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Composition graduate Alan Taylor’s debut work is published by Routledge

After a career as a geography academic, civil servant, local government officer, and political activist, Alan Taylor turned his focus to music, completing his Masters in Composition at Trinity Laban in 2010. He has since gained a PhD on musical imagination and is an active community musician.

Alan has now published The Imagination of Experiences: Musical Invention, Collaboration, and the Making of Meanings, a book that explores the invention of ideas, shared imagining through collaboration, and the making of meanings from musical experiences.

Rejecting the traditional trope of the isolated ‘creative genius’, Alan presents an alternative view of the imaginative process where ideas spring from a subconscious dialogue activated by engagement with the world around us.

Pitched at lay, student, and academic readers alike as an introductory text, the book consists of a summary and synthesis of modern research, offering insight into musical imagination and its implications.

Alan comments –

“When I began a composition PhD, focussing on collaborative projects, I soon found that I needed to define how people can share imaginative work, and therefore to study how the imagination works. The book is the outcome of that period of study. I hope students find it interesting.”

Discover more about research at Trinity Laban and our Composition Department.