Author Archives: sbbd746

Alexander Karpeyev Presents Paper at International Conference in Moscow

In late October, DMA student Alexander Karpeev presented a paper entitled ‘New Light on Nikolay Medtner as Pianist and Composer’ at an international conference in Moscow dedicated to lives and creative output of Emil and Nikolay Medtners. The event was organised by the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, the Gnessin Institute of Music and the Glinka and Pushkin museums. In the course of three days, papers were presented by distinguished researchers from Russia, Sweden and Austria. Notable presenters included Christoph Flamm of Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Magnus Ljunggren from Gothenburg University and Yelena Dolinskaya of Moscow Conservatoire. Sasha’s paper was well received and has led to an invitation to publish his work.

Ikuko Inoguchi presents lecture-recital to the Takemitsu Society

Ikuko Inoguchi presented her lecture-recital, “Performing Tōru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch: “A Sense of Time, A Sense of Space, and A Sensitivity to Colour and Tone,” on 13 November, 2013, at the Takemitsu Society concert held at the Schott store in London. After performing Rain Tree Sketch, Ikuko discussed the notion of time in this work and how to respond to it in performance. Following the analysis of the piece, showing how Takemitsu communicates the idea of natural cycles of water with his cyclical use of motif and pitch-class sets, she compared three recordings by Kazuoki Fujii (1982), Roger Woodward (1990), Peter Serkin (2000) and suggested that their choices of different tempi could have been the result of different tempo markings in three editions, based on her recent findings made upon her visit to Schott Japan Tokyo office in December 2012. After introducing the concept of ma she concluded her presentation by the discussion of how the performer can assimilate the aesthetic of ma in order to evoke the feel of cyclic time that Takemitsu had in mind in the listener’s perception.

Recent Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Music Events at City

The second half of October saw a series of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean music events in the Music Department at City University, starting on Monday 21st October when we welcomed Professor Rachel Beckles Willson from Royal Holloway, University of London, to lead a Turkish makam workshop with second and third BMus students taking the Music Traditions of the Middle East module.

This was followed on Tuesday 22nd October by a concert – part of the Inside Out Festival – of music from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East with Kalia Baklitzanaki on voice, nay and naval, Jon Banks on kanoun, Ruth Goller on double bass and percussionist Vasillis Sarikis on riq, darbuka, frame drum and cajon. The band performed a range of pieces including both traditional songs, some collected by Kalia during her travels and from her native Crete, and original material.

Also part of the Inside Out Festival was the half-day conference on Wednesday 23rd October focused on Middle Eastern music in the urban UK and featuring a number of speakers and performers. The event was organised by City PhD student Miranda Crowdus and included a presentation by another PhD student, Seth Ayyaz. The afternoon ended with a performance of Iraqi-Jewish music by Sara Manasseh and Keith Clouston (see separate blog entry).

Finally, on Saturday 26th October, City lecturer Laudan Nooshin presented a talk in the beautiful setting of the Mosaic rooms in Kensington, part of both the Inside Out Festival and the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s annual Nour Festival of Middle Eastern and North African arts and culture. The panel was entitled “Iran: An Overview of Classical and Popular Musical Developments” and included 3 speakers talking about different aspects of contemporary music in Iran. Laudan’s talk was about experimental practices among young Iranian musicians.

http://www.insideoutfestival.org.uk/2013

http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites/nour/events/music/irananoverviewofclassical.aspx

 

Professor Stephen Cottrell hosts British Academy Panel Discussion

Professor Stephen Cottrell was recently involved in the organisation of a conference on the well-known Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs, held at the British Academy.  Follow the youtube link below to see his discussion with composer Gavin Bryars, folk singer Martin Carthy, and cellist Steven Isserlis about their experiences of being on the programme, and their thoughts on music, autobiography and memory.

Critical Panel on Georgina Born’s ‘On Musical Mediation: Ontology, Technology and Creativity’

City’s latest music research seminar saw staff, students and other London-based researchers engaging in a critical panel discussion of Georgina Born’s well known article, ‘On Musical Mediation: Ontology, Technology and Creativity’.

The evening began with a series of brief responses, which touched on a range of issues. Ikuko Inoguchi and Diana Salazar discussed the relevance of Born’s argument to practicing musicians and practice-based researchers, while Liam Cagney assessed the article as a work of music philosophy. Miranda Crowdus and Kyle Devine offered degrees of reflexivity, situating the article within Born’s oeuvre and as itself an artifact and agent of history and culture. Ian Pace used a wealth of historical examples to call into question several of Born’s generalisations about relationships between ontology and genre. Finally, in addition to chairing the panel Laudan Nooshin offered a response on creativity, stemming from her work on Iranian improvisation. The ensuing floor discussion was equally wide-ranging, covering topics from the practical to the philosophical.

A common thread weaving through much of the evening (and, indeed, much of the research and teaching in City’s Music Department) was the degree to which technological mediation influences our understanding of what music is — and what it might be.

For a link to Born’s article on the Twentieth-Century Music website, visit http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=359831&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S147857220500023X

— Kyle Devine

Off the Beaten Taqsim: Middle Eastern Musical Encounters in the Urban UK, a half-day conference on Middle Eastern music

City hosted this half-day conference on Wednesday October 23rd as part of the Inside Out Festival, which supports and showcases the contributions made by London universities to the city’s cultural life.

The conference was themed around middle eastern musical encounters in the urban UK, with a strong and distinctive emphasis on practice: the speakers were all composers and / or performers whose work deals with middle eastern music, albeit in very different contexts and with different approaches and results.

Sean David Crowdus outlined how, in his piece A Sailor’s Dream, notions of cultural difference are represented, played with and negotiated through the setting of the middle eastern maqam alongside a more straightforwardly ‘western’ musical language. The two idioms are encapsulated by two distinct ensemble alignments, allowing the musical encounter to present itself dramatically through performance.

Seth Ayyaz gave a broad overview of his work as a composer and of new developments in experimental music and sound art in the middle east, beginning with a short documentary covering the 2010 Mazaj festival. The festival, which he curated, was a rare opportunity to have  diverse practitioners of experimental music engage in live discussions about issues surrounding creativity in contemporary middle eastern contexts. Ayyaz also played extracts from his recent pieces makhraj and the bird ghost at the zaouia.  He outlined how he was both inspired and troubled by performing at London’s Leighton House, given the building’s historical association with British imperialism and orientalism.

Soosan Lolavar introduced her new project Stay Close, which aims to harness contemporary classical music as a means of cultural exchange between the UK and Iran. The project’s first phase involved a trip by Lolavar to Iran, where she met a variety of composers and forged links with institutions such as Hermes Records. The second phase, recently begun, involves leading creative workshops with youth groups at the Iranian Youth Development Association, aiming to stimulate musical creativity among London’s Farsi-speaking diaspora. Ultimately this will lead to the composition of a new work by Lolavar to be premiered in 2014.

The final item was a performance of Iraqi Jewish songs by Sara Manasseh and Keith Clousten, providing an ideal counterpart to the presentations. Beyond the captivating music itself, Manasseh was able to draw on years of knowledge and research on the history of Iraqi Jewish music when introducing and discussing each song.

— Sam Mackay

Erik Nyström and Peiman Khosravi present AMBIT at BLOCK 336, Friday 18th October

Recent City PhD graduates Erik Nyström and Peiman Khosravi are premiering Ambit, a new multichannel sound installation and electroacoustic concert event, at the Block 336 gallery in Brixton. The event is part of Everything Wants to Run, an international exhibition curated by Mark Jackson, featuring nine artists exploring concepts and conditions of materiality in contemporary art practice.

“Ambit explores visuospatial imagery evoked by the apparent physicality of sound material. Projected sonic images liquefy the surfaces and boundaries of the room, as if it were an elastic topology. Thus a mutable world of illusory spaces emerges that transcends the geometry of the listening environment — bringing into bringing into consciousness the tension between ‘here and now’ and a universe extending beyond.”

The gallery is going to be immersed in transforming sonic environments in an evening which takes spatial music in new directions, blending concert listening with the temporary non-linear spatial experiences of installation work.

 

Details

Friday 18th October, 2013

7pm: installation

8pm: Concert

Khosravi – Vertex, Convergences

Nyström – Lucent Voids, Latitudes

 

BLOCK 336

336 Brixton Road

London SW9 7AA

 

The event is FREE and no booking is required.

 

Department of Music sponsors first edition of the London Contemporary Music Festival

City’s Department of Music was happy to sponsor the first edition of the London Contemporary Music Festival, which took place from 25th July – 4th August at Peckham multi-storey car park. The festival featured performances from an array of artists including Glenn Branca, Tony Conrad, Jane Chapman, SND, Leon Michener, Max Baillie, and many others.

Current MA student Sam Mackay was co-director of the festival, and recent PhD graduates Peiman Khosravi and Erik Nyström were the audio engineers for most of the events. Both were also involved as performers: Peiman Khosravi performed Bernard Parmegiani’s ‘De Natura Sonorum’ and the tape part for his piece ‘Violostres’; Erik Nystrom performed his own 2012 piece ‘Catabolisms’. Finally, another recent PhD graduate, Ambrose Seddon, gave the world premiere of his piece ‘Secure’, inspired by the sounds of the womb.

The festival was the brainchild of four young contemporary music enthusiasts with a shared desire to bring new classical music to dynamic, appropriated spaces. At the same time, it was crucial to mobilise the best talent the scene had to offer, even booking iconic artists based abroad such as Charlemagne Palestine and Tony Conrad. Discussing the festival’s ambitious approach in The Daily Telegraph, critic Ivan Hewett said the following:

“This determination to seize the moment and “kiss the joy as it flies”, is exciting. One feels the tremor of something that touches on real cultural energies, which is at least as valuable as any purely musical experience the event might offer. Everything has happened at top speed; the tickets mostly melted away within a few days of the festival’s announcement… All this has happened in joyous defiance of the accepted way of launching an arts festival”

A controversial debate was sparked following the festival’s climax, a sprawling 90 minute piano recital by Mark Knoop which culminated in a performance of Philip Corner’s Piano Activities. The piece, which calls for the destruction of the piano, was described by The Guardian as ‘morally dubious’ and ‘creatively redundant’, charges which were fiercely debated by a number of musicians and critics in the subsequent days.

Ben Schoeman wins the Contemporary Music Prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition and performs at Festivals in Edinburgh and Bucharest

DMA student Ben Schoeman has been awarded the prize for the best rendition of a contemporary work at the prestigious Cleveland International Piano Competition in Ohio, USA. Schoeman performed the Toccata for John Roos by the South African composer Surendran Reddy (1962-2010). This Toccata includes several elements of South African jazz and mbaqanga dance music and is a highly virtuosic work. Schoeman was one of 28 selected participants who took part in the event. He was praised in Cleveland Classical by critic Daniel Hathaway, who wrote the following:

South African pianist Ben Schoeman brought the session to an end with Bach and Haydn that felt completely right. His reading of the Toccata, BWV 911 was dramatic in concept, full in tone, his playing virtuosic where it was meant to sound improvisatory and clear and neat when counterpoint was involved. Schoeman responded to Haydn’s delightful C major Sonata (Hob. XVI:50) with elegantly cheerful playing full of character and contrast and festooned with pearly passagework. South African composer Surendran Reddy’s Toccata for John Roos was pure dessert: jazzy, bluesy, caffeinated and just bordering on the pianistically trashy, Schoeman played it with amused glee.

After his success at the Cleveland Competition, Schoeman went on to give six recitals at the Royal Over-Seas League Concert Series that forms part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. He also travelled to Bucharest to perform Liszt’s Piano Concerto no. 1 at the George Enescu International Festival, where he collaborated with conductor Vlad Vizireanu, members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Camerata of Romania.

http://festivalenescu.ro/en/calendar/events/symphonic-concert-side-by-side

Mr. Schoeman has also recently been named a ‘Steinway Artist’. His name appears on an international roster of artists, including musicians such as Vladimir Horowitz, Martha Argerich, Radu Lupu as well as Schoeman’s teacher at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Prof. Ronan O’Hora.

http://www.steinway.com/artists/solo-profile/s/BenSchoeman

Schoeman is currently completing his doctoral thesis on South African composer Stefans Grové’s piano music under the supervision of Dr. Christopher Wiley.

Ben Schoeman (DMA) selected to take part in the Cleveland International Piano Competition 2013

City University DMA student, pianist Ben Schoeman, was selected as one of 30 pianists to take part in the Cleveland International Piano Competition. This is one of the world’s most prestigious competitions and a member of the World Federation of International Music Competitions (WFIMC). Ben Schoeman is a student of Dr. Christopher Wiley (City University, London) and Prof. Ronan O’Hora (Guildhall School of Music & Drama). He is currently completing a doctoral dissertation on the piano music of the South African composer Stefans Grové. Schoeman won the 1st Prize in the 11th UNISA International Piano Competition in Pretoria (also a WFIMC competition) as well as the Gold Medal in the Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition in London. In 2012 he won the Glass Trophy of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama after his performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 1 with the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra in the Barbican Hall. He passed two pre-selection rounds to be accepted as one of the 30 competitors in the Cleveland Competition. The event will take place between 28 July and 12 August 2013 in Cleveland (Ohio), United States of America.

For more information, please visit the competition website: http://www.clevelandpiano.org/