As a composer, vocalist and performance artist, my practice has been guided by interests in distributed authorship in the compositional process. In my recent compositional work, I have employed ethnographic interviews as a way to share the creation of lyrical and compositional content. For those participating in this process of distributed authorship, co-composition becomes a conduit for uncovering ideas, experiences, feelings, and traumas that they may have placed far away in their memory.
As a researcher at the City, University of London Music Department, my work will further explore the utilisation of narratives from ethnographic interviews as the connective tissue between experimental composition and popular music. This research will specifically explore new intersections of composition, environmental location recording and technology, ethnomusicology.
I use a collaborative practice to make music and performance work that explores life’s essential and most difficult questions. In my practice I collaborate with self-identified women and femmes of the African Diaspora to explore questions such as- what matters now? What stories shaped me? What must my soul wonder? What is true in this world? What about the world did we create?
I am a story-gatherer and a storyteller. I follow a participatory practice inviting the community to contribute thematically, lyrically, and melodically. I use music and performance to explore life’s essential and most difficult questions. Inspired by classical and jazz music, and the storytelling tradition I think of all my pieces as a series of experimental creations that blend genres and instruments with lyrics.
Liz Gre (née Lassiter), b. 1991, is a composer and vocalist writing genre-less compositions with Black Women for Black Women. Her practice is rooted in storytelling and the viscerality of the imaginary. Currently, a PhD student at City, University of London studying how ethnographic composition can best answer questions around the Black Woman immigrant/ex-pat/trans-national identity.
Hometown: Omaha, NE, USA
Current base: London, United Kingdom
lizgremusic@gmail.com
For research inquiries: liz.lassiter@city.ac.uk