Dr Les Gillon

As Research Degree Tutor, Les supports the research activities of the postgraduate research community within the School of Arts and Media. He is also Director of UCLan Recordings Group which is the University of Central Lancashire's in-house record label and Committee Chair of Preston Jazz and Improvisation Festival. Together with Professor Ewa Mazierska and Music Industry Consultant Tony Rigg he is a Co-Director of the Music Research @UCLan, which has published a series of edited collections on the future of the music industry and been involved in organising conferences featuring international panels of academics and industry professionals.

Les is a musician, writer and academic who has worked as a guitarist, bassist, vocalist, composer and songwriter since the 1970s and has taught performance and composition to young musicians for over twenty years. He records and performs regularly in a variety of ensembles, playing types of music that range from experimental improvisation to traditional British folk music. In addition to his research in the field of music, he also writes on aesthetics and the visual arts. His monograph The Uses of Reason in the Evaluation of Artworks uses the Turner Prize as a case study, in order to explore fundamental questions about the nature, purpose and value of art. He is also active in practice-based music research that explores composition and improvisation techniques, the use of non-western music traditions and interdisciplinary collaborations with dance, moving image and spoken word practitioners.