Author Archives: sbbd746

MA student Sam Kendall and Dr Diana Salazar run ensemble workshop at Cambridge University

On the 24th October MA student Sam Kendall and Lecturer in Music, Dr Diana Salazar, will attend the Cambridge University conference- ‘Building Interdisciplinary Bridges Across Cultures‘. Here, they will present research and run a workshop on the electronic ensemble within higher education, in collaboration with Dr Oded Ben-Tal, Senior Lecturer in Music at Kingston University. The presentation will address the benefits and challenges of this type of ensemble, the local and global institutional contexts, and the interdisciplinary implications, in relation to music pedagogy.

PhD student Rachel Hayward to present paper at International Steel Pan Conference at University of East London

The University of East London will be hosting the 5^th biennial Steel Pan Conference over the weekend of 11-12^th October. This collaborative project aims to bring together academics and practitioners to examine the ways in which the three strands of the Caribbean Carnival arts (pan, masquerade and calypso) are interwoven and have been adapted and adopted around the globe. Outside of its home country — Trinidad — pan in particular has suffered from a lack of academic attention despite long traditions in other Caribbean islands, the USA and UK — a deficit this series of conferences has attempted to address. City University PhD student Rachel Hayward has been invited to give the opening paper entitled ‘Yellow Bird’ and Pan: Caribbean Musical Migrations based upon research undertaken for her recently submitted thesis. Also a respected performer, Rachel will be performing The Birmingham Spirituals by Patrick Larley which includes a specially composed part for solo pan within the orchestra. The work will be performed along with other solo pan transcriptions at St Paul’s Church, Chichester on 4^th October.

Joanna Bailie: Recent Activities

PhD student Joanna Bailie was invited this summer to join the teaching staff at the 47th Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music. As well as tutoring over forty composition students from a wide variety of cultures and musical backgrounds, she was a composer-mentor at the percussion workshop and presented a paper during the Darmstadt lecture series entitled “Towards a poetics of sampling: embracing the gap” which can be heard at:

https://voicerepublic.com/venues/lectures/talks/die-lucke-schliessen-zu-einer-poetik-des-sampling

She also had two works programmed at the summer course — Street-Souvenir was performed by the young French ensemble Soundinitiative, and On and Off 2 by students from the percussion department.

July 2014 saw the publication of Stephanie Power’s article “Joanna Bailie: strange parallel music” in Tempo. The article presents a general overview of Bailie’s career and works with a particular focus on her more recent pieces involving field recording and intermediality. Joanna is currently working on her first orchestral piece, entitled To be beside the seaside, which will be premiered in May 2015 by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Georgia Rodgers awarded Mercers’ Prize

PhD student Georgia Rodgers has been awarded the Mercers’ Prize for 2013-14.

Georgia specialises in music composed for acoustic instrument and electronics, with a particular interest in the perception of sound and the human experience of listening. She is interested in using electronic techniques as a ‘sonic microscope’, helping us to hear musical instruments in new ways. She is in the second year of a PhD in Music Composition at City University, studying under the supervision of Dr Newton Armstrong.

Earlier this year Georgia won a place on the Sound and Music Higher Education Programme, a scheme which provides twelve young composers with an opportunity to work with the London Sinfonietta and soloists. Her new work will be premiered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in November.

The Mercers’ Company is the Premier Livery Company in the City of London. The company and its associated charitable trusts make substantial grants to support education, general welfare, church and faith and arts and heritage. More information can be found here: http://www.mercers.co.uk.

Laudan Nooshin presents keynote lecture at ‘Analysis, Cognition and Ethnomusicology’ Conference

In the first week of July, Laudan Nooshin presented a keynote paper at the conference ‘Analysis, Cognition and Ethnomusicology’, a joint meeting of the 3rd ‘Analytical Approaches to World Music’ and the 2014 annual meeting of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology. The conference was hosted by the Institute of Musical Research, University of London, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, in association with the Centre for Music and Science (University of Cambridge) and the Society for Music Analysis, and was attended by over 200 people, including delegates from across the UK and from abroad. This was one of the first conferences to bring together ethnomusicologists, music analysts and music psychologists to discuss ways of approaching the study of music that would benefit from drawing on each of these areas.

Laudan’s paper was entitled ‘Re-imagining DIfference: Musical Analysis, Alterity and the Creative Process’ and explored a number of issues around the intersection of musical analysis and alterity arising from her long-term research on improvisation in Iranian classical music. The keynote was chaired by Laudan’s former PhD supervisor, Professor John Baily from Goldsmiths’ College.

The other keynote speakers at the conference were Professor Nicholas Cook (University of Cambridge) with a paper entitled ‘Music, Identity, and the Clever Boy from Croydon’ about the life and music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor; and Professor Martin Clayton (University of Durham) speaking about ‘Music Analysis and Ethnomusicology: Some Reflections on Rhythmic Theory’.

http://aawmconference.com/index.htm

Alexander Karpeyev organises Medtner Day at Guildhall School of Music and Drama

On 22nd May 2014 the first one-day UK festival dedicated to the Russian émigré pianist and composer Nikolay Medtner (1880–1951) took place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Twenty-two musicians performed Medtner’s compositions, including two major sonatas – Sonata-Reminiscenza by Louise Cournarie and Sonata tragica by Mihai Ritivoiu – alongside eight smaller pieces, twelve songs, the Violin Sonata Op. 21 and the Quintet Op. Posth.

Professor Hamish Milne of the Royal Academy of Music gave an outstanding masterclass on Medtner’s music. Performers were pleasantly surprised to receive tuition from a teacher who knew the repertoire so well. Professor Francis Pott of the University of West London presented an enthralling talk entitled ‘Born with the Sonata Form?’, followed by a Q&A session.

The Guildhall’s cozy Lecture Recital Room was always full. The audience’s response was appreciative: ‘…a most unusual treat…’, ‘I was exposed to music I didn’t really know… wonderful’, ‘…all the playing was really impressive’ and ‘it was a brilliant evening’.

Rachmaninov hugely admired Medtner, even telling him: ‘I repeat what I said to you back in Russia: you are, in my opinion, the greatest composer of our time.’ One can hope that similar events organized on topics related to Medtner will take place in order to encourage the wider performance of his music.

Medtner Day-2014 was organised by City University DMA student Alexander Karpeyev (www.akarpeyev.com).

Laudan Nooshin at Popular Music Conference in Norway

At the beginning of June, Laudan travelled to Oslo, Norway, as an invited speak at a symposium held as part of a 5-year project funded by the Norwegian Research Council on ‘Popular Music and Gender in Transnational Contexts’, led by Professor Stan Hawkins.

Laudan’s paper was entitled ‘Sites of Memory: Public Emotionality, Gender and Nationhood in the Music of Googoosh’, and explored the music of Iran’s pop diva Googoosh and its role for Iranian diasopra communities in Europe and the US.

The other invited speaker was sociologist and popular music scholar Professor Antoine Hennion, from the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Paris, whose paper was entitled: ‘Performativity, Performance and Musical Genres’.

More information on the symposium and on the project:

http://www.hf.uio.no/imv/english/research/news-and-events/events/conferences/2014/symposium-popular-music-and-gender-in-a-transnatio.html

http://www.hf.uio.no/imv/english/research/projects/musicandgender/index.html

CUSO reviewed on classicalsource.com

The City University Symphony Orchestra’s final concert for the year (Friday May 23rd, at LSO St Luke’s) has received a glowing review on Classical Source, drawing particular attention to DMA candidate Ben Schoeman’s performance as soloist in Saint-Saëns’ ‘Egyptian’ Concerto. The full review can be found here.

Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum

The Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum took place at City University London on Tuesday May 20^th 2014. The forum has been running as part of the Institute of Musical Research since 2007 and is open to researchers, students and anyone interested in the music and culture of the region. The forum provides a space for both students and more experienced researchers to present their current research in a relatively informal context.

The event was well attended with about 35 visitors, and 9 speakers from the UK and abroad presented papers on a range of musics across the region, The day began with a panel on music and conflict resolution in Israel/Palestine with speakers Antonia Baum (PhD student, SOAS) and Miranda Crowdus (PhD student, City) presenting papers entitled ‘Practising Play and Moving in Time: Musical Performances at an Israeli-Palestinian Reconciliation Gathering’ and ‘Collective Trauma, Advocacy, and Intertext in Jaffan Music Communities’.

The second morning session focused on Iran, starting with Iranian-British composer Soosan Lolavar (Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance) talking about her recent project ‘Stay Close’ in which she collaborated with British and Middle Eastern musicians as well as running workshops in an Iranian youth centre in south-east London. The last speaker of the morning, Mehryar Golestani (aka Reveal; MMus student, SOAS), a well-known British-Iranian rapper, presented a paper on ‘Persian Hip-Hop and the Emergence of an Online Iranian Diaspora’.

The afternoon included a screening of the film Music of the Uzbeks of Northern Afghanistan, by Razia Sultanova , followed by Edward Fox (Open University) talking about the Sowt al-Khaleej music that he encountered and recorded on a recent trip to Oman. Eliot Bates (University of Birmingham) then talked about Doğa İçin Çal (literally ‘play for nature’), a 2011 Turkish crowd-sourced video series featuring hundreds of amateur and professional musicians ostensibly playing or singing for environmentalism. Through a discussion of this video series, Bates presented a reassessment of the ninety-year history of state-sponsored folklore in Turkey, and the fifty-year history of Unkapanı, the heart of the music industry located in Istanbul.

For the final session of the day, we welcomed Joseph Alagha from Haigazian University, Lebanon, talking about the use of music by Hizbullah in Lebanon (“‘Resistance Art’ as Soft Power: Hizbullah’s Music Bands”) and in the last paper of the day Stefan Williamson Fa (SOAS/The Sayat Nova Project) discussed some of the current trends in Islamic musical practice in the Northeastern Caucasus, drawing on recent fieldwork amongst Dagestani and Chechen communities in Georgia and Azerbaijan.

The day ended with a concert in the performance space – ‘Stay Close: Only Sound Remains’ – showcasing work from Soosan Lolavar’s Stay Close Contemporary Music Project.

Links:

http://www.edwardfox.co.uk/

http://www.staycloseproject.com/

http://music.sas.ac.uk/research-networks/middle-east-and-central-asia-music-forum

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27439043

Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum, Schedule and Abstracts (20.5.14)

Ben Schoeman (DMA) performs with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra and at Carnegie Hall in New York

On 24 April, pianist and DMA student Ben Schoeman performed the Piano Concerto no. 5 by Camille Saint-Saëns with the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra in the Cape Town City Hall. This concert was part of the CPO’s centenary celebrations and Schoeman performed under the baton of fellow South African Pieter Daniel. The concert received outstanding reviews in the local press and the critic Pieter Kooij wrote: “Ben Schoeman’s beautiful interpretation of the Fifth Piano Concerto by Saint-Saëns was a feast of virtuosity. However, delicate playing and sparkle, typical aspects of Saint-Saëns’ music, were also brilliantly achieved … the audience in the packed City Hall rewarded him with a loud and standing ovation” (Die Burger, 26 April 2014).

A few weeks later Schoeman joined his duo partner, the cellist Anzél Gerber, in a successful performance at the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall in New York. The concert was part of the duo’s first prize in the 2012 Ibla Grand Prize Competition in Ragusa-Ibla, Italy. Ben and Anzél are also embarking on an extended tour of South Africa and Namibia in 2015.

On Friday 23 May 2014, Ben Schoeman will perform the Saint- Saëns Concerto no. 5 with the City University Symphony Orchestra and conductor Anthony Weeden at LSO St. Luke’s. The concert starts at 19:30 and tickets are available on the LSO St. Luke’s website: http://lso.co.uk/145/City-University-Symphony-Orchestra/1048

Music at City

The blog for the Music Department at City University London