Tom is the Christopher Cox Junior Research Fellow at New College. He completed his DPhil in Music in 2021 at Worcester College, supervised by Jonathan Cross and Robert Saxton. Following this, Tom was a Junior Teaching Fellow at the Ashmolean Museum (2022) and the Junior Anniversary Fellow at The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, for his project Photography and/as Music (2022-2023). During this time, Tom was a Committee Member for the Association of Art History’s Doctoral and Early Career Research Network with particular responsibility for assessment and administration of the Undergraduate Dissertation Prize. 

Before joining New College, Tom spent a year in the charity sector working as Trusts and Foundations Manager for Liverpool Philharmonic, securing significant grants for capital, digital, infrastructure, and music outreach projects. 

As well as academic research Tom is also a composer. His music has been performed by internationally renowned ensembles and soloists, with recordings on the NMC, Herald and Métier labels. More information on Tom’s creative practice can be found on his website.

Teaching 

Tom has taught across a wide range of papers at Oxford, mostly concerned with music from the 20^th century to the present, and especially papers that explore aesthetics, intertextuality, and technology. Tom successfully completed the ‘Developing Learning and Teaching at Oxford’ course through the Humanities Division in 2020, and in 2022 co-designed and convened the Composing Philosophy seminar series for the MSt Music (Composition) course with Prof. Jennifer Ronyak.

Research Interests 

Tom's research explores relationships between musical and visual forms, both in theory and practice. In particular, Tom is interested in the applications of post-structural philosophy, visual studies, and art history to music based upon works (or processes) of visual art, privileging notions of medium, materiality, and cultural imagination in their discourse and analysis. Other research interests include musical semiotics and notation, music and politics, and the histories of (post)modernism.

Selected Publications 

• Metcalf, T. ‘Imagetext, Indeterminacy, Iconoclasm: What Do Graphic Scores Want?’, Music in Art 48(1-2), Research Center for Music Iconography, City University of New York, 2023, 175-186.

• Metcalf, T. ‘Between Audiation and Ekphrasis: Pascal Dusapin’s “False Trails”’, Tempo 75(305), CUP, July 2023, 26-43.

• Metcalf, T. ‘Cornelius Cardew's Camouflage and “Bun No. 2”’, Music Analysis 42(1), Wiley, March 2023, 112-151. [open access]

• Mathieson, D. & Metcalf, T. ‘Graphics, Extended Techniques, Timbral Diversity: Collaborative Approaches to Contemporary Organ Music’, RCO Journal 15, 2022, 80-94.

• Metcalf, T. ‘Anne Boyd at 75: A Celebration through the String Quartet’, Tempo, 75(297), CUP, June 2021, 35-47.

• Metcalf, T. ‘Graphical Data Sets as Compositional Structure: Sonification of Colour Graphs in “RGB” for Clarinet and Piano’, Leonardo 54(3), MIT Press, June 2021, 329-336.

• Metcalf, T. ‘Labyrinths, Liminality and Ekphrasis: The Graphical Impetus in the Music of Kenneth Hesketh’, Tempo 75(295), CUP, January 2021, 45-71.

• Metcalf, T. ‘Pixelation as a Teleological Strategy in Music Composition’, Principles of Music Composing 20, Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, 2020, 135-146.

• Metcalf, T. ‘Graphical Ekphrasis: Translating Graphical Spaces into Music’, Question Journal 5, AHRC, September 2020, 78-91.

Composition Recordings 

• Metcalf, T. ‘Pixelating the River’, Something So Transporting Bright, Kreutzer Quartet, Métier (MEX 77132). January 2025.

• Metcalf, T. ‘LIVING SENSE DATUM’ & ‘H(AI)KU’, Young Composers 4, National Youth Choir, NMC (NMCDL3051). 2023.

• Metcalf, T. ‘DISSOLUTION (X-XII)’, Daniel Mathieson, Lockdown Music: South East, NMC Recordings. 2022.

• Metcalf, T. Metcalf, T. ‘Worcester Service’, Qui Christi Vestigia Sunt Secuti. Worcester College Chapel Choir. Herald (HAVPCD408). 2019.