Research

Louise’s research areas include contemporary music performance practice, Australian music, digital notation, post-instrumental practice, music and gender. Her creative and written research projects explore a number of these areas simultaneously. Louise is a current Australian Research Council Fellow (DECRA 2020-2023 and SRI 2020-2024) and is based at Monash University.

Further information about her DECRA project can be found at The Sound Collectors Lab website.

Further information about the SRI project Gender Diversity in Australian Jazz and Improvisation can be found here.

Books

Devenish, L., Hope, C. (Eds.). (2024). Contemporary Musical Virtuosities, Routledge, United Kingdom. Available here. Book review here.

Devenish, L., (2019). Global Percussion Innovations: The Australian Perspective, Routledge, United Kingdom


Articles and book chapters

Devenish, L., Goh, T. (2024, in press). ‘New directions in Australian art music: The curatorial, creative and conceptual’, in Harris, A., Bracknell, C. (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Australian Music, CUP.

McMillan, K., Hope, C., Devenish, L. (2025, in press). ‘Never at Sea: A collaborative creative project about forced migration and women’s stories using film, sculpture, performance and sound’, in Campbell, M., Vidal, R. (Eds.), The Translation of Experience: Cultural Artifacts in Experiential Translation, Routledge, United Kingdom.

McAuliffe, S., Devenish, L. (2023). ‘Exploring sonic worlds: The significance of instrumentality’, Performance Philosophy (available here).
Media-rich companion article ‘Exploring sonic worlds’, ECHO, Vol. 5 (available here).

Lind, A., Devenish, L., Hope, C. (2024, in press). ‘Remediations, extensions and amputations: Evaluating a latency-accepting approach to telematic chamber music performance’, Contemporary Music Review.

Devenish, L., Hope, C. (in review). ‘Turntablature: Turntables and records in music performance’.

Canham, N., Goh, T., Barret, M.S., Hope, C., Devenish, L., Park, M., Burke, R., Hall, C. (2022). ‘Gender as performance, experience, identity and, variable: A systematic review of gender research in jazz and improvisation’, Frontiers in Education, 7/2022. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.987420

Devenish, L. (2022). ‘Instrumental infrastructure: sheet materials, gesture and musical performance’, in Tomás Calderón, E., Gorbach, T., Tellioglu, H., & Kaltenbrunner, M. (Eds.). (2022). Embodied Gestures. TU Wien Academic Press, pp.11-20. https:/doi.org/10.34727/2022/isbn.978-3-85448-047-1 (available here)

Devenish, L. (2021). ‘Instrumental infrastructure, instrumental sculpture and instrumental scores: A post-instrumental practice’, Music & Practice, Vol. 9. ISSN: 1893-9562. DOI: 10.32063/0906.

Devenish, L. (2021). ‘Digital Phasing: Using latency as an agent for metric change’, DRUMMINGat50 (online) (PDF)

Devenish, L., Sun, C., Hope, C., Tomlinson, V. (2020). ‘Teaching Tertiary Music in the #MeToo Era’, Tempo 292: ISSN 0040-2982 (print), 1478-2286 (online)

Devenish, L. (2020). ‘Towards Gender Diversity in New Music Practice’, Tempo, Issue 292: ISSN 0040-2982 (print), 1478-2286 (online)

Devenish, L. (2020). ‘Animated percussive notation: Perspectives from three practitioners’, Percussive Notes, USA, December 2020: 8-13. ISSN 0553-6502

Devenish, L., James S. (2019). ‘Composer-performer collaboration in the development of Kinabuhi | Kamatayon for percussion and electronics’, Soundscripts, 6(1). Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/soundscripts/vol6/iss1/9 ISSN 2209-1475

Devenish, L., (2017). ‘Contemporary percussion explorations in twenty-first century Australia’, Contemporary Music Review, 36/1-2: 1-4. ISSN 0749-4467

Vickery, L., James, S., Devenish, L., (2017). ‘Expanded percussion notation in recent works by Stuart James and Lindsay Vickery’, Contemporary Music Review, 36/1-2: 15-35. ISSN 0749-4467

Devenish, L. (2016). ‘Forty years of Synergy Percussion’, Percussive Notes, USA, March 2016: 28-33. ISSN 0553-6502

Devenish, L., (2016). ‘The rise of contemporary percussion in Western Australia with an emphasis on Nova Ensemble’, Soundscripts, Vol. 5. Sydney: AMC Press (accepted).

Devenish, L. (2015). ‘The emergence of contemporary percussion in Australia: 1960-1975’ Musicology Australia, 37/1: 1-27. ISSN 0814-5857

Devenish, L., (2014). ‘The percussion music of David Pye’, PERCUSscene, 75/1: 94-96

 

Editorials

Devenish, L. (2020). ‘Towards Gender Diversity in New Music Practice’, Tempo 292: ISSN 0040-2982 (print), 1478-2286 (online)

Devenish, L., (2017). ‘Moving Forward: Percussion explorations in twenty-first-century Australia’, Contemporary Music Review, 36/1-2. ISSN 0749-4467.

Devenish, L., Rocke, S., Alessi, P., (2014). ‘Music and Metamorphosis’, Eras Journal, 16/1. ISSN 1445-5218 .


Other writings

Devenish, L. (2023). ‘Cutting Edge: Below the surface’, Limelight Magazine, April 2023 issue (available here)

Hope, C., Devenish, L. (2020). ‘The New Virtuosity: A Manifesto for Contemporary Sonic Practice’, ADSR Zine, Issue 11 (available here)
Republished: Hope, C., Devenish, L. (2021). Tempo Vol. 75, Issue 298 (available here)

Devenish, L., Hope, C., Wyatt, A. (2019). ‘Shuffle Over: Aleatoric electronic scores for percussion representing sound and gesture’, Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Music Conference 2018: 14-22.

Devenish, L., (2017). ‘Book Review: The Cambridge Companion to Percussion’, Directions of New Music (1). DOI 10.14221/dnm.i1/4

Devenish, L., (2015). ....And Now for the Noise: Contemporary Percussion in Australia, 1970-2000 [D.M.A. thesis] (available here)

Devenish, L. (2015). ‘Revealing the Roots: Researching Australian Contemporary Percussion’. Resonate Magazine (available here)

Selected Conference Presentations

Devenish, L. (2023). Symposium panel presentation: ‘Artists working with socially and community engaged practices’, Kings College London.

Devenish, L. (2022). Keynote presentation: ‘Percussive Pluralities’, Boom! International Percussion Festival, Sydney.

Devenish, L. (2022). ‘Tools, medium, methods: Percussive contributions to evolving new music practices’, Transplanted Roots Percussion Research Symposium, San Diego/ online

Devenish, L., McAuliffe, S. (2021). ‘Encountering the World Through Alluvial Gold’, Vibrant Practices, Leeds/online.

Devenish, L. (2021). ‘Instrumentality and the ‘Specialist Non-Specialist’ Performer’, 12th international Conference on Artistic Research, Vienna/online.

Devenish, L, Hope, C. (2020). ‘Performing the digital facilitation of indeterminacy in the percussion works of Cat Hope’, The Future of Indeterminacy, Dundee/online.

Devenish, L., Sun, C. (2018). ‘Transgressing Domesticity in Never Tilt Your Chair Back’, Musicological Society of Australia Conference, Perth.

Devenish, L. (2017). ‘Implements as Instruments’, Transplanted Roots Percussion Research Symposium, Brisbane.

Devenish, L. (2017). ‘Performing Tone Being for tam-tam and subwoofer using an electronic graphic score’, Performing Indeterminacy: An International Conference, Leeds.

Devenish, L. (2016). ‘Greater Than The Sum of Its Parts: Balinese Gamelan Instruments, Electronics and Composer-Performer Collaboration’, Musicological Society of Australia Conference, Adelaide.

Scores
(All scores read in the Decibel ScorePlayer. Contact Louise for a download link).

Devenish, L. and Wyatt, A. (2024). Preservation Reference Area. For prepared bass drum, waterphone and electronics, with accompanying film by Olivia Davies.

Devenish, L. and James, S. (2023). Liquidities. For prepared vibraphone and electronics.

Devenish, L. (2020). Taut. For 6 porcelain bowls.

Devenish, L. and James, S. (2019). Percipience: After Kaul. For overtone triangles and electronics.

Artistic Research

Louise’s artistic research is centered around collaboration with composers and makers to create new music, new instruments, and new forms of notation for percussion.

Louise is director of The Sound Collectors Lab, a creative lab dedicated to the research, development and creation of new music, based at Monash University. The Sound Collectors Lab collaborators research and develop new modes of music creation and presentation through the lens of percussive practice, apply them in collaborative performance works, and critically reflect on these practices and methodologies through public performances, recordings, talks and scholarly publications. Key research themes are post-instrumental practice, the climate crisis and environmental communication through music, and percussion performance, pedagogy and presentation.
More information available at The Sound Collectors Lab website.

She is a performer-researcher within Decibel New Music (directed by Cat Hope), exploring the integration of acoustic and electronic instruments in chamber music performance, and pioneering digital notation formats including the Decibel ScorePlayer app.

As a director-performer for solo projects and The Sound Collectors Lab, she has worked with composers including Kate Neal, Cat Hope, Mark Applebaum, Lachlan Skipworth, James Hullick, Kate Moore, Kate McMillan, David Pye, Warren Burt, Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh, Lindsay Vickery, Olivia Davies, Michael Askill and numerous others. With Decibel and Speak Percussion, Louise has collaborated on and premiered countless works from composers such as Cathy Milliken, Simon Løeffler, Damien Ricketson, Julian Day, Eugene Ughetti, David Toop, Robin Fox, Juliana Hodkinson and Lionel Marchetti.

Louise is currently working on Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (2020-2023) project titled ‘The Role of post-instrumental practice in twenty-first-century music’, and an Australian Research Council Special Research Initiative grant (2021-2023) titled ‘Diversifying Australian Music: Gender Equity in Jazz and Improvisation’.

Churchill Fellowship

In 2018, Louise undertook a Churchill Fellowship to study percussion music creation, performance, and research methodologies and percussion pedagogy in Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Her nine-week Fellowship program included engagement with leading artists, teachers and scholars, including mentorships and studio visits with Christian Dierstien, Robyn Schulkowsky, Emmanuel Sejourné and Jean Geoffroy, performances, masterclasses and research presentations, and observing and discussing best practices in twenty-first century percussion at universities.

Full report available here

Teaching

Louise is Convenor of Classical Music and Percussion Coordinator at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music at Monash University, where she is also the director of The Sound Collectors Lab. Previously she was Chair of Percussion at The University of Western Australia Conservatorium of Music and founding director of Piñata Percussion (2013-2019). Louise’s percussion studio program offers a wide range of performance focus areas including solo and chamber music, orchestral percussion and timpani, contemporary and experimental percussion, and also includes options in global musics, electronic music, artistic research and composition. Her percussion studio program is designed to produce exceptional performers who are also articulate artists, with each student’s study program designed according to their individual goals and interests. At the heart of Louise’s percussion pedagogy is developing an excellent technical facility across all instruments, gaining experience in creative collaboration and honing professional musical skills that enable students to develop successful artistic practices beyond university. Louise also teaches courses in global music cultures, rhythm, performance practice and artistic research methods at undergraduate and honours level, and supervises masters and doctoral students. Louise won the 2016 UWA Teaching Excellence (Early Career) Faculty Award for her teaching and course development. She is currently accepting PhD and Masters level students at Monash in contemporary music, performance practice, percussion, artistic research, Australian music, improvisation and notation.

School of Music website

Select Performance Projects