Heather Couture

Biography

Heather Couture is an active educator, researcher, and musician who has a passion for highlighting and sharing a wide variety of musical perspectives and cultures. She received bachelor's degrees in music and international studies from Texas State University and went on to study at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the University of Texas at Austin. Her PhD dissertation is titled "The Heart of Asia: Musicking, Tourism, and Taiwan's Place in a Globalized Asia" and examines how Taiwanese identity is defined and contested for global audiences during musical activities in tourist spaces. Heather utilizes ethnographic methods in her research, which includes topics such as musicking and tourism, music and identity, protest music, music and world-building, music and social justice, music of East Asia, and globalization. Along with her research in Taiwan, Heather has presented at ethnomusicology conferences on the Chinese diasporic musical performance known as Shen Yun and its covert protest methods. She also plans to focus her musical tourism research on her home region of Central Texas.

Heather has a variety of world music performance experience, including performing with such world ensembles as Japanese Gagaku, Chinese Jiangnan Sizhu, Javanese Gamelan, and Balinese Gamelan. She studied guqin under Taiwanese master Yuan Zhong Ping, founder of the New York Guqin Society, and performs on the guqin for community events. She also currently performs on gamelan with the Texas State Gamelan Lipi Awan ensemble and holds masterclasses for Javanese Gamelan. She is a frequent guest lecturer for UT Austin's world music courses and teaches music and social justice courses at TLU as well as Western music history. Heather also teaches private and group violin lessons through TLU's community music academy to K-12 students in the Seguin area. When she is not teaching, researching, or performing, Heather enjoys digging into a good book, roller-skating, and going on walks with her family.