Dr Morag Galloway

Teaching

I am Course Leader for BA Musical Theatre and I teach across the whole BA Music suite and the BA Musical Theatre course. I also teach across the music MAs and am supervising PhDs.

From 2004 to 2009 I was Head of Music at a Preparatory Primary School in Hampstead, London. From 2009 to 2015 I was a Lecturer in Music at Leeds Conservatoire where I taught composition and musicology in the Popular Music department. I also supervised MA composition students and taught pop composition and dissertation individually too. I have worked as a Visiting Lecturer at York St John University since 2017 and as a full time Lecturer since September 2019.

Areas of teaching expertise include:

Composition; Performance; Collaborative Practice; Improvisation and Experimentation; Directing and Company Practice; Voice in Theatre, Musical Theatre and Music; Viola Studies; Embodied Practice; Autoethnographic and Reflective Writing Practices.

Research

My research focusses on collaborative models of creating and my practice is highly collaborative with a performer and relationship-led process. My PhD 'The Dynamics of Mutuality in the Composer and Performer Relationship' can be found on the White Rose eTheses Online website, and explores - through practice - the relationships between performers and composers during the creative process, contextualised by Vera John-Steiner's writing on collaboration.

I have a breadth of experience in theatre, plus a love of fine and applied arts, dance, film, textiles, psychology and philosophy. This has evolved into a distinctive compositional style which explores the space between disciplines and creates multi-faceted experiences.

Current research interests are taking the form of

• An embodied, dance and music collaborative practice with Senior Lecturer in Dance, Nicola Forshaw. We are engaged in practices which focus on embodied and creative ways of knowing.
• Research into the singing violist as solo performer.

Publications and conferences

• Presented the paper ‘Feeling my way – Fabric as metaphor, methodology and material’ at the first Music Theatre in Process Symposium in London, November 2019
• Vocal anthem We Are Not For Names published within the ‘UYMP Anthems for Sopranos, Altos and Unison Male Singers’ collection with the Royal School of Church Music
• Female voice trio Dream of You published in the ‘Songspin Songbook’ published by the UYMP
• The Moon written for Merit Ariane features on her debut album The River
• Dream of You written for Juice Vocal Ensemble features on their debut album, Songspin

Professional activities

I am published as an Associate Composer with the University of York Music Press, and sit on their board representing the Associate Composers. I am also a founder member of the Northern Composers Network. I have completed a Mayfield Trust commission - 'It's Getting Hot In Here' - for the Gemini Ensemble (Bb Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Piano), which was premiered on the 2nd of October, 2021. My recent piece, 'Manifold', for soprano Anna Snow and pianist Kate Ledger was premiered earlier in 2022.

Recent freelance credits include: playing viola in 'Seeing Music, Hearing Colour', a community collaborative experimental project exploring synaesthesia lead by composer Helen Madden; directing 'Earth Odyssey', an opera devised by Sarah Dacey with students on the Classical pathway at Leeds Conservatoire; directing, acting and running workshops for school children taking part in Helen Madden's opera 'The Magic Paintbrush' at The Civic, Barnsley; directing the opera for children, 'Butterfly Brain' - written by Kerry Andrew and Laura Dockrill - at the Wigmore Hall, London.

Upcoming freelance work includes collaborating with soprano Sarah Dacey on a reimagining of Laura Dockrill and Kerry Andrew's 'Butterfly Brain' with a view to securing funding to perform this opera in schools across the UK.

I have a breadth of composing, performing and directing experience across music and theatre. Notable productions throughout my career include composing scores for productions of: Much Ado About Nothing; Equus; A Clockwork Orange; Bouncers; Metamorphosis; The Cripple of Innishmaan; Trojan Women; Henry IV Parts 1 and 2.

Directing and Musical Directing Credits include: Sweeney Todd (MD); Under Milk Wood (D); Night; Fond Love (new play by Hannah Davies); Women of Trachis (AD); Bed (MD); Narcissus and Echo (MD - a new opera which was toured to Bradford's Theatre in the Mill and The Lowry, Salford).

My acting credits include: The Witch in Into The Woods; Alice in a new musical version of Alice in Wonderland written by Andrew Fisher and Andrew McCaldon in 1998; Isabella in Measure for Measure; Feste in Twelfth Night; Dull Gret/Angie In Carol Churchill’s Top Girls.

Singing experience includes: Soprano in the New London Chamber Choir with James Wood and James Weekes where I performed with Rambert Ballet at Sadler's Wells and in the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall; Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival; collaborations with Juice Vocal Ensemble.

I was also the Vocal Coach for a West End production of Little Women, adapted by Emma Reeves, in the Lilian Bayliss Theatre, Sadler's Wells and the Duchess Theatre, London.

Additional information

I am very interested in the overlap between academic and pastoral provision at tertiary level and am also involved in cross-university projects linked to social and environmental justice.