Our annual graduation ceremony for BMus students took place on Friday 20 July 2012 at The Guildhall, London. Congratulations to all our successful graduands (many of whom are pictured below in the traditional group photographs).
Monthly Archives: July 2012
Liam Cagney reviews George Benjamin’s ‘Written on Skin’ in The Telegraph
Centre for Music Studies’ PhD student Liam Cagney has published a review of George Benjamin’s new opera Written on Skin in today’s issue of The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/9403789/Written-on-Skin-Festival-Aix-review.html.
Maja Egebo Schriver presents Infinitum at Holy Trinity Hoxton
MA Composing for Moving Images student Maja Egebo Schriver has created an audiovisual installation, Infinitum, which was performed at Holy Trinity Hoxton from June 19-21.
The installation finds points of interaction between video art, sound design, and classical voices, and the set-up encourages the audience to experience the church room and its acoustics in different ways. The piece is composed as a circular and infinite movement developing through three different phases inspired by the elements and the existential circular journey of human life. The theme evolves around the dualistic struggle between nature and culture, seeing the church room and its inherent auditive tradition of Latin choral singing as the manifestation of culture, while undergoing an artistic ornamentation and abstract transformation inspired by the power and divinity of nature.
Father Andrew Newcombe, Vicar at Holy Trinity Hoxton, comments: “Working with Maja on her audio-visual installation at Holy Trinity Hoxton was amazing. Her ideas were well-conceived and the piece was ideal for the church setting and its acoustic. Even those who were just passing by and popped in to see what was happening stayed to listen and became absorbed by the music and the way it flowed around them. I was moved when a homeless man told me how it had ‘touched his heart’. The video worked extremely well and, along with votive candles, was the only source of light, adding to the ebb and tide of the music.”
Aki Pasoulas appointed Lecturer in Sonic Arts at the University of Kent
Dr Aki Pasoulas, a former PhD student and Visiting Lecturer at the Centre for Music Studies, has been appointed Lecturer in Sonic Arts at the University of Kent. Aki will be developing the BMus, BSc and MA programmes with Prof Tim Howle and City alumnus Dr Paul Fretwell, and he is looking forward to expanding on his research on timescales in electroacoustic music.He is currently a board member of the UK and Ireland Soundscape Community, and between 2004 and present he taught at universities in London including City, Middlesex and the University of the Arts. Aki’s PhD compositions are continuously performed across the world. His early acousmatic piece Chronos was selected for this year’s International Computer Music Conference to be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Ian Pace performing and lecturing at Stockhausen — A Festival of Light
Ian Pace will be performing and lecturing at Stockhausen — A Festival of Light in Birmingham on August 19-21, which precedes the world premiere of the composer’s opera Mittwoch aus Licht. On August 20th, Ian will be performing one of his own specialities, Stockhausen’s Klavierstück X, a notorious modernist classic performed in fingerless gloves. He will then join with percussionist Chris Brannick to perform Kontakte for piano, percussion and tape. The following day Ian will present a paper drawing upon his recent archival research considering Stockhausen’s early development in the 1950s and the influence of lesser-known but vital figures such as Herbert Eimert and Werner Meyer-Eppler, as well as his correspondence with Karol Goeyvaerts, Henri Pousseur and Pierre Boulez.
Further details are available at the Stockhausen — A Festival of Light webpage: http://www.stockhausenbirmingham.co.uk/
Adam Stansbie appointed Lecturer at the University of Sheffield
Centre for Music Studies’ PhD candidate Adam Stansbie has been appointed Lecturer in Music Technology at the University of Sheffield. Adam will be teaching electroacoustic and acousmatic composition alongside Dr. Adrian Moore, and will continue to develop his research on the creation and presentation of acousmatic music.
Adam’s appointment coincides with various high-profile performances of his musical works. His electroacoustic work Escapade was selected to represent Great Britain at the International Society for Contemporary Music World Music Days 2012, while his work Fractions was selected for the International Computer Music Conference 2012.
While in Russia: City University Symphony Orchestra at LSO St Luke’s
City University Symphony Orchestra returned to LSO St Luke’s in May to round off another successful year.
Anthony Weeden conducted a Russian themed evening which began with Mikhail Glinka’s Kamarinskaya before Tatjana Goldberg joined the orchestra for a performance of Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2. The concert was brought to a triumphant close with Kalinnikov’s Symphony No. 1.
The orchestra is open to all students studying at City University London. Auditions for the coming year will be announced at the beginning of the Autumn term.
Javanese Gamelan Ensemble perform at City
Centre for Music Studies’ Javanese Gamelan Ensemble, directed by Andy Channing, perform ING (laras pelog).
The concert featured three ensembles performing on Gamelan Sekar Enggal, an iron and brass gamelan made in the late 1980s by Suhirjan of Yogyakarta, Central Java.
Composed by Andy Channing, ING is “an ‘ancestral gamelan’ piece about everything and nothing”.
PhD students present at EMS Conference, Stockholm
Lasse Thoresen, Erik Nyström, Gary Kendall, Ambrose Seddon and Peiman Khosravi
PhD research students Peiman Khosravi, Erik Nyström and Ambrose Seddon recently presented papers at EMS12 – the Electroacoustic Music Studies Network Conference – hosted by the Royal College of Music and Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm, in June.
In his paper ‘Spectral Spatiality in the Acousmatic Listening Experience: the emergence of autonomous spectromorphological entities’ Peiman dealt with the manner in which the ontological notions of source and sound can become perceptually blurred in more abstract acousmatic contexts, giving rise to the experience of sound-shapes as visuo-spatial ‘entities’. The presentation then discussed the physiological basis of the correlation between the perception of spatial elevation and spectral frequency-range, which gives rise to the experience of ‘spectral space’ as the domain populated by autonomous sonic entities.
Erik presented a set of aesthetic principles for critical phases in textural organisation, and the roles of structure and disorder in electroacoustic music, in his paper, ‘Thermal Crises: Aesthetic Potentials of Texture in the Entropic Continuum.’
Ambrose’s paper, entitled ‘Sound Material Correspondence and Temporal Relationships in Acousmatic Composition: Proposing a Taxonomy of Recurrent Phenomena,’ discussed ways to consider acousmatic musical works in terms of the constituent sound materials and the different kinds of correspondences perceived among them.
More details on the conference can be found at: http://www.ems-network.org/ems12/index.html
Alice Jeffreys selected for LSO Soundhub
Leave a reply
Centre for Music Studies composition student Alice Jeffreys has been selected for the London Symphony Orchestra Soundhub programme: a flexible space for composers to explore, collaborate and experiment. Soundhub offers selected composers access to vital resources and a supportive environment in which to try out new ideas or develop existing work. The composers have unprecedented access to LSO rehearsals and concerts, as well as use of LSO St Lukes, workshops with LSO players, and attendance at presentations by industry organisations. The first full year of Soundhub will begin in September 2012, during which time Alice will explore the relationship between environmental soundscapes and an acoustic soundworld, as well as the relationship between movement and sound.