Category Archives: Conferences

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.

PhD Student Christina Michael Presents in Germany and Greece

Christina Michael, who is in the third year of her PhD at City, will be delivering a conference paper on the 30th of September entitled ‘Issues of Authenticity and National Identity in Greek Popular Music: The Entechno Laiko [art-popular] tradition’. Her paper will be part of The Languages of Popular Music: Communicating Regional Musics in a Globalized World conference, which will take place in Osnabruck, Germany between 29th of September and the 2nd of October 2014.

Following this, Christina will be presenting a paper on the 2nd of October entitled ‘The employment of cultural and musical continuity in Manos Hadjidakis’ 1949 Lecture on Rebetiko’ for the conference Continuities, Discontinuities, Ruptures in the Greek World (1204-2014): Economy, Society, History, Literature, which will take place in Thessaloniki, Greece between the 2nd and 5th of October 2014.

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

Conference Presentation by PhD Student Christina Michael

Third year PhD student Christina Michael will be presenting a paper at the conference ‘Spaces and Places in the Theory and Practice of Greek and Roman Drama‘, which takes place from 30 June to 1 July at the Central School of Speech and Drama (University of London) and Oxford University. Christina’s paper is entitled ‘A Musical Approach of Ancient Greek Comedy on Modern Greek Stage: The Compositions for Plato, Lysistrata and Birds by Manos Hadjidakis’.

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)

Upcoming Conference Presentations by Doctoral student Mark Porter

Doctoral candidate Mark Porter has been awarded funding from the City University Graduate School in order to present a paper at the conference of the International Society for Media, Religion and Culture in Canterbury later this year. Mark’s presentation on congregational music and the ‘new cosmopolitanism’ will focus on the application of recent cosmopolitan thought to the understanding of musical dynamics within congregational music.

In addition to Canterbury, Mark is due to present papers at two further conferences this summer. In April he will present a paper at a joint BFE/RMA study day on music, circulation and the public sphere, focussing on the application of aspects of Jürgen Habermas’ thought to contemporary worship music and in July he will present a paper at the annual conference of the BFE at SOAS focussing on the dynamics of alternative musical spaces within the musical life of a congregation.

PhD Composer Georgia Rodgers at Sound Thought 2014

Earlier 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.

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