Research Catalogue

This research work is a practice-based enquiry that investigates the use of the saxophone in Middle Eastern music and in Makam-music in general. This research will not focus on a specific style, but on all aspects common to the various regional styles included within the Makam-music macrocategory. Characteristics such as microtonality, modality, ornamentation and a specific type of phrasing are in fact common to a very wide variety of musical styles, present in a geographical region ranging from the Balkan peninsula to Anatolia, the Arab world and North Africa. In this research I focused on the saxophone's technical possibilities of producing microtonal notes, which are fundamental to all makam-music. To do this, I analysed the approach of various performers, consulted some experts on the subject and self-analysed my own approach, developed over five years of studying this type of music. As a proof of concept of this work, I recorded three improvisations. On my practical outcome, I carried out analysis work together with the network of experts.

This is the working document of a six-month residency with the Sound and Image Research Centre at the University of Greenwich, summer 2025, funded by the Arts Council England DYCP program. As an exposition, it records the field trip element of the project and begins to explore the role of spatial audio composition and installation in forging deeper relational connections with place. Ultimately, it asks whether the spatial audio encounter alters the subjective position of the human listener towards a more posthuman subjectivity. As the project evolves more will be added with the hope of an eventual live performance of selected compositions and a broader exposition on the role of field recording as a compositional method.

This exposition or archive is a work in progress, under construction, for gathering material of encounters with junipers.

The digital revolution is boosting innovations across our contemporary social life and culture with a strong impact in performing arts studies, creation and fruition. By exploiting augmented and virtual technologies and their cutting-edge applications, contemporary researchers, performers, composers and artists are spurred to renovate their traditional practices and creations, and overcome the boundaries of real stages towards virtual stages and extended reality (XR), where the physical encounters the digital. The possibility to be projected in the blended scenario of the extended reality (XR) and metaverse determines the avant-garde perspective of imagining music performance in hybrid stages where performers and audiences are involved in immersive and intriguing phygital experiences. This exposition wants to present and discuss what the investigation on augmented and virtual reality in artistic research in music entails, and how and why to create a XR music performance in the metaverse. The focus will be on my personal artistic research experience in the creation of a phygital piano performance "MetaPhase: A contrapuntal dialogue between a pianist and her avatar in the metaverse". Download Accessible PDF

SKVR:n kantelerunot alueittain koottuina ja vanhakantaiseen kanteleperinteeseen linkitettyinä. The SKVR collection (1908–1948, 1997) comprises 34 editions and 89,247 texts of oral Kalevala metre lyrics collected from Karelians, Ingrians, and Finns and published by the Finnish Literature Society. This exhibition features texts from the collection relating to the mythical origins and music of the kantele. The front page provides an overview of the regional characteristics, and the tabs offer texts from each region. The exhibition is in Finnish.

The histories, stories, and names of Chinese railroad workers who dedicated their lives to constructing the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad have remained in the shadows for over a century. Completed in 1869, the railroad was a monumental achievement in America’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ during the nineteenth century. But despite their contributions, the Chinese laborers have not received the recognition they deserve. This project seeks to remember Chinese railroad workers via arts-based research methods (ABR). Archives are not merely repositories of the past but also products of political power. In this light, the project poses a key methodological question: How can art-making critically reconfigure the power of archives and lost history? We seek to ask questions, initiate a dialogue, acknowledge the absence, and give form to the invisible. Building upon the historical recovery work of previous scholars, we reconstruct fragmented pieces through remixed artworks. The current article highlights key artworks that demonstrate the scope and variety of a much larger project (Yu 2025b). We dedicate this work to the Chinese master railroad builders––to the great-grandfathers––whose stories and names demand remembrance.