Research · Music · Performance
Ancient Sound Lab explores the sound worlds of ancient cultures through music, research and performance.
Working at the intersection of archaeology, musicology, composition and historically informed performance, we bring surviving evidence back into musical practice. Our aim is not to claim a definitive reconstruction of the past, but to discover what can be learned by making ancient sound possible again.
About the lab
The lab brings together composers, performers, archaeologists, music historians and other specialists according to the needs of each project.
What emerges is not a restoration of a lost musical past. It is new music, performance and research grounded in the surviving evidence, while remaining explicit about where evidence ends and creative interpretation begins.
The evidence and methods vary with the questions being asked. Surviving notation and texts, archaeological objects, reconstructed instruments, visual representations and other traces of ancient sound can all become part of the investigation. Composition and performance provide a way of testing that evidence in practice.
Watch / Listen
Ancient sound becomes a research tool through experimentation, collaboration and performance. Watch the instruments, musicians and ideas behind Ancient Sound Lab in practice.
First play
Nuno Silva explores the pandoura
A first encounter with the pandoura for Sound Worlds of Ancient Greece — exploring the instrument in practice before recording begins.
Projects
Current project
Music · Research · Recording · Film
A new body of music exploring the sound world of ancient Greece through surviving musical evidence, reconstructed instruments, composition and performance.
Explore projectResearch & music project
Composition · Archaeomusicology · Recording · Research
A practice-based exploration of ancient Roman music, using surviving evidence as the starting point for composition, reconstruction and recorded musical performance.
Explore projectOur approach
Exploring surviving evidence for ancient musical practices, from notation and texts to instruments and representations of performance.
Investigating musical instruments and sound-producing objects through archaeological evidence, reconstruction and practical experimentation.
Using creative practice to test possibilities, constraints and interpretations that emerge from the surviving evidence.
Bringing music into dialogue with archaeology, history and other specialist fields according to the questions raised by each project.
Research & Writing
Ancient Sound Lab develops research through the interaction of scholarship and creative practice. Publications, experiments and musical works examine what surviving evidence can reveal when sound is treated not simply as an object of study, but as something that can be tested through making and performance.
Journal article / Accepted for publication
Frontières — The Edges of Sound
Accepted for publication
Journal review
Vol. 79, No. 1 — Spring 2026
Read moreContact
Ancient Sound Lab welcomes enquiries about research, collaboration, performance, recording and future projects.
Get in touch
maryann.tedstoneglover@gmail.comResearch · Collaboration · Music · Film · Performance