Internationally Commissioned
Composer
Exploring Sound, Scholarship, and Cultural Memory
Lark McIvor is a Canadian composer whose work bridges cultural memory, medievalism, and contemporary creative practice. Her music has been commissioned and performed internationally, including as a finalist for the River Thames Composition Competition (Premiere: 2026, County Hall Arts).
Her compositions span chamber orchestra, vocal chamber, brass, and multimedia forms, with premieres in the UK, Ireland, and Canada. An active collaborator, McIvor has worked with the Irish Composers Collective, the Festival of Creative Learning in Edinburgh, and her graphic scores were featured in the Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition (2021).
Drawing on research-informed approaches to notation and narrative, McIvor’s work explores how sound shapes identity, place, and collective memory.
Digital Ethnomusicologist
Researching Medievalism, Cultural Memory, and Ethnomusicological Compositions
Equally at home in contemporary compositional techniques and folk idioms, McIvor’s musicological research spans medievalism, Celticism, and cultural memory in contemporary sound. She holds a Master of Musicology from the University of Edinburgh, where her thesis explored Irish National Celticism and medievalism in modern animation scores, and a Master of Music in Composition from the Trinity College Dublin, which informs her research-driven approach to sound and notation.
Her scholarship has been published in Oxford Early Music, with further work forthcoming through the Gustav Mahler Privatuniversität für Musik. She has presented internationally at the Edinburgh Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, as well as at postgraduate seminars hosted by the Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis and the Royal College of Music.
Working at the intersection of historical inquiry and creative practice, McIvor’s research engages music semiotics, historical notation systems, and autoethnographic approaches to composition, with particular attention to how digital culture reframes narratives of identity, belonging, and collective memory.