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City Summer Sounds DMA Celebration Concert

On Monday 6th June, as part of the City Summer Sounds Festival, we were treated to a concert celebrating the joint City-Guildhall Doctor of Musical Arts degree, presented by 4 completed and completing DMA students, all pianists.

First established in 1992, the City University DMA was the first degree of its kind in the UK. It was re-launched in 2002 as a joint degree with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the first such collaboration between a top-rated University Music Department and an internationally-renowned Conservatoire. The programme combines performance at a professional level with research on an aspect of performance through scholarly work.

With the final students on the programme graduating in 2016, the concert was a celebration of the past 14 years. All of the music performed related to the research undertaken by the students, starting with Annie Yim who performed the first movement of Robert Schumann’s Fantasie in C major, Op. 17, which is strongly connected to her research on Brahms’ Piano Trio in B major, Op. 8a (original version). This was followed by Jennifer Lee who played pieces by Claude Debussy and Korean composer Unsuk Chin, about whose music Jennifer wrote her DMA thesis. Next, Sasha Karpeyev also performed music by Russian composer Nikolai Medtner who spent the last 15 years of his life in London and whose archive of works at the British Library Sasha studied for his DMA. The first half ended with Ben Schoeman playing works by South African composer Stefans Grové, again the focus of his doctoral research.

In the second half of the concert, the pianists came together for some duets (4 hands, 2 pianos) – Schumann’s Andante and Variations in B flat major for two pianos, Op. 46, played by Annie and Ben and the original piano duet version of Ravel’s La Valse played by Sasha and Jennifer. The grand finale of the concert saw all 4 pianists join forces for an energetic performance of Albert Lavignac’s Galop-Marche with 8 hands, 2 pianos – a rousing end to a wonderful concert.

The list of DMA students/alumni since 2002 includes several well-known musical personalities who are active in the United Kingdom and abroad (here are their names in alphabetic order alongside their thesis titles):

Andrew Brownell (USA) – The English Piano in the Classical Period: Its Music, Performers and Influences

Amy Beth Guitry (USA) – The Baroque Flute as a Modern Voice: Extended Techniques and their Practical Integration through Performance and Improvisation

Clare Hammond (UK) – To Conceal or Reveal: Left-Hand Pianism with Particular Reference to Ravel’s ‘Concerto pour la main gauche’ and Britten’s ‘Diversions’

Kostis Hassiotis (Greece) – A Critical Edition of the 48 Studies for Oboe, Op. 31 by Franz Wilhelm Ferling (1796-1874)

Ja Yeon Kang (South Korea) – Robert Schumann’s Notion of the Cycle in ‘Lieder und Gesänge aus Goethes Wilhelm Meister’, Op. 98a and ‘Waldszenen’, Op. 82

Alexander Karpeyev (Russia) – New Light on Nikolay Medtner as Pianist and Teacher: The Edna Iles Medtner Collection (EIMC) at the British Library

Jennifer Lee (New Zealand) – A Study of the Korean Woman Composer, Unsuk Chin, and her Piano Études

Chenyin Li (People’s Republic of China) – Piano Performance: Strategies for Score Memorisation

Edward Pick (UK) – Tonality in Schoenberg’s Music, with Particular Reference to the Piano Concerto

Vasileios Rakitzis (Greece) – Alfred Cortot’s Response to the Music for Solo Piano of Franz Schubert: A Study in Performance Practice

Ben Schoeman (South Africa) – The Piano Works of Stefans Grové (1922-2014): A Study of Stylistic Influences, Technical Elements and Canon Formation within the South African Art Music Tradition

Antonios Sousamoglou (Greece) – An Interpretational Approach to the Violin Concerto of Nikos Skalkottas

Christopher Suckling (UK) – The Realisation of Recitative by the Cello in Handelian Opera: Current and Historical Practices

Annie Yim (Hong Kong/Canada) – A Comparative and Contextual Study of Schumann’s Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 63 and Brahms’s Piano Trio in B major, Op. 8 (1854 version): From Musical Aesthetics to Modern Performances

‘Soundspaces of the Middle East and Central Asia: Exploring the Intersection of Sound Studies and Ethnomusicology in the Middle East and Central Asia’

by Rachel Cunniffe, MA Music Student

On Friday 13^th May 2016, the Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum was hosted by the Music Department at City University, in conjunction with the Institute of Musical Research. Convened by Dr Laudan Nooshin, this twice-yearly event has been running since 2007 and is open to researchers, students and anyone interested in the music and culture of the region.

The event was attended by over 60 people, and current research projects were presented by both scholars and research students. The morning session was opened by Meri Kyotö (University of Tampere, Finland), who examined the dynamics of private and common soundscapes in Istanbul. Ruard Absaroka (PhD student, SOAS) and Rachel Harris (SOAS) then presented their work on the Islamic soundscapes of contemporary China. In the second morning session, Rachel Beckles Willson (Royal Holloway) focused on interpreting and situating sound-making involving the oud (Arabic lute), followed by a screening of the documentary film Telling Strings (Anne-Marie Heller, Switzerland, 2007).

After lunch, a roundtable discussion explored the opportunities and challenges offered by the ‘intersection of sound studies and ethnomusicology’ in the region, generation some lively discussion. The session was chaired by Katherine Butler Schofield (King’s College London) and included the following speakers: Aaron Einbond (City University London), Jason Stanyek (University of Oxford), Elizabeth Tolbert (Johns Hopkins University) and Abigail Wood (University of Haifa).

The final session of the day included a presentation by Abigail Wood on the soundscape of Jerusalem’s Western Wall, a ‘seamline’ of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and Stefan Williamson Fa (PhD student, UCL) on Shi’ite Muslim soundscapes in Northeastern Anatolia. The day concluded with Laudan Nooshin talking about her work on the soundscapes of Tehran, Iran, and presenting a paper on behalf of Mohsen Shahrnazdar (Iranian Institute of Anthropology and Culture) on his Tehran Soundscapes Project.

All in all, this was a very stimulating and thought-provoking day.

http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2016/may/middle-east-and-central-asia-music-forum

Ruard Absaroka and Rachel Harris (SOAS)

Meri Kyto (University of Tampere, Finland)

Coffee Time

Roundtable Discussion

New Publications by Laudan Nooshin

Two book chapters relating to Laudan Nooshin’s ongoing research on Iranian popular music and culture have just been published:

‘Jazz and its Social Meanings in Iran: From Cultural Colonialism to the Universal’, in Philip V. Bohlman, Goffredo Plastino and Travis Jackson (eds.), Jazz Worlds/World Jazz. Chicago University Press. 2016.

‘Discourses of Religiosity in Post-1998 Iranian Popular Music’, in Karin van Nieuwkerk, Mark LeVine and Martin Stokes (eds.), Islam and Popular Culture. Texas University Press. 2016.

Laudan Nooshin Speaks at University College Cork

Earlier this month, Laudan Nooshin visited the Music Department at University College Cork, Ireland, to present a research seminar entitled ‘Re-Imagining Musical Difference: Creative Process, Alterity and “Improvisation” in Iranian Music from Classical to Jazz’. Drawn from her ongoing research on Iranian music, the presentation explored the various ways in which the concept of ‘improvisation’ has been understood, constructed and imagined in Iran. The audience included both undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as staff from the Music Department at UCC.

New Book Chapter Published by Music PhD Student

The Italian Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini has recently announced its newest book publication, entitled Protest Music in the Twentieth Century. The volume comprises a number of essays on protest music and on dissident composers and musicians throughout the twentieth century. The general focus of the publication is the numerous forms and shapes through which opinions of dissent may be expressed in music. Articles by scholars of different nationalities approach this phenomenon from a broad range of perspectives, drawing in historical, sociological, philosophical and historiographical contexts.

Amongst the contributing scholars is a chapter by myself on Mauricio Kagel’s 1979 radio play Der Tribun. In this chapter, I aim to determine the different ways in which Kagel uses radio transmission as a means of socio-political critique. By analysing the radio play as an acoustic art form (thereby focusing on structure, sonic events and textual content) and linking it to both Kagel’s compositional aesthetics and the German tradition of the Neues Hörspiel, I attempt to demonstrate the various levels at which the artist destabilises the media of language and radio.

‘Protest Music in the Twentieth Century’ is edited by Robertio Illiano and is now available as part of the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini’s book series ‘Musical Treatises’. The volume contains contributions by (in alphabetical order): Marie Bennett, John Cox, Christine Dysers, Marita Fornaro Bordolli, Mara Favoretto, Germán Gan Quesada, James Garratt, Stefano Gavagnin, Andrew S. Kohler, Russ Manitt, Henrik Marstal, Upa Mesbahian, Santiago Niño Morales, James O’Leary, Roger W. H. Savage, Giuseppe Sergi, Tatevik Shakhkulyan, Kara Stewart Meredith, Joe Stroud, David Thurmaier, Jessica Winterson.

Christine Dysers, First Year Music PhD Student

Medtner Study Day, 29th January 2016

City University Music Department’s alumnus Alexander Karpeyev has organised an international study day, Revealing Medtner: Emerging Research and Repertoire, which will take place at the British Library on 29 January 2016. The study day will be part of the International Medtner Festival, an unprecedented event comprising a series of concerts and masterclass dedicated to Medtner’s output. The festival is organised by Alexander, whose research topic for his DMA degree at City University was performance practice in the music of Medtner (1880-1951).

The study day is supported by the Royal Musical Association (http://www.rma.ac.uk/) and the British Library Sound Archive. Presenters include Nathan Uhl (Arizona State University), Bradley Emerson (University of Texas Austin), Wendelin Bitzan (Berlin University of Arts), Olga Paliy (Royal Northern College of Music), Francis Pott (University of West London), Hanna Choi (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and Satoru Takaku (Nihon University, Tokyo). At the end of the day, Christoph Flamm of the University of Music, Lübeck, will deliver a key-note speech Researching and Teaching, Playing and Preaching: What do we do with Medtner in the 21st Century? The study day is open to everyone. Delegates are kindly requested to register their interest at www.medtnerfest.wordpress.com.

Middle Eastern Music Workshops with Rachel Beckles Willson

On Monday October 26th and Monday November 2nd 2015, we participated in a workshop as part of the Music Traditions of the Middle East module. The workshop was led by Professor Rachel Beckles Willson from Royal Holloway College and introduced us to the modal structures of Middle Eastern art music, focusing on Arabic maqam and Turkish makam. Rachel played the ‘ud lute and students brought their own instruments including lute, violins and guitar.

We found the workshop very enjoyable; it was a fun, new experience! It was good to be able to take part in the music rather than just read about it. Rachel was very patient and she played very nicely. It was useful to hear the quartertones first-hand on an authentic instrument, as we have no experience of this in our Western training. She taught us how to improvise around different maqams and their relative structures. It was fun to engage with the rest of the class with call and response exercises and melodic development activities. We enjoyed improvising away from sheet music, which was a more authentic experience than reading from the music as we are used to. Also, it was interesting to explore our own instruments in a different way, especially if these are stringed and non-fretted. The practice of singing before playing also deepened our understanding of the melodic and rhythmic modes. Overall, we think this has given us a good understanding of the musical culture and enriched our listening ability when researching this topic further.

The following week (November 9th), the focus moved to Iranian classical music and we were fortunate to be able to experience live music again, this time from santur (hammered dulcimer) player Saeid Kord Mafi who has recently moved to the UK from Iran to study for a PhD. He played examples from the classical repertoire and answered questions about life as a musician in Iran.

Charlotte Algar, Sarah Hashim and Marisa Oikawa

Rachel Beckles WIllson playing the ‘ud

Saeid Kord Mafi Playing the Santur

Laudan Nooshin Presents Research Seminar at Bath Spa University; and other conference activities …

On Thursday November 12th, Laudan Nooshin visited Bath Spa University to present a research seminar on the music of Iranian pop diva Googoosh (b.1950). The seminar explored Googoosh’s immense popularity, despite not being able to perform between 1979 (after the Iranian Revolution) and 2000 when she left Iran after 21 years of silence, and following which she toured North America, Europe and elsewhere to ecstatic audiences. The seminar sought to understand the power of Googoosh’s music to evoke a level of emotional engagement in her audience quite unlike any other Iranian musician. A recording of the seminar can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/145631933 (password: mparf123)

This seminar followed a series of conference presentations since the summer, some on joint panels with City Music PhD students. In late June, Laudan presented a paper at the London School of Economics at the Annual Conference of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES), together with City PhD students Steve Wilford and Sam MacKay. The conference theme was ‘Liberation?’ and the panel was entitled: ‘Perspectives on Music and Liberation in the Middle East and North Africa’. Steve and Sam both talked about aspects of their current PhD research and their papers were entitled ‘Libération? Music, Independence and Postcolonialism in Algeria’ and ‘Freedom and Exile: North African Musical Migration in Marseille’ respectively. The panel also included a paper by Cristina Moreno Almeida (SOAS PhD student) – ‘Echoing the Moroccan ‘(R)Evolution’: Rap and the 2011 MENA Popular Uprisings’. The panel generated a great deal of interesting discussion.

Laudan also presented papers at the Joint Conference of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology/Société Française d’Ethnomusicologie in Paris in July 2015 and at the Royal Musical Association Annual Conference at the University of Birmingham in September 2015.

Laudan speaking at Bath Spa University, November 2015

Sam MacKay speaking at BRISMES, June 2015

Steve Wilford speaking at BRISMES, June 2015

Music Department 40th Birthday Boat Trip.

City University’s Music at 40 Cruise was a truly wonderful occasion. A clear, crisp October evening in London provided the perfect backdrop for a night of celebrations, laughter, music, and cake (it was a birthday celebration after all, and what birthday would be complete without cake?). Arriving at Temple pier with some of my classmates, the first two people I recognised in the line were two who not only played a big role in our first week at City to make sure we all settled in, but who continued to make a difference to us throughout our time there (albeit in very different ways).

These two familiar faces were quickly followed by a medley of people who we graduated with, those in the years above and below, the lecturers and personal tutors who made sure we survived, and a large number of completely new faces. Making our way down the line (looking for “the lady with the ipad and name stickers”), it really hit home how many people over the last 40 years had embarked on the same journey that we began just 4 years ago and it made me hope that many more will follow in our footsteps!

The night itself was smooth sailing (literally), with highlights including a speech given by the founder of the Department, Professor Malcolm Troup, which was incredibly humbling and inspirational; and the surprise of finding a gamelan set on the top deck that would be played later in the night. Most of all though, it was wonderful to see my peers and lecturers once again and to catch up with one another over a year on from graduating. That may not sound like a long time but when life gets in the way as it too often does, events like this are more important than ever to remind us to cherish the relationships that began in City University’s Music Department. Here’s to the next 40 years!

Zara Lim, BMus alumnus (graduated 2014)

City Hosts Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum

On Friday 22^nd May 2015, the Music Department hosted the Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum. This forum has been running twice a year since 2007 under the auspices of the Institute of Musical Research, but has recently moved its base to City. The Forum provides a meeting point for students, researchers and others interested in the musics and culture of the Middle East and Central Asia.

The day was a great success with about 70 people in attendance and a lively atmosphere with plenty of positive feedback and stimulating discussion after papers and in between in lunch and coffee breaks. There were 10 speakers altogether, including both research students and academics from across the UK and abroad. Highlights of the day included presentations by two City PhD students, Steve Wilford and Sam Mackay, whose papers were entitled: ‘Between Thames and Sahara: Representations of Algerian Music in Contemporary London’ and ‘A Shared History? North African Musical Heritage and the Public Sphere in Contemporary Marseille’. Other papers covered such diverse topics as female musicians in Afghanistan and Kuwaiti ṣaut music.

The main conference was followed by a book launch for Laudan Nooshin’s recently published Iranian Classical Music: The Discourses and Practice of Creativity (2015, Ashgate Press) and an evening concert which opened the City Summer Sounds Music Festival: ‘Sounds of the Bosphorous Today’ with sisters Neva and Yelda Özgen from Istanbul playing traditional and contemporary pieces on kemençe (bowed fiddle) and ‘cello.

Abstracts and biographies of speakers can be downloaded here: http://www.city.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/266640/Abstracts-and-biographies-for-the-Middle-East-and-Central-Asia-Music-Forum,-Friday-22nd-May-2015,-City-University-London.pdf

More details on the concert: http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2015/may/sounds-of-the-bosphorus-today

More details on Laudan’s book: http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&pageSubject=310&title_id=3314&edition_id=3393

More details on the day: http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2015/may/middle-east-and-central-asia-music-forum