Raymond MacDonald is a saxophonist, composer and psychologist with an extensive career in music, cross-disciplinary arts and academia. He has been an artist in residence at the Aiia festival in Geneva 2022 and 2023, collaborating with Chimere, an artificial intelligence, to produce a series of new cross disciplinary artworks and continues to produce new artwork in collaboration with AI as part of Chimere Communities . Much of his work explores the boundaries and ambiguities between what is conventionally seen as improvisation and composition. MacDonald has released over 70 CDs, toured and broadcast worldwide and has composed music for film, television, theatre, radio and art installations and is a founder member of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra. He has a particular interest in cross-disciplinary collaboration and has extensive experience of working with artists and filmmakers. MacDonald’s work is informed by a view of improvisation as a social, collaborative and uniquely creative process that provides opportunities to develop new ways of engaging musically and artistically. He plays in many collaborative free improvisatory contexts, and his roots in jazz and pop music can be heard across all areas of his performance and composition. His approach of combining music and psychology and incorporating other artistic disciplines, has been used to develop collaborative projects and ongoing working relationships around the world. He is professor of Music Psychology and Improvisation at University of Edinburgh and is also a chartered Health Psychologist. He has published over 80 papers, was editor of the Journal Psychology of Music between 2006-2012 and has co-edited five texts: Musical Identities (2002), Musical Communication (2005), Music Health and Wellbeing (2012), Musical Imaginations (2012) and The Handbook of Music Identities (2017) and co-written a recent text, The Art of Becoming: How Group Improvisation Works, (2021) with Graeme Wilson.
