Draft:Jonathan Impett

Impett studied at Goldsmiths, University of London, the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in and the City University of London. In 2002, he obtained a PhD from the University of Cambridge, where his doctoral research examined the relationship between composition and performance in the context of new technologies, with a particular focus on complex dynamical systems models for interactive music.^[2]

Impett served as senior lecturer at the University of East Anglia from 2000 until the controversial closure of the School of Music in 2011.^[3][4] He later joined Middlesex University as an associate professor in the School of Media and Performing Arts.^[5] At Orpheus Instituut, he served as Director of Research and as the principal investigator of the research cluster Music, Thought and Technology.^[6] He has also served as a member of the music panel of the Arts Council England and on the editorial board of the Leonardo Music Journal.^[7] He is the founder of the online journal ECHO | a journal for music, thought and technology.

As a trumpet soloist, Impett has performed and recorded works by significant twentieth- and twenty-first-century composers, including Luciano Berio, Michael Finnissy, Jonathan Harvey and Giacinto Scelsi.^[8] Premiere performances have taken place at prominent venues and festivals, including the BBC Proms and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and IRCAM in Paris. He is a member of the experimental chamber ensemble Apartment House.

Impett also has a long-standing career in historically informed performance. He plays both baroque trumpet and cornetto, and is a long-standing member of The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century and The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Furthermore, he has made guest appearances on dozens of recordings with ensembles such as the La Chapelle Royale, London Baroque, The King's Consort, the Academy of Ancient Music and Gabrieli Consort & Players.

As an improviser, he has performed with musicians across a wide range of traditions, including freejazz saxophonist Paul Dunmall and the Indian vocalist and scholar Amit Chaudhuri.

Impett directed the live electronic chamber ensemble Metanoia. His compositions make extensive use of improvisation, real-time composition, sound processing and interactive techniques. They have been performed at the Venice Biennale, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and for the BBC, and have been broadcast throughout Europe.

Central to his practice is the metatrumpet, a computer-extended version of the instrument that integrates live electronics and interactive systems. This development earned him a Prix Ars Electronica in 1994.

Impett’s scholarly interests centre on artistic research: the discourses and practices of contemporary musical creativity, the nature of the technologically-situated musical artefact, and the cultural role of models drawn from science.^[9] He also devoted significant work to the Italian composer Luigi Nono. His work furthermore explores the spaces between score and improvisation, between musician and technology, and the use of interactive and intelligent systems. His research engages with the cultural role of scientific models in musical thought and the nature of the contemporary technologically situated musical artefact. Work in the space between composition and improvisation has led to continuous research in the areas of interactive systems and interfaces.

• Mirror-Rite for metatrumpet, electronics and computer (1993)
• Memoria colorata I & II (after Machaut) for saxophone quartet and percussion (2009)
• Spoken for metatrumpet and electronics (2014)
• Prado florido I & II (after Guerrero) for wind quartet, cymbals and computer (2014)
• Folto Giardino II for chamber orchestra, installation and computers (2016)
• Apollo e Marsia for viola d’amore, installation and electronics (2019)
• Three States of Wax for metatrumpet, electronics and computer (2020)
• Wood-Wind 1&2 for countertenor and three cellos, on poems by Paterson, Machado and Shelley (2023)

• Prix Ars Electronica 94, Ars Electronica Center, ARS 94, 1994.
• Ladder of Escape 7, Attacca, BABEL 9476, 1994.
• Undistracted (improvisations with Paul Rogers, Philip Gibbs, Paul Dunmall, Andrew Ball and Jonathan Scott), DUNS, DLE 040, 2004.
• Epiphany (with Circuit Electro Acoustic Ensemble), FMR Records, FMRCD209-0906, 2006.
• Found Music (with Amit Chaudhuri and Bart Dietrich), The Vortex, BVOR1089 and Virgin India 50999096092 2-8, 2010.
• Open Music #1 (with Tempo Reale Electroacoustic Ensemble), Tempo Reale/T Rema/EMA Vinci, 2016.
• Breathless (with Ensemble La Tricotea), ATT.C 14, 2017.
• John Cage, Christian Wolff (with Apartment House), Huddersfield Contemporary Records, HCR16CD, 2017.
• Time Crystal (with Chris Chafe and Juan Parra Cancino), Ravello Records, RR8050, 2021.
• Transmission Series (with Sarah Rose Weaver and others), SyncSource, SS333, 2025.

• ‘Projection and Interactivity of Musical Structures in Mirror-Rite’, Organised Sound 1/3 (1996), 203–211.
• ‘The Identification and Transposition of Authentic Instruments: Musical Practice and Technology’, Leonardo Music Journal 8 (1998), 21–26.
• ‘Situating the Invention in Interactive Music’, Organised Sound 5/1 (2000), 27–34.
• ‘The Tragedy of Listening: Nono, Cacciari, Critical Thought and Compositional Practice’, Radical Philosophy 125 (2004), 29–36 (revised as ‘Tragödie des Hörens. Nono, Cacciari, kritisches Denken und Kompositionspraxis’, Musik & Ästhetik 12/48 [2008], 22–36).
• ‘Shadow Boxing: Sequenza X for Trumpet and Piano Resonance’, in Berio’s Sequenzas: Essays on Performance, Composition and Analysis (Ashgate, 2007), 83-96.
• ‘Making a Mark: The Psychology of Composition’, in The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology, ed. by Susan Hallam, Ian Cross and Michael H. Thaut (Oxford University Press, 2009), 403–412.
• Artistic Research in Music: Discipline and Resistance (as editor, Leuven University Press, 2017).
• ‘Folto Giardino: Hybrid Cross-Pollination of Score, Performance, Installation and Technology’, Leonardo Music Journal 27 (2017), 54–56.
• Routledge Handbook to Luigi Nono and Musical Thought (Routledge, 2018).
• ‘Interaction, Simulation, and Invention: A Model for Interactive Music’, in Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, ed. by Elias G. Carayannis (2020), 1425–1431.
• Sound Work: Composition as Critical Technical Practice (as editor, Leuven University Press, 2022).
• ‘Music, discourse and intuitive technology’, AI & Society 38 (2023), 1885–1896.
• ‘Virtue restored, virtue shared’, in Contemporary Musical Virtuosities, ed. by Louise Devenish and Cat Hope (Routledge, 2023), 14–28.
• ‘Intelligent Company: Co-Creative AI as Anamnesis’, in Choreomata, ed. by Roberto Alonso Trillo and Marek Poliks (Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2023), 219–239.
• ‘Nows, Thens, and Truths: Attending to the Present in Performing the Past’, in Early Music in the 21st Century, ed. by Mimi Mitchell (Oxford University Press, 2024), 168–186.