Dr Robert Wilsmore
Musician, academic, author, composer, producer, collaborator, educator. Former Head of School of the Arts at York St John University and Assistant Head of Music at Leeds College of Music (Leeds Conservatoire). Now an Independent Scholar and Artist.
Visiting and Guest Lectures
Visiting lectures on Collaboration Theory and Collaboration in Performing Arts, also on Coproduction in Music Production.
Recent guest lectures include:
​
York Business School (2023/24) Creativity and Business Leadership
University of Chester (2023) Keynote for Creative Futures Event
University of Hull (March 2023) Newland Lecture Series
Napier University (June 2023) Innovation in Music 23 conference
University of Stavanger (2022) Interdisciplinary Collaboration in HE.
Leeds-Beckett University (2022) Coproduction
With Dr Petter Frost-Fadness. University of Stavanger, Norway.
Higher Education
Over two decades of experience in senior management in HE of curriculum development, team making, teaching, researching, quality assurance, strategy and estates, as Assistant Head of Music at Leeds Conservatoire (LCM) and Head of School of the Arts at York St John University. Also, external examiner at other institutions and a PhD assessor and supervisor.
The new creative centre at York St John University
Author
As well as many articles on collaboration and popular music, his recent research with Chris Johnson is published in Coproduction: Collaboration in Music Production. It is the first comprehensive book dedicated to this area of music production musicology. As well as numerous studies of different ways in which production teams work, it also includes philosophical writings on music and connectedness. For over twenty years he has researched and published on intertext and similarity in music and continues to work on this discourse.
Composer
Studied music at Bath College of HE (Bath Spa University) and Composition at Nottingham University with Nick Sackman, graduating with a Doctorate in 1994.
His music spans contemporary classical, opera, amateur dramatics, pop music and EDM, and favourite composers and artists include, Tippett, Birtwistle, Gilbert & Sullivan, The Chemical Brothers and Bill Wurz.
Puck, in Another Dream, a reworking of A Midsummer Night's Dream in the form of a G&S Operetta.
Collaboration
Collaboration has been a consistent theme in research and practice, leading on a major project for the HEA in arts collaboration pedagogy in Higher Education in the UK. His research includes the self as multiple and small group work, to the whole world as a collaborative group. The Routledge book 'Coproduction: Collaboration in Music Production' is his most recent publication on the subject.
Pop Music
The And Ensemble are York St John University's foremost Deleuzian Pop band. Their output includes 'And And And', the very first that ever existed 'This Song Sounds Like Another Song', and the best Christmas song ever 'A Very Festive Song'. He is also a supporter of local community music project 'LS18 Rocks' in Horsforth, Leeds.
EDM
Producing Electronic Dance Music under the artist name Aarwills is an outlet for experimenting with EDM ideas such as reworking Nino Rota's 'Love Theme for R&J', Deacon-esque minimalism, inverting Beethoven's 5th as part of Toast theory, and Messiaen inspired octatonic light jazz.
Recently begun a Collaboration with Professor Claire Hind 'The Long Dead Stars' as EDMP artists (Electronic Dance Music Poetry) focusing on the Rocks of the North Yorkshire Coastline.
Abbey Road Studio 2 control room
Performance Art
Collaborators Professor Simon Piasecki and Robert Wilsmore have worked on live art projects for 30 years, including performing in galleries across Europe, and being pulled down Whitby Steps in order to uncover whether Winnie-the-Pooh would lean more towards Aristotle than Plato. It's a difficult one, reasoning might help find an answer but the sensual world tends to get in the way.
The Knowledge of Whitby Steps