Monthly Archives: January 2014

Recent activity and publications by PhD student Liam Cagney

WP_001079-b-2hvvblnOn Wednesday 22 January, PhD student Liam Cagney was invited by the BBC Symphony Orchestra to introduce a concert at the Barbican focussing on contemporary French music. During his pre-concert talk Liam interviewed the composer Hugues Dufourt onstage in the Barbican’s Fountain Room, discussing Mr Dufourt’s new piano concerto On the Wings of the Morning, the meaning of the name ‘spectral music’ which Mr Dufourt coined back in 1979, and the influence of painting on aspects of Mr Dufourt’s musical style.

Liam recently travelled to Salzburg in Austria to interview the composer Tristan Murail, and will soon go to Basel, Switzerland, to spend two months studying the Gérard Grisey Collection at the Paul Sacher Foundation.

Liam has also had some recent publications. The January issue of the journal Tempo features a review article by Liam on the music of Fausto Romitelli. In creative writing, Liam had a short story published in the winter issue of Irish literary journal The Moth; a short story in the New Island Anthology of new Irish writing, New Planet Cabaret; and will have a short story included in relaunch issue of the journal The Honest Ulsterman, which previously published early work by Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon and other Irish writers.

PhD Composer Georgia Rodgers at Sound Thought 2014

georgia-17aplwtEarlier in January PhD Composer Georgia Rodgers had her work Late Lines programmed in Sound Thought, an annual music composition, performance and research conference run by Glasgow University music department postgraduates. Georgia’s work, originally for cello and electronics, was presented as a fixed media installation in the cinema at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow. The work impressed critic David Kettle of the Scotsman newspaper, who remarked:

‘Georgia Rodgers’s Late Lines remix put the playing of cellist Séverine Ballon through electronic processing to create sounds whose granular textures were so vivid you wanted to reach out and touch them. Sent spinning around the listener through four loudspeakers in the corners of the room, the music melded machine-like pistons and valves, sandstorms and solar winds into a slowly developing – and strangely gripping – crescendo.’

Read the full review here.

Erasmus student Nawras Odda wins screen sound internship

Congratulations to Nawras Odda, who has secured a coveted 3-month paid internship with award-winning production company Brains and Hunch. Nawras is one of the first Erasmus students to visit us from the University of Turku in Finland thanks to a newly formed partnership between the two Universities. He will now be working at the London-based company, which specialises in music and sound design for film and TV, until April 2014, after which he will return to Finland to complete his Masters degree.