Expanded Solo:
Performing the Expanded Self
What constitutes solo performance when identity extends beyond the individual body? This project proposes the Expanded Self as a compositional framework through which performer identity, musical agency and authorship are understood as relational rather than autonomous. Across four compositions, the project examines how a performer’s musical identity can extend across instruments, sound, technology, other performers and the collaborative processes through which a work comes into being.
Each work explores a distinct manifestation of the Expanded Self. ritual for violin and meridian for accordion treat physical gesture and theatrical action as compositional material; mantle movements #1 for transducer piano extends instrumental sound through mediated resonance; and one for shō and kamancheh expands solo identity into a shared performative body, negotiating contrasting instrumental traditions through collaboration.
An iterative, workshop-based methodology positions performers as active creative participants whose feedback, experimentation and embodied knowledge reshape the works throughout their development. Rather than treating the score as a fixed endpoint, the project considers collaboration itself as compositional material, redistributing agency and authorship between composer and performer. The Expanded Self thus offers an alternative understanding of solo performance as an emergent practice in which identity, agency and authorship are continually negotiated across bodies, instruments, technologies and relationships.
Toh Yan Ee
Yan Ee Toh is a Singaporean composer whose music fuses spontaneity and organicity, exploring gesture through the amalgamation and morphing of timbres and harmonies. Her interests in interdisciplinary work and traditional instruments have led to collaborations with Duo Nessi and the School of the Arts Ethnic Ensemble, as well as the curation of the Landscapes//Atmospheres concert series for the Steingraeber Transducer Piano.
Her music has been performed in 11 countries, with notable performances at Wigmore Hall, Cockpit Theatre, Victoria Concert Hall, and the Esplanade Recital Studio. She has worked with ensembles including RIOT Ensemble, Onyx Brass, TACET(i), Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Quartetto Maurice, Ensemble Kochi, and the Singapore Chinese Orchestra.
Yan Ee holds a Master of Music from the Royal Academy of Music, where she was awarded the DipRAM and the Priaulx Rainier Composition Prize, and is a graduate of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music.
Photo courtesy of Anjulie Chen
YST Conservatory of Music