Interweaving as Method: Collaborative Composition and Imaginative Exchange amongst Cultural Pluralities

This presentation reflects on collaborative composition as an interweaving of materials, artists, culture and imagination, drawing on two 2026 projects: the Jogja & Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Project in Yogyakarta and Ma-Shugorei with Tunji Beier and Takako Nishibori.

In the Jogja project, Vishnu Satyagraha and I are co-creating a work inspired by the Mahabharata and wayang kulit. In Ma-Shugorei, Japanese folk and court materials are reimagined through an ensemble combining Indian and Western percussion, koto and electronics. Rather than treating cultural identities as discrete, I approach these projects as collaborations among artists working within layered cultural contexts.

Using autoethnography, I trace how my assumptions and compositional choices are reshaped through collaboration. I suggest that collaboration often begins from a partial and exploratory position marked by curiosity, wonder and artistic instinct. As the process develops, this openness can be retained and intensified, allowing new musical forms to emerge.

Across both projects, I consider how composers negotiate different musical logics, tensions and asymmetries, and how collaboration becomes a site of exchange. I ask how mutual curiosity creates affective conditions through which music does not simply represent identity, but actively produces it. Collaboration thus becomes both a compositional method and a way of working within interwoven cultural conditions.