New York Times and The Age for her dynamic and powerful performances. She has appeared at major festivals and venues worldwide, including the Barbican Centre in London, the Venice Biennale, De Doelen in Rotterdam, Bargemusic in New York, and all of Australia’s major festivals. With repertoire spanning from 15th-century Faenza Codex to works written for her today, Sonya is known for her fiercely imaginative, daring collaborations across theatre, dance, film, visual art, and spoken word to create work that positions art music at the nexus of interdisciplinary performance practices.The theme music for Creative Conversations: Research in Music is "Gleam" by Helen Svoboda.Links:Works discussed in this episode can be found at www.sonyalifschitz.comFind out more about the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music & Performance at Monash UniversityFollow us on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Merinda Dias-Jayasinha is an outstanding, genre-crossing, multi-talented Australian vocalist. Her PhD project at Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music explores jazz-trained women vocalists' experiences of education and professional roles in the music industry. What is unique about Merinda's project is her use of narrative and poetic inquiry methodologies, and the development of techniques informed by an intersectional feminist lens. She uses these methods to explore participant perceptions of intersectional factors facilitating or constraining their career progression and industry engagement.The theme music for Creative Conversations: Research in Music is "Gleam" by Helen Svoboda.Links:Find out more about the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music & Performance at Monash UniversityFollow us on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we’ll be joined by Lauren Stewart joined by our guest Professor Bronwyn Davies.Bronwy Davies is an Independent Scholar,  Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne and Emetruis Professor at the University of Western Sydney. She was a professor of Education at James Cook University and then at the University of Western Sydney before becoming an independent scholar in 2009. Bronwyn was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for her work in early childhood at Uppsala University. She is author of 22 books and more than 150 book chapters and papers, many of them co-authored.We hope you enjoy this conversation with Lauren Stewart and Professor Bronwyn Davies.Links:Find out more about the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music & Performance at Monash UniversityFollow us on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lauren Stewart is a PhD candidate at Monash University and a recipient of the Monash Graduate Excellence Scholarship (MGES). Her doctoral research takes a holistic approach to the study of songwriting, exploring the technical, intrapersonal, and interpersonal factors that can enable or inhibit early-career songwriters’ development. She completed her Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Music degrees at Monash University in 2015, specializing in Popular Voice Studies at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music. This was followed by a Bachelor of Music (Honors) degree, which sparked her research interests in popular music, songwriting, and the creative process. Outside of her research pursuits, Lauren works as a singing teacher, a teaching associate, and a vocalist with a variety of bands and ensembles, including the Australian Army Band Corps (Melbourne). This year, she also worked as a music mentor for the ADF Arts for Recovery, Resilience, Teamwork and Skills (ADF ARRTS) program in Canberra.Links:Find out more about the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music & Performance at Monash UniversityFollow us on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cassandra is a PhD candidate with the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance at Monash University in Naarm, Australia. She has a bachelor’s degree in music performance with honours (awarded in 2020) through Monash University. Cassandra has also obtained a Bachelor in secondary education from the University of Canberra in 2015 and completed her Licentiate degree with distinction in classical flute performance from the Australian Music Examination Board in 2017.Links:Find out more about the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music & Performance at Monash UniversityFollow us on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we’ll be joined by Miranda Park and our guest Professor Jonathan Wyatt. Jonathan is the Professor of Qualitative Inquiry and Director of the Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry, at the University of Edinburgh in the UK.Jonathan trained as a counsellor, part-time, at the Isis Centre in Oxford and Oxford Brookes University. For ten years, he worked in the NHS as a counsellor in primary care and, until moving to Edinburgh in September 2013, ran a small private counselling and supervision practice. He originally worked as an English teacher, then subsequently in youth and community work, before moving into staff development and training.He completed his doctorate at Bristol in narrative and life story research in 2008. Jonathan is an accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, and a member of the International Association of Qualitative Inquiry, the Narrative Inquiry Centre at Bristol and the Centre for Arts Therapies Research, Roehampton.We hope you enjoy this conversation with Miranda Park and Professor Jonathan Wyatt.Links:Find out more about the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music & Performance at Monash UniversityFollow us on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we’ll be joined by Cassandra Gibson and our guest Dr Bryant Keith Alexander from Loyola Marymount University in the US.Dr Bryant Keith Alexander is dean of the LMU College of Communication and Fine Arts. He is professor of Communication, Performance and Cultural Studies. Alexander is an active scholar with a distinguished record of teaching, service, professional activity, and a regular performer and keynote speaker at universities and conferences around the US.We hope you enjoy this conversation with Cassandra Gibson and Dr Bryant Keith Alexander.Links:Find out more about the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music & Performance at Monash UniversityFollow us on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Miranda Park is a PhD candidate, writer, musician and editor. Her doctoral research is an intersectional feminist, narrative examination of students’ and teachers’ experiences in Australian tertiary jazz institutions. This project involves fieldwork across three jazz courses in Australia, with the aim of understanding how individual and institutional practices and beliefs contribute to, or challenge, enduring inequalities in higher jazz education. Miranda is part of the ARC-funded project Diversifying Music in Australia: Gender Equity in Jazz and Improvisation at Monash University, which investigates the gendered practices of inclusion and exclusion in the Australian jazz and improvisation industry.Links:Find out more about the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music & Performance at Monash UniversityFollow us on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.