Izaak Wesson

BA (Hons, 1st Class), MMus (Research) W.Aust.

Musicologist

Current Research Interests

As a musicologist, my research interests fall into roughly three areas: contemporary opera studies, particularly notations of gender, sexuality, politics, climate, materiality, and (hyper)mediacy; minimalist and post-minimalist composers from Europe and the United States; and medievalism in both instrumental and operatic genres, especially in the globalised (cultural) economy of the twenty-first century.

Previous Research Topics

  • The music of John Coolidge Adams

  • The cultural history of castrati and countertenors

  • The historically informed performance of natural/baroque horns

Outside of these research areas, I am passionate about educating and discussing music in the course of my conducting work, where I relish the opportunity to engage with audiences to critically introduce and discuss works both before and during performances. Through enthusiastic communication, I seek to challenge and revitalise established practices in programming and listening to ensure the continuing relevance of the music that I perform. 

  • Profile at the University of Western Australia

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  • Master's Thesis

    Supervised by Sarah Collins and Cecilia Sun at the University of Western Australia, and examined by Anthony W. Sheppard and Kirsten Yri, my master’s thesis explores medievalism in John Adams’s El Niño

    Read on the UWA Research Repository

  • My ORCiD

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Conferences, Events, Editorial Activity

  • Panelist, “What is Opera?”, with James Ledger, Chris Van Tuinen, and Rabiya Plush-Noad, 4 Apr 2023, UWA Conservatorium of Music.

  • Founder and Co-Editor, with Laura Biemmi and Julia Nicholls, Accent: Journal of the UWA Music Students' Society 1, no.1 (2022). https://uwamss.org.au/accent

  • Conference presentation, “Presenting the Past in John Adams's El Niño”. Paper presented at 44th National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia, Online (2021).

  • Session Chair, "20th-Century Music", 44th National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia (2021).

  • Conference presentation, “The countertenor in the works of John Adams and Peter Sellars”. Paper presented at Musicological Society of Australia - Western Australia Chapter Conference 2020, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.

  • Pre-Concert Talk, “Reich’s Quartet and Smalley’s Monody”, UWA Chamber Music Festival (2019).

  • Public Seminar, “Introduction to the Historical Horn”, UWA Albany Campus (2019).

Awards and Funding

  • Postgraduate Research Travel Award, UWA ($750)

  • Clough Scholarship for Music at St George’s College, UWA ($15 000)

  • Australian Government Research Training Program—fees and stipend ($63 000)

  • Shortlisted for the J.A. Wood Memorial Prize, for the most outstanding Honours graduate in the Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Education at UWA

  • Finalist for the General Sir John Monash Scholarship, Australia’s most prestigious postgraduate research award