SCHWARTZ, Laura Rose

Laura R. Schwartz is a composer, educator, lawyer, and video projectionist. Her music explores written notation as a facilitator of a performer’s own creativity and self-formation. She blends together elements of traditionally notation scores, verbally notated scores, and illuminated manuscripts situating the participant in a space of their own curiosity and creativity. Laura’s focus on mechanical environmental sounds as musical materials (electric fans, combs, etc.) brings a playful curiosity to the mundane. She regularly performs guided improvisations on amplified electric fans that play both the instrument and the room. Beyond composition, Laura is an active conference organizer, concert producer, and artistic director.

Laura is also an active scholar in Music Theory and Musicology. She was a recipient of an Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Research Fellowship for 2018-2019 for her dissertation research on self-formation in works by Jenifer Walshe and Pauline Oliveros. Her primary research areas include: verbally notated scores, technologies of self, listening, voice/self in video game music, and Pauline Oliveros. She attended the University of California, Davis (B.A. in Music, 2013), Illinois State University (M.M. in Composition, 2015), and the University of Pittsburgh (Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory, 2019).