Laurie Stras studied harpsichord, piano and singing at the Royal College of Music, and gained her doctorate from the University of London in 1995. Before returning to postgraduate studies, she pursued a freelance career as
... Laurie Stras studied harpsichord, piano and singing at the Royal College of Music, and gained her doctorate from the University of London in 1995. Before returning to postgraduate studies, she pursued a freelance career as both singer and keyboard player, including four years in the Royal National Theatre Company as Musical Director for both touring and repertory productions. She has two main areas of research, sixteenth-century Italian music and twentieth-century popular music, and in both she concentrates on the work of female musicians. Her articles have appeared in Early Music History, Acta Musicologica, Journal of Musicological Research, Early Music, and Popular Music. In 2008, she received the prestigious ASCAP Deems Taylor award for her article on the Boswell Sisters appearing in the Journal of the Society for American Music.
Laurie acts as consultant to a number of performing groups in both early music and heritage jazz, and is co-director of the early music ensemble Musica Secreta, with whom she has supervised three award-winning recordings. Throughout 2010 and 2011, She also worked closely with Sarah Dunant on her historical novel set in a 1570s convent, Sacred Hearts, for which Musica Secreta recorded a soundtrack CD. She is currently writing a book, Musica Secreta: Women, Polyphony and Performance, which investigates a wider musical, historical and cultural context for the famous concerto di dame at the court of Ferrara.
Laurie is Senior Tutor in the School of Humanities. She can supervise doctoral dissertations in sixteenth- and seventeenth century music, in popular music, and in topics related to music and gender or disability.
