Personal statement

Celeste Cantor-Stephens is a trumpet player, educator-facilitator and researcher-writer. Her music focuses on the creative and exploratory, spanning a range of practices and traditions, from klezmer to free improvisation. Celeste has worked with other artists including percussionist Billy Martin, soundpainting pioneer Walter Thompson, late dub progenitor Lee 'Scratch' Perry, and more local projects including The Moulettes and free-improv trio TORU, as well as theatre and dance productions.  

Beyond performance, Celeste often works at an intersection of arts and social justice, including journalistic writing, academic papers, interdisciplinary audiovisual and creative audio work. Her specialisms include a focus on human displacement, borders, lived experiences of these, and on the personal, social, and political roles of music within this. 

Academic qualifications

  • BA (Hons), University of Sheffield 
  • MSt, University of Oxford
  • MPhil, University of Cambridge. 

Professional memberships

  • Association of British Choral Directors.

Other external roles

  • Senior Lecturer, BIMM Bristol.

Teaching subjects and areas of expertise

  • Brass and woodwind performance and technique 
  • Improvisation/Free improv 
  • Ethnomusicology
  • Social and political musicology
  • Interdisciplinary collaboration
  • Community music.

Research outputs

Book Chapters:  

'Border Spaces and Sounds of Resistance: Music at the Franco-British Border': In Sonic Rebellions: Sound and Social Justice (Wanda Canton, Ed., Routledge, 2024)  

'La Nouvelle France: Institutionalized abuse, 'exception' and spectacle in the Exiled/Volunteer Relationship at the Franco-British Border': in Humanitarian Action & Ethics (A. Ahmad & J. Smith, Eds., Zed Books, 2018)  

Conference Papers:  

‘Sonic Rebellions, Music, Research, and Activism’, Panel paper: Music, Research, and Activism Conference, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, 10–12 May, 2023.  

‘Border Spaces and Sounds of Resistance’: Sonic Rebellions, Sound and Social Justice conference, Brighton, UK, 27-28 May, 2022.  

'Music in Space, Place and Being in Calais's border camps': AVAMUS Conference, The Mediterranean: Migrant Sounds, Asociación Valenciana de Musicología, València, Spain, 23-25 July 2019.  

'Musical Practice and Meaning Among Displaced People in the Unofficial Migrant Camps of Calais, France': Making Music In Migrant Camps summer school, Université Franco-Allemande, Bayonne, France, 2-8 September, 2018