Category Archives: Uncategorized
Marie Saunders presents at ‘Understanding Scotland Musically’ conference
Marie Saunders, who is working towards her PhD in Ethnomusicology at City, recently presented a paper at the Understanding Scotland Musically Conference, sponsored by the AHRC and held at Newcastle University, 20-21 October 2014. The title of her paper was ‘Understanding Scotland differently: intergenerational musical reception amongst the London-Scottish diaspora’. Her paper was prompted by reflections on evidence from primary research she carried out in London among two different age groups drawn from members of London’s Scottish diaspora. The data from her current ethnographic research in progress is beginning to suggest a definite shift in perceptions of what Scottish music is. Responses about Scottish music differed from those gathered in her earlier research carried out in 2010. Three patterns are beginning to emerge: little connection with bagpipe music, the prominent place of Indie bands indicating new identity markers for Scottish music and the importance of audience participation, ‘musicking’(Small,C.,1998), with reference to Indie Concerts, ceilidh bands and the Proclaimers. It remains to be seen whether these patterns will be maintained or challenged as the quota of interviews moves toward completion in 2015.
Dr Laudan Nooshin and Dr Diana Salazar Present at RMA Study Day
On 21st November two members of Music staff presented papers as part of the Royal Musical Association’s Study Day on ‘Researching music as process: methods and approaches’, hosted by the Faculty of Music, Oxford University.
Dr Laudan Nooshin’s paper ‘Between a rock and a hard place: discourse, practice and the unbearable lightness of analysis. Methodological challenges in studying creative process in Iranian (classical) music’ presented a case-study of two Iranian musicians, Amir Eslami and Hooshyar Khayam, as a means of uncovering some of the methodological challenges of analysing and understanding creative process in ethnomusicology. Dr Diana Salazar presented a paper on a practice-led collaboration with dancer Maria Salgado Llopis, entitled ‘Corporeal cartography: navigating process in the development of an expressive system for dance, improvisation and sonic art’. This presentation examined approaches to documentation and reflection during the development of a work for interactive dance and sound.
Annie Yim wins award from Worshipful Company of Cordwainers
The Worshipful Company of Cordwainers has made its £1500 annual award for a City University music student to Hong Kong-born pianist Annie Yim, who is currently studyng on the DMA programme run jointly by City University London and the Guildhall School, supervised by Dr. Christopher Wiley and pianist Joan Havill. Annie is a remarkable scholar and performer whose performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with the City University Symphony Orchestra in St Luke’s in 2013 won much admiration; she has also performed widely around the UK, Europe and Canada, including recent appearances at festivals at London, Geneva, Trasimeno and Vancouver, as well as broadcasting on CBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3 and Portuguese Radio Antena 2. She has been a regular and important contributor to City’s musical life not only as a soloist but also as a chamber musician. She has performed regularly with the Minerva Piano Trio in our concert series; the ensemble was also recently chosen as part of the Park Lane Group Young Artists series, and will be giving their debut at the Purcell Room on January 7th, 2014 (tickets available here). Her research focuses on performance practice in chamber works of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, particularly on the early version of Brahms’s Piano Trio in B op. 8. She has given various papers and lecture-recitals, including recently at the Conservatoires UK Postgraduate Research Forum highly valued member of the research and performing communities at City University London and we are delighted to congratulate her on being the recipient of this award. Annie’s website is here.
Ian Pace – Recording of Michael Finnissy The History of Photography in Sound now available – also 290 page free book considering sources, techniques and meaning
Ian Pace’s new recording of Michael Finnissy’s five-and-a-half-hour piano cycle The History of Photography in Sound, was released in October, and is now available via Amazon for under £23 – see http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00GCST93I/ref=tsm_1_fb_lk
Also, on the website of Divine Art records, is a hugely extended version of the programme booklet, amounting to a 290-page book on the work considering each of its chapters in turn, as well as the cycle as a whole, with a wealth of musical and other examples. This can be downloaded for free here – http://www.divine-art.co.uk/CD/HOPIS.htm 
Release of Ian Pace’s 5-CD Set of Michael Finnissy’s The History of Photography in Sound on October 10
On October 10th will be released the five-CD set of Michael Finnissy’s epic piano cycle The History of Photography in Sound in Divine Art Recordings. The CDs are available to be ordered immediately – see the page on Divine Art’s website here. The release is sponsored by City University.
Ian Pace has had a special association with Finnissy’s music for over 20 years. In 1996, to celebrate the composer’s birthday, he performed a landmark six-concert recital series of his complete piano works, and went on in 2001 to give the first complete performance of The History in Photography in Sound in the Royal Academy of Music, London, having already premiered several chapters of the work on earlier dates. He went on to perform the complete cycle in Leuven, Glasgow, Montréal and Southampton, and will perform it complete again on Sunday February 23rd, 2014 in the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Oxford.
He has also written extensively on Finnissy’s work, as co-editor and a major contributor to the volume Uncommon Ground: The Music of Michael Finnissy, which was published by Ashgate in 1998. From 2003 to 2006 he was an AHRC Creative and Performing Arts Research Fellow at the University of Southampton (where Finnissy is Professor of Composition), and wrote an extensive monograph on the History, which informs the 100-page essay included with the CDs, and a broader 200-page study of the work which will appear on Divine Art and City University’s websites in October 2013. The complete monograph will be edited for publication in 2014-2015.
A launch event for the CD will take place at City University, Performance Space, College Building, on Tuesday November 5th, beginning at 6:30pm.
Major Performances from Ian Pace during Summer 2013
Following appearances earlier in the year in the UK, France, Germany, Austria, and Portugal, Ian Pace gave a series of important concerts during the Summer of 2013. First of these was a recital at the York Late Music Festival on August 3rd, dedicated to the 75th birthday of American composer Frederic Rzewski, with whom Ian has worked extensively in the past and from whom he has premiered several works. This concert included the world premiere of his new piano work Illusions perdues as part of the first complete performance of the cycle Dreams, as well as the world premiere of Rzewski’s Four Hands, given by Ian and the composer. The concert also featured new commissions from Jake Wilson, James Whittle, and Sadie Harrison. A review of the concert can be read here, and a video of the performance of the Whittle can be viewed here.
In September Ian was resident pianist and director of the piano classes at the Akademie für Neue Musik in Munich, where he gave a major recital on the 12th featuring music of Pascal Dusapin, Marco Stroppa, Michael Jarrell and Wolfgang Rihm. And on September 20th, he gave a recital in Florence, as part of the Firenze Suona Contemporanea, featuring music of Brian Ferneyhough, Fabricio Filidei, Patrícia Sucena Almeida (the premiere of the new version of her Reditus ad Vitam, which Ian premiered in Coimbra in January 2013, now together with film), Lauren Redhead, Jarrell and Beat Furrer. A review by Lauren Redhead of the concert can be read here.
On Friday October 11th Ian will be giving a concert of operatic transcriptions by Liszt, Thalberg, Tausig, Busoni, Grainger, Gershwin, Earl Wild and Michael Finnissy. Full details can be found here.
Ian’s personal website (new and currently still in the process of being updated) is here and his personal blog, ‘Desiring Progress’, is here.
Excellent review for Letitia Keys, Siân Dicker and Genevieve Arkle following concert in Charroux, France, July 20th
A review of the concert in Charroux on July 20th, in which singers Letitia Keys, Siân Dicker and Genevieve Arkle performed together with Ian Pace, has been published in La Nouvelle République . This is review speaks of the ‘perfect diction, masterful breathing and impeccable vocal control’ of the singers – high praise for the diction considering the concert included several numbers in French! Many congratulations to the three singers. The review can be viewed here. Photos from the event will follow later.
The Society for Music Analysis’ Postgraduate Writing Club: First meeting at City University London
Clockwise, from left: Becky Thumpston, Jun Zubillaga-Pow, Olga Sologub, Kirstie Hewlett
Huddled around a table, in the intimate setting of Room C143 at the Tait Building, four students from four different universities spearheaded the first meeting of the Society for Music Analysis (SMA) Postgraduate Writing Club. It was hosted on 1st December, 2012 by Dr Shay Loya on behalf of the Centre for Music Studies at City University London. The organizer was Kirstie Hewlett, a postgraduate student from the University of Southampton, and the idea behind her initiative was simple enough: to form an analysis-centred study group, comprised of postgraduate students from around the country, which will gather periodically to discuss at length extracts from dissertations or complete papers . This first meeting was specifically designed as a ‘dry run’ for the RMA conference this January. And so Becky Thumpston (Keele University), Olga Sologub (University of Manchester) and Jun Zubillaga-Pow (Kings College London), presented one after the other papers that were still in-progress though at an advanced, nearly finished stage. This gave each one of them an opportunity to focus on the delivery. A frank exchange of views about the more memorable as well as problematic aspects of each paper followed. Talking points ranged from pitching the paper to the target audience to the relationship between theory and analysis. (To save time and allow more discussion, Hewlett graciously withdrew her paper.)
One of the admirable qualities of this group is their self-sufficiency. They have corresponded about their research independently of supervision, and have invested their own time and money on a Saturday morning to discuss it in depth. It was an initiative worthy of the Centre for Music Studies’ support.
Centre Staff and Student Speak on Byzantine Music in New York
Senior Lecturer Dr Alexander Lingas, who has been spending the autumn term as a Visiting Research Fellow in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University, will be joining a distinguished group of scholars offering presentations on ancient and modern facets of Byzantine music in New York City. On Thursday, 29 November he will open a series of lectures at Queens College of the City University of New York with an introduction to the history of music in Byzantium.
On Saturday, 8 December he will present the opening paper of the ‘Mostly Orthros 2012’ conference jointly sponsored by the Axion Estin Foundation and the Sophia Institute at Union Theological Seminary. Dr Lingas will speak on ‘Byzantine Chant in the American Spiritual Marketplace’, after which City University London Ph.D. candidate Spyridon Antonopoulos will turn to the fifteenth century with a paper entitled ‘The Kalophonic Sticherarion of Manuel Chrysaphes: A Case Study in Reception History’.
For conference abstracts and additional information, please see the website of the Axion Estin Foundation.