Interview with James Perkins

Image may contain: James Perkins, glasses, night and close-up

This interview took place online on 13 August 2020 between City’s Head of the Department of Music, Dr Ian Pace, and BMus graduate James Perkins.

Ian Pace: I want to welcome James Perkins. James graduated from the BMus course at City in 2012, and went on to work for the Students’ Union at City for 2 years. Since 2015, he has been working in Arts Higher Education, and is Head of Quality Assurance and Enhancement at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. He has also recently started a PhD in Higher Education at the University of Lancaster.

James, it is great to see you again, since you were coming to the end of your undergraduate study when I had just started at City! What are any of your abiding memories of your time as an undergraduate on the BMus?

James Perkins: Thanks Ian, it’s always great to think back on my time at City! I think my lasting memories are performing as a small vocal ensemble one of Tarik O’Regan’s own pieces…to Tarik O’Regan (!), doing gigs with the City Big Band and also the great sense of community everyone in the department had for each other

IP: What were some of the areas in which you specialised during the course of your undergraduate degree?

JP: I arrived at City quite unsure how I wanted to specialise, but I was able to try out a lot of different areas and in my second year I really got in to composition. This was where I focused my third year in particular and I also wrote my dissertation about video game music composition. I also combined this with studying European music from the 19th century on; I really enjoyed learning about how composers subverted dictatorships during WW2 and in Cold War Russia, as well as the development of opera during this time.

IP: What would you say are some of the wider skills developed during your undergraduate degree which have proved useful in your subsequent activities?

JP: What was great about the degree was that I was able to learn a whole load of skills (collaboration, working to deadlines, learning new technologies and developing clear arguments for example) which prepared me to go into any number of careers when I finished. I was also a programme representative during my studies, and I benefited from this kind of extra-curricular activity in developing my ability to communicate, synthesise feedback and make proposals and time management.

IP: You went on to work for the City Students’ Union after finishing your degree. How did this activity change your perspective upon time as a student?

JP:  I was representing the views of students across the university in that role to a lot of different academic groups within City, and I realised how special it was to be part of a group of students in a department that was so tight-knit, that was incredibly supportive and also where Music felt like it was radical, exciting and could be used to make a difference when we graduated.

IP:  And how about in terms of your work as a Head of Quality Assurance and Enhancement? A lot of students may not know about the nature of this type of activity, and how vital a part it plays in the running of university degrees.

JP: When I was writing music, I found it really helpful to develop frameworks and rules that I could use, bend and play around with to help spark my creativity. When I started working in arts higher education, I was able to apply the same kind of processes to helping academic teams ensure that they quality of their degrees is the highest it can be. It’s often not a part of universities people know a lot about, but there’s lots of people like doing what I do every institution! To be able to do that in the arts as well is really rewarding, it feels like I’ve been able to combine a lot of different areas of interest.

IP: What would you say to anyone thinking about studying music at higher education level?

JP: I would absolutely encourage them to do it – I haven’t regretted it for one second! In some ways it is one of the most flexible degrees, getting you to look at music through multiple lenses (as historian, sociologist, anthropologist, artist, physicist) and you develop so much over your three years. Doing that at a university in the heart of London is just great.

IP: There are some who imagine that a music degree is of purely ‘vocational’ import, i.e. it only prepares you specifically for a musical career. I imagine you would have quite a different view?

JP: I do! People in my class went off to do so many different things, from teaching to performing, fitness instruction, further studies and academic roles in and outside of music. I think what a degree gives you is so much more than just the opportunity to learn new things and if you reflect on how you develop as a person during your time at City you just open so many doors for yourself.

IP: James, thanks so much for doing this interview today. Do you have any links relating to your work or anything else which you would like to share?

JP: If you’re interested in what I’m up to you can follow me on Twitter @JPHEd, and if you have any questions I’m always happy to answer!

Interview with Genevieve Arkle

This interview took place online on 13 August 2020 between City’s Head of the Department of Music, Dr Ian Pace, and BMus graduate Genevieve Arkle.

Ian Pace: I want to welcome Genevieve Arkle. Genevieve studied at City from 2011-14 on the BMus course, before going on to do a Master’s degree at King’s College, and is currently pursuing a PhD on Wagner and Mahler at Surrey University, whilst having returned in 2019-20 to teach on my Ninteenth-Century Opera module. In 2020-21, she will be teaching in the modules Music, Fascism, Communism, and Music in Culture 2.

She is Deputy Director of the Institute of Austrian and German Music Research (IAGMR). Genevieve is also a Board Member of the EDI in Music Studies Network and was recently appointed as the Leader of the PGR / ECR Network for the Gustav Mahler Research Centre founded at the University of Innsbruck

Genevieve, welcome! What are some of your most abiding memories of City from when you were an undergraduate?

Genevieve Arkle: Hi Ian! Thank you for featuring me for an interview. I think the thing I feel I enjoyed the most at City was the versatility of the education that I received. When I first started, I was convinced I was going to have a career as a performer, and City gave me the opportunity to dive head first into my performance studies. However, at the same time I took a module on ‘African American Music Studies: Gospel and Blues’ that allowed me to explore the representation of race in music, and similarly, after taking the ‘Wagner, Mahler, Schoenberg’ module I started to get a feel for the relationship between music and philosophy and musical aesthetics in general. (This module actually sparked the idea for my current PhD thesis, so I’ve got a lot of praise for that one!). So over the years I was able to look beyond performance and actually discover so many things that I was interested in that I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to explore otherwise. As for the most _lasting_ memory? It has to be the Christmas Cabarets with the Staff ‘Orchestra’ attempting Christmas Carols on instruments they couldn’t play. I loved that City offered so much community and mingling across year groups and also between staff and students.

IP: How do you feel your perspective on music changed after your three years at City?

GA: I think my perspective certainly developed over time, as I realised that (unlike A Level music courses, and other comparable exams) it was not expected of me just to repeat information that I had been taught in the lecture. I was given the creative freedom to write on things that inspired me and was encouraged to give my own perspective and substantiate that into a fully-fledged academic essay that could (maybe, one day!) influence the way in which we look at a work. I think the skills that I learned from this, independent thought, critical thinking, strong academic writing, etc. all really helped me to carve a path for myself in the industry after leaving City.

IP: How would you relate, in your own experience, studying about music to learning it as a performer?

GA: I think these two things are, in many ways, inseparable entities. My passion for Gustav Mahler’s music came primarily from performing it, after being invited to sing in the chorus for Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, and also doing a few choral arrangements of some Rückert-Lieder. The performances moved me so much that I wanted to understand what it was about that music that made me love it so much. I also think its essential that performers learn where their music comes from so they can perform it with more historical awareness and understanding. So much of music is written in response to something that was happening in the wider context of their society (or politics, or personal relationships, (the gossipy composer stories are endless!)) and all of that is essential to understand in order to tell the ‘story’ of the piece well when you play it.

IP: You have continued to pursue an academic career, and today you stand on the ‘other side’ from where you were as a student – now teaching some of the types of things you were then learning! How does this sort of perspective affect how you look back on your time as an undergraduate?

GA: Ha, well it was certainly a bit unnerving at first! After spending three years at City as a student listening to many distinguished lecturers teach me, being the person _behind_ the podium for the first time was a bit of a shock! But it has been an incredibly valuable experience that enables me to reflect and work out how I can do better and help my students to achieve their best. Standing on the other side now, I wish my undergraduate self had sometimes spoken up more in lectures and shared my views (nothing kills a lecture like a tumbleweed moment after the lecturer asks a question, folks!). I think I used to worry about getting the answer ‘wrong’ to something, and what I’m realising now is that it’s all about facilitating discussion and engagement and that we WANT to hear your thoughts and perspectives even if they seem wrong or silly. Because that’s how you learn, and that’s what sparks new conversations and ideas.

IP: From your experiences of teaching at City and elsewhere, have you found that many think of study in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ views on things? If so, why might that be?

GA:  I think at earlier stages of learning (in school / college) we are all taught in a way that encourages repetition of ideas rather than creative thinking. And from teaching first year undergraduates I have found that it’s a real learning curve for them when they realise that there are no wrong answers and that we need to embrace subjectivity. Also, I think of utmost importance is realising that you don’t have to like a piece of music to have a valuable view. If you hate something, that’s all the better for discussion, because it’s great to think about why you have such a response to it. Although not with university students, I had a fantastic encounter with a young girl in one of my secondary school music workshops who told me that she hated classical music and refused to participate. The task I set for them was to listen to the piece and jot down what it made them think of and what associations the piece might have (a very early introduction to Topic Theory). When I played the third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony (a slow, macabre funeral procession to the tune of ‘Frère Jacques’) she refused to participate, claiming “I don’t get it. This is a waste of time. It’s awful and depressing and sounds like someone has died.” I told her that she was spot on, it’s a funeral march, and you could see the penny drop for her where this idea that she could have an opinion on something, that she could _hate_ something, and still get the answer ‘correct’ was really liberating for her. So I think we need to help students see that learning isn’t black and white, and that their thoughts and views are valuable.

IP: You have also done a lot of work to do with Equality, Diversity, Inclusion in Music Education. Could you tell us a bit more about this, and some of the most important challenges in these respects, in your view?

GA: Yes, so I’m of black-mixed heritage, and I’ve always found music studies (particularly within academia) to be a very white dominated field. I decided to speak out on this for the first time earlier this year at a conference where I discussed Black and Black Mixed representation in Music Higher Education. Through my research, I learned that only 0.7% of individuals (across all subjects and departments in the UK) in senior academic are black, in contrast to 93% white. I was just at a loss for words and decided I wanted to be a part of the change and help make music higher education a more inclusive and welcoming space. So I was invited to join the EDI in Music Studies Network and I currently run all their social media platforms which aim to create online safe spaces for people to share and discuss issues concerning diversity and representation in Music. But, and perhaps more importantly, on a personal level I try to do my best to create safe spaces in my lecture rooms and to have those uncomfortable conversations with my colleagues so that the upcoming generation of students (I hope) will not feel as marginalised or unwelcome in departments. We need mentorship schemes, we need to foster diverse recruitment and get more People of Colour (PoC) in staff positions at Universities, we need community and safe spaces for PoC within their department and we need allies who are willing to use their privilege to fight for change from the inside. I am doing my best to combat this but it needs to be a collective effort, and I hope that as we all move forwards we’ll be able to create some positive and lasting change in this area. In the mean time, if any students want to chat about EDI or racial representation in Music, my (currently virtual) door is always open to listen, learn, and help in any way I can.

IP: Do you think the EDI issues relate to earlier education (at primary and secondary level) as well as at university? There are clear imbalances in those who apply for music degree courses (also significant differences in terms of gender relating to different types of courses)?

GA: Yes absolutely – this is a problem that starts far earlier on in life and I think higher education is just a symptom of this rather than the cause. Having said that, I often feel that there is a problem with visibility and PoC feeling like a department or course might not be ‘for them’ because the department has no PoC on staff or on their current student body. The same goes for gender, that there is this idea that working in tech, for example, is ‘not for women.’ We need to see more women in these fields (power to Laura Selby!)  and throw these outdated gender roles in the bin!

IP: What might be any thoughts or recommendations you would want to share with those thinking of studying music as part of higher education?

GA:  Do it!!! People often think that if you study music you can only go into music, and it’s so wrong. So much of what you learn on these courses can be applicable to wider career opportunities and and you develop so many transferable skills. There is so much more to studying Music that just dead composers and Bach chorales, and if you have a passion for any kind of music, just follow it and see where it takes you. If you told 18 year old me that at 27 I’d be completing a PhD in 19th-century Austro-German music and lecturing at a University I would have laughed _hard_. But I feel like passion led me here without me even realising it, as I just followed what interested me and started carving a little space for myself in this world. So my advice is just to go for it and follow your passion for music, whatever it may be!, and give it your all.

… also, please do the reading for your lectures. 😉

IP: Genevieve, thank you very much for doing this interview. Do you have any links relating to your work which you would like to share?

GA: My absolute pleasure! Thank you so much for asking me to be involved. Yes, so please feel free to give me a follow on twitter as I usually post my latest musicology ramblings and any interesting articles (mostly memes) on there: @genevievearkle

You can also check out the @EDIMusicStudies twitter for our equality, diversity and inclusion work, and here’s the website with some more info:
https://www.edimusicstudies.com/

For those interested in Austrian and German Classical Music, you can check out our organisation, the IAGMR (Institute of Austrian and German Music Research) @iagmr_surrey and see our blog etc on our website:
https://iagmrsurrey.wordpress.com/

 

Interview with Laura Selby

Image may contain: 1 person, on stage and playing a musical instrument

This interview took place online on 13 August 2020 between City’s Head of the Department of Music, Dr Ian Pace, and BMus graduate Laura Selby.

Ian Pace: I want to introduce you to Laura Selby, who graduated from the BMus course in 2015, and now works as a Production Manager and Music and Sound Editor for the leading composer-led studio organisation Brains & Hunch. Here is Laura’s website – https://laurakrselby.com/ and here is that for Brains & Hunch – https://www.brainsandhunch.com/ . 

Laura, you’ve gone onto a wonderful career since being at City. What are your most abiding memories of your time with us?

Laura Selby: There are so many to choose from but particular memories would be the Christmas Cabarets, a time we had to celebrate our department as a whole and felt like one big family enjoying our passion of all things musical together, with wine. Of course.
Another was being the leader of the orchestra in my final year, a tricky year for me but the department was so supportive, I was able to still achieve my absolute best despite circumstances.

IP: That’s fantastic – which pieces were played by the orchestra when you were leader?

LS: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, an absolute favourite especially the 2nd movement. It was fantastic having the opportunity to play such a beautiful piece at the LSO St Lukes.

IP: What do you remember in particular in terms of the modules you took during your study?

LS: Particular modules that stood out for me were performance, audio art and techno culture and composing for moving image. I was able to move my instrumental performance to a standard I had not expected to obtain coupled with learning how to apply my playing and understanding to the industry of music production and sound art. Such a broad array of skills to explore.

IP: Were such things as audio art, techno culture and composing for the moving image previous interests, or things you first started to explore at City?

LS: They were as I have always enjoyed experimenting with creating recordings from sounds around me. The modules helped me focus that in useful applications as well as inspiring me further for more abstract creations.

IP: How do think your perspective on music, and things musical, changed from when you started at City until when you left?

LS: Massively and is still constantly evolving. I think it helps open up new ideas and genres/ concepts that previously were just not on the radar of possibility. By the time I left I think my experience left me with the freedom to go make my own way with the skill set to apply in any direction I decided to go.

IP:  Could you elaborate a little on some of those ideas and genres/concepts?

LS: David Dunn was a composer who really pivoted my interest in looking at environments in a new light, how deeply he thought about concepts regarding the world around him and the way he elevated these through compositions interacting with different settings. Primarily using music as an intermediary between humans and their environment.

IP: What are some of the skills you developed during your time at City which you have gone on to use in your professional life?

LS: Sound recording, mixing and editing in both Logic and ProTools are used most days in my creative work for Brains and Hunch and freelance projects. Other skills from managing the orchestra sections when I was leader are always applicable when liaising with clients and musicians who come into the studio for sessions. Critical thinking and listening for producer roles when feeding back on music/ sound work or communicating a new idea. Many!

IP: What would be your advice to anyone who is thinking of studying music at a higher education level?

LS: Have an open mind to what you can take from your time at City and take as many opportunities to utilise the brilliant advantages studying music in London brings, like the lunch time/ evening concerts which are attended by industry professionals (they’re so good!) never too soon to network. And most importantly make as much music with your fellow peers, make relationships as these are the people who you may well work with later on or get opportunities with. Use this opportunity to get creative, experiment with ideas and make mistakes 🙂
Good luck!!

IP: Laura, thank you so much for doing this interview today! Where would those reading this be best to look for samples of the types of projects on which you are working at present?

LS: Pleasure! Yes check out Brains and Hunch’s site to see all the projects that come through the studio and on my site my recent personal project More Than Concrete made for The Albany is a great example of what you can just get on and do if you have an idea!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8TLo7mYYhKg

 

Interview with Honey Rouhani

Image may contain: Honey Rouhani Barbaro

This interview took place online on 13 August 2020 between City’s Head of the Department of Music, Dr Ian Pace, and BMus graduate Honey Rouhani.

Ian Pace: I am very pleased to introduce you all to distinguished British-Iranian soprano Honey Rouhani Barbaro. Honey graduated from the BMus course at City in 2011, and since has won various prizes and pursued an important career as an opera singer, singing such roles as Despina in Cosi fan tutti, Mimi in La bohème and Tosca in the opera of that name. Her website is below.

http://www.honeyrouhani.co.uk/about/4578003998
Honey, welcome! It’s great to see you again. Could you tell me something about your time at

City, and what this has meant in terms of your subsequent career?

Honey Rouhani: Hi Ian, so wonderful to be speaking with you here. And as always a pleasure to be an alumni of City University. I was on the BMus performance degree at City and throughout the 3 years I spent there, I learnt more about music than I ever did before and after my time. As an Opera Singer I soon realised that just having the knowledge of singing and performance is not enough to have a successful career. I learnt so much about the history of music, not only Western Classical music but different ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds. In particular I loved the Ethnomusicology and Music reception.

IP: How did the study of those different musical traditions affect how you thought about music as a whole?

HR:  Coming from a different culture myself, it was so wonderful to learn so much about other cultures and their importance in what we call World Music today. The importance of connecting our world with the power of Music was the most important part of my learning.

IP: Tell me about the study of music reception for you?

HR: Music reception focused on the various events that occurred after a particular piece was premiered or performed for the first time. I was so fascinated to learn that all these events and issues like people leaving the concert hall, the social conventions etc were not just particular to one genre but could be seen in a spectrum of all musical genres. I in particular remember Bizet’s Carmen and Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

IP: Two very different examples! But both with their own sets of conventions for both musicians and listeners, in terms of listening and wider behaviour?

HR: For example, in terms of Bizet’s Carmen, the convention of going to the theatre to see something was a family event. People would bring picnics and enjoy family time whilst seeing something on stage. However this was the first time at the Opéra Comique in Paris that there was a murder scene, and people left the theatre. Many believe that this was one of the reasons that Bizet died 3 months later, as he was terribly heart broken after his premiere.

IP: Whereas if they had been at the main Opéra (which now combines the Opéra-Garnier and Opéra-Bastille) in Paris, murders on stage would have been commonplace. If only Bizet had had an inkling that his opera would go on to be one of the most successful of all time.

HR: Absolutely. now every time I perform Carmen I have that in mind.

IP: Tell me some more about your experiences of performance at City?

HR: I had a great time being a part of both the Chamber choir and the a cappella group led by the wonderful Alexander Lingas called Civitas. Both taught me so much about musicianship, tone, and controlling vibrato.

IP: The music you would have sung with Civitas would have been of a wholly different nature to what you do now as an opera singer?

HR: Totally. We mainly worked on Gregorian chant and polyphony from the Greek orthodox church.

IP: A repertoire which is likely to be quite unfamiliar to many at undergraduate level, I would think? But what attracted you in that music?

HR: I learnt so much from this group, about sight-singing, being able to sing in an ensemble without necessarily being on the melody line and learning to hold your tune whilst 15 other singers are singing different lines around you. I loved the music because it was sacred.

IP: Fantastic. What do you think are amongst the most important skills worth developing during university-level musical study?

HR: The history of Western Classical Music just changed my life. I still have all my notes as well as the big book with all the post its that I can refer to anytime I want. In my career there has been many times that I’ve wanted to understand the reasons behind a composers thinking,  to be able to interpret it in the right way. And I’ve gone back to my book and my notes and almost every time solved the issue.

IP: You could certainly have studied at either a university or a conservatoire. What made you choose a university department?

HR: I really recommend broadening ones horizons to different genres. When I first came to see City on an open day, I saw myself living the next 3 years of my life at City. I had heard so much about City university’s music department and had a couple of friends who had already studied there. I also wanted to have an academic knowledge as well as performance knowledge and I truly got the best of both worlds

IP: What would be your advice to any at age 18 nowadays who is thinking about pursuing musical study further?

HR: I think the best advice to the young students would be to really understand their love for music and why they are pursuing it as opposed to pursuing it as a hobby or simply as a means to gain a bachelor’s degree. The music business is not a joke, it’s full of hard work and frustrating moments, so you really need to love it

IP: Could you give us some links to hear you sing (it would be great to talk about some concerts, but understandably most performances are on hold for the majority of musicians during lockdown)?

HR: Sure, you can find some recordings on my website www.honeyrouhani.co.uk, as well as IGTV on Scenarialtd page. My performance diary for 2020 has a big red cross on it at the moment. However I’m lucky enough to be teaching and hopefully inspiring the next generations.

IP: Honey, thank you so much. We look forward to welcoming you back to City soon!

HR: It was absolutely my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and good luck to all starting this year.

Meet our Instrumental and Vocal Teachers

At City, we have a great team of visiting instrumental and vocal teachers, many of whom also teach at the leading London conservatoires.

We also have two ensembles in residence, a large number of departmental ensembles and offer regular workshops and masterclasses with high-profile visiting performers and composers.

Read some short interviews with a selection of our visiting performance teachers.

Alena Walentin

Alena, could you start by telling us something about your current performance projects?  I recently recorded my debut solo album and also a second album with my wind quintet Atéa. Both albums will be released later this year which I’m very much looking forward to! I will also will be recording with my chamber duo partner harpist Anne Denholm for a planned release next year. As well as recording, I have some masterclasses and performances coming up in Denmark, the USA and in the UK, including with Ian Pace at City! Right now, I’m in the middle of a tour of Wales with Mid-Wales Opera as part of the Ensemble Cymru playing Puccini’s Tosca. So some really exciting and enjoyable projects.

What is the highlight of your music teaching career so far?  I feel that each conservatoire and university I teach at is unique and each offers a different but wonderful experience. When I was a student I had no idea that such an important part of my career would be teaching, but now I teach and give masterclasses in so many amazing places and I absolutely love it. I feel very humble and honoured to be teaching at City as well as at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Junior Royal Academy of Music and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire as well as giving masterclasses in different countries. I think sharing one’s knowledge is so important and it’s a very special, incredibly happy feeling when you hear your students progress and see that they enjoy playing the instrument!

What were the most important things you learned from your own teachers? It would be very hard to identify one single thing – they all together form one thing! Everything from intonation, the technical side of playing the instrument, posture, breathing, rhythm, dynamics etc are all incredibly vital to being able to express the composer’s intentions to its fullest. But if I had to pick the very most important thing, it would be the feeling that I’ve had from when I first started to play the instrument: that music always should come first, technique second. Instrumentalists, of course, need a flawless technique to be able to be professional, but the musical part should always take first place. When an audience member comes to a concert, they might not know much about the instrument and how hard certain passages or aspects of the playing might be. However, they feel the music! And if one can make them cry, laugh, smile from real enjoyment or bring back to them sacred memories – that is what it’s all about and is the reason why we learn the instrument. And that is why I always aspire to be a musician, an artist and not an instrumentalist. And I wish to all the students out there to remember why they love music so much and why they want to play the instrument.

Thank you very much for your time and good luck with your forthcoming tours!

You can find out more about Alena’s music at www.alenawalentin.com

 

Richard Uttley

Many thanks for joining us, Richard. Could you start by telling our students something about your current performance projects? One unusual project I’m particularly enjoying at the moment is playing Erik Satie’s ‘Entr’acte’ music from his ballet Relâche, which was written to accompany a silent film by René Clair. I’m playing it in the piano duet version with my friend and collaborator Kate Whitley, and we’re performing it live with the film. We spent a long time experimenting to work out how we could bring out as much subtle detail in the timing between the music and visuals as possible; it was a labour of love but that makes it so enjoyable for us to share the result with audiences. As well as being a pianist, Kate is also a composer and she’s writing me a piece that I premiered in a recital at City last spring. Other things I’ve got on the go this season include the Gershwin Piano Concerto, which I learnt over summer and played in the Queen Elizabeth Hall recently, and  a cycle of all ten Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin for a tour in Scotland next month.

What is the most exciting country you’ve played in? I’ve toured in China several times in recent years, and have given recitals in over twenty cities there. I didn’t get to spend a long time in any of them, but to play and travel in a totally different culture was a great experience and one I feel very lucky to have had through music.

What is the most memorable concert or other musical event that you have attended?   It was a concert at LSO St Luke’s (just round the corner from City, in fact) that was part of a Barbican festival in 2007 focussed on the music of Thomas Adès. I wasn’t living in London at the time but made a special trip to attend this concert as I was obsessed with Adès’s music back then. The concert included, amongst other things, the composer himself playing his mesmerising Traced Overhead (I had no idea until then what an incredible pianist as well as composer Adès is), and a very starry Les Noces, with Peter Donohoe, Rolf Hind and Katia and Marielle Labèque on the four pianos and an amazing group of Russian singers called the Pokrovsky Ensemble. If I could go back in time to hear concerts again I’d go to that one every week!

What would you most recommend students do beyond practising their instrument/voice and rehearsing?  Make the most of being in London. If you come to study at City you’ll be in the heart of an incredibly vibrant city, with world class food, theatre, concerts, museums and galleries – to name but a few – and this is a great opportunity to have experiences that will stay with you for a lifetime. Students get cheap tickets too!

Thank you!

Listen to some of Richard’s music: https://soundcloud.com/richard_uttley/chris-willis-burning-up

richarduttley.com

 

Madeleine Mitchell

Many thanks for joining us, Madeleine. Could you start by telling us about your current performance projects? I’ve just completed a 3-week tour of the USA which included three performances of the Brahms Double Concerto and two concerts in San Francisco – a trio concert and my recital programme ‘A Century of British Music’ ranging from Elgar and John Ireland to Grace Williams (1906-77) and a piece written for me in 1993 by Michael Nyman. In coming weeks, I’m focusing on Grace Williams’  Violin Sonata in several concerts, coinciding with the release by Naxos of my latest album of her chamber music, all premiere recordings, with my London Chamber Ensemble, recorded here in the Performance Space at City. In fact, we held the album release at City last year at City.

What is the most exciting place you’ve performed in? I’ve played in over 50 countries so there are many exciting places to choose from, including the extraordinary German Cultural Centre in Madagascar (at the invitation of the British Ambassador), the Sydney Opera House and representing the UK at a festival of British Culture in the Lincoln Center, New York just after 9/11. New York is particularly dear to my heart since I was a Fulbright/ITT Fellow there years ago.

What were the most important things you learned from your own teachers? (a) that to be a complete musician, you have to be open to the other arts; (b) that your body is your instrument; (c) that, as the great Jascha Heifetz put it: ‘to be a great artist you need the nerves of a bullfighter and the concentration of a buddhist monk’

Madeleine Mitchell is a leading international violinist, who has performed as soloist and chamber musician in over 50 countries, including with major orchestras. She has made many recordings, some of which have been nominated for BBC Music Awards, and has collaborated with composers including James MacMillan and Michael Nyman. As well as teaching at City, University of London, Madeleine is also a Professor at the Royal College of Music

Thank you very much for your time!

Find our more about Madeleine’s work at: www.madeleinemitchell.com

 

Shirley Smart

Thanks for joining us today, Shirley. Could you start by telling us something about your current performance projects? Sure. I am currently performing with my trio/quartet, with whom I recently released my first album, ‘Long Story Short’. We have quite a few performances this year, and hopefully a tour next spring. I’m also writing material for my next album, although that may take a while to be ready for performance! Long Story Short is available here: Long Story Short

Other projects which I lead/co-lead are a duo with reeds player James Arben – this is a freely improvised project, mostly as a duo, but sometimes with guests. We have recorded quite a bit of music recently, so may well release an EP or an album with that.

I also have a jazz string trio with violinists Matt Holborn and Richard Jones. This is a relatively new project that we have been trying to put together for about 2 years. The three of us felt that string players in jazz often get overlooked. Matt and Rich are both amazing jazz violinists, but also very different players so it’s an interesting balance.

Another group I play in is Issie Barratt’s band Interchange, which is an all-female dectet that she founded in 2016, in order to address the imbalance of gender in the jazz world. We were all commissioned to write a work for the group, and the album ‘Donna’s Secret’ was released earlier this year.

My final, and one of my favourite bands ever, is the trio ‘Sawa’, with vocalist Alya Al-Sultani and pianist Clemens Poetzch. This was founded in about 2015, and is a unique synthesis of Iraqi folk music, jazz, chamber music and free improvisation. As Clemens lives in Germany, we don’t get to play together that often, but I love it when we do! Our EP is here : Sawa EP

What is the most exciting country/venue/space that you have played at? I suppose, having lived in Jerusalem for 10 years, that would have to count in its entirety as the most exciting (and challenging) place to have existed musically in. It was incredibly fertile and I was involved in all sorts of things, from jazz to classical Arabic and Turkish music, all of which inform my musical activities now.

What is the highlight of your teaching career so far? It’s difficult to pin-point one particular thing, as I get different things out of different contexts, and they all present different challenges! I really enjoy teaching at the RCM Junior Department, where I do a lot of improvisation work, since this is very marginalised in classical education – although I think it is better than it was 15 or so years ago.

A couple of particular highlights were a workshop I gave for Jazzlines in Birmingham a few years ago – the students were so keen and eager to learn! We worked on a North African tune completely by ear, and performed it at the end of the session in the Symphony Hall Foyer. The group included Xhosa Cole, who recently won the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year. He came up at the end and extracted a list of everything I knew about world music – he was so keen to absorb everything he could, which is an absolutely fantastic attitude to have!!

What would you recommend students do beyond practising their instrument/voice and rehearsing?  Learn to use your time well. And be on time for things. The music profession, especially the session world, is very highly time-constrained, and being on time is a central part of your professionalism and a really good habit to get into early. So much is about taking responsibility for yourself, being respectful to others, and learning to discuss any issues – musical or otherwise – calmly and professionally as well.

My website is here : Shirley Smart

Thank you very much and good luck with your forthcoming projects!

 

City Music Department Hosts Major Ethnomusicology Conference

Beginning on the day that the UK might have left the EU, the Music Department at City, University of London hosted a three-day joint conference of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology and Société française d’ethnomusicologie from 31st October to 2nd November 2019. This was the second time that the two societies have come together for a conference, following on from a previous meeting at the Musée de Quai Branly in Paris in 2015. In a thoroughly amicable atmosphere, three days of thought-provoking papers highlighted the intersection between ethnomusicology and sound studies, and explored the places and spaces in which music and sound are produced, contested and consumed.

After a bilingual welcome, the first day consisted of two plenary panels: ‘Listening in France’ and ‘Mediated Listening, New Spaces and the Shifting Sonic Experience of Islam’. Papers focused on a range of topics, including music at the 1931 ‘Exposition Coloniale’ in eastern Paris; the forming of sound hunting clubs – both amateur and professional – that used tape recorders to capture ambient sounds; the car as a counterprivate arena for Islamic ethics in the United Arab Emirates; and much more. The day was rounded off with two sound walks to the British Library, where Dr Janet Topp Fargion (British Library) delivered the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Annual John Blacking Lecture. Dr Topp Fargion’s presentation was entitled ‘Archiving World Music Cultures and the Impacts of Listening’, and explored a range of issues relating to the collection and preservation of sounds from around the globe.

Day two was characterised by friendly duality: parallel panels, with presentations in both English and French. Papers pertaining to contested, ritual, urban and judicial spaces highlighted how the environment (natural, social and physical) influences the production and consumption of music. Topics included archaeology and archives, including papers that encouraged us to consider elements of field recordings that are not directly the sound itself. Andrea Zarza Canova (British Library) highlighted the additional context that field notes can provide that may not be immediately obvious from the sound recording, and Jonathan Henderson (Duke University) unpacked how studio processes contribute to understanding cultural practices of negotiation and power in music production. Kit Ashton (Goldsmiths, University of London) presented work on how music was being used to save language, through the case of Jèrriais on his native island of Jersey.  At the other end of the spectrum, Dr Heikki Uimonen (University of Eastern Finland) presented ACMESOCS, a four-year Finnish project researching the carefully mediated sounds present in commercial areas such as shopping malls. It was a reminder that background music – the music we tend not to actively hear – nevertheless merits scholarly attention.

A buzzing wine reception on the Friday evening, kindly sponsored by the BFE, offered an informal space to discuss the papers presented so far, before an evening concert run in conjunction with SPARC (Sound Practice and Research at City), which featured work by sound and visual artists in response to the conference theme of ‘music, sound, space and place’.

The third and final day of the conference featured excellent panels on instrumental sounds and ecomusicologies, followed by a final plenary panel on virtual spaces, which considered sound and music in Virtual Reality experience, music-making in virtual social spaces (such as mobile phones) and streaming online spaces (such as YouTube). The wide variety of research elicited by these contemporary virtual spaces seemed a fitting end to a fascinating three days that started with listening for the past in Paris.

Throughout the conference, the papers encouraged thinking about how physical and virtual spaces influence the type of music and sound practices we encounter as ethnomusicologists. The close relationship between ethnomusicology and sound studies was brought to the fore, echoing the relationship between the BFE and the SFE. We can only hope that this was the second of many more joint conferences in the future.

Mez van Slageren, Cerence

Summer Sounds Festival Ends with Chamber Choir and Orchestra Concert

The final concert of this year’s City Summer Sounds Music Festival took place on Friday 31st May at the local church of St Clement’s, King Square.

The concert began with the City University Chamber Orchestra performing the Overture to Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro (1786). The orchestra was then joined by the Music Department’s Chamber Choir for a performance of Haydn’s dramatic Missa in Tempore Belli (‘Mass in Time of War’) (1796).

Many thanks to Tim Hooper for his amazing work conducting both Chamber Choir and Chamber Orchestra this year.

The concert marked the end of this year’s festival and another busy year of music-making!

 

Children’s Book Launch at the British Library

On Thursday May 30th, The Phoenix of Persia children’s book was launched at the British Library in London.

This picture book is the culmination of a two year collaboration between the Music Department at City, University of London and children’s publisher Tiny Owl

Based on a tale from the 10th-century epic poem, the Shahnameh, by Iran’s national poet Abolqasem Ferdowsi (940-1020 CE), the book tells the story of Prince Zal, born albino and abandoned by his family as a baby, who is found and raised by the wise and magical Simorgh bird. At the end of the story, Zal is reunited with his family. The aim of the book is to introduce British children to Iranian storytelling, music, instruments, culture and history. With its many topical themes of understanding and valuing difference, and of the importance of forgiveness, this is an ideal story for a book aimed at promoting greater cultural understanding.

The project was initiated by Professor Laudan Nooshin and builds on her earlier project with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2012-12 It is very much about promoting a different and more positive image of Iran than children might otherwise receive through the mainstream media and elsewhere.

The book’s soundtrack introduces children to Iranian instruments, with each character of the story represented by a different instrument. The original music was composed and performed by: Nilufar Habibian (qanun, plucked zither), Saeid KordMafi (santur, hammered dulcimer), Amir Eslami (nei, end-blown reed flute) and Arash Moradi (tanbur, long-necked lute).

City Music PhD student Soosan Lolavar, was the Creative Producer and Assistant Editor, and the music was mixed, mastered and edited by Julius Johansson and other students in the sound studios at City (Malhar Kawre, Mara Miron, Olivia Cepress-Mclean).

The story was adapted by Sally Pomme Clayton, who also narrates the soundtrack, and beautifully illustrated by Amin Hassanzadeh Sharif. Ideal for children aged 6 to 11, the book can be purchased here:

As well as the book, the project includes educational resources for key stage 2 children and Laudan and Nilufar have been leading school workshops around the project.

The book has received many positive reviews, including the following:

http://tinyowl.co.uk/the-phoenix-of-persia-is-a-beautiful-immersion-into-the-literature-of-iran-armadillo/

http://tinyowl.co.uk/the-phoenix-of-persia-is-a-boon-for-teachers-parents-in-touch/

http://tinyowl.co.uk/the-phoenix-of-persia-is-a-must-read-read-it-daddy/

Photos from the launch:

Workshop on Interrogating Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music: BAME routes into and through Higher Education

On 28th May 2019, City hosted a workshop on ‘Interrogating Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music: BAME routes into and through Higher Education’.

The event was co-organised by the Royal Musical Association, the National Association for Music in Higher Education and the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, and is one of a number of recent initiatives aimed at addressing issues of equality, equity and diversity in University Music Departments and conservatoires, with a particular focus on BAME under-representation.

The afternoon was attended by about 30 delegates, with representatives from Music HE institutions and the wider music industry, including organisations such as the Musicians’ Union, Live Music Now, the Incorporated Society of Musicians, Sound and Music, London Music Masters, Chineke! Foundation and The Third Orchestra.

The discussion was very wide ranging and covered a number of areas from pre-university to academic careers. Ideas and recommendations coming out of the workshop will be taken forward to a larger event to be held in the autumn.

The event was linked to the Department’s 2019 Distinguished Lecture, which followed in the evening, on the topic of diversity in British Orchestras and delivered by Chi-chi Nwanoku, OBE.

The work of Michael Finnissy: 2019 Book Launch at City

by Chloe Davey, BMus Year 2

The evening of Wednesday 26th June 2019 saw an exciting new book launch, and a celebration of the work of British composer Michael Finnissy, with the added honour of having Finnissy himself in attendance. The launch involved talks by those who contributed to the book, along with outstanding performances of some of Finnissy’s works.

The book, titled Critical Perspectives on Michael Finnissy: Bright Futures, Dark Pasts, was edited by City’s Head of Performance Dr Ian Pace, along with composer and musicologist Dr Nigel McBride. It consists of chapters written by several performers, musicologists and composers (many of whom were in attendance at the event), all portraying their perspectives on Finnissy’s complex and contemporary work.

The music began with Philip Thomas’ performance of Finnissy’s First Political Agenda, and the concert consisted of several other performances of Finnissy’s works, including Chi mei ricercari for cello and piano, played by Neil Heyde and Zubin Kanga. The works of Chris Newman also featured, and were performed by Lauren Redhead.

Philip Thomas

With Michael Finnissy present at the concert, a world premiere took place of his new 2019 work, Fourth Political Agenda. This was performed by Finnissy himself, along with Ian Pace and Philip Thomas.

Michael Finnissy

Lauren Redhead

Dr Ian Pace closed the evening’s performances with Finnissy’s highly complex Piano Concerto No.4; the exceptional performance had audience members standing in applause.

Ian Pace

The evening as a whole was an excellent opportunity to launch the new book and acknowledge the commitment of the book’s contributors, as well as celebrating the work of Michael Finnissy in his presence. Many thanks to Leo Chadburn, Ian Pace, Laudan Nooshin and many more for making the event possible!

Some of the book’s contributors.