On Wednesday 22 January, PhD student Liam Cagney was invited by the BBC Symphony Orchestra to introduce a concert at the Barbican focussing on contemporary French music. During his pre-concert talk Liam interviewed the composer Hugues Dufourt onstage in the Barbican’s Fountain Room, discussing Mr Dufourt’s new piano concerto On the Wings of the Morning, the meaning of the name ‘spectral music’ which Mr Dufourt coined back in 1979, and the influence of painting on aspects of Mr Dufourt’s musical style.

Liam recently travelled to Salzburg in Austria to interview the composer Tristan Murail, and will soon go to Basel, Switzerland, to spend two months studying the Gérard Grisey Collection at the Paul Sacher Foundation.

Liam has also had some recent publications. The January issue of the journal Tempo features a review article by Liam on the music of Fausto Romitelli. In creative writing, Liam had a short story published in the winter issue of Irish literary journal The Moth; a short story in the New Island Anthology of new Irish writing, New Planet Cabaret; and will have a short story included in relaunch issue of the journal The Honest Ulsterman, which previously published early work by Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon and other Irish writers.