Music graduate success

University of Brighton Performance and Visual Art Music graduate (June 2009) Jade Pybus, has landed interesting high-profile professional work co-writing and singing the music for the latest Ford Focus Advert.

Jade's final degree performance focussed on exploring the sound of the human voice when the body is placed under different types of restraint, and composed a work for projected image, multi sound diffusion and live performance.

Her written research explored the cultural construction of the female voice and the genderisation of musical instruments. She drew upon the work of artists as diverse as PJ Harvey  and Gillian Wearing to examine ways in which identity and gender are carried in the voice and wrote about ways of singing, whispering, shouting, screaming, mumbling and muttering.

According to Jade her favourite theoretical reads for this research were Michel Chion’s The Voice in Cinema and Steven Connor’s Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism. On graduating from the course she said, "the Performance and Visual Art Music degree at Brighton has given me the skills and confidence to pursue a rich and varied career. Whenever I work with sound, I am thinking of the visual implications and vice versa".

Speaking of the recent work for the Ford Focus Advert she says, "I recently worked with Mark Delany on the music for the latest Ford Focus Viral Advert. I composed the Vocal Melody and wrote the lyrics. Working to a brief was enjoyably challenging. I found this way of working very rewarding and enjoyed using the versatility of my own voice to fit a mould that had already been devised. Working in conjunction with visual material came naturally to me and was inspiring. Equally, this inspiration began from the words in the brief, initially conjuring up melodies and lyrics before I had seen the film."  

Many of the staff on the Performance and Visual Art courses at Brighton are also interested in the voice for their own art practice and research.

Amy Cunningham, voice artist and researcher at University of Brighton Faculty of Arts

University of Brighton Faculty of Arts The Voice laboratory, an interdisciplinary research cluster led by composer, performer and visual artists

Mikhail Karikis, composer and researcher at University of Brighton Faculty of Arts