Intercultural new music composer, performer, researcher.

Research profile

Alex Chilvers’s research investigates how musical meaning is shaped through cultural encounter: how listeners interpret music across cultural contexts, how musicians negotiate difference through collaborative creative practice, and how higher music education can respond to the diverse musical knowledge present in contemporary Australia. Across music education, music psychology, musicology and practice-led composition, his work asks how listening can become a more critically aware, reciprocal and dialogic activity.

One strand examines intercultural curriculum transformation in the conservatory. Working with cultural knowledge holders and specialist musicians, Alex develops and evaluates teaching interventions that bring Chinese, Iranian and Aboriginal Australian musical practices into core aural skills study. This research considers not only what new musical materials students encounter, but also the assumptions, analytical habits and institutional hierarchies that shape how those materials are heard and taught. Recent publications examine the integration of Iranian classical music and student responses to curriculum diversification, including the responsibilities involved in engaging Indigenous musical knowledge.

A second strand explores cultural source, perception and musical appreciation. Drawing on music psychology and phenomenological approaches to listening, this work investigates how contextual information and listeners’ cultural positions influence their responses to music. It connects empirical questions about appreciation and open-earedness with broader concerns about cultural security, positionality and the ways listeners make meaning.

A third strand is intercultural composition and collaborative music-making. Through Bark Tin Band and other partnerships, Alex develops new work through sustained exchange with musicians whose instruments, techniques and musical knowledge come from different traditions. Projects such as Tang Suite use collaborative composition as a form of inquiry into musical time, notation, historical materials and the possibilities of dialogue without reducing difference to a single shared language.

These strands come together in Alex’s work on aural skills, ethical listening and institutional change: how students learn to listen beyond familiar frameworks, how expertise is recognised and shared, and how conservatories can build more reciprocal relationships with the communities whose musical practices they teach. The 2026 Australian Government Maitri Grant supports this work through a partnership between the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and Bengaluru’s Subramaniam Academy of Performing Arts, alongside engagement with Indian-Australian musicians and communities in Sydney.

Selected research outputs

Journal articles and reviews

• “Integrating Iranian classical music into the Western aural skills curriculum” (2026). Music Education Research, advance online publication, 1–13. With Majid Amani. https://doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2026.2727919. Proposes a model for integrating Iranian classical music into conservatory aural skills, centred on an interactive module informed by Dariush Talai’s “New Approach”.
• “Student Perspectives on Curriculum Diversification in Higher Music Education: Contrasting Encounters With Iranian and Aboriginal Australian Music” (2026). Research Studies in Music Education. With Jean Wong, Majid Amani and colleagues. https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103X261465592. Analyses student responses to two intercultural aural-skills workshops, considering both the value of curriculum diversification and the tensions around Western analytical frameworks and responsible engagement.
• “Technological Advances that Shape Practice Towards Better Teaching and Learning Experiences in the Study of Music” (2026). Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 14, 1–16. With J. Rose, J. Rowley and colleagues. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.14.27. Examines how formal higher-education teaching development can support innovation in practice-focused music educators’ teaching.
• “Yawulyu: Art and song in Warlpiri Women's ceremony” (2026). Book review, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 37(1), 218–220. https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.70049.
• “The effects of cultural source sensitivity on music appreciation” (2024). Psychology of Music, 52(3), 284–304. With Yixue Quan, Kirk Olsen and Bill Thompson. https://doi.org/10.1177/03057356231201846. Reports an experimental study of how cultural framing and listener background interact in evaluations of music.
• “Intercultural dialogue and the mobilisation of aural skills” (2024). Music Education Research, 26(2), 170–180. With Lulu Liu. https://doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2023.2291661. Develops a model for incorporating diverse musical content into core conservatory aural-skills curricula.
• “World Music Open-earedness as a Possible Measure of Proteophilia and Connection to a Cultural Secure Base: A Commentary on Quan et al. (2022)” (2023). Empirical Musicology Review, 17(2), 113–116. https://doi.org/10.18061/emr.v17i2.9554.
• “Foreign Models, Familiar Themes: The Aesthetic Function of Folklore in Works by Szymanowski and Górecki” (2021). Musicology Australia, 43(1–2), 108–130. https://doi.org/10.1080/08145857.2021.2006869.

Book chapters

• “Your Song,” My Chords: A Phenomenological Analysis of Ellie Goulding's Cover” (2026). In The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song, 154–165. With Pat O’Grady. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003489924-11.
• “Music and Cultural Identity” (2021). In Science and Psychology of Music: From Beethoven at the Office to Beyoncé at the Gym, 124–129.
• “Sound Waves: The Music inside Sound” (2021). In Science and Psychology of Music: From Beethoven at the Office to Beyoncé at the Gym, 7–13.

Creative research outputs

• Tang Suite (2026), recorded work for pipa, harpsichord and bass guitar, with Lulu Liu and Anthony Abouhamad; released by ABC Classic. Listen to the album.
• Lisboa Chime (2024), composition for pipa and bass guitar, with Lulu Liu. Australian Music Centre.
• Chainwheel (2021), composition for harpsichord, four hands. Australian Music Centre.
• Studium O (2019), composition. Australian Music Centre.
• coûte que coûte? (2017), composition. Australian Music Centre.

This is a selected list of research and creative outputs. For the complete institutional record, including additional performance outputs, see Alex’s University of Sydney research profile or ORCID.