New Directions in Musical Collaborative Creativity

Raymond MacDonald is a saxophonist and Professor of Music Psychology and Improvisation at Edinburgh University. His co-edited texts include, Musical Identities, Musical Communication, Music Health and Wellbeing, Musical Imaginations and, The Handbook of Music Identities and he co-authored (with Graeme Wilson) The Art of Becoming: How Group Improvisation Works. He was head of music at Edinburgh University from 2013-2017 and editor of the Journal Psychology of Music from 2006-2012. He is a co-founder of The Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, has produced music for film, television, theatre and art installations, released over 60 albums and toured and broadcast worldwide.

Tia DeNora is Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter. Her books include Hope: the dream we carry, Music in Everyday Life, and Music Asylums: Music and Wellbeing in Everyday Life. She was Principal Investigator on the AHRC Care for Music project (2019-2023). She is a Leverhulme Major Fellow working on Island Life and Death, an ethnography of cultural change around death, dying and bereavement. DeNora is also a Fellow of the British Academy.

Maria Sappho is a Newyorican artist and researcher currently working in the UK. She gained her PhD from the University of Huddersfield as part of the European Research Council project Interactive Research in Music as Sound (IRiMaS) and continues this work as a postdoctoral research fellow on the Digital Playgrounds for Music project. She is also the module coordinator for experimental improvisation at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and is a Masters supervisor at the Institute for Contemporary Music Performance. Sappho is a co-founder of the Chimere Communities project, which brings AI into marginalised, artistic, and activist spaces on a global scale. She is a founding member of both the Noisebringers ensemble and the Brutalust duo and has played with the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra for eight years. She is a winner of the BBC radiophonic Daphne Oram award.


Robert Burke is an Australian improvising musician and composer, and Associate Professor of Jazz and Improvisation at The Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance, Monash University, Australia. He has performed and composed on over 300 album releases, collaborating with George Lewis, Raymond MacDonald, Hermeto Pascoal, Dave Douglas, Tony Malaby, Ben Monder, Tom Rainey, Tony Gould, Paul Grabowsky and Mark Helias. He is the author of Perspectives on Artistic Research in Music and Experimentation in Jazz: Idea Chasing. Burke's research focuses on jazz and improvisational processes investigating what happens during improvisation, including investigation into the phenomenology of musical interaction, experimentation, identity, agency and gender studies. He is also the current president of AJIRN (Australasian Jazz and Improvisation Research Network).

Ross Birrell is Professor of Contemporary Art Practice and Critical Theory and Senior Researcher at Glasgow School of Art. His interdisciplinary creative practice research is predominantly situated in the field of site-specific/contextual art and moving image/audio installation, and explores inter-relationships between music, poetry, politics, and place.