Izaak Wesson
BA (Hons, 1st Class), MMus (Research) W.Aust.
Musicologist
Current Research Interests
As a musicologist and cultural historian, I am broadly interested in reception studies (especially medievalism), and contemporary opera studies—particularly notations of gender, sexuality, politics, climate, materiality, and (hyper)mediacy.
Having worked in academic and orchestral libraries since 2018, I have secondary interests in the digital humanities, manuscript and copyright history, and implementation of Open Access and Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) in creative research.
Previous Research Topics
The music of John Coolidge Adams
Minimalism and postminimalism
The cultural history of castrati and countertenors
The historically informed performance of natural/baroque horns
Outside of these research areas, I regularly engage in public musicology through my conducting work, where I relish the opportunity to engage with audiences to critically situate and critique music 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.
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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
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My ORCiD
Publications
Sophia Chan, Kate Croker, Monique Fountain, Marlena Janisch, and Izaak Wesson, 2024 Publication Collection Report, The University of Western Australia - Research Committee, 2025. [Confidential]
Sophia Chan, Kate Croker, Monique Fountain, Marlena Janisch, and Izaak Wesson, 2023 Publication Collection Report, The University of Western Australia - Research Committee, 2024. [Confidential]
Conferences, Events, Editorial Activity
Conference presentation, with Liam Wooding, “Introducing Open Access for Creative Works at the UWA Library: Navigating Copyright and Impact Assessment in Performance Research”. Musicological Society of Australia - Western Australia Chapter Conference 2025, Perth, Western Australia.
Conference presentation, with Stephanie Davenport, “Open Access NTROs”. Western Australian University Libraries Conference 2025, Perth, Western Australia.
Speaker, with Sophia Chan, “Coding with Gen AI: API Data Retrieval for the UWA Research Repository”. University of Western Australia Library Staff Seminar, 2025, Perth, Western Australia.
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).
Conference presentation, “Presenting the Past in John Adams's El Niño”. 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”. Musicological Society of Australia - Western Australia Chapter Conference 2020, Perth, Western Australia.
Pre-Concert Talk, “Reich’s Quartet and Smalley’s Monody”, UWA Chamber Music Festival (2019).
Speaker, “Introduction to the Historical Horn”, UWA Albany Campus Public Seminar (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 (2020), for the most outstanding graduate in the Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Education at UWA
Finalist for the General Sir John Monash Scholarship (2020), Australia’s most prestigious postgraduate research award