Dr Jonathan Packham

I am a composer and researcher interested in a variety of contemporary experimental music and sonic arts. I obtained my DPhil in Music from St. Hilda's College, University of Oxford in 2021, where I also co-founded EXPO, an organisation for experimental art and sound. I am also an active member of EMPRes, the University's Electronic Music Practice Research group, and perform and release original work under my own name and the alias SALINGER.

Some of my recent compositions include pavilion lovesong number 1 (2021), which was commissioned by EMPRES and SONCITIES STUDIO for the launch event of Gascia Ouzounian's book Stereophonica: Sound and Space in Science, Technology, and the Arts, and SLOWLY SHRINKING WORLDS (2020), commissioned by Sebastiaan Kemner for his online series on contemporary experimental music Lonelinoise. In 2020 I won the EMPRES Award for Experimental Electronic Music for my collaborative composition FISSION, co-written with producer Xactus. In 2019 I was commissioned by Modern Art Oxford to compose a new piece—Copper House Music—based on the architectural plans of the Piper Gallery space; and wrote the electronic soundtrack to a short theatre piece devised by experimental performance group MaloMalo, performed at the Barbican (PREPARE IT, MY BODY). Since late 2016 I have also been experimenting with live-generated video scores in virtual environments using VR headset technologies, as exemplified in my composition SECRET ANIMALS (2019). In June 2019 I was invited to present at the Royal Northern College of Music’s Future Music+ Festival on my work with virtual reality as part of a programme of new works by student composers inspired by my approach. Between 2017 and 2021 I was the host of a regular radio show on online radio station datafruits.fm, playing music from across the electronic music spectrum.

In 2021, I published “Scoring the Journey: Listening to Claudia Molitor's Sonorama” in TEMPO, an analysis of a 2015 sonic artwork by Claudia Molitor that drew out the relationship between the sonic and the spatial in the work, exploring how Molitor’s site-specific composition interacts with its environment on multiple scales. In 2020, I contributed an essay titled “Scoring the Social Voice: Lin Chi-Wei's Tape Music” to the collection Crafting a Sonic Urbanism: the Political Voice II, published by Theatrum Mundi. My current written research concerns sonic illusions in the context of Beatrice Harrison’s nightingale broadcasts, and musical hoaxes.

I am currently the Organising Tutor in Music and Stipendiary Lecturer in Music at Lady Margaret Hall.

jonathanpackham.com