Research fellow
Catherine Laws is a pianist and musicologist. She is a Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of York and a Senior Research Fellow at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent.
As a performer, Catherine specializes in contemporary music, often working collaboratively with composers to explore the wide and subtle variations of touch, tone, dynamic and texture possible on the modern piano, and the innate drama of interactions between performer, instruments and audience. Catherine also performs with two ensembles: the music theatre group Black Hair and amplified experimental ensemble [rout].
Most of Catherine’s research lies in two areas: contemporary music performance practices and the relationship between music and language. Current practice-based projects are concerned with: 1) embodiment and subjectivity in contemporary music performance; 2) processes of collaboration between composers and performers. Much of Catherine’s published musicology examines the relationship between music, language and meaning. She is currently completing a book on music in the work of Samuel Beckett and composers’ responses to his work.
