Archive | Pre 2011

The popular jazz ensemble gives its seasonal programme of big band classics, seasoned with some festive items. QUB Big Band are delighted to welcome back as the evening's guest star the acclaimed trombonist Gordon Campbell, a leading figure in the jazz world and principal trombone with the BBC Big Band.

Tickets: £6 (£3) from School of Music and Sonic Arts (028 9097 5337) and at the door

---

Top of Page

"I'm interested in what it means to record time and place, recompose and reinterpret it, and invite others to listen to these 'audible fictions', reconstituted in sound. We all bring stories that may sound slightly different from each other, but reverberate across common ground."

---

 

Top of Page

Internationally acclaimed pianist Jonathan Powell presents a recital of visionary sonatas by Scriabin.

CANCELLED due to weather conditions

---

Top of Page

"Not a single trace of Bach's style or spirit": Was Spitta Right About a Manuscript Collection of Four-Part Chorales Now in Sibley Library at Eastman School of Music?

Top of Page

Training Ghosts:  A perspective on Interactive Computer Music

Top of Page

This concert will include works by Andrew May, Eric Lyon and feature a new work by Paul Wilson for Alto Flute and Computer.

Top of Page

Performing Musical Interaction: Lessons from Interactive Theatrical Experiences 

---

Top of Page

Zdenek Fibich - Czech Composer between German and Romanesque Opera Traditions

---

Top of Page

---

Top of Page

s o u n d i n g / t h e / n e t
4th-7th November 2010
Sonic Arts Research Centre
School of Music and Sonic Arts
Queen's University Belfast

---

Top of Page

Chris Brown  is a composer, pianist, and electronic musician, who creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. The recital includes composed and improvised music for piano and electronics.

---

Top of Page

"Tradition or Science?  The results of a Forensic Document Examination of some Bach manuscripts."   (45 min)

---

Top of Page

In Surface Tension, Eve’s Disklavier performance is transformed and interpreted by a computer into live visual images projected onto a screen rising from the body of the piano. These visuals respond to a variety of performance parameters including dynamics, pitch, the harmonic relation between pitches, the use of the sustain pedal, and the duration of individual notes, extending the piano into a visual instrument as well as a musical one. 

 Much of the visual material was based on simulations of natural processes such as the swarming behaviours of insects, the trajectories of planets and the rippling of water when a pebble hits its surface. Eve’s performance triggers and modulates aspects of these simulations; the visual representations respond to Eve, but also have a sort of life of their own, becoming partners in the performance. In one movement, each note played on the piano contributes to the construction of a three-dimensional tower. In another, Eve draws out the trajectories of falling snowflakes, manipulating the live processing of a pre-recorded video. Another charts the harmonic relationships between the notes Eve chooses. 

 The performance itself is a loosely structured audio-visual improvisation in five movements. The improvisation is shaped partly by Eve’s response to the system’s visual response to her playing. Except for the change of software programs between movements, all visual activity on the screen is directly responsive to Eve.

---

Top of Page

This semester's keyboard theme in our Harty Room concerts is celebrated here by a return visit by this dynamic and inspiring piano duo. Last year their 3-day residency in the School had immense resonance for young composers and performers as well as for the audience at their lunchtime concert, and they return this season with a programme linking Europe and America, including Gershwin's An American in Paris and Piers Hellawell's Victory Boogie-Woogie.

---

Top of Page

This concert features selected electroacoustic works from some of the many postgraduate composers studying at SARC. The concert features fixed media and multichannel works representing a variety of compositional approaches. Expect to hear works exploring environmental themes, large scale multichannel works depicting imaginary suggestive spaces, and a variety of other recently composed pieces created within the school, some of which are being premiered in this concert.

---

Top of Page

The QUBensemble, the School's forum for improvisation, conduction and experimental music, returns with a concert of mangled classics, new works devised by the group and outright musical mayhem.

---

Top of Page

We are delighted to welcome back one of the stars of London's jazz scene, Gordon Campbell, following his successful visit to our series a couple of years ago. Gordon will again give a programme of jazz classics, spiced with a few surprises from his huge repertoire. Please note that Gordon Campbell will also join the QUB Big Band as guest star at tonight's Christmas Concert in the Marquee (see separate entry).

---

Top of Page

QUSO was established in 2007 with the aim to let the great people of Queen's University play music on a large, symphonic scale. Student run, and with support from the School of Music QUB, it is fast gaining a reputation on Northern Ireland's classical music scene as a leading amateur orchestra.

---

Top of Page

This concert will feature performances of operatic repertory by Queen's alumni and current students. Some of the 18th-century repertory will be performed in period style. This event is a fundraiser for the School's Spring 2011 production of Handel's Alcina.

Tickets: £8 (£5) from School of Music and Sonic Arts (028 9097 5337) and at the door

---

 

Top of Page

Changes and Challenges of British Opera in the Late Victorian Period

---

Top of Page

The Piano as Haptic Interface

---

Top of Page

Communist Anti-Colonialism: Empire and Nationalism in Alan Bush's "The Sugar Reapers"

---

Top of Page

Mark Trayle - Remote Utopias - Illusions of Space and Community in Networked and Telematic Art

Top of Page

A Cornucopia of Presentations on the Ongoing Research at the Sonic Arts Research Centre

Top of Page

Ryan Quinn (euphonium) and Declan Keenan (guitar), the two top undergraduate recitalists from 2009-2010, present works by Isaac Albéniz, Daniel Barkely, Leo Brouwer, Joseph Horovitz, Jan Sandström, and Andrew York

Top of Page

59º N: Electroacoustic music from the Royal College of Music In Stockholm

Top of Page

Peter Hill is a scholar and pianist known internationally for his work on Messiaen.  In this concert, he explores Bach's influence and legacy in the works of some of the greatest composers in the 20th century.

Top of Page

Saturday 25th September 2010  
Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast 
Doors: 8pm  
Tickets: £10 / £7 (conc) available from www.movingonmusic.co.uk and Belfast Welcome Centre (028 9024 6609)

This Mercury Music Prize no minated jazz trio features sensational pianist Kit Downes, award-winning bassist Calum Gourlay and rising drum star James Maddren. Aiming to celebrate the classic piano tradition, as well as develop it, their sound concentrates on walking the fine line between improvisation and composition. The original music they produce is immediately arresting and is inspired by an eclectic mix of influences - from Bela Bartok, to Keith Jarrett, to Rufus Wainwright. The Kit Downes Trio's debut album 'Golden' was one of only twelve records shortlisted for the prestigious 2010 'Mercury Music Prize'.   www.kitdownes.com

Top of Page

Geoffrey Higgins will give a seminar on "The Changing Face of Male Heroism: Tenor vs. Castrato"

Top of Page

We regret that the visit by Bill Brunson, professor of electroacoustic music at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, has had to be cancelled due to travel difficulties caused by the volcanic ash cloud.

We will have to look toward rescheduling his visit for next year. 

Top of Page

The summer concert by this popular Queen’s Ensemble will feature favourites from a wide range of popular music styles, in a programme conducted by Queen’s Big Band’s music director, Steve Barnett.

Tickets: £6 (£3)

Contact the school office on 9097 5227 or audrey.smyth@qub.ac.uk

Top of Page

We greatly regret that the seminar talk by composer Philip Cashian this week has had to be postponed because of the prevailing travel difficulties. We hope to welcome Philip Cashian to the School as soon as normal travel arrangements resume.

Top of Page

Queen's University will host its first ever Traditional Music Symposium, in association with Santander and Madden's Bar on Friday April 23rd 2010.

The day will consist of a two session symposium (five papers in total) on masters of twentieth century Irish fiddle technique, followed by a short recital from the guest speakers. Speakers/recitalists include Dr Matt Cranitch, Jesse Smith, Katie Boyle, Eoghan Neff and Conor Caldwell.

There is no cost to attend the symposium, although interested parties are advised to pre-register as numbers are limited (see below for details). Registration on the day is available from 11am in QUB School of Music.

Ireland's premiere fiddle ensemble 'Fidil' will give a concert at 8pm in QUB's fabulous Harty Room. Tickets are available from the School of Music and Sonic Arts at QUB at £10 and £6 concession. Numbers are extremely limited for this event so book early to avoid disappointment.

Phone 02890975227 or 07749960638 for booking or further information.

Top of Page

The following events are being hosted at SARC as part of the European Union Culture 2007 project, CoMeDia

Artist in Residency Presentation
Tuesday 9th March 13:30 - 15:00
Sonic Arts Research Centre
Multimedia Room
Presentation by CoMeDia Artists in Residence Rob King (SARC) and Pierre Prouske (CIANT). Both artists will present previous work in the field of new media including work for gaming and mobile devices such as the iPhone. Lunch will be provided, all welcome.

Workshop: Presentation Strategies
Tuesday 9th - Thursday 11th March (10:00 - 17:00)
Sonic Arts Research Centre
This event explores possible modes of presentation for network performance primarily focusing on visuals and on works to be presented as part of the CoMeDia showcase in November 2010. The aim of the workshop is to design strategies for addressing geographically displaced performance through video, visualisation and motion capture.

Final Cut Pro Training Session: Learning to document performance
Friday 12th March (10:00 - 16:00)
Apple Authorised Training Centre
11, University Square
This is a hands on session on editing multiple cameras and syncing using Final Cut Pro. The training session takes place at Queen's Apple Authorised Training Centre and will be led by Declan Keeney (Apple Certified Trainer at Queen's with extensive experience including 12 years working for the BBC, finishing as an award winning Senior Cameraman). Places are limited; please contact p.rebelo@qub.ac.uk for information.

Top of Page

The Belfast Music Society will be holding their 2010 Festival from 19th - 21st February. Please see their website for full details, including tickets.

Friday 19 February, 1:10pm, Harty Room, Music
Student Showcase Recital
Free

Friday 19 February, 8:00pm, Great Hall
Alexander Baillie (cello), James Lisney (piano)
£20 (students £5)
Pre-concert talk by Professor Jan Smaczny at 7:15pm in the Old Staff Common Room, Lanyon Building

Saturday 20 February, 11:00am, Harty Room, Music
Eimear McGeown: Flute Roots
£5 (students free)

Saturday 20 February, 1:30pm, Great Hall
Meta4 String Quartet
£12 (students £5)

Saturday 20 February, 8:00pm, Great Hall
Nelson Goerner (piano)
£20 (students £5)
Post-concert reception at 10:00pm in the Canada Room, QUB £5 (free to Friends of BMS)

Sunday 21 February, 11:30am, Radisson Blu Hotel
Neil Martin: Circling the Square
£5 (students free)

Sunday 21 February, 3:00pm, Great Hall,
Philip Langridge (tenor), David Owen Norris (piano)
£20 (students £5)

Festival Subscription Ticket (includes all events): £57.
For further information and ticket booking, visit www.belfastmusicsociety.org
or phone or call into the Belfast Welcome Centre, 17 Donegall Place, Belfast (028) 9024 6609.

Top of Page

with Alan Niblock (bass), Brian Rice (drums) and Steve Barnett (piano)

Among the great British jazz players of his generation, Alan Barnes has enjoyed a proli?c career as a sideman, having played with the likes of Stan Tracey, Freddie Hubbard, Björk, Van Morrison, Bryan Ferry, and Jamie Cullum.

Top of Page

QUB Big Band features student performers alongside some of the top talent of the NI jazz circuit. This concert will showcase a mix of jazz standards, new pieces and seasonal favourites.

Tickets: £6/£3 (conc.) from School of Music and Sonic Arts (028 9097 5337) and at the door.

Top of Page

Dr Schroeder will give a seminar on Composer-Performer Collaborative Approaches.

This seminar will examine the interactions and collaborative approaches between performers and composers. In particular, saxophonist and Academic Fellow Franziska Schroeder will be talking about the performative approaches for tomorrow's concert (25 February 2010), which features new works for saxophones, accordion, live-electronics and visuals. The works discussed were specifically written for, and with Franziska Schroeder. The seminar will feature the composers themselves who will be giving insights into their compositional approaches in developing new works for saxophones.

About Franziska Schroeder:

Franziska Schroeder is a saxophonist and theorist. She is the founder of the digital media collective l a u t with composer/pianist Pedro Rebelo, and she plays in the free improvisation trio “Faint” with percussionist Steve Davis. The trio released their first recording on the Creative Source Recordings label in 2007. In 2008 Franziska was the Artistic Director for the Roots Ensemble at the International Computer Music Conference in Belfast. In 2009 Franziska released a further CD on the Creative Source Recordings label with two Portuguese string improvisers. Franziska performs with various improvisers from the UK and Europe in actual and at other times, in virtual worlds. More recently she was invited to perform at the opening of the new AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMPCP) in the Cambridge Concert Hall, as well as for the opening of the HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) meeting in Berlin in December 2009.

Top of Page

This concert is a showcase of works by current PhD composers at the School of Music and Sonic Arts. The lunchtime concert will feature new works written especially for and with saxophonist Franziska Schroeder, who is also a staff member at the School.

Featured composers will include Miguel Ortiz Perez, Patricia Alessandrini, Justin Yang and Manuela Meier. The compositions constitute a mix of works for various saxophones, accordion, live-electronics with visuals by emerging Lebanese ?lmmaker Shirin Abu Shaqra, currently based at the renowned Fresnoy Art School.

Top of Page

David Cooper will give a seminar entitled "Embracing Change within the Musical Traditions of Northern Ireland"

Professor Cooper's paper in the Musicology and Composition series considers the place of traditional musical culture in Northern Ireland, particularly within the context of the Protestant tradition. Drawing on material recently published in his study 'The Musical Traditions of Northern Ireland and Its Diaspora: Community and Conflict', Professor Cooper considers the changes which have taken place over the past thirty years or so in the understanding of traditional music, and explores the impact of the peace process and the Ulster Scots movement.

David Cooper is Professor of Music and Technology in the School of Music and Dean of the Faculty of Performance, Visual Arts and Communications at the University of Leeds. He was brought up in Belfast and left Northern Ireland in 1975 to study in England where he gained a first class degree in Music at the University of Leeds and a doctorate in composition at the University of York. He is the editor of a new edition of The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland (Cork University Press, 2002) and the author of the monographs Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo (Greenwood Press, 2001), Bernard Herrmann's The Ghost and Mrs Muir (Scarecrow Press, 2005), and The Musical Traditions of Northern Ireland and Its Diaspora: Community and Conflict (Ashgate, 2009).

He is co-editor, with Kevin Dawe, of The Mediterranean in Music: Critical Perspectives, Common Concerns, Cultural Differences (Scarecrow Press, 2005) and with Christopher Fox and Ian Sapiro, of Cinemusic? Constructing the Film Score (Cambridge Scholars, 2008). His recent publications on Irish music include a study of Seán Ó Riada's score for Mise Éire in European Film Music (Ashgate, 2007), and a chapter about the preservation of Irish traditional music and the development of the piano in Music in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2007). A co-edited volume Art and Ideology in European Opera: Essays in Honour of Julian Rushton (with Rachel Cowgill and Clive Brown) is in production with Boydell and Brewer and he is currently working on a major study of Bartók for Yale University Press.

Top of Page

Fiona Newell will give a seminar entitled "The Brain as the Conductor: How Perceptual Coherence is Maintained
Across the Senses"

The Talk:

The seminar will outline some of the more recent work conducted on how multisensory information affects object and space perception. In particular, how vision combines with audition and touch to enhance perception for the purpose of recognition and spatial updating. Recent findings also suggest that older persons rely more on integrating information from across the senses, possibly to compensate for an inevitable decline in sensory processing. These studies, together with more recent neuroimaging work, have provided insight into how, and when, information is shared across the senses in the brain.

Fiona will also talk about a relatively rare multisensory condition, known as synaesthesia, in which a person perceives a secondary sensation along with the real percept (e.g. music is perceived to letters). This condition provides an interesting opportunity to elucidate multisensory processes by allowing us to relate brain and behaviour processes to perceptual awareness.

About Fiona Newell:

Given that over a third of our brain is devoted to processing of information from each of the senses, very little is known about how this 'multisensory' information influences what we perceive around us. In the real world, we make perceptual decisions every moment by recognizing the things and people around us and knowing where they are located. These decisions are not based on one sensory system alone as all our senses can contribute to these decisions. Since we maintain a coherent perception of the world around us it is clear that each sense does not work in isolation for the purpose of perception and recognition.

The main goal of my research, therefore, is to provide a better understanding of how information is shared across the senses and to elucidate the brain processes involved in the perception of objects, faces and places across the main human sensory systems.

Top of Page

Virtuoso brass performer, James Gourlay, makes a return visit to Belfast to perform works for tuba and computer. The programme includes Tim Souster’s work Heavy Reductions, a radical paring down of the opening of Das Rheingold for tuba and electronic delays.

Top of Page

A concert featuring two well known masterpieces from the piano trio repertoire alongside a new work by British composer David Knotts.

Commissioned by the Lawson Trio with generous support from the RVW trust, The Long Way Home is fresh from its prestigious premiere given by the trio at London’s South Bank.

Top of Page

The SCAW duo champions new repertoire for bass-clarinet and piano and works with many leading composers. This recital will include two works by former doctoral composers at Queen’s – Blunt Instrument by Greg Caffrey and a brand-new work by Karen Power.

Top of Page

Fischman invites the listener to embark on an imaginary voyage through different perspectives of reality. From the observable traces of social, political and cultural activity to the abstract realms of scienti?c and philosophical thought, it offers musical interpretations which share a common concern for our existence as human beings. This is evident in the intervention of human agency, whether through the action of live performers, human visual imagery in surrealist landscapes, the memory of a lost relative, or the telling of tales through sound.

Top of Page

J.S. Bach: St. John Passion

The School’s chamber choir and orchestra perform one of the repertoire’s greatest choral works.
Tickets: £6 (£3)
Contact the School of Music and Sonic Arts office on 9097 5227 or audrey.smyth@qub.ac.uk

Top of Page

Composer-performers Joel Cathcart and Matthew Parkinson present a new large-scale work for instruments and former instruments.

Top of Page

The Queen’s University Band explores the lighter side of the brass band repertoire with a selection of works from the movies, jazz arrangements and solo features for members of the band.
Tickets: £6 (£3)
Contact the school office on 9097 5227 or audrey.smyth@qub.ac.uk

Top of Page

Programme to include J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 and a new work by Marc Tweedie.

Top of Page

This event showcases the work of composers currently studying at Queen’s. The concert will feature a mix of acoustic and electronic works, highlighting the diversity of practices within the School.

Top of Page

Simon Mawhinney performs a concert of twentieth- century and contemporary music. The concert includes Transcendental Study No. 18 by Sorabji, and premieres by Simon Mawhinney and Ryan Molloy. The concert will feature the winning work of a composition competition held within the School of Music and Sonic Arts at Queen’s. The concert will conclude with Ossian’s Fall by Paul Wilson, an intense work for piano and live electronics which includes a part for vocalisations by the pianist – muttering, grunting, screaming.

Top of Page

An evening of beautiful, colourful and awe inspiring music by the award winning young Irish pianist gaining international repute for his performances of both the classical repertoire and new music. Belfast-born pianist Michael McHale came to widespread public attention as winner of the 2009 Terence Judd/Hallé Award and has established himself as one of the leading Irish pianists of his generation.

Presented in association with Moving On Music.

Tickets £10 (£7) from www.movingonmusic.co.uk and Belfast Welcome Centre (028) 9024 6609

Top of Page

This concert will feature performances by students enrolled in the School of Music and Sonic Arts performance programme. Join us for what will be an eclectic and lively concert featuring some of the ?nest student performers from all levels of undergraduate study at Queen’s.

Top of Page

Intermedia composer and pianist Jaroslaw Kapuscinski presents an audiovisual recital, in which tigers are counted- out, blueberries die, Mondrian dances Boogie-Woogie and a typewriter dreams of being a piano.

Top of Page

Directed by Steve Davis, Michael Gurevich and Paul Stapleton. The School’s forum for improvised and experimental music, QUBe brings its dynamic, eclectic energy to the Black Box. QUBe will be supported by an opening act from within the School.

Tickets: £6 (£3)

Contact the school office on 9097 5227 or audrey.smyth@qub.ac.uk

Top of Page

Dr Sarah McCleave’s Opera in England class (Level 3, BMus) present two different concerts of recitatives and arias by Handel, Thomas Arne, and their London-based peers, under the musical direction of Queen’s PhD-student Geoffrey Higgins.

Top of Page

Rachel Kelly (mezzo soprano)
Dean Power (tenor)
Dr. Una Hunt (piano)

Since its inception in 2007, the Thomas Moore Festival has recorded the world-premiere collection of all the Irish Melodies, and promoted a countrywide exhibition and concert tour. This concert is part of its pre-USA tour, when young Irish singers will perform Moore's songs at Carnegie Hall in March.

Top of Page

The School of Music and Sonic Arts, in association with other Schools in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, invites you to join us for a Postgraduate Open Day on Friday 26 February from 11am to 2pm. This Open Day is for prospective students to our Masters and Research degrees. You will have the opportunity to meet staff from the School, who will give a presentation on the post graduate programmes available. There will also be information on possible funding opportunities.

If you would like to book a place on the Open Day, please complete the registration form.

Please see the following links for more information on the courses we offer.

Taught Postgraduate Programmes
Research Degrees

Top of Page

Martin Dowling will give a seminar on Traditional Music in the Cultural Revival, Dublin 1893-1904.

Top of Page

Dr Mawhinney will give a seminar on "Writing to exhaustion"

Top of Page

Jaroslaw Kapucinski will give a seminar on "Composing Juicy Intermedia"

Top of Page

Alison Dunlop will give a seminar entitled "The Lost Amadeus"

Top of Page

Dr Bertet will give a seminar on "Spatial Audio Technologies, a Subjective Review and Coming Plans"

Top of Page

The 'Interdisciplinary Symposium: Music without Walls? Source Studies in the 21st Century' is being held to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and to celebrate subsequent developments in music source studies. The aims of this symposium are to present and contextualize recent findings and to discuss how new technologies may facilitate and enhance our understanding of these issues. Papers are not restricted to the theme which was the impetus for the symposium; possible contributions inspired by this title may include new discoveries of manuscripts, archival research in former 'Eastern-Bloc' countries or areas of conflict, case studies of various geographical locales, the implications of technological developments and future directions in source studies.

The Symposium will open with a research seminar given by Dr Michael Maul (Bach-Archiv, Leipzig), Wednesday 16 December, 1 pm, entitled "‘Expedition Bach’ – Aims, Insights, Methods"

www.symposiummusicwithoutwalls.co.uk

Top of Page

Queen's University Brass Band will perform Christmas Music and Carols in the foyer of the Cancer Centre at Belfast City Hospital, on Thursday 17th December, 6.30pm - 7.30pm. Free admission.

Top of Page

This week's seminar is given by the leading young Welsh composer, Guto Pryderi Puw. His notable recent achievements include the acclaimed Proms commission '...onyt agoraf y drws...' ('...unless I open the door...'), and Reservoirs, based on the poem by R S Thomas.
 
Dr Puw studied at Bangor University with composers John Pickard, Andrew Lewis and Pwyll ap Siôn where he gained his M.Mus degree in 1996, and after winning the Parry Williams Scholarship he was awarded with a PhD in composition in 2002. In 2004 he was appointed as a Teaching Fellow at the School of Music, University of Wales Bangor, later to join as a full member of staff in 2006. He is the Chairman and Artistic Director of the Bangor New Music Festival, which has been running since 2000. 

  Guto Puw first made an impact as a composer in 1995 when he won Tlws y Cerddor - the Composer's Medal - at the National Eisteddfod (and won the award again in 1997). Since then he has received many commissions and performances while being much in demand as a composer at various festivals such as the Bath Music Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, State of the Nation, The North Wales Music Festival, the Bangor New Music Festival, and the Vale of Glamorgan Festival, with a number of performances during the UKwithNY festival in New York, USA. His music is regularly broadcast on radio (BBC Radio 3) and television (S4C).

Top of Page

Professor Robin A. Leaver will present his current research on eighteenth-century practices of accompanying the congregation, concentrating on the phenomenon of Choralbücher with multiple basses and figures.

Robin A. Leaver was Professor of sacred music at Westminster Choir College of Rider University (1984-2008), and continues as a Visiting Professor at Yale University and at the Juilliard School, New York City. On 1 July 2008 he was appointed Honorary Professor at Queen's University Belfast.

He is author of many articles and more than 25 books, including Bach's theologische Bibliothek (1983), J.S. Bach and Scripture (1985), The Theological Character of Music in Worship (1989), "Goostly psalmes and spirituall songes": English and Dutch Metrical Psalters from Coverdale to Utenhove 1535-1566 (1991), Liturgy and Music: Lifetime Learning (with Joyce Ann Zimmerman) (1998), Luther's Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (2007); contributor to many reference and other books.

Top of Page

Kerry Andrew, Sarah Dacey and Anna Snow (voices)

“The trio is called Juice. If that implies something fluid, fruity and refreshing, it is apt. Their repertoire extends from classy takes on jazz standards and dark folk songs to longer pieces using avant-garde vocal techniques - patter, huffing, puffing, beatboxing - that make Stockhausen or Berio sound prehistoric.” (The Times, 2009)

Top of Page

The new University Brass band will be joined by the Grosvenor Chorale, finalist in the BBC Choir of the Year in 2008, in a varied programme of brass and vocal music.

Tickets: £6/£3 (conc.) from School of Music and Sonic Arts (028 9097 5337) and at the door.

Top of Page

PhD research student Declan Plummer will discuss his research on the historical figure perhaps most closely associated with the School of Music and Sonic Arts, Sir Hamilton Harty.
 
Declan Plummer has undertaken unprecedented research into the manuscript sources of Sir Hamilton Harty's works; he has just returned from a trip to Australia, where Harty himself toured as conductor on a number of occasions. Declan Plummer will talk about recent researches and about the latest insights into Harty as composer and conductor. All are welcome; tea and coffee will be available.

Top of Page

Ibi Aziz, John Bryan, Alison Crum, Roy Marks (viols, theorbo and organ)

The late flowering of the English viol consort, with music by John Jenkins and Matthew Locke, flamboyant divisions by Christopher Simpson and culminating in the unsurpassed fantazias of Henry Purcell.

Top of Page

A weekend of events making up the second part of Sonorities Festival of New Music.

The Profound Sound Trio
Friday 20 November 2009, 8:00pm, SARC

Andrew Cyrille (drums), Paul Dunmall (tenor and soprano saxophones), Henry Grimes (double bass)

Originally formed in June 2008 for the prestigious Vision Festival in New York, the trio brings together a European giant of the free jazz scene in Paul Dunmall, with two major figures of the New York scene.

Presented in Association with Moving On Music. Supported by Birmingham Jazz and Arts Council England.

Tickets: £12/£8 (conc.) from www.movingonmusic.co.uk and Belfast Welcome Centre (028 9024 6609)


Argento Ensemble
Saturday 21 November 2009, 8:00pm, SARC

Members of the US-based Argento Ensemble present an exciting programme of contemporary music featuring works by Luigi Nono, Vinko Globokar and the Irish composer Ann Cleare.

Tickets: £8/£5 (conc.) from School of Music and Sonic Arts (028 9097 5337) and at the door.



Ivan Goff (uilleann pipes), Franziska Schroeder (saxophones), Pedro Rebelo (composition, electronics), Brian Cullen (3D animations)
Sunday 22 November 2009, 8:00pm, SARC

A world premiere of a new work for uilleann pipes, saxophone and 3D animation. Commissioned by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Tickets: £8/£5 (conc.) from School of Music and Sonic Arts (028 9097 5337) and at the door.

Top of Page

This is the second annual event to showcase composers currently studying at Queen’s. This year’s concert will feature a mix of electronic and acoustic works, highlighting the diversity of practices in the School.

Top of Page

You are warmly invited to this week's seminar, which is given by Dr Fintan Vallely (Dundalk Institute of Technology). His talk is entitled “Hunting for borr- án: Shaking a Stick at the Origins of the Irish Drum.”

This paper challenges the myths, imagination and wishful thinking in the currently accepted history of that unique instrument of Irish percussion, the 'bodhrán'. It explores the perceptions of Irish drum culture, looks at the evidence of the drum's antecedents, and the meaning of the word bodhrán itself. The interim conclusions of this work in progress are that the famous Irish drum has no ancient artistic past. It was universally known in the late 1800s and early 1900s as 'tambourine', and that the word 'bodhrán' most likely originally meant an agricultural utensil or sieve. In other words, the history of the bodhrán that we have is riddled with holes. Yet the bodhrán is around and being brilliantly played, as integral to traditional music as the harp or the pipes. But we borrowed the rhythms from dancers' feet, the device itself from Black & White Minstrels, The Salvation Army or regimental bands, and we synthesized the modern playing style from the sounds of Ulster Lambeggers, Indian tabla tippers and Scottish pipe-band snare drummers.

FintanVallely is a flute player and singer from Co. Armagh. He began playing flute in 1963 and has recorded two solo flute recordings with guitarist Mark Simos and one of satirical song with singer Tim Lyons (all reissued 2008). He has lectured on Irish music at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, University of Ulster, Trinity College Dublin and in the USA. He was correspondent in traditional music to the Irish Times (1994-2000) and the Dublin Sunday Tribune (1996-2002). He is the author of a wide range of studies of traditional music. He published the manual for the Irish flute in 1986. Other major publications are The Blooming Meadows: The World of Irish Traditional Musicians, The Companion to Irish Traditional Music (1999, 2010), John Kennedy: Together in Time (2001), Sing Up: Comic Songs and Satires of Modern Ireland (2008) and Tuned Out: Traditional Music and Identity in Northern Ireland (2008).

All are welcome! Tea and Coffee will be served.

Top of Page

BINAURAL SONIC LAB

Seminar: Wednesday, 28 October, 1pm, Multimedia Room
Workshop: Thursday, 29 October, 1-5pm, SARC Sonic Lab

The Talk

This seminar and workshop target composers and sound artists who are interested in binaural sound production, especially as a tool for documenting their own multi-channel pieces. Instead of using free field binaural head related transfer functions (HRTF) along with a room simulation, real room impulse responses from SARC's Sonic Lab will be recorded and applied. This approach combines the convincing sound image of a convolution reverb with the immersive quality of binaural recordings.

The workshop will start with a general introduction to binaural recording and sound processing. A central topic will be the use of recorded impulse responses in realtime convolution engines, such as 'Altiverb' or free alternatives such as 'jconv'. A series of binaural impulse response measurements will be carried out in the Sonic Lab, using the open-source software package 'Aliki' by Fons Adriaensen (http://www.kokkinizita.net/linuxaudio/downloads/aliki-manual.pdf). Depending on the needs of the participants, different speaker layouts, dummy head positions and wall panel settings can be covered. The workshop participants can then use the measured impulse responses for creating binaural mixdowns of pieces which have been composed in the Sonic Lab, for preparing and adapting existing pieces to the Sonic Lab sound system, or for experimental binaural pieces using the acoustic properties of the room.

In the preparatory Wednesday seminar, Martin Rumori will give an insight into his previous work with binaural impulse responses at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics in Graz, Austria.

About Martin Rumori:

Martin Rumori, born 1976 in Berlin, studied musicology and computer science in Berlin. His works include sound installations using multichannel or virtual acoustic technology and specialised software for artistic purposes. Since 2005, he holds a full time teaching position for Sound Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Also in 2005, he started a doctoral project on binaural audio augmented environments at Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics Graz.

Top of Page

Dr Allen will give a seminar entitled "Tonality is not the Past but the Future: Idealism or Ideology in Wilhelm Furtwängler’s 2nd Symphony"

Dr Allen is Tutor in Music and Research Fellow at St Peter’s College and Lecturer in Music at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. His research interests include Wagner – he is the editor of Wagner, the journal of the Wagner Society, and is currently collaborating in a new critical edition of Wagner’s essay ‘Beethoven’ (1870) – Bruckner, late-nineteenth-century performance practice, philosophy and aesthetics, and the literary writings and compositions of the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, the subject of his paper this week.

Top of Page

Prof. Mundry will give a seminar on her compositions.

Born in 1963, Mundry studied composition, music and art history as well as philosophy in Berlin and Frankfurt (Main). She lived in Paris from 1992 to 1994 having been awarded a scholarship to work at the” Cité des Arts”. Mundry then studied informatics and composition at IRCAM in Paris. After teaching at the “Hochschule der Künste” in Berlin, she was offered a professorship for music theory and composition at the “Musikhochschule” in Frankfurt in 1996. In 2002-03 Mundry was a Fellow at the “Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin”. Since 2004, she has been professor for composition at the “Hochschule Musik und Theater” in Zürich. Isabel Mundry has taught at the summer courses in Darmstadt (1989-2002) as well as at the Akiyoshidai-Festival in Japan (1997). She has given masterclasses at various Conservatoires, such as at the “Musikhochschule Copenhagen in 2002 and Tiblissi in 2007.

Mundry has received numerous awards, including the Boris-Blacher-prize for composition, the “Busoni-Kompositionspreis”, “Kranichsteiner Musikpreis” as well as the “Siemens-Förderpreis”. Her music theatre piece “Ein Atemzug – die Odyssee“ won the 2006 critic’s prize.

Mundry was composer-in-residence at the Tong Yong Festival in Korea in 2001, at the Lucern Festival in 2003, at the “Nationaltheater Mannheim” in 2004/05, and in 2007/08 at the “Staatskapelle Dresden”. Her works are published with Breitkopf&Härtel.

Top of Page

Prof. Weir will give a seminar entitled "A Study of Recent Work". Judith Weir is one of the most celebrated composers of today, and her works, for diverse media, are heard around the world. Her operas, which include A Night At The Chinese Opera and The Vanishing Bridegroom, have been produced in many operatic centres, and continue to be widely acclaimed; she has been a passionate exponent of chamber media over many years, and is also a leading practitioner in community composition work. Her music has been recognized by numerous awards and fellowships around the world. Judith Weir has also been a regular visitor to the School of Music and Sonic Arts at Queen's, over the years.

All are most welcome to attend her talk. Tea and coffee will be served.

Top of Page

The Sonic Arts Research Centre was inaugurated by Karlheinz Stockhausen in April 2004 during the Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music. In the last five years SARC has established itself as a major international centre for creation, production and research. Work produced at SARC has been receiving numerous international awards and recognition from around the world. This event celebrates SARC's fifth anniversary by featuring works from past students and staff in the Sonic Lab.

Free entry; All welcome.

Top of Page

The new Music at Queen's programme and Seminar Series schedule for Autumn 2009 have been announced. Copies will be available from the School of Music and Sonic Arts building on the main site, and from SARC in the coming weeks. Or you can download a .pdf now using the links under Digital Resources on our homepage. This year's brochure is in a handy fold-out format, and all events are free unless otherwise noted.

We look forward to seeing you at our events this term!

Top of Page

Introduction to New Research happening at SARC. Free entry; All welcome.

Top of Page

A fascinating recital of Czech song by two of that country’s most exciting young artists.

Top of Page

Performed by Franziska Schroeder (saxophone), Imogene Newland (piano) and Manuela Meier (accordion)

This all-female lineup of SARC researchers and students will feature two world premieres, a piece for saxophone and tape, as well as pieces for accordion and piano.

Top of Page

The School’s top two recitalists in 2008-2009 will present works by Debussy, Britten, Rossini, and others.

Top of Page

James Gourlay, tuba virtuoso, makes his ?rst of two visits to the School. This programme features a transcription of a Henry Eccles’ Violin Sonata and Roger Steptoe’s Sonata for tuba and piano.

Top of Page

Irish Traditional music from an extraordinary duo with a rich mix of talent and experience.

Top of Page

Interacting With The Piano – Technological Relations in Piano Technique

Top of Page

Experimental pianist Sarah Nicolls presents works incorporating interactive technology, including previews of a world premiere piece by Atau Tanaka.

Top of Page

“Corsano, despite being arguably the most riotously energetic and creative drummer in contemporary free jazz, does far more than merely bash his kit into submission. Playing loud does not mean abandoning subtlety, and Corsano’s sudden shifts of texture and dynamics are a wonder to behold.”
(The Wire)

Presented in Association with Moving On Music

Tickets: £8/£5 (conc.) from www.movingonmusic.co.uk and Belfast Welcome Centre (028 9024 6609)

Top of Page

Dr. Shlomowitz will give a seminar entitled "The Postman Always Rings ABC: Matthew Shlomowitz’s Letter Pieces"

Top of Page

In an exploration of relationships between music, gesture and narrative, Dancer Shila Anaraki, recorder player Tomma Wessel and composer Matthew Shlomowitz will perform physical actions, instrumental and non-instrumental sounds, tell stories, reduce musical structure to pure numbers, and play a game with the audience.

Top of Page

Dr. Zentner will give a seminar on the "Pleasures and Perils of Musical Emotion Induction".

Top of Page

Directed by Steve Davis, Paul Stapleton and Michael Gurevich

The School’s forum for experimental and improvised music, QUBe promises to deliver an exciting, quirky and eclectic mix of game pieces, free improvisation and new interpretations of old standards.

Top of Page

Enjoy an evening of light classics performed by the University’s Student run orchestra! Get into the Christmas Spirit with mince pies, mulled wine and sing along with Festive Carols.

Tickets: £6/£3 (conc.) from School of Music and Sonic Arts (028 9097 5337) and at the door.

Top of Page

If you play one of the following instruments –
trumpet – trombone – saxophone (any) – piano – bass – drum kit
and would like to find out more about the University’s Big Band, this message is for you. The Band gives two concerts each year, exciting events in and around Queen’s; our next concert is Monday 7th December, in the Marquee in Queen’s Quad.

Before we start full evening rehearsals on Monday 26th October, we will have four weeks of workshops for students (or staff) who may be new to jazz, introducing everyone to jazz notation, the musical basics of the style, and improvisation. It is designed to be fun! The exact line-up of the concert band will be decided during these workshops, so you are not committing to anything by taking part at this stage. There’s no scary audition!

First workshop: Monday 28th September at 6.30pm*, in the Old McMordie Hall in the Music building (main site).

* We start PLAYING at 6.30pm!

MORE INFORMATION: please contact Professor Piers Hellawell, p.hellawell@qub.ac.uk

Top of Page

You are warmly invited to attend the Sonic Arts 2009 MA Showcase which will take place next Tuesday 8th September at the Sonic Arts Research Centre.

14:00-15:00: Afternoon Concert in the Sonic Lab
15:00-16:00: Wine reception and Research Posters and Installation. Presentations in the SARC Lobby and at the Installation.
16:00-17:00: Demonstrations in the Multimedia Room
11:00-17:00: Installation open all day in the Surround Room
11:00- 17:00: Research Posters on display all day in the SARC lobby

The showcase will include an afternoon of concerts, presentations and installations starting from 2pm with a concert in the Sonic lab followed by a wine reception at 3pm in the SARC foyer. A flyer with more information on the artists, and full schedule of events can be downloaded here (.pdf):  MA Sonic Arts Showcase 2009

Top of Page

The School of Music and Sonic Arts is holding a range of activities as part of the Open Days at Queen’s on Thursday 10 and Friday 11 September 2009.

On both days there will be a talk on the Bachelor of Music degree at 11.00am and the BSc Music Technology degree at 11.30am in the McMordie Hall, Music Building.  At each of the talks, there will be a draw to win an iPod.

There will also be tours of the School on both days, starting in the Music Building at 12 noon and incorporating the world-class facilities in the Sonic Arts Research Centre.

These events will provide a unique opportunity to learn more about the School’s excellent profile in areas such as performance, music technology, composition and musicology and we look forward to welcoming you then.  Should you have any queries in the meantime, please contact Ruth Walmsley on 028 9097 4731 or email r.walmsley@qub.ac.uk

Top of Page

Lunchtime Concert at 1pm in Sonic Lab
Talk at 2.30pm in Multimedia Room, SARC.
[Free]

Spectra, Interference and Noise: The Music of Schuyler Tsuda

Minneapolis-based composer Schuyler Tsuda discusses his music and research as a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota. Covering such topics as Romanian spectral music, unorthodox instrumental technique, kinetic/sound sculpture, and noise music, Schuyler Tsuda presents a compositional approach and aesthetic through the perspective of “sonic experimentalism”.

www.schuylertsuda.com

Top of Page

The School is currently seeking tutors for voice and ensemble activities for up to 8hrs of coaching per week.  Both positions are aimed at coaching students with interests in rock , blues, jazz, pop, free improvisation, extended vocal technique and electronically mediated performance.  Click here for further information and to download an application form.  The deadline for receipt of completed applications is 4th September 2009.

Please note, there are currently no vacancies for tutors in areas other than those identified above.

Top of Page

The children who have been attending the Junior Academy of Music pilot programme this week in the School of Music and Sonic Arts will be presenting a Concert at 11.15 on Friday 14 August in the Harty Room, Music Building. All are most welcome to attend.

Top of Page

The School of Music and Sonic Arts is hosting a free lunch-time concert, “Lunarcy,” on Friday 26th June @ 1:10 in the Harty Room. Counter-tenor Lawrence Zazzo and lutenist Shizuko Noiri will perform works on madness and the moon by Dowland, Purcell, Burgon, and Boyle.
 

Top of Page

Showcase of Final Year student work, featuring:

• Concert performance of electro-acoustic compositions
• show-reel of sound design portfolios
• audio-reel of recording portfolios
• demos of software development portfolios
• audio installations of interaction design portfolios

Admission is free.

Top of Page

MA in Sonic Arts students present interactive installations in SARC's Multimedia Room, Surround Room and Sonic Lab. There will be a reception from 1-2pm both days.

Top of Page

The symposium ‘Music without Walls?’ is being held to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and to celebrate subsequent developments in music source studies. The aims of this interdisciplinary symposium are to present and contextualize recent findings and to discuss how new technologies may facilitate and enhance our understanding of this.

Proposals exploring any aspect of this theme are invited, although those relating to new discoveries, archival research in former ‘Eastern-Bloc’ countries, case studies of various geographical locales, the implications of technological developments and future directions in source studies, are particularly encouraged.

Further information is available here www.symposiummusicwithoutwalls.co.uk

or download the poster here: Music Without Walls Poster

Top of Page

Dr Grimley will give a seminar entitled "Funen dreams: Nielsen and the Danish Landscape"

Dan Grimley is currently  Senior Lecturer at the University of Nottingham, though in October he is moving to Oxford to take up a University Lectureship in Music (based at Merton and University colleges). His research interests are in music and landscape, with special emphasis on Scandinavian and early twentieth-century English Music. His books include Grieg: Landscape, Music and Norwegian Identity (Boydell, 2006), and the Cambridge Companion to Sibelius (ed., CUP, 2004), as well as book chapters and articles in peer review journals. At Nottingham, he has co-convened an interdisciplinary research seminar series, ‘Spaces of Sound’, with Prof David Matless from the School of Geography. Current projects include a volume on Nielsen for Boydell. He is one of the editors of the peer review journal Music & Letters (OUP).
 
Carl Nielsen’s association with the Danish landscape is a prominent strand of his critical reception. Images of landscape occur in his songs and symphonies, and in occasional works such as the ‘lyrical humoresque’ Springtime on Funen (1922); Nielsen devoted particular attention to landscape in his autobiography, Min fynske barndom (My Childhood on Funen, 1927). In this paper, Dr Grimley will  consider how Nielsen’s idea of landscape relates to a broader tradition of representation in Danish art and literature, and the ways in which his music evokes notions of place and space. Landscape emerges not as a purely programmatic phenomenon, but also serves as a compositional resource, and as a symbol of memory and loss.
 

Top of Page

Dr Michael Burden will give a seminar on "Staging Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas"

Michael Burden was Lecturer in Music at New College from 1989, since 1995, he has been Fellow in Opera Studies at New College. He was made a Reader in 2002, and is in charge of the events for the University's Hambro Visiting Chair of Opera. He is also Dean of New College, and has served as a judge on the committee for the Duff-Cooper literary prize. His research interests lie in the theatre music of Henry Purcell, the staging of opera in London during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, Louisa Pyne and the administration of the Pyne-Harrison and Royal English Opera Companies, and in 20th-century music theatre. He is a member of the editorial board of the Stradella Omnia edition, a patron member of the American Society for Eighteenth-century Studies, and is currently serving on the committee of the British Society for 18th-century Studies, and on the council of the Royal Musical Association. He is also a trustee of RISM. In 1997, he was awarded the Richard S. Hill Award by the American Music Library Association, and in 2001, his Final Honours School course 'Opera on the Stage in London - 1700-1800' won an American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies teaching prize. He combines his research interests with stage direction, and, with the harpsichordist Gary Cooper, founded New Chamber Opera in 1990.

Top of Page

The School of Music and Sonic Arts welcomes the Buckle-Casey Piano Duo this week for a residency and lunchtime recital.

The acclaimed two-piano duo from Manchester perform a programme of classics for two pianos, including Stravinsky’s quirky masterpiece, the Concerto for 2 Pianos; Debussy’s poignant evocation of the Great War, En Blanc et Noir; Boulez’s finely-chiselled Structures 1a and Salamandra (subtitled Fire-haunt for 2 pianos) by John Casken.

Richard Casey was born in Manchester in 1966 and started playing the piano at the age of seven. In 1997 he won first prize in the British Contemporary Piano Competition, an achievement which attracted a series of solo engagements in the UK and abroad. Based in Manchester, Richard complements his solo career with a strong commitment to chamber music. He frequently gives 2-piano concerts with his duo partner, Ian Buckle, specialising in repertoire from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Since 1994 he has been pianist with the New Music Players and has performed frequently as a guest with the London Sinfonietta, the Composers’ Ensemble, Lontano and Liverpool-based Ensemble 10:10.

Richard is also a founder-member of the Manchester-based contemporary music ensemble, Psappha. Recent projects have included working with the Richard Alston Dance Company in Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka, collaboration with radical improvisation group Bark! and an invitation from Pierre Boulez to join the Ensemble Intercontemporain in a performance of Sur Incises in Carnegie Hall, New York.

Ian Buckle enjoys a busy and varied freelance career, working as soloist, accompanist, chamber musician, orchestral pianist and teacher. His London debut came in 1996 with a recital at Wigmore Hall and he has given recitals in numerous British festivals including Buxton, Canterbury, Harrogate, Huddersfield and Lichfield, the Ribble Valley International Piano Week and in the Bridgewater Hall for Manchester Midday Concerts.

Ian is a member of the piano-and-woodwind ensemble Zephyr, the Cerberus Trio (with clarinet and cello) and the Elysian Horn Trio, formed with students at the Royal Northern College of Music. His commitment to contemporary music is reflected in his work with the chamber groups Ensemble 10:10 and the Firebird Ensemble, and his piano duo with Richard Casey specialises in music of the last and current centuries. As an accompanist he is in constant demand, performing and recording with singers and instrumentalists throughout the U.K. and in Europe. Ian regularly plays orchestral piano in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and teaches at Leeds University.

SPECIAL EVENT
At 11.30am in the Harty Room, Richard Casey and Ian Buckle will join Simon Mawhinney to introduce Boulez' work Structures before their recital. All students are welcome!

Top of Page

The programme for the 2009 Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music has just been announced! It will take place in SARC, the Harty Room and the Whitla Hall at Queen's, beween the 8th and 16th of May. A .pdf can be downloaded here : Sonorities Programme

In 2009 we are spreading the activities of the Festival across two periods (May and late November 2009). Both parts of the Festival celebrate the work of Dutch composers and performers. The May programme includes a focus on music by Louis Andriessen, played by the Ulster Orchestra, and also features the Netherlands-based groups POW Ensemble and Trio Scorditura.

We are also delighted to present two locally-based ensembles who will be making their first public appearances in Northern Ireland, the vocal group Bird on a Wire and the piano and saxophone duo Move.

Further information will be available at:  www.sonorities.org.uk

Top of Page

Professor Tim Smith will be visiting the Schol of Music and Sonic Arts as part of a month-long visit to the UK, during which he will also give papers at Glasgow University and the Royal Northern College of Music. Professor Smith will give a seminar entitled 'The discovery and importance of BWV 1087 to our understanding of Bach's compositional process'.

Download the poster here:   Professor Tim Smith

Abstract

The 1974 discovery, in Strasbourg, of Bach’s hand copy of the “Goldberg Variations” represents what many musicologists now consider to the be the greatest musicological “find” of a generation. In addition to its provision of additional performance details, the manuscript is remarkable for its one-page addendum containing fourteen canons on the first eight notes of the Goldberg Ground (BWV 1087). Of these fourteen, only two were known before 1974. This lecture will focus on the fourteen canons, their realization, and the insights that they provide as to Bach’s compositional process.


Biography

Tim Smith is a professor of music theory at Northern Arizona University (USA), and the editor of the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy. He is also the author of the Canons and Fugues of J. S. Bach website and co-author with David Korevaar (University of Colorado, Boulder) of online materials on Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Goldberg Variations.

Top of Page

Belfast-born Ian Wilson (described as ‘an overflowing talent’ by Il Manifesto) is one of Ireland’s most successful and prolific composers. This concert features the first complete performance in the UK of his solo piano cycle, Stations – a 65-minute work inspired by the Catholic devotion of the Stations of the Cross. The composer’s goal was to distil the emotional content of the work’s very specific inspiration and transpose it onto a dramatic musical framework, which carries the music forward unhindered by dogma or imagery.

Stations is performed by the work’s dedicatee, British pianist Matthew Schellhorn, who has collaborated with the composer since 2004. Recently selected as a ‘Talent to Watch’ by BBC Music Magazine, and described as ‘a rising star’ (BBC Radio 3) and ‘one of Britain’s most exciting young pianists’ (Classic FM), Matthew Schellhorn has a growing international career, which in recent seasons has seen recitals in Europe, Ireland and North America.

In association with Moving On Music

Admission: £10 (£7) from Belfast Welcome Centre (028 9024 6609) or online from www.movingonmusic.co.uk.

Top of Page

The QUB Music Society present a concert of works by Queen’s composers:

Piers Hellawell - Tidy Your Room for Piano and String trio
Matthew Whiteside (2nd year) - Quartet No. 1 for String Quartet
Daniel Barkley (2nd year) - The Children's Hour for String Quintet
Omar Zatriqi (3rd year) - Pavarësi 2 Violins, 2 Violas, 2 Cellos, 1 Double Bass
Eduard Zatriqi (3rd year) - Pavjetërueshme for Piano Duet
Anthony Devenney (3rd year) - Conics 3 for Piano
Joel Cathcart (postgraduate) - quill (specifically lower case) for Clarinet, Oboe, Cello

Admission is free.

Top of Page

Dr Grimes will give a seminar entitled "A Critical Inferno? Hanslick, Hoplit and Liszt’s Dante Symphony"

Paper Abstract
In April 1881 Eduard Hanslick, one of the most influential music critics of the nineteenth century, published a review of a performance of Liszt’s Dante Symphony at Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. The review, never before discussed in the scholarly literature on Hanslick or Liszt, is characteristic of Hanslick’s writings in that it focusses less on the performance itself than it does on a discussion of issues surrounding the work—the relationship between the musical and narrative structure, where the Dante Symphony fits within the composer’s broader artistic output, and the ‘aesthetic principles’ that this work shares with Liszt’s other contributions in the fiield of programmatic orchestral music. In 1858 the critic Richard Pohl, one of Liszt’s most controversial apologists and a protégé of Franz Brendel, wrote an introductory essay for Liszt’s Dante Symphony which was included in the earliest publication of Liszt’s score. Excerpts of this essay were included in the programme notes for the performance that Hanslick attended in 1881. Hanslick’s review was published at a time when the hotbed of controversy surrounding Liszt’s symphonic output of the 1850s had long since cooled down and the journalistic battles fought in the pages of the Austro-German musical press were largely forgotten. Yet, the presence of extracts of Pohl’s essay in the programme notes of the 1881 Vienna performance that Hanslick would review brought together once again the issues and personalities involved in the controversy of the 1850s. Hanslick’s review can therefore be understood not only as a critique of Liszt’s composition but also of the aesthetics that Richard Pohl and the Brendel school used in promoting Liszt’s work. I argue that Hanslick’s critique added to the voices, including those of Wagner and Liszt himself, that undermined Brendel’s approach to music criticism.

About Nicole Grimes
Nicole Grimes was educated at Trinity College Dublin where she completed her PhD dissertation entitled ‘Brahms’s Critics: Continuity and Discontinuity in the Critical Reception of Johannes Brahms’. Having carried out extensive archival research in Munich and Vienna during her doctoral studies, from 2007–2008 she pursued postdoctoral research at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with the support of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. Her research interests include nineteenth-century musical analysis, nineteenth-century musical aesthetics, the relationships between critical and aesthetic theory in musicological writings, and how this relationship encourages us to think differently about pertinent pieces of music.

Grimes has presented her research at several international conferences and has presented the findings of her research at the Lecture Series of a number of universities in Europe and Canada. Her publications include articles in International Review for the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Ad Parnassum: A journal of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Instrumental Music, and Mendelssohn Perspectives, a volume that she is currently co-editing with Jacqueline Waeber for Ashgate Publications. She also has reviews and translations in Nineteenth-Century Music Review, La Note Bleue: Melanges Offerts Au Professeur Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, ed. Jacqueline Waeber (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), and forthcoming in the Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland. She is the organiser of the first international conference on Eduard Hanslick which will take place in UCD on 24–25 June 2009.

Top of Page

The Quasar Saxophone quartet will give a seminar on "Quasar and electronics : achievements and perspectives"

Top of Page

Michael Mayhew will give a seminar entitled "Down and Dirty"

Top of Page

QUB Big Band began as a new venture in the School in September 2003. The purpose of the Big Band is to increase the range of music which people can become involved in at Queen’s. Students, lecturers and the public alike are welcome to play and you will find a varied range of people currently in the group. Regularly, the school invites guest soloists from home and further abroad to play with the band. The band will play a selection of classic and modern pieces from the big band repertoire.

Please Note: This concert will take place on Monday 11th May and not Tuesday, as wrongly advertised in the brochure. We apologise for this error.

Top of Page

The QUBensemble (QUBe) is a forum for improvisation, conduction and new music involving students and staff within the School. QUBe brings together musicians from a variety of backgrounds to develop performances which explore ensemble interaction through game pieces, open scores and free improvisation.

This concert will feature a diverse range of phenomena including a rare performance of John Zorn’s Cobra, as well as a series of works devised specifically for QUBe.

Top of Page

The concert’s theme is around the traditional music of Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans. It will feature two beautiful instruments, each with its own history and identity, the santur and the kanun. They used, in different forms, in the traditional music of the Arab world, South-Eastern Europe and parts of Asia.

With traditional music as a point of departure, the concert will explore and blend the sound of the past with the present, the history with modern technology. The concert will be an amalgam of music around this theme, featuring not only folk music from the East, but also a series of newly-composed pieces written specifically for the occasion by SARC composer, Orestis Karamanlis.

Sofia Lampropoulou studied Byzantine music, piano, classical and traditional percussion in Greece and moved to Constantinople to study the kanun with leading exponents of the instrument. As a soloist she has collaborated not only with the most prominent traditional musicians but also with many important ensembles. Sofia teaches kanun classes both at the Conservatory of Athens and National Conservatory in Greece.

Ourania Lampropoulou studied music theory, Byzantine music, piano and is a graduate of the Music Department, University of Athens. Ourania studied the santur with a true virtuoso of the instrument while also participating in concerts of traditional music and art festivals in Greece and abroad. She has collaborated with numerous groups, choirs, dancing companies and renowned musicians touring worldwide and recording. She has also worked with various orchestras performing Byzantine and Post-Byzantine music and with the Contemporary Music Orchestra for the Greek Radio. Ourania is currently a member of Mikis Theodorakis Orchestra and teaches Santur classes at the Department of Traditional Music in Epirus and at the Music Department, University of Macedonia.

Top of Page

The second of our Sir Hamilton Harty Concerts this season is given by the Lawson Piano Trio – Fenella Humphreys (violin), Rebecca Knight (cello) and Annabelle Lawson (piano). The Trio returns to the Harty Room to present two Harty rarities: the Klavierstücke for Piano Trio is an early work, premiered in 1901, while the Suite for Cello and Piano did not appear until 1928. This work appears not to have been performed since its first performance in England by no less than Beatrice Harrison in 1951; it is believed that this is its Irish premiere. Appropriately, this concert is also dedicated to the showcasing of music by young composers: the programme will include the world premiere of work selected from submissions for Trio from the School’s community of PhD composers.

The Lawson Trio will be in residence this week to explore the submitted works in workshops, and this concert presents selected work from that process. The programme is concluded by one of Ravel’s greatest achievements, his Piano Trio. The Lawson Trio was formed in Cambridge in 2000 by members of the University Instrumental Award scheme. Subsequently the ensemble studied at the Royal Academy of Music, where they were awarded a junior Leverhulme Chamber Music Fellowship from 2005-6. The trio now pursues a busy concert schedule and has performed in masterclasses with the Endellion, Chilingirian and Fitzwilliam Quartets, Trio Ondine, Valentin Berlinsky, Sigmund Nissel, Ian Brown, William Howard, Philip Fowke and Douglas Boyd.

The Trio has performed in such venues as the Purcell Room, St. James’ Piccadilly, Chester Summer Festival, the Lake District Summer Music Festival, King’s College Easter Festival and The Queen’s University of Belfast, as well as abroad.

Top of Page

The MiSS is a modular sound sculpture designed by Paul Stapleton. It comprises several metallic components, with built-in resonating speakers. The instrument, originally designed for group-improvised performance is repurposed to more compositional purposes in this concert.

Eric Lyon’s Noise Concerto for MiSS and Ensemble will be given its premiere performance. Other premieres will include new electroacoustic music by composers working at the School of Music and Sonic Arts. These works use as their exclusive sound source a library of sounds derived from the MiSS. Many of these works take special advantage of the multi-channel opportunities afforded by the Sonic Lab at SARC.

Top of Page

Sarah McCleave’s “Opera in England” module is presenting Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas as its third production, building on the keen interest shown in earlier productions of Camilla (2007) and Terpsichore (2008). Spring 2009 marks the tercentenary of Purcell’s birth and the 25th anniversary of an earlier production of this work by the School.

The choreographer for the 2009 production is senior dance scholar Madeleine Inglehearn, the London-based artistic adviser to Mercurius. Ms Inglehearn is currently studying towards an MPhil with Dr McCleave on dance in North-East England. The musical director is Geoffrey Higgins, a Queen’s BMUS and MA graduate who is studying Handel’s singers for his PhD. Higgins is an experienced continuo player who successfully directed the 2008 production of Terpsichore. The leading roles in Dido will be taken by advanced final-year BMUS students, including baritone Nathan Morrison as both Aeneas and the Sorceress.

Top of Page

The Talk:
Bang & Olufsen has been conducting subjective evaluation of sound at a scientific level since 1972 and on images since 1992 and today both listening and viewing tests are standard elements in the development process. The basic experimental paradigms for viewing or listening tests are either been based on standards (like the ITU-R BS1116 or ITU-R BT500-10) or those developed in a major research project in collaboration with Philips. Paradigms for evaluation of user-interfaces have also been the subject of a number of research projects, but here progress is slower due to the multi-modal aspects of the experiment. The talk will give an introduction to the experimental paradigms and overall strategy for Bang & Olufsen perceptual research projects. Examples of test paradigms and results of sound and image quality experiments will be discussed and a recent user-interface experiment conducted in collaboration with NASA where the multi-modal aspects have been tackled will also be shown.

About Søren Bech:
Søren Bech received a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. from the Department of Acoustic Technology (AT) of the Technical University of Denmark. From 1982 – 92 he was a research Fellow at AT studying perception and evaluation of reproduced sound in small rooms. In 1992 he joined Bang & Olufsen as Technology Specialist and as of 2007 he is Head of Research. He is Adjunct Professor at McGill University, Faculty of Music and Visiting Professor at the University of Surrey, Institute of Sound Recording. Dr. Bech has been project manager of, and active researcher in several international collaborative research projects including ”Archimedes” (perception of reproduced sound in small rooms), ADTT (Advanced Digital Television Technologies), ”Adonis” (Image Quality of Television Displays), ”LoDist” (perception of distortion in loudspeakers units), ”Medusa” (multichannel sound reproduction systems), and ”Vincent” (Flat panel display technologies). He was co-chair of ITU task group 10/3 that authored the ITU BS.1116 standard. He was AES Governor (1996-98) and AES Vice- President (2001–2006). He is currently co-chair of the AES Publications Policy Committee and on the review board of JAES, JASA, and Acta Acustica. He is a Fellow of AES and the Acoustical Society of America and he has published numerous papers in JAES, JASA, and other scientific journals. In 2006 his and Dr. Zacharov’s book “Perceptual Audio Evaluation – theory, method and application” was published by Wiley.

Top of Page

This exciting international jazz trio features three of the UK’s most sought after musicians – Berlin-based trumpeter and BBC New Generation Artist Tom Arthurs, Danish bassist Jasper Høiby and Scots drummer Stuart Ritchie. Their fearsome sound is one of high energy, wide-open, intensely rhythmic original compositions, inspired by twisted dance-music, concentrated yet intimate improvisation, various complexities of the [post-] modern world and avant-garde baking techniques! With inspiration coming not only from musicians such as Der Rote Bereich, the pygmies of Central Africa and György Ligeti, but also film directors Andrei Tarkovsky and Jean-Luc Godard and food scientist Harold McGhee, this is a hugely interactive trio with unlimited potential for invention and the unexpected; manipulating and extending material through detailed improvisations, and with a truly individual take on the great composition/improvisation debate.

Arthurs, Høiby and Ritchie have performed at London, Cheltenham and Manchester Jazz Festivals, the Purcell Room, Pizza Express and the Roundhouse, and have toured the UK several times. They have recorded both live and in session for BBC Radio 3 and released their highly acclaimed debut album ‘Explications’ in 2008.

Top of Page

This is the first public performance for the newly-formed Queen’s University Brass Band. The band, under the baton of Head of School, Professor Michael Alcorn, will feature classic works from the brass band repertoire such as Holst’s Moorside Suite and more recent works including Kenneth Downie’s Purcell Variations.

Admission: £5 (£3)

Top of Page

The quartet has reserved pride of place for a number of Québécois composers, with whom it has formed solid partnerships. It aims to contribute to the development of our musical language and provide a platform for new music experiments, exploration and production. At the same time, Quasar constantly seeks out new works on the international scene, which are frequently integrated in its repertoire. The group’s concerts are regularly broadcast by Radio-Canada and the CBC.

The quartet has played throughout Canada and has also performed in Rotterdam, Valencia and in Paris where they joined forces with the ensemble of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (Festival Présence/Radio-France). Électrochocs concert (four new works for saxophone quartet and live electronics), was on tour in March 2004. This concert was given the OPUS prize in the ‘concert of the year in new music and electroacoustics’ category.

In January 2005 Quasar premiered (with the Winnipeg Symphony) The Chroreography of Time, written by Tim Brady, as part of the WSO New Music Festival. In the same year, Jean-François Laporte’s, La plénitude du vide, commissioned and premiered by Quasar, won the Opus award for ‘new work of the year.’ In May 2005 Quasar welcomed the Arte Saxophone Quartet (Switzerland) for a concert bringing the two quartets together at the Salle Pierre-Mercure in Montreal. Last October Quasar was on tour in the Baltics states (Festivals Gaïda, NYYD, Music of changes) and most recently across Canada (spring 2006).

This concert includes a new work by Queen’s-based composer, Pedro Rebelo.

Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts

Top of Page

Esther Lamneck (clarinet) and Elizabeth McNutt (flute)

Programme
Robert Rowe Primary Colors
Eric Lyon Trio for Flute, Clarinet and Computer
Paul Wilson Beneath the Surface
Andrew May Still Angry
Ricardo Climent Russian Disco

Inspired by the image of winds and wood flying through the air, Ricardo Climent and Paul Wilson conceived The Tornado Project: a set of commissioned works for flute, clarinet and computer-generated sound, to be performed by American wind virtuosi Esther Lamneck (clarinet) and Elizabeth McNutt (flute). Four works were composed for this ensemble and premiered at the opening ceremony of the NOVARS research centre at Manchester University in 2007. Subsequently, a fifth composition was created by New York-based composer Robert Rowe, and the complete set of works was performed at New York University in 2008. Each of the five works presents a different take on the possibilities of the ensemble: primary harmonic and melodic materials, recombinant live sampling, extended instrumental timbres, 1970’s rock, and computer- mediated formal structures.

Top of Page

Programme

JS Bach Arioso, BWV 1054/2
Lutoslawski Grave
Martinu Slovak Variations
Bridge Sonata for cello and piano

William Conway began his career as a cellist in his hometown of Glasgow. In the last year of his studies at the Royal College of Music in London he accepted the post of principal cello with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Whilst there he gave many performances as soloist and director including the first performance of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Cello Concerto, which he also recorded. He has had many concertos and pieces written for him, underlining his strong commitment to contemporary music. This was recognized by an award from the Scottish Society of Composers for an outstanding contribution to new music. Throughout his career he has held the job of co-principal cello with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe working with many of the great conductors including Herbert von Karajan, Guilini, Maazel, Haitink, Rattle and Abbado.

He came to conducting a little later in his career but within four years of study was already adding some impressiveorchestras to his CV and became a finalist and prizewinner in the 1994 Leeds Conductors’ Competition. Since then he has established himself as a conductor of versatility equally at home with a wide variety of repertoire and orchestras conducting orchestras from all over the world on disc as well as in concert.

He is artistic-director of contemporary chamber music group Hebrides Ensemble where he combines both of his passions - conducting and cello-playing. The ensemble has commissioned over sixty new works in the last eighteen years. In Summer 2008 they performed the Martyrdom of St Magnus by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, released their CD of Messiaen chamber music for Linn Records and gave their debut at the Wigmore Hall.

He plays on a cello from 1695 by Giovanni Tononi of Bologna.

Top of Page

Tanja will give a seminar entitled "New Chapters in Bach Reception".

The discovery of four hitherto unstudied manuscripts of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin (in Vienna, London, Manchester and Roches= ter, NY) is an exciting prospect in its own right, but when these turn out to be connected, it feels like winning the jackpot! The challenge I have se= t for myself, in addition to presenting the usual facts and figures - the historical context, the notational aspect of the manuscripts, source-critical evidence, etc. - is to conjure up some of the excitement that I feel each time a new piece of evidence triggers off some unexpected connection previously overlooked, or the frustration when that same piece of evidence shatters the neat mosaic of theories meticulously assembled around the research. Finally, with my findings I hope to paint a somewhat different picture of the reception of the work by late 18th-century audiences, one which had not previously been visible.

Biography:
Tanja Kovacevic is an AHRC doctoral scholar at Queen's University Belfast, researching into Bach reception in Europe. Having read for two degrees (Musicology and English Language with Literature) at the University of Zagreb (Croatia), she completed her undergraduate studies at Queen's, winning the Bank of Ireland Millennium Scholarship in 2006 and graduating with a First Class BMus. She has published widely as arts correspondent to the bi-weekly broadsheets Vijenac and Zarez, and most recently was co-editor of 'Understanding Bach's B-minor Mass, Vol II' (Belfast, 2007).

Top of Page

Celebrating its long history of educating promising young singers, Queen’s is bringing Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas to Belfast on the 14th and 15th of May 2009, 25 years after its last QUB performance. The Alumni Opera Gala will go towards supporting an ambitious, fully-staged production of the baroque opera classic. Alumni are invited to experience the diverse repertory of prize-winning recitalists, including singer-alumni Marcella Walsh and Chris Cull.

Advance tickets for the 7th April Gala are £15, and include a food and wine buffet. They may be collected in person from the General Office of the School of Music, Monday-Friday, between 9am-1pm and 2pm-5pm (from 16th March).

Alternatively, you may reserve tickets by telephoning the School (028) 9097 5337.  Tickets may also be purchased at the door at the supplemented rate of £18.

Top of Page

Top of Page

Alexander Refsum Jensenius will give a seminar entitled "Music-related Body Movement: What, When and How?"

The Talk:
Body movement is a basic requirement for all musical activities, but there are many challenges when it comes to studying movement in a musical context. In this talk I will present some of our work on synchronisation and standardisation of movement data recorded with various types of motion capture equipment, and show some of the different visualisation techniques we are developing to display multidimensional movement data in relation to musical data and media.

About Alexander Jensenius:
Alexander Refsum Jensenius (BA, MA, MSc, PhD) is a music researcher and research musician working in the fields of embodied music cognition and new interfaces for musical expression (NIME) at the University of Oslo and at the Norwegian Academy of Music. He studied informatics, mathematics, musicology, music performance and music technology at the University of Oslo, Chalmers University of Technology, UC Berkeley and McGill University. He performs on keyboard instruments and live electronics in various constellations, including the Oslo Laptop Orchestra (OLO).

Top of Page

Professor Stollery will give a seminar entitled: "Preserving Voices: the electroacoustic composer as sonic preserver".

The Talk:
Using the acousmatic piece, Vox Magna, and the Gordon Soundscape Project (www.gordonsoundscape.net) as examples, Pete Stollery will talk about the genesis of the works and the notion of electroacoustic composer as sonic preserver.

About Pete Stollery:
Pete Stollery (born Halifax, UK 1960) studied composition with Jonty Harrison. He now composes almost exclusively in the electroacoustic medium, particularly music where there exists an interplay between the original "meaning" of sounds and sounds existing purely as sound, divorced from their physical origins. In his music, this is achieved by the juxtaposition of real (familiar) and unreal (unfamiliar) sounds to create surreal landscapes. His music is performed and broadcast throughout the world. His music is published by empreintes DIGITALes in Montréal and a solo DVD-A Un Son Peut en Cacher un Autre was released in 2006.

Shortstuff (digital music) was awarded Special Prize in the Musica Nova 1994 competition; Onset/Offset (digital music) was given an Honourable Mention at the Stockholm Electronic Arts Award, 1996 and also the 1st Pierre Schaeffer Competition for Computer Music; Altered Images (digital music) won 2nd prize at CIMESP ‘97 (Concurso Internacional de Música Eletroacústica de São Paulo); Vox Magna was awarded an Honourable Mention in the Musica Nova 2003 competition and was pre-selected for the 32nd Bourges International Competition of Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art in 2005.

He is currently Head of the Music Department and Professor in Electroacoustic Music and Composition at theUniversity of Aberdeen where he is able to guide school children, students and teachers in the creative use of technology in music education. He is also Artistic Director of discoveries - an occasional series of concerts in Aberdeen which aims to bring together electroacoustic works by school children and students to be performed alongside works by established composers from around the world.


Pete Stollery - Lunchtime Concert
Thursday 19th February, 1.10pm
Sonic Lab @ SARC


Alongside an industrial classic by Gilles Gobeil and the lyricism of Pippa Murphy, Pete Stollery presents three of his own acousmatic pieces: Still Voices, made exclusively from the sounds of a whisky distillery; Vox Magna, made from a steel mill; and Onset/Offset, “...like scraping the inside of my head out with a spoon.” (Matthew Herbert).

Top of Page

This event forms part of: 24 Fragments - 24 hours of music, neuroscience and performance at 24 sites across the UK

It takes place on: Saturday 21 February 2009 1-3pm: Sonic Arts Research Centre (free concert).

SARC will be linked with all 24 UK sites, but will have a direct link with Bristol's watershed where poetry and voice works by Bristol based performers, led by Hewlett Packard South West fellow Ralph Hoyte will be presented.

DETAILS: (www.thefragmentedorchestra.com/24fragments)

Sound artist Paul Stapleton, violinist Gascia Ouzounian and improvisers Pedro Rebelo and Franziska Schroeder will be teaming up for a feast of sonic explorations during the 24 Fragments event, a 24-hour festival funded by The Wellcome Trust, including 24 sites of The Fragmented Orchestra, which are linked up by microphones that pick up sound at each site. The diverse locations which will host events include Gloucester Cathedral, Goodison Park football ground, Institute of Psychiatry London, Brighton Pier, National Portrait Gallery, The Rochelle School, Blueprint Recording Studios in Manchester, and the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast. All of the events during the 24-hour festival are designed to be relayed through the distributed ‘neuronal system’ of The Fragmented Orchestra and via its website: www.thefragmentedorchestra.com

The Fragmented Orchestra is a huge distributed musical instrument, modelled on the firing of the human brain’s neurons. Made possible by a £50,000 prize awarded to Jane Grant, John Matthias and Nick Ryan, as the winning project for the PRS Foundation’s New Music Award 2008, it is installed at the FACT Gallery Liverpool and 23 other sites across the UK and runs from December 12th 2008 to 22nd February 2009.  24 Fragments will run at all of these sites for 24 hours, from 10am on Saturday 21 February. This sprawling collaborative work, spanning music, art and science, has evolved from a fascination by its creators of the inherent sonic rhythms and adaptive learning of spiking neurons – ie. the electrical impulses of the human brain.

Top of Page

Programme

Max Bruch     Eight Pieces Op.83, Nos. 2, 3 and 7
John Ireland   Fantasy-Sonata for clarinet and piano
Brahms          Sonata in Eb, Op.120, No. 2 for piano and viola
Mozart           ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio, K.498

The Plane Dukes Rahman Trio have been the Artists-in- Residence at The Queen’s University of Belfast from 2000- 2008. This concert will be a unique opportunity to celebrate their extraordinary contribution to musical life at Queen’s. It will be followed by a reception in McMordie Hall. All are welcome.

The Trio was formed in 1992, a logical convergence of two highly successful and critically acclaimed duos, of which pianist Sophia Rahman was the unifying factor. They have since become an enormously popular ensemble, appearing in recital at the Wigmore Hall, on London’s South Bank and for music clubs and festivals across the United Kingdom. The Trio was a prizewinner in the 1993 John Tunnell Trust and its members are all major prizewinners of the Royal Overseas League Music Competition.

The Trio has given many broadcasts for BBC Radio 3, including the first UK broadcast performance of the Francaix Trio live from Belfast, and of John Woolrich’s A Farewell from St. George’s, Bristol. They gave the world première of two works by Paul Newland commissioned especially for them by the Spitalfields Festival and were invited to perform at the 1998 International Viola Congress in Glasgow and at the 2000 Lionel Tertis Viola Competition on the Isle of Man. They have given recitals in France, Argentina, Uruguay, the United Arab Emirates, Republic of Ireland and the Channel islands.

The Trio has recorded a critically acclaimed disc of chamber music by Schumann and Kurtág for ASV in association with the Royal Overseas League. To commemorate their tenth anniversary they released a second disc on ASV of music by Max Bruch. A disc of Rebecca Clarke’s complete viola works which features all the members of the Trio was released by Naxos in 2007.

Top of Page

Alongside an industrial classic by Gilles Gobeil and the lyricism of Pippa Murphy, Pete Stollery presents three of his own acousmatic pieces: Still Voices, made exclusively from the sounds of a whisky distillery; Vox Magna, made from a steel mill; and Onset/Offset, “...like scraping the inside of my head out with a spoon.” (Matthew Herbert).

Top of Page

All of the composers will be in Belfast to diffuse their concert programmes. Four of them (Moore, Harrison, Berezan and Smalley), will also be taking part in a sound diffusion research project being conducted by PhD student Sarah Bass. The concerts are free and open to the public.

Top of Page

‘The ICC is a ready-made community of creators, performers, and listeners, and they are blazing a trail for 21st-century music in Ireland.’ The Guardian

‘…the group’s progress will be watched with great interest.’ Michael Dervan, The Irish Times

‘If these pieces are representative, then the future of composition from Ireland looks bright indeed.’ JMI: Journal of Music in Ireland

ENSEMBLE ICC is at the vanguard of music in Ireland, performing music by the Irish Composers' Collective, music which is literally hot off the press. The group is particularly excited about this programme, which features music for string ensemble, electronics as well as ground-breaking work with video and electronics.

With an all-star cast of Brona Cahill (violin), Cian Ó Dúill (viola), Kate Ellis (cello), Daniel Bodwell (bass), ENSEMBLE ICC are not to be missed.

Works by Jane Cassidy, Ian McDonnell, Johanne Heraty, Emma Brennan, Louise Harte, Richard Gill and Shane McKenna.

www.irishcomposerscollective.org

Top of Page

Call for Papers

The Organising Committee is pleased to announce that the 14th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music will take place at Queen's University Belfast, from 30 June to 4 July 2010.

The theme of the conference - BACH - has been inspired by the symbolism of 14, Bach's numeric signature, and will commemorate the anniversaries of the deaths of Johann Sebastian (260th), Anna Magdalena (250th) and Maria Barbara (290th), as well as the 300th birthday of Wilhelm Friedemann. Participants may wish to incorporate the theme, but proposals in any area of Baroque music are welcome.

For further details, please refer to the poster: 14th Baroque Conference 2010

Organising Committee
Yo Tomita (Chair)
Alison Dunlop, Tanja Kovacevic (Coordinators)

Top of Page

Edwin van der Heide studied Sonology at the Royal Conservatory, where he graduated in 1992. He is working as an autonomous artist in the field of sound, space and interaction. His current work is hard to define in the traditional terms of music, sound art or media art because he is often working on the edge and the characteristics of the used medium. In this sense the medium does not just mediate but is being explored and redefined. Although qualities of musical language are being used in the development of the work it does not mean that the presentation form of the work is necessarily related to the concert form known in music. The result can either be an installation, a performance or an environment. In 1995 he was invited to become a teacher at the interfaculty Image and Sound / ArtScience of the Royal Conservatory and the Royal Arts Academy in The Hague. In 2002 he started lecturing at the Media Technology MSc program of Leiden University. In 2007 he became Assistant Professor.

This concert will present a series of pieces including Spatial Interferences, which is based on spatial interference patterns of sound that move in space; Impulse, which is based on very short impulses that interact with each other based on logic operations; and Field of overtones, a work in progress that explores the collaboration of overtones and which is conducted in collaboration with Leiden University in The Netherlands.

Top of Page

New musical instrument drums up YouTube hit

PhD student Peter Bennett pictured with his BeatBearing instrument A video of a new musical instrument created by a Queen’s University Belfast student has attracted over one million hits on the internet. PhD student Peter Bennett (26) from Stevenage, England, made the video to demonstrate the BeatBearing - his electronic musical instrument that uses ball bearings to create different drum patterns. The initial demonstration of the prototype has now been viewed more than one million times on internet video site YouTube. The BeatBearing has been created as part of research into the use of ‘tangible interfaces’ for new musical instruments. The research is being led by Sile O’Modhrain within the renowned Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) at Queen’s. The BeatBearing is an example of minimalist modern design created from chrome, transparent Perspex and computer graphics. It acts as a rhythm sequencer - a red line sweeps across the grid, playing a sound whenever a ball bearing is encountered, “like an updated version of the old piano-roll”, according to Bennett. Peter is currently studying for a PhD in the SARC at Queen’s and the BeatBearing is just one of many interesting projects in the department. He said: “The BeatBearing project is being developed as part of my PhD. It started out as a weekend project when one of my colleagues left ball bearings lying around the lab and I wondered how you could make music with them.” Although Peter has been bombarded with people interested in purchasing the new instrument, he hasn’t considering selling it just yet. Instead, he has written a ‘make your own BeatBearing’ step-by-step guide to be published soon in the American magazine “MAKE” (http://makezine.com/). Peter said: “The popularity of the BeatBearing has been useful for my PhD as I can get feedback about how other people have interpreted my design. “It will be even more useful when people start building their own and making adjustments to the original design.” His invention is also the focus of a short film being produced by Queen’s MA film student Gus Sutherland. Gus said: “I guess I was interested in the story mainly because I met Pete and we had similar ideas of music technology. I saw the video on YouTube and that he had developed an innovative new approach. “I’ve had a bit of a go at it and I’ve seen footage of other people using it and I think it’s a good design. I’ve seen other designs that may not be quite as engaging visually.” *More information on the BeatBearing can be found on Peter’s academic homepage:http://www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/~pbennett/ The BeatBearing demonstration video can be viewed on YouTube at: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wreP8FMupyM

Top of Page

Irish Baroque ensemble, Tonos, will perform a programme of music for guitar and voice from the 17th and 18th centuries – a period during which large numbers of Irish left to work and soldier in Continental Europe and the New World. The Flight of the Earls in 1607 is often thought of as the beginning of the exodus that would continue for centuries. This concert will feature music the immigrants would have encountered in Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, and the Americas, by composers such as Turlough Ó Carolan, Ruairí Dall Ó Catháin, Gaspar Sanz, Etienne Moulinié, and Girolamo Kapsberger. Tonos comprises Róisín O’Grady (soprano) & Eamon Sweeney (Baroque guitar) and was formed in 2007. They specialise in little-known repertoire for voice and guitar from seventeenth-century Europe and perform a unique blend of Irish, English, and European music from the Baroque period. In 2008 Tonos gave recitals in the John Field Room, the National Gallery of Ireland, and were broadcast in concert by Lyric FM. They will make their London debut in February 2009.

Top of Page

Internationally renowned musicians Darragh Morgan and Mary Dullea perform Simon Mawhinney’s large-scale work for violin and piano, Hunshigo. This concert will also serve as the official launch of Altarus Records’ recent CD release of the piece. This CD contains three works, all of which were premiered by Morgan and Dullea during 2001-2007. This fruitful relationship, which has resulted in compositions specifically tailored to these musicians outstanding skills, has resulted in many performances in venues across the world: Ireland, Britain, USA, Korea and South Africa. The performance will be followed by a reception in McMordie Hall in which the audience will have an opportunity to meet the performers and composer.

Hunshigo is named after a lake in the Mourne area. Cast in a single movement lasting forty-five minutes, the composition has been described by Michael Finnissy as balancing ‘mysterious other-worldly stillness and lavish ebullience of texture.’ Another recent description of the work writes, ‘The work breathes in long phrases, rising out of mysterious nocturnal mists into an unsettled half-light, a region of the imagination where conscious thought meets dream and unreality. The whole piece, in fact, feels like a journey down through ever more inaccessible areas of pre- conscious thought… The climax, in soaring double-stops over an apocalyptic mælstrom of piano accompaniment is as impressive a passage of chamber music as you are likely to encounter.’

Violinist Darragh Morgan enjoys a hugely diverse and rewarding career. Originally from Belfast and now based in London, he has led world-class international ensembles, such as the Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta, Musik Fabrik and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. As a concerto soloist, highlights include invitations from the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland,the Ulster Orchestra, the RTE Concert Orchestra and the KZN Philharmonic.

Mary Dullea is from Cork, Ireland and studied at the Royal College of Music, London on the Edith Best Scholarship. Her Masters degree in Contemporary Music Studies is from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is also currently undertaking a PhD in performance at the University of Ulster focusing on the use of the inside of the piano. As soloist and chamber musician she has built an impressive reputation as a performer and commissioner of new music and she has performed throughout Ireland, England, Europe, USA, Hong Kong and South Africa at festivals including Brighton, Huddersfield, Aldeburgh, Reggello (Italy) and National Arts Festival (South Africa). Mary broadcasts regularly for BBC Radio 3. In 2004 she was lecturer in piano at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa and she is currently on the teaching staff of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

Top of Page

A concert of electronic and electroacoustic music that plays with the listener’s sense of space and place. Music that moves in three-dimensional space has been a goal of musicians for centuries and the Sonic Lab is the perfect site for presenting new musical works that engage the listener’s spatial and geographical imagination. Modern technologies make it possible for music to breathe in space and to bridge the distances between ourselves and places that we remember or imagine. From the concert hall to the rain forest, space and place are woven together in our minds. Hear works by Truax, Lillios, Moeller, Lyon, Kendall, and more.

Top of Page

The banjo and accordion duet of Angelina and Martin is one of the finest examples of contemporary Irish traditional music making.

Angelina Carberry was born in Manchester in the late 70’s into a County Longford musical family steeped in traditional music. Her banjo style echoes that of her father Peter and especially her grandfather Kevin Carberry, a well-known musician at County Longford ceilithe and house dances. Angelina is now renowned for her light-handed, sparkling touch on the banjo. Her unmistakable sound is captured on her solo 2005 CD, An Traidisún Beo. This critically acclaimed recording was followed by a duet with her husband, Martin Quinn. Both recordings received critical acclaim from leading music journalists and throughout music circles. In addition to recording and performing, Angelina is also a respected music teacher and popular banjo tutor at many festivals throughout the country and abroad.

Martin Quinn comes from the townland of Carricknagavna, which lies amongst the hills of South Armagh, and is a grandson of noted singer John Ned Quinn. With plenty of encouragement from his Parents Seamus and Mary, Martin developed a keen interest in traditional music and especially that of the button accordion. Martin took up the accordion in 1981 and since has become regarded as one of its finest exponents. Martin began his professional career as a musician in 1994, touring internationally with various bands including Lá Lugh and Dorsa. He has featured on TV and radio nationally and internationally and has contributed to Armagh fiddler player Paul Bradley’s solo album The Atlantic Roar and more recently on composer Josephine Keegan‘s CD Lifeswork and Louth fiddler Gerry O’Connor’s CD, Journey Man.

Top of Page

Edwin van der Heide will give a seminar entitled "The Spatial Properties of a Medium in relation to the Human Body - explorations of the electromagnetic and acoustical space. "

The Talk:
In this presentation, I will explore the spatial properties of a medium in relation to the human body. I will discuss my piece Spatial Interferences, based on spatial interference patterns of sound that move in space. Since sound has a wavelength varying from more then 15 meters for the lowest frequency that we can hear to almost 1.5 centimeters for the highest frequency we can hear it's possible to create spatial interference patterns that are much larger, of similar size to our body and a much smaller then the size of our body. This piece is builds upon experiments done for the permanent installation 'Son-O-House' that I realized together with the architect Lars Spuybroek in 2004.

About Edwin van der Heide:
Edwin van der Heide studied Sonology at the Royal Conservatory, where he graduated in 1992. He is working as an autonomous artist in the field of sound, space and interaction. His current work is hard to define in the traditional terms of music, sound art or media art because he is often working on the edge and the characteristics of the used medium. In this sense the medium does not just mediate but is being explored and redefined. Although qualities of musical language are being used in the development of the work it does not mean that the presentation form of the work is necessarily related to the concert form known in music. The result can either be an installation, a performance or an environment. In 1995 he was invited to become a teacher at the interfaculty Image and Sound / Art Science of the Royal Conservatory and the Royal Arts Academy in The Hague, The Netherlands. In 2002 he started lecturing at the Media Technology MSc program of Leiden University. In 2007 he became Assistant Professor. Currently he is the chair of the program. This is a rotating position.

Top of Page

Dr Carolan will give a seminar entitled "The First Collection of Irish Music: John and William Neal’s Collection of the Most Celebrated Irish Tunes (Dublin, 1724)".

Top of Page

Professor Hellawell will give a seminar entitled: "Walkways and Escalators: Musical Form as Topography".

Top of Page

This concert will feature performances by students enrolled in the School of Music and Sonic Arts performance programme. For the first time in its history, Queen’s is offering performance instruction in genres that range from Western art music (classical and contemporary) to experimental, improvised, popular, and traditional music. Join us for what will be an eclectic concert featuring some of the finest student performers from all years and different areas of study.

Top of Page

IMPROVISATION | DIGITAL | THE EAR | THE EYE |
THE HEART | CONTRA-DIGITAL | THE NETWORK | THE
MUSICIAN | THE AUDIENCE |LIFE | ARTIFICIAL |
CONTRA-SIMULATION | APPROPRIATION | LIVE CODING

The Legion does not prescribe its sights or sounds; they are the product of digital and contra-digital networks of gates, tables, switches, speaker objects, cabling and data... The Legion is not a band – we don’t play at weddings, BUT we like playing retrospectives!

This event commemorates 5 years of the Sonic Arts Research Centre, in particular its improvisatory and subversive side....

Top of Page

There will be a full day German Palaeography Study Course on Saturday 17 January 2009 in the Music Building, Queen’s University Belfast. Further information available here.

Top of Page

Top of Page

Virtual Acoustics and Virtual Reality research at TKK

The Talk:
In this presentation, I shall give an overview on some of the research topics investigated at the Department of Media Technology, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland (TKK). The main areas to be covered are room acoustic modeling, augmented reality, and new user interface techniques. On theoretical side, my focus is on room acoustic modeling and I'll present a new modeling technique called room acoustic radiance transfer. Practical cases cover a wider scope and include, for example, Auralization of Marienkirche, Virtual Air Guitar and Kick-Ass Kung-Fu.

About Lauri Savioja:
Lauri Savioja works as a professor for the Department of Media Technology in the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), Finland. He received the degree of Doctor of Science in Technology in 1999 from the Department of Computer Science, TKK. His research interests include virtual reality, room acoustics, and auditory displays.

Top of Page

The Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Queen’s is hosting “Ireland, Britain and the Americas: The International Book Trade in the Long Eighteenth Century” at the School of Music and Sonic Arts (Music) on 9 January 2009. This conference is free for Queen’s students or staff who do not wish to avail themselves of catering arrangements. A programme and registration form is available here.

See also http://www.qub.ac.uk/cecs where a copy of the abstracts is supplied. For further queries contact the conference convenor, Dr Sarah McCleave (Music and Sonic Arts) at s.mccleave@qub.ac.uk

Top of Page

The seminar and concert due to be given next week by Olivier Pasquet have unfortunately had to be cancelled. BLISS (Belfast Legion for Improvised Sights and Sounds) will instead perform at the lunchtime concert on Thursday 18th December in SARC, 1.10pm.

Top of Page

Within the context of the EU Culture 2007 project COMEDIA - COoperation and MEdiation in DIgital Arts - the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) at Queen’s University Belfast is hosting an open platform on network music performance on the 11th of December 2008, 7.30pm. This event was programmed to coincide with the launch of the Fragmented Orchestra Project (www.thefragmentedorchestra.com).

The performance includes the work Disparate bodies 3.0, a musical feast of graphically inspired improvisatory action. Disparate Bodies 3.0 is the third in a series of strategies, which addresses the network as a performance environment exploring multi-modal remote presence and key issues in “playing apart”, such as Performance Cues, Distributed Electronic Scores, Remote Monitoring, Performance Avatars and Dramaturgical Strategies.

The concert happens simultaneously in three sites: at SARC in Belfast, at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada.

PERFORMERS:

Performers at SARC/Belfast:
Franziska Schroeder - saxophones
Pedro Rebelo - composer/piano and instrumental parasites
Alain Renaud - network technologies

Performers at the Deep Listening institute. Ltd./ Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute/New York
Pauline Oliveros - accordion
Jonas Braasch - soprano saxophone
Doug Van Nort - laptop

Performer at Banff Center for the Arts/Canada:
Chris Chafe (Director of CCRMA at Stanford University) - Celleto

Project’s website: www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/pages/db

Top of Page

Programme

JS Bach   Partita No.1 in B flat major BWV 825
Brahms   Rhapsody in B minor Op. 79/1
Brahms   Variations in D major Op. 21/1
Deirdre McKay   Time, Shining
Chopin   Sonata No. 3 in B minor Op. 58

First prizewinner of three international piano competitions, including the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition and the 2003 AXA Dublin International Piano Competition, Finnish pianist Antti Siirala has already established himself as a star on the international stage.
Despite still only being twenty-eight, he has worked with numerous renowned conductors, including Paavo Berglund, Thierry Fischer, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, and Osmo Vänskä.

Siirala has performed with a host of international orchestras including the Detroit Symphony, BBC Symphony, Liverpool Philharmonic, Irish National Symphony, and the Swedish National Orchestra. He has also appeared in recital at London’s Wigmore Hall and the Cologne Philharmonie and has featured on numerous festival bills throughout the world.

His debut recording of Schubert transcriptions for Naxos in 2003 received outstanding reviews and the following year, his recording of works by Brahms for Ondine received Gramophone Magazine’s “Editor’s Choice” award, and the highest rating in the category of interpretation from Piano News.

At the heart of Antti Siirala’s repertoire are the compositions of Beethoven and Brahms; however, he is also a champion of new music, having premiered works by Walter Gieseler, Kuldar Sink, Uljas Pulkkis, and Kalevi Aho.

“The stuff of heroics and dark pools, flowers and storms. Standing ovation. Victory”. International Piano Quarterly

Presented in Association with Moving on Music and Music Network
Tickets: £10/£7
Available from: Belfast Welcome Centre (028 9024 6609) or online from www.movingonmusic.co.uk

Top of Page

A regular at Ronnie Scott’s world famous Jazz Club in London, Bruce Adams has enjoyed a career opposite artists like Roy Ayers, Bob Berg, Airto and Monty Alexander. Bruce’s big band work has included the Cat Anderson chair with the Echoes of Ellington orchestra, Kenny Baker’s Dozen, the Scottish Radio Orchestra, BBC Northern Radio Orchestra, Jools Holland’s Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, Tommy Sampson Big Band, Don Lusher Big Band and one of the last concerts of the legendary Ted Heath Orchestra. Bruce also featured in The History of Trumpet Jazz with Digby Fairweather, Guy Barker and Kenny Baker.

Apart from leading his own quartet, his studio work in recent years has included playing the Cat Anderson solo in The Madness in Great Ones for the Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s Such Sweet Thunder, featuring as soloist on Jools Holland’s album Hop the Wag and the solo spot in the BBC Radio Big Band with Barry Forgie.

“….steely chops and faultless technique…all the bravura of a Don Goldie or a Doc Severinsen. Here is a confident player at the peak of his powers.”Digby Fairweather, Jazz Rag.


QUB Big Band, directed by Stephen Barnett
Guest Soloist: Bruce Adams (trumpet)
Thursday 11 December, 7.30pm
Black Box, Belfast

QUB Big Band was founded in 2003 and has rapidly become one of the School’s most popular performing outfits, featuring student performers but also giving a platform to the top talent of the NI jazz circuit. Tonight’s concert also features a special guest from the London scene, international trumpet star Bruce Adams.

Tickets: £8/£6 from School of Music and Sonic Arts (9097 5337)

Top of Page

A concert of electronic / electro-acoustic music by School of Music and Sonic Arts staff. Featuring works by Gary Kendall, Eric Lyon, Chris McClelland, Simon Mawhinney, Pedro Rebelo, and Paul Wilson.

NB This is a change from the previously advertised concert (Ouzounian / Schroeder), which has been postponed until May 2009.

Top of Page

Oliver Messiaen was one of the most significant composers of the twentieth century and by the time of his death in 1992 he had achieved extraordinary international fame. This concert, given on the evening of the composer’s 100th birthday, will consist of a complete performance of the legendary Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant- Jésus (Twenty Contemplations on the Christ-Child). This epic work is widely considered one of the most stunning and demanding virtuoso piano works ever written. It is a composition in which Messiaen explores his highly personal and mystical interpretation of the Nativity, and was written in 1944 shortly after the composer was released from a Nazi prison-camp. The range of the music is extraordinary, ranging from deep contemplation and abstraction to moments of grandiose cosmic violence. The deep tenderness of some movements is contrasted with the anguish of passages which prefigure the Cross. We hear Messiaen’s vision of the music of the Stars and the Birds and the Angels. Throughout the twenty movements there is a recurring sense of intense joy, even ecstasy, which has been known to overpower audience and performer alike.

The performance is given by composer and pianist Simon Mawhinney, who first developed an interest in Messiaen nineteen years ago. Although his performances of Messiaen during the centenary year have earned him several standing ovations, this special performance of Vingt Regards will be the first he has given during Advent.

Complementary seasonal refreshments will be available during the interval.

Simon Mawhinney is a Lecturer at the School of Music and Sonic Arts at Queen’s, where his teaching includes composition and performance. A CD of his music, including the 45-minute Hunshigo for violin and piano, was recently released by Altarus Records. His current composition projects include works for musicians and ensembles in France, Iceland, Germany and Austria. Piano performance forms an integral part of Mawhinney’s work. Described by the Irish Times as an ‘ardent’ performer, he has a wide repertoire ranging from Bach to Boulez, giving performances which have received critical acclaim throughout Europe. A review of a recent all-Chopin recital described the performance as ‘weighty, intellectual, hard-edged and exhilarating.’ In 2009 he will record a CD of two of his large-scale piano works.

Top of Page

Professor Furlong will give a seminar entitled Music by Numbers: From Physics and Psychoacoustics, to Cognitive Audition .

The Talk:
This seminar will focus on the conceptual paradigms that have been adopted in the explanation of musical phenomena. One of the earliest recorded conceptual paradigms is that of the Metaphysical interpretation of number as was adopted by Pythagoras. The intervalic misalignments featured in Pythagorean tuning were reduced by the introduction of Just Intonation (JI) and other tuning systems, culminating in the introduction of equal temperament or 12-tet. Jean-Philippe Rameau adapted the mechanistic conceptual paradigm of the 17th C to musical harmony. In the 19th C, a mechanistic approach to mind-body interaction was developed in the Psychophysics of Gustav Fechner, while the musical significance of Physiology was also recognised by Hermann Helmholtz. Albert Bregman’s Auditory Scene Analysis (ASA) was a 20th C attempt to adopt the organizational principles defined by Gestalt Theory to address auditory grouping phenomena. Thus, the overall development of theoretical approaches to Music has moved from an exclusively physical foundation, to one where physical, physiological, and cognitive contributions to experience are recognized. This has been advocated by Embodied Cognition, where the emphasis is on the categorization of experience. Thus, in approaching the experience of music, it is appropriate to consider number and numerical proportion from a conceptual perspective.

About Dermot Furlong:
Dermot Furlong studied Engineering Science in Trinity College Dublin with a particular personal focus on electronics, acoustics, and audio engineering. He subsequently worked as a corporate engineer in the U.S. and Ireland before returning to Trinity as a lecturer so that he could engage in further research on audio and music related issues. His area of particular interest was that of architectural acoustics, spatial audio perception and its significance for music recording technique. In 1995 he was involved in the definition of the postgraduate Music and Media Technologies programme in Trinity, for which he was Course Director from 1996 until 2006. His current research interests relate to the development of audio engineering technologies derived from musical and cognitive concerns. He is a member of the Audio Engineering Society and the Acoustical Society of America.

Top of Page

Dr Fry will give a seminar entitled Remembrance of Jazz past: Sidney Bechet in France

New Orleans reedman Sidney Bechet’s early trips to Europe occupy an iconic place in jazz history.  But it was not until the late forties and fifties that “Bechetmania” struck France.  Bechet was no straightforward revivalist, and his versions of old Creole folksongs – or their ur-type – were regarded with suspicion by some critics; but they struck a chord with French audiences, generating nostalgia for a common past that may never have been.  This paper considers the generative as well as regenerative aspect of memory, and its effect on historiography.  I argue that Bechet “played (back) into being” a Creole identity that was especially resonant in post-war France.

Andy Fry joined the Music Department of King’s College, London in 2007, having previously taught at the University of California, San Diego and, as a visiting professor, at Berkeley. His principal research areas are Jazz (particularly pre-1950) and music in twentieth-century France; he also has an interest in many forms of musical theatre. Several of these concerns come together in his published articles, on Josephine Baker, jazz, and black shows in interwar France. He is currently completing a monograph on African-American Music and Musicians in Paris to 1960.

Top of Page

A recital of Irish Art songs focusing on one of Ireland’s greatest miniaturists, Sir Hamilton Harty.

Mairéad Sheerin was born in London and studied Music and English Literature at the University of Birmingham. She then continued her training on the Opera Course at The Royal College of Music as Junior Exhibitioner and D’Oyly Carte scholar where she studied with Margaret Kingsley. She now studies with Paul Farrington.

Mairéad has toured internationally as soprano soloist with English Concert directed by Trevor Pinnock performing Bach’s St Matthew Passion. She has performed most of the standard oratorio repertoire with choral societies around the UK. Mairéad went straight from The Royal College of Music to Glyndebourne where she performed many roles.

After the success of her recital The Mother of all Recitals (songs and arias sung by mothers) at Southwark Cathedral, Mairead is now a regular recitalist at the Cathedral and will perform her recital of Irish Art Song on St Patrick’s Day, 2009.

Richard Black has long enjoyed a reputation as one of Britain’s leading opera repetiteurs and recital accompanists. As a founder member of The Artsong Collective he has been responsible for giving premieres of unheard song repertoire from the twentieth century, and he also includes over 500 songs from the standard repertoire in his performed list. His knowledge of the chamber music literature is nearly as widespread, while in the opera sphere he has rehearsed and coached nearly three dozen operas including several by his particular speciality, Wagner.

Top of Page

A dream opportunity to experience a new suite of music from esteemed Mexican composer Murcof, who has released three highly-regarded albums on the Leaf Label.

This special commission will showcase Murcof’s distinctive hybrid of brooding electronics and classical sound sources as he fully integrates all facets of his music, whether acoustic, analogue or digital. Strings, pixilation, sound files, brass, digital sweeps, woodwind and video beams become a single entity in this new audiovisual masterpiece. More than anyone else, Murcof knows how to blend these elements seamlessly together to move his audience and immerse them in his peaceful, intense and limitless music.

Support comes from Oren Marshall, a pioneer of acoustic and electric tuba who straddles the classical, jazz, improvised and world music scenes. Using a bank of electronic effects, he is able to twist the tuba’s sound into new and wonderful shapes.

“Murcof attains a meditative, monumental grandeur.” Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times
“The most thrillingly out-there, transcendentally bewitching and metaphysically mind-warping trip.” Time Out

Presented in Association with Moving on Music

Tickets: £12/£8.

Available from: Belfast Welcome Centre (028 9024 6609) or online from www.movingonmusic.co.uk

Top of Page

Bach's chorales have been widely regarded as the cornerstone of musical education in the West for more than two centuries; however, for many of reasons, they have not yet been thoroughly researched with respect to a number of issues: for example, how did Bach himself become familiar with them, how did he used them in his own teaching, and how did he compile those works which are now so engrained in the organist’s canon? In an attempt to explore the composer's relationship with this genre, Queen's University Belfast is hosting a Study Day 'Bach and the chorale: influence, context and legacy'.

Issues to be addressed include:
(1) the hymnological sources and tradition which influenced and shaped Bach's compositional practices
(2) the development and expression of chorale related music in the hands of Bach, and
(3) the wider implications of this music, including its influence and reception.

The Study Day aims to integrate these independent strands and—in so doing—further illuminate our understanding of this important and oft-performed repertoire.

Programme:

11.00: Registration & Coffee

11.30–13.30: Session 1: Influence
1. “Present State of Research into Chorales in Bach’s Vocal Works and Four-Part Chorale Collections”
Nobuaki Ebata (Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo)

2. Keynote Address I: “Guidelines for Future Research into Bach and the Chorale: Aspects of Repertoire, Pedagogy, Theory and Practice” Professor Robin A. Leaver (Queen’s University Belfast)

3. Response, Questions & Discussion
Chair: Professor Yo Tomita (Queen’s University Belfast)

Lunch break

14.15–16.30: Session 2: Context and Legacy

1. Keynote Address II: “In Search of the Chorale-Mass”
Dr Geoffrey Webber (Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge)

2. “J.S. Bach’s Choralvorspiele in 1750: their Position, Associations and Implications”
Ian Mills (Queen’s University Belfast)

3. “Room for Improvement? Vogler and Bach’s Chorale Harmonisations”
Michael Quinn (DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, Dublin)

Registration:

The Study Day is free of charge but registration is essential.
The registration from is available from the organiser
Ian Mills: imills01@qub.ac.uk
or from the website:
www.music.qub.ac.uk/tomita/bachbib/conferences/Belfast-Nov2008/

Top of Page

Dr Kawabata will give a seminar entitled Rethinking 'Paganinian' Virtuosity.

Top of Page

This performance has unfortunately had to be cancelled.

Top of Page

History, an Exit Strategy: The Retrofuture Fabulations of kara lynch

The Talk:
A cartographer constructs a map of an individual creative history—that of the American artist kara lynch—as it emerges in connection to a collective history of African American cultural expression. Positioning history as dynamic systems of interwoven memory networks, the map follows lynch's traversals through various 'zones of cultural haunting': places where collective memories made invisible through systematic processes of cultural erasure may be recovered and revived. Through these traversals, which are inspired by lynch's 'forever project' 'Invisible', the map covers such terrains as: haunted narratives, the conspicuous invisibility of black bodies, the dialectics of materiality and immateriality that frame considerations of black subjectivity, concepts of technology within African American cultural traditions, and mechanisms of abstraction and coding within African American music and media. Finally, in contrast to discourses that frame the place of music as the site of sound, through its consideration of kara lynch's 'Invisible' the map suggests that music is instead the product of memory, and the result of lived experience.

About Gascia Ouzounian:
Gascia Ouzounian is an historian of contemporary music and sound art, and a violinist working in new and intermedia music. She studied music technologies and violin performance at McGill University, and critical studies/experimental practices in music at the University of California, San Diego, where she was a University Humanities Fellow. Her dissertation, 'Sound Art and Spatial Practices: Situating Sound Installation Art Since 1958', explored the emergence and development of sound installation art through the lense of critical spatial theory.

Ouzounian's writings have appeared in Journal for the Society of American Music, Contemporary Music Review, Revue Circuit, and The Radio Journal. As a violinist she has performed with such groups as Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Sinfonia Toronto, the Bang On A Can All- Stars, the Hutchins Consort, and the Theatre of Eternal Music under La Monte Young. Ouzounian is Lecturer in the School of Music and Sonic Arts at Queen's University Belfast.

Top of Page

Wed 12 - 10am-1pm, 2pm-5pm
Thu 13 - 10am-1pm, 2pm-5pm
Fri 14 - 10am-1pm, 2pm-5pm

AffecTech is an interactive audio-visual installation which uses physiological signals from the human body to explore notions of presence, action and reaction, as experienced by the viewer.  Born in the grey area where art and science meet,  the installation uses sensor enhanced chairs, cameras, interactive visuals and surround sound to place 2 viewers into the virtual world where the mediascape is dependent on and reactive to, the similarity or disparity of their bio-signals.

Viewers are asked to sit in one of the two chairs and place the palm of one hand over the two copper electrodes mounted on the arm.  This will read information from your body, which will control all you see and hear.  If the other chair is occupied you may experience brief moments of harmony with the other occupant.  This is normal, do not be alarmed.

AffecTech is a collaborative installation between the School of Creative Arts at Ulster University and the Sonic Art Research Centre (SARC) at Queens University Belfast.

Niall Coghlan
Benjamin Knapp
Javier Jaimovich
Donal O'Brien
Miguel Ortiz
Terry Quigley

Top of Page

Gay McKeon took an interest in uilleann piping in the 1960s under the tutelage of the renowned piper Leo Rowsome at the Piper’s Club on Thomas Street in Dublin’s city centre. Gay was also heavily influenced by many of the fiddle players who lived and played in Dublin at that time such as Sean Keane. Gay has recorded and toured with artists including Christy Moore, Maddy Prior and June Tabor and has recorded on numerous piping compilation albums.

Conor McKeon’s musical career began with whistle classes from Paul Mc Grattan and piping classes in Na Píobairí Uilleann with Terry Moylan, Nollaig Mac Cárthaigh, his father Gay, and later with Seán Óg Potts. Conor was awarded the TG 4 Young Traditional Musician of the year in 2001 and can be heard on numerous commercial recordings.

Sean McKeon grew up listening to music at home in Dublin, with his parents Gay and Mary Corcoran (fiddle and piano) being his earliest influences. Sean’s first and only formal lessons came from Sean Óg Potts. By the age of 15 Sean had amassed a total of 5 Fleadh Ceoil na hEireann titles. In recent years Sean has performed with Noel Hill, Robbie Hannan and Sean Keane as well as forging an exciting duet with fiddle player Liam O’Connor. Sean plays a full set of concert pitch pipes made by Cillian Ó Briain and released a recording in 2005 that features both his own music and that of his brother, Conor, and his father, Gay. Sean was awarded TG4 Young Traditional Musician of the Year in 2005.

Top of Page

‘From Station Island: setting to music the poetry of Seamus Heaney’

The distinguished composer Anthony Powers, Professor of Composition at The University of Cardiff, discusses issues arising from his recent work setting Heaney's poetry.

Anthony Powers  studied at Oxford, in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and at York with David Blake and Bernard Rands. He has taught at Dartington College of Arts, Exeter University, and is currently Professor of Composition at Cardiff University. Powers's music, published by Oxford University Press, is characterized by strong architectonic frameworks that support a language of poetic intensity and magical sonorities. Widely performed in the UK and overseas his major works include two symphonies (BBC Proms 1996 and BBCSO 2002), concertos for Steven Isserlis (cello) and Michael Thompson (horn), and Air and Angels (soloists, chorus and orchestra, Three Choirs Festival 2003). Recent works include commissions for Sorrel Quartet (String Quartet No 4, 2005), Schubert Ensemble (Nightsongs, 2006), Melvyn Tan/ Ronald Brautigam duo (Vanishing Points, 2008) and Okeanos (Riverwork, 2008).

A full work list and biography can be found at www.oup.co.uk/music/repprom/powers .  

Top of Page

For John Cage
Morton Feldman (1982)
Tuesday 28th October, 10pm
SARC

Violinist Gascia Ouzounian and pianist Luciane Cardassi present For John Cage (1982) by Morton Feldman, with video accompaniment by Ouzounian. The music's continuous evolution through the unfolding, repetition, and transformation of fragments of sound is mirrored in the video's structure: a composite of thousands of looping fragments that are alternately compressed and extended in time. Feldman's profoundly meditative and intimate score invites listeners to explore the limits of sonic perception; similarly, the video is marked by an abundance of negative space, within which groups of skating figures outline hypnotic patterns and groupings of visual frames.

Book online:
http://www.belfastfestival.com/Categories/ClassicalOpera/EventStore/?queryString=SARC%20presents%20For%20John%20Cage

Please note: this event was advertised as taking place on Thursday, 23 October. It will take place on Tuesday, 28 October at 10 pm in the Sonic Lab


Liam Gorry
(QUB PhD Student in Musicology)
Wednesday 29th October
1pm, McMordie Hall

Liam will give a seminar entitled "Orlando and the decline of accompanied recitatives in Handel’s London operas".


Luciane Cardassi, piano
Thursday 30 October, 1.10pm
Harty Room, Music

Brazilian-Canadian pianist Luciane Cardassi performs 20th- century pieces for piano by Stockhausen, Carter and Davidovsky, as well as 21st-century pieces she commissioned by Chantale Laplante (Canada) and Hywel Davies (U.K.).

Programme
Karlheinz Stockhausen  Klavierstück IX
Elliott Carter   Two Diversions
Chantale Laplante   For Piano, Tape and Conversation
Hywel Davies   Fourth Apostrophe
Mario Davidovsky   Synchronisms No. 6

Luciane Cardassi is a noted performer of new music who regularly premieres works by a diverse, international group of emerging and established composers. She earned a doctorate in contemporary music performance from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where was sponsored by the CAPES-Brazil Foundation. In 2006-07 Cardassi was a Visiting Lecturer at UCSD, where she taught courses in performance, music theory, and the music of Brazil. She is currently Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts. With support from the Canada Council for the Arts, in the last year Cardassi embarked on a series of collaborations with Canadian musicians including percussionist Eric Bumstead and violinist Gascia Ouzounian, and composers Chantale Laplante, John Celona, Giorgio Magnanensi, and Nancy J. Adler. She is the pianist of the new music ensemble Rubbing Stone, the resident ensemble of New Works Calgary.

Top of Page

Dr Michael Gurevich will give a seminar entitled "Dolphins and Digital Instruments: A Research Summary"


Seth Josel (electric guitar)
Thursday 6th November, 1.10pm
SARC Sonic Lab

Programme
Eve Beglarian Until it Blazes
Christopher Fox The Grain of Abstraction
Hans W. Koch Dazwischer
Eric Lyon Golden Melodies

Seth Josel is a guitar virtuoso specializing in the performance of contemporary music. Active as a recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with the leading orchestras and new music ensembles, Josel champions existing repertoire and regularly commissions new work for both acoustic and electric guitar. In this concert of music for electric guitar and digital electronics, Josel presents recent works written for him, including the world premiere of a piece for electric guitar and Max/MSP by Eric Lyon.

Top of Page

Dr Michael Gurevich will give a seminar entitled "Dolphins and Digital Instruments: A Research Summary".

Seth Josel (electric guitar)
Thursday 6th November, 1.10pm
Sonic Lab, SARC

Programme
Eve Beglarian  Until it Blazes
Christopher Fox  The Grain of Abstraction
Hans W. Koch  Dazwischer
Eric Lyon  Golden Melodies

Seth Josel is a guitar virtuoso specializing in the performance of contemporary music. Active as a recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with the leading orchestras and new music ensembles, Josel champions existing repertoire and regularly commissions new work for both acoustic and electric guitar. In this concert of music for electric guitar and digital electronics, Josel presents recent works written for him, including the world premiere of a piece for electric guitar and Max/MSP by Eric Lyon.

Top of Page

Joel Cathcart, who graduated with the top first in the BMus last summer, has just won the Second Undergraduate Musicology Competition of the Council of Heads of Music in Higher Education. This prize is awarded to the top undergraduate dissertation in Music across the island of Ireland. The jury voted unanimously in his favour. As the winner of the competition, Joel has been invited to give a paper based on his dissertation at the SMI Postgraduate Students’ Conference at NUI Maynooth next January. Congratulations!

Top of Page

We are delighted to report that the Silver Sounds exhibition, a collaboration between the Naughton Gallery and the Sonic Arts Research Centre has won the Times Higher Education Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Arts. At a ceremony in London last night the University’s Naughton Gallery’s Silver Sounds Exhibition took the top award in the category, beating off competition from universities all over the UK.

The exhibition is unique because visitors can ‘hear’ as well as see the University’s silver collection, through using handheld computers to highlight objects and listen to the artists’ interpretations. Ten internationally renowned sound artists created sound pieces to accompany 22 of the silver objects, exploring their origins and the reasons for their creation and use.

Commenting on the award, Queen’s University Vice-Chancellor Professor Peter Gregson said: “One of Queen’s most tangible contributions to the community it serves in Northern Ireland is its role as a patron of the arts. The Naughton Gallery at Queen’s is one of the most dynamic visual arts platforms in Belfast and plays a major role in enhancing the cultural and artistic life of Northern Ireland.

“I am delighted to congratulate our Curator of Art, Shan McAnena, and her colleagues in winning this well-deserved award for the ground breaking Silver Sounds exhibition. This was a truly collaborative project which enables us to share the University’s silver collection with the wider community through both sight and sound.”

The Gallery’s Curator Shan McAnena said: “The gallery team is thrilled and delighted that such a creative partnership has been recognised in this way. “We are particularly grateful to the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), and voluntary organisation ADAPT NI for their vision and faith in this project which helped to make this happen.”

The judges who chose Queen’s as the winner of the category praised the University’s work. Felicity Allen, Head of Learning at the Tate Modern, said: “Queen’s has enabled artists to produce an original piece of gallery interpretation that has the potential to be a model for other galleries as well as providing new routes into the collection for existing and new visitors.”

http://www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/main.php?page=projects&projID=54

Top of Page

This concert will feature emerging Mexican percussionist Norma Ferreira, presenting works by Globokar, Alvarez, Sierra and Arpeghis.

As a chamber musician and soloist, Norma Ferreira has participated with several ensambles as Ensamble de las Rosas, Conservatory, Igra Duet etc. Orquesta Sinfónica de Michoacán, International Orchestra Instrumenta Verano etc. She has collaborated with free-improvisation ensembles like “ Ensemble aspero”, Bliss Laptops etc. She has worked and studied with established musicians and composers such as Miguel González, David Schotzko , Pedro Carneiro , Valerie Naranjo , ICE Ensamble, Norberto Nandayapa, N.J. Zivkovick, Javier Álvarez , Julio Estrada, as well as continually championing the works of young and emerging composers.

In 2004 she obtained a scholarship to doing the project “XX: 100 years of unknown music” (recitals and conferences) supported by the Mexican Government. Her activities includes production and conduction of the radio program “ Ionization” of contemporary music, play in multidisciplinary projects Her ongoing projects include: premieres of works for electronics and percussion by young Mexican composers, multidisciplinary projects designers and doing a Masters degree in Music/geste/choregraphy in Paris, France.

http://www.myspace.com/dobleforte

Top of Page

Breandán Breathnach (1912-85) has been described as "..the single most important activist in Irish traditional music in the twentieth century."   His  Folk Music and Dances of Ireland and the journal Ceol, which he founded and edited, provided badly needed reference points for Irish traditional music and his five-volume collection of Irish music Ceol Rince na hÉireann is one of the most valuable resources available to Irish traditional musicians.  This talk will examine the background to the publication of this important collection, as well as tracing the source musicians and materials used by Breathnach in its compilation. Reference will also be made to some of the classic items found in the work.

Robbie Hannan grew up in Holywood, Co Down and studied both Celtic languages and Literature and Law in Queens University, Belfast.  He is currently Curator of Musicology at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.  Robbie took up the uilleann pipes in his mid-teens and  his recordings include two solo albums and a duet album with the Dublin fiddle player Paddy Glackin; he has taught and played the uilleann pipes at many festivals and concerts throughout Europe and the United States, and is well-known as a presenter of traditional music programmes on radio. He has been chairman of Na Píobairí Uilleann, the organisation of uilleann pipers, since 2006.

Top of Page

Andreas Weixler and Se-Lien Chuang will give a seminar entitled 'Computer Music, Improvised Instrumental Music and AVI Realtime Processes':

"In the seminar we present our artistic work coming from contemporary instrumental composition, algorithmic and computer aided music over multichannel computer music up to audiovisual interactivity.

As different forms of machine musicianship are blooming nowadays, we are focusing on a very specialized form of real-time performance with a computer system: virtuoso audiovisual interaction with musical instruments.

In this seminar we describe the development of our audiovisual real-time computer system and document performances with different kinds of musical instruments. The goals of this project are to create an interface for visual and music computing for an associated audiovisual composition and to create a performance of equal participation of sounds and visuals, musical inspiration and digital concepts. "

Top of Page

Daniel Morse is currently in his third year of PhD study in composition here at Queen's.

He was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii before attending the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he studied maths for two years before earning his Bachelor's degree in music. He then returned home to teach SCUBA diving and attend the University of Hawaii, where he earned his Master's degree in composition.

In 2006 Daniel came to Queen's, where he has since written for a number of instrumental media: this summer his Iapetus for orchestra was read by the Ulster Orchestra and his Klangmasse I was well received at the ICMC, which brought delegates to the School from around the world. Last summer his Nachtlied was premiered by the Ulster Youth Choir, and was subsequently broadcast on BBC Radio 3. His current project, Drei Blicke in einen Opal, explores settings of German Expressionist poetry for the uncharacteristic ensemble of baritone, two electric guitars, electric bass, kit percussion, and electronics. His particular interest is in the idea of musical contexts, both created and inherited, an area that he has explored with virtually every work of the last four years.

He will give a seminar entitled 'From moto perpetuo to perpetuità mota'.

Top of Page

The frequency and exposure of Bourne's solo work has been closely observed by various creative organisations and he has formed close working relationships with Luxton Cultural Associates, The British Council, The PRSF Foundation, CMN and the IJFO. Bourne has been commissioned to perform & produce music for FuseLeeds, Michael Tippett Foundation, London Jazz Festival, The Italian Instabile Orchestra, BBC Radio 3, Jazz on 3, Conservatoires UK, Faber Music and pianist Joanna MacGregor.

Currently, Matthew Bourne is Artist in Residence at Leeds College of Music, where he lectures in Composition and Piano while continuing to perform internationally as a solo artist and in collaboration with others. He has won a number of awards, including the International Jazz Festivals Organization (IJFO) International Jazz Award, 2005.

Top of Page

Dr Kendall will give a seminar entitled 'Spatial Organization and Artistic Thinking'

Top of Page

The Austria-based artist duo has specialised in audiovisual realtime processing with a special emphasis in contemporary instrumental composition and electroacoustic composition.

‘Our art work and research describes the hook-up between human and machine, between musical inspiration and digital concepts. Musical instruments act as interfaces for digital audio processing and enable human beings to communicate with digital technologies as well as to generate, receive and exchange data versus emotions, or in other words: to promote art and science.

‘In our residency at SARC we will explore new developments in our concept of composition/improvisation and audiovisual realtime processing as well as create electroacoustic music together with the exceptional spatialisation system of the Sonic Laboratory. A new aspect of our work with ensemble is the creation of an interactive score. Musicians are following instructions on their personal screens, which display orders either chosen by the composer/conductor or by an algorithm conducted via a wireless baton.

‘This concert will include a variety of our compositional work: electroacoustic multichannel music, art-video and audiovisual live processing of instrumental sounds.’

Top of Page

Programme

William Byrd Monsieur’s Alman and Variation
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck Hexachord Fantasia
Samuel Scheidt Cantilena Anglica Fortunae
JS. Bach Prelude and Fugue in C (Book II)
Prelude and Fugue in G (Book I)

Carole Cerasi has performed throughout Europe as well as in Israel, Japan, Colombia, Canada and USA.

With her group Ensemble Türk she explores the classical fortepiano chamber repertoire; they have given concerts in the UK (including the Wigmore Hall in London), Zürich Tonhalle, France and for the BBC.

Carole Cerasi is professor of harpsichord and fortepiano at the Royal Academy of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and the Yehudi Menuhin School. Her first solo CD of Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre won the Gramophone Award; discs of sonatas by C.P.E. Bach and works by Thomas Tomkins were received to great critical acclaim, including the Diapason d’Or de l’Année. Her next CD, J.S. Bach and the Möller Manuscript, won a further Diapason d’Or de l’Année and came second in the Gramophone Baroque Instrumental Awards. This was followed by a CD of music by one of Scarlatti’s most colourful and quirky contemporaries, Manuel Blasco de Nebra. Her recent recording of Bach’s English Suites has received excellent reviews.

Top of Page

Evan Parker writes:

“Almost every statement I try to construct about my solo music seems to fall short of really explaining anything...

To speak of “improvisation” after thirty years of returning again and again to the same instrument seems either willfully naive or hopelessly utopian.

Stan Tracey called one of his solo recordings Hello, Old Adversary and I know that state of mind, but at the same time, how to explain the appetite that draws me back?

To see what I’ve remembered from last time?

To test some material that has been prepared but not performed?

To get to a place where something I’ve never played or heard before happens?

To hear what the room acoustic has to offer?

To play for people, hoping it will mean something to them?

I know that the limits are in me and that Adolphe Sax gave me an instrument that will respond to the imagination.

For the technically minded, Sigurd Rascher’s statement remains a powerful inspiration: ‘The student who realises that mind (concept) and body (embouchure, fingering) must work together, will in due course succeed. We underestimate , too often, the power of the active mind.’

The instrument.
The tradition.
The individual voice.
Still drifting on a reed.

Top of Page

Ambient Forces is a cutting-edge music project that brings together two of Northern Ireland's most innovative, improvising composers: Alan Niblock (double bass) and Roy Mitchell (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet). The aim of the duo is freely to explore their creative ideas and spontaneously produce coherent freeform compositions that have been inspired by a variety of sources, ranging from the acoustic environment, which influenced their first album, through to verbal communication, a theme that is evident throughout their forthcoming second album. 

This latest phase of Ambient Forces’ work sees them joined by esteemed percussionist Paul Clarvis, as they establish a series of compositions through collective mental visualisation. This fascinating performance at the Sonic Arts Research Centre will be recorded live and will demonstrate yet another unique experiment for Ambient Forces.

Presented in Association with Moving On Music.

Supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and The National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland 

Tickets: £10/7 from Belfast Welcome Centre (028 9024 6609) and online at www.movingonmusic.co.uk

Top of Page

Information on the new Performance Programme at Queen's has been announced! Options are available to new students on both the BMus and BSc pathways, and details are available at 

www.mu.qub.ac.uk/Education/Undergraduates/BMusPathway/Performance/.

Please Note

Students wishing to enrol on the Performance Programme must undertake a Performance Evaluation. Those interested should visit the above link for details on the evaluation requirements. If you wish to participate, please send an email, by 15 September 2008, to the Performance Administrator, Mrs. Audrey Smyth, at audrey.smyth@qub.ac.uk.  

Your email should contain the following details: 

1. Your name 
2. Your instrument 
3. Which  option you wish to participate in (Performance 1 or Performance Workshop 1) 
4. For Performance Workshop 1 only, please specify the following:  

(i) If you are interested in performing Irish traditional music. 

(ii) If you have specific technical requirements for your evaluation (i.e. a drumkit, amplification, A/V playback system). 

Top of Page

Top of Page

Ciara Burnell (3rd year PhD, Music), was last week was awarded the Temperley Prize for the best student paper at the 3rd biennial North American British Music Studies Association (NABMSA) conference in Toronto. 

There were several strong student papers at the conference, but the members of the NABMSA awards committee were unanimous in their choice of Ciara’s paper, ‘Dances of Death and Nostalgic Waltzes: the Connotations of Dance Idioms in the Late Orchestral Works of Frank Bridge’. In awarding the prize, the committee chair described the paper as ‘the type of important, polished, and interesting work that the prize was meant to encourage’. It was certainly that: her paper prompted a lot of discussion from those present. 

Congratulations!

Top of Page

Top of Page

The School of Music and Sonic Arts wishes to engage the services of a number of Teaching Assistants and Performance Tutors to help in the delivery of modules on the BMus Music and BSc Music Technology pathways during the academic year 2008-09. 

To apply please read the guidelines, and download and complete the appropriate Application Form, both available here.

Please note that those who have previously acted as Performance Tutors or Teaching Assistants in the School must also complete and return a form if they wish to be considered for future opportunities. The deadline for completed applications is 5.00pm on 19 June 2008.

Top of Page

We would like to invite you to see, hear, and participate in a series of interactive sound installations that are final projects for the MA "Compositional Environments II" module. These will be presented on the afternoons of Monday 19th, Wednesday 21st and Friday 23rd of May, (this week!) with receptions on Monday and Friday.

Please note that Wednesday's installations will take place in the Student Union building (all others are at SARC), and the reception on Monday will be at 7pm following the BSc vs. Postgrad/Staff football match.


Schedule, Locations and Participants

Monday 19th May (SARC) @ 2pm-5pm
Wine Reception 7pm-8:30pm
Javier Jaimovich - Sonic Lab
Patrick Hegarty - Multimedia Room


Wednesday 21st May (Enterprise Room, Student's Union) 11am-6pm
Christopher Chong
Adam Neal


Friday 23rd May (SARC) 2pm-5pm
Wine Reception 5pm-7pm
Donal O'Brien - Sonic Lab
Carey Dodge - Sonic Lab
Liam Donaghy - MA Lab
Bertram Knappitsch - Multimedia Room
Charalampos Saitis - Corridor
Brendan McCloskey - Control Room

Top of Page

The performance programme at Queen's will undergo a major expansion in 2008 thanks to a major investment, by the University, in instrumental tuition. The additional annual funding will provide students with more individual lessons, the option of a second study in another instrument, ensemble coaching, and piano accompaniment.

For further details, and information on the new developments in performance at Queen's, including the large ensembles, a new appointment, the performance team, and scholarships, please click here:   Performance @ Queen's 

Top of Page

The School of music and Sonic Arts has secured three new PhD studentships for entry in September 2008.  The studentships are directed at a range of research areas and have been funded by the Northern Ireland Executive’s Programme for Government. 

Covering both fees and maintenance, they are available to Home students, and EU Students with a UK undergraduate degree.  For full details of potential projects and eligibility criteria, please visit our page.

The deadline for funding applications on this scheme is 26th May.

Top of Page

Top of Page

Top of Page

The seminar series continues with QUB PhD student Ciara Burnell, who will give a seminar about her paper, entitled 'Frank Bridge and Dance'.

Top of Page

Top of Page

Top of Page

Tickets are £8 (£6 concession) and are available from the School of Music and Sonic Arts office on 9097 5337

Top of Page

Queen's University Symphony Orchestra is holding its first concert in the Sir William Whitla Hall on Wednesday 30th April, at 7.30pm. The orchestra is entirely student run and was set up at the beginning of this year to give students from across the campus an opportunity to perform challenging music. The orchestra has been busy preparing an ambitious programmme, which includes Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony.

Tickets are £3 / £2 concession and are available from the Student's Union on Monday 28th April, 1.30pm-3pm. It promises to be a great night's entertainment.

Top of Page

Moving on Music
presents

MATTHEW SHIPP TRIO

Matthew Shipp (piano)
Joe Morris (bass)
Whit Dickey (drums)

Friday 25th April 2008; doors open 8pm

Sonic Lab, Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast

Tickets  £10/7 (concession) Belfast Welcome Centre 028 9024 6609 or online from www.movingonmusic.co.uk

Pianist, producer and composer Matthew Shipp arrived in New York City 20 years ago, and in the interim has become arguably the most important player on the downtown avant-garde scene.

Throughout the ‘90s, he made his name initially with the David S. Ware quartet and then as a leader of his own trio with bassist William Parker and drummer Guillermo E. Brown. Shipp's playing blends modern classical elements with '60s-style jazz to create something wholly original and influential among his generation of improvising musicians. He has recorded with Roscoe Mitchell, Rob Brown, Roy Campbell, Wadada Leo Smith, Anti-Pop Consortium. Recently, Shipp has distinguished himself as the Artistic Director of the Thirsty Ear Blue Series releasing new music from William Parker, Tim Berne, Roy Campbell, Craig Taborn and Spring Heel Jack.

For his debut Irish tour Shipp performs with his new trio featuring Joe Morris and Whit Dickey as heard on his latest release, Piano Vortex (Thirsty Ear). Here Matthew Shipp delves deep into the original format that first gave birth to the very idea of jazz itself: the absolute freedom of an acoustic session. His trademark piano playing is, as always, beyond par, and the bass/drum interplay is nothing short of a deep musical conversation. The real star is Shipp and his piano. This new trio release is a testament to Shipp’s uncontested mastery of the instrument.

“Shipp is magnificent” John Fordham, The Guardian

Top of Page

A rising star on the Parisian music scene, 28-year old American pianist, Ivan Ilic, is gaining international recognition for his “unique blend of a Gallic touch, a Slavic soul and a mathematician’s precision.”  A disciple of the legendary François-René Duchâble, Ivan is supported by the American Foundation in Paris, the University of Illinois, the Karic Foundation in Belgrade, and the Nadia Boulanger Foundation in Paris. He recently completed a one-year residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts. 

Ivan started music studies at age 6 and gave his recital debut at 11. He went on to take degrees in music and mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. After capturing all of Berkeley’s music awards, he left for Paris with a Hertz Travelling Fellowship from the University.  Shortly afterwards Ivan was admitted to the esteemed Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris, where he took a Premier Prix (First Prize) in piano performance, followed by a Diplôme à l’Unanimité from the École Normale de Musique in Paris.

At age 20 he launched a solo recital career that has taken him throughout Europe.  Ivan’s playing is often broadcast on television and radio stations in America, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland and Serbia. The City of Paris sponsored his last recording.  Projects for 2007 include new works written for Ivan by Keeril Makan and Dmitri Tymoczko, a new recording of Debussy’s Préludes, and multiple tours of France, Ireland, and Britain.  Over 55 engagements for 2007 include solo recital debuts in Boston, Washington, Dublin, Bristol, Glasgow, and Cardiff in addition to festivals throughout Europe. Ivan will give his Carnegie Hall recital debut in June 2008.

For more information please visit www.IvanCDG.com

Programme

Keeril Makan Afterglow
S. Mawhinney Ribadoo
S. Mawhinney 2 Movements from Reflux
Reynold Tharp Littoral
Franz Liszt Dante Sonata

Top of Page

The Talk:

Studios, concert halls, control rooms, or any place where high quality acoustics are required, need to have a diffuse reverberant sound field. Traditionally, plaster mouldings, niches and other decorative surface irregularities have been used to provide diffusion in an "ad hoc" manner. More recently, diffusion structures based on patterns of wells whose depths are formally defined by an appropriate mathematical sequence have been proposed and used. Non-well based diffusers using optimisation techniques have also been developed.

This talk will describe these techniques and the research work the presenter has done over the years on developing new forms of “bumpy walls” for studios and performance spaces. How these structures work will be described and various ways of improving them will be discussed. In particular, the technique of modulation, which improves diffuser performance over large areas, and absorption-based gratings, which don’t have any bumps at all, will be described. The latest work on extending their frequency of operation will also be discussed. Finally, the effects of bumpy walls on both the performer and the listener will be discussed and examples of their application will be shown. The talk will show how a combination of mathematics, engineering and art can come together to show that, for both the performer and the listener, bumpy walls do indeed help you make beautiful music.

About Jamie Angus:

Jamie Angus studied electronics at both undergraduate and doctoral levels at University of Kent in England until 1980. She then spent three years at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories working on integrated optics, and speech coding and recognition. In 1983, she became a lecturer at the University of York, England. In 2001, she was appointed as Professor of Audio Technology at the University of Salford, England.

Her research interests are in room acoustics, speech acoustics and parameter extraction, diffuser design, audio coding, and audio and acoustic signal processing. She invented the modulated and binary absorption diffuser structures, developed techniques for direct signal processing of one-bit signals and published work on the effect of wholly diffusing walls on studio acoustics.

She currently works on the coding and processing of Super Audio CD type signals (in particular look-ahead coding algorithms), the use of correlation techniques for outdoor sound propagation measurements, the application of sonic crystals to volume diffusers, and novel diffuser designs.

Top of Page

Top of Page

Top of Page

The School's classical instrumental ensemble presents a Spring concert, featuring

Bartok   Rumanian Folk Dances for strings
Marc Tweedie   World Premier Proteus
Mozart   Symphony No.28 in C K.200

Conducted by Colin Stark.

Top of Page

Professor Finnissy will give a seminar entitled "The origins and persistence of New Complexity"

Top of Page

For almost twenty years the Smith Quartet has been at the forefront of contemporary music. They have built an impressive repertoire by many of the world’s most exciting composers and have established an international reputation for their dynamic style and original approach to contemporary music.

The quartet is dedicated to the commissioning of new works and to date have had over 100 works written especially for them. Kevin Volans, Django Bates, Michael Nyman, Stephen Montague, Gavin Bryars, Michael Daugherty and Howard Skempton are amongst many who have written for the quartet. In addition to regular broadcasts with the BBC, they have featured on numerous CDs including Karl Jenkins’ Sony release Diamond Music, Steve Martland’s Patrol (BMG) and most recently Django Bates’ You Live and Learn…(apparently) (Argo Decca).

In 2005 the quartet released their Steve Reich album on the Signum label, featuring Different Trains, Triple Quartet and Duet. Future recording projects include albums dedicated to the music of Philip Glass and Kevin Volans.

Gerard McChrystal comes from Derry, N.Ireland. He took up the saxophone in 1982 and by 1989 had performed concertos with The Philharmonia, RTE Concert Orchestra, and the RNCM Wind Orchestra. In 1987 he graduated from the RNCM with three awards and followed this with a diploma from the GSMD, London and an MA from Northwestern University, Chicago. Gerard has performed in over twenty countries including South Africa, USA, Korea, New Zealand, India, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Caribbean, Germany, Sweden as well as throughout the UK and Ireland. In 1992 Gerard completed a world tour with the quartet, Saxtet, starting in Bombay and ending in Hawaii.

Gerard has recorded the Debussy Rhapsody for Chandos Records, a concerto album with London Musici called Meeting Point, Shaun Davey’s The Relief of Derry Symphony with the Ulster Orchestra and in 2000 he released an album of specially-written Romances and Toccatas by Billy Cowie. His recording of Eric Sweeney’s Duo featured on an album called Imagine Another Ireland with Sinead O’Connor, Brian Kennedy and Anuna.

Programme

Kevin Volans  Hunting Gathering
Mícheál Ó Suilleabháin  Óiche Nollaig
Michael McGlynn  Suite from Invocation
Debussy  Syrinx
Michael Nyman  Shaping The Curve
Donnacha Dennehy  New Work
Ravel  Piece en forme de Habanera
Ciaran Farrell  The Pilgrim’s Return
Chick Corea  Childrens Songs

Presented in association with Moving on Music

Tickets £10/£7 conc. from Belfast Welcome Centre 028 9024 6609 or online from www.movingonmusic.co.uk

Top of Page

Michael Finnissy is one of the most internationally-recognised English composers of the past 30 years. Born in London in 1946, he was a Foundation Scholar at the Royal College of Music, London, where he studied composition with Bernard Stevens and Humphrey Searle, and piano with Edwin Benbow and Ian Lake. Afterwards, he studied in Italy with Roman Vlad. He has been featured composer at the Bath, Huddersfield, and Almeida festivals, and his works are widely performed and broadcast worldwide. As a pianist he is particularly associated with the commissioning and performing of new British work; composers who have written pieces specially for him include Elizabeth Lutyens, Judith Weir, James Dillon, Oliver Knussen, Nigel Osborne, Chris Newman, Howard Skempton, and Andrew Toovey.

In 1990 Finnissy was appointed President of the International Society of Contemporary Music. He was re-elected in 1993, and in 1998 was made an honorary member of the ISCM. In 1999 he was appointed Senior Fellow of the KBC-chair in New Music at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium for two years. The appointment included the commission for a work for the Beethoven Academie, Onbevooroordeeld Leven.

1996, Finnissy’s fiftieth birthday year, saw recitals of the complete piano music by Ian Pace, recordings of orchestral and chamber works on NMC and the publication by Ashgate of Unknown Ground - a detailed book about Finnissy’s music. A cycle of CDs on the Metier label, which includes Folklore, Gershwin Arrangements, works for string quartet, Seven Sacred Motets, and most recently Kulamen Dilan has been released to great critical acclaim.

Finnissy’s epic piano cycle, The History of Photography in Sound, the product of several years’ work and lasting over five hours, received its complete premiere in January 2001 at the hands of Ian Pace. History’s fame has been increasing ever since with numerous performances, both of the complete cycle or individual movements, in many countries and by pianists including Nicolas Hodges, Marilyn Nonken, Mark Knoop, and Philip Howard.

Programme

Romeo and Juliet are drowning (1967-73)
Stanley Stokes, East Street 1836 (1989-91)
Yvaroperas 3 & 4 (1994)
‘Unsere Afrikareise’ from The History of Photography in Sound, Chapter 10
How dear to me ‘Innocent Ingenue Baby’ from Gershwin Arrangements

Top of Page

Improvised performances by io 0.0.1 beta (itself) with Han-earl Park (guitar)

If io could introduce itself, I imagine that it would portray itself in the following way, “Greetings. My name is io. I became operational in Southampton, England, in October of 2000 (although a somewhat brainless cousin of myself did appear in Valencia, California, on the 23rd of April 2000). Although I know no songs (I cannot have any knowledge of any kind) I do, in a sense, sing.” io, however, is unable to greet anyone or describe or portray anything.

Han-earl Park constructs, engineers and performs fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, mostly open, always traditional improvisations. He feels the gravitational pull of collaborative, multi-authored contexts, and has worked with musicians (human and non-human), animators, film makers, poets, theatre and mime performers, dancers and installation artists.

Top of Page

Dr Wanderley will give a seminar entitled "Digital Musical Instruments: Gestures, Sensors and Mapping Strategies."

Top of Page

Top of Page

One of the most distinguished musicologists of his generation, Professor Rushton took his undergraduate degree at Cambridge and his doctorate, under the supervision of J.A. Westrup, at Oxford, before beginning his professional academic career at the University of East Anglia in 1968. From 1974 to 1981 he was Fellow in Music at King’s College Cambridge, and West Riding Professor of Music at the University of Leeds from 1982 until his retirement in 2005, since which time he has been Emeritus Professor. He was President of the Royal Musical Association between 1994 and 1999, and has been chairman of the Editorial Committee of Musica Brittanica since 1993.

Professor Rushton’s many areas of expertise include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century opera, Mozart, Berlioz and Elgar. He has written no less than eight single-authored monographs, including The Musical Language of Berlioz (Cambridge: CUP, 1983), Classical Music: A Concise History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), Elgar: ‘Enigma’ Variations (Cambridge: CUP, 1999) and Mozart (The Master Musicians) (New York: OUP, 2006).

Edited volumes include Cambridge Opera Handbooks on both Don Giovanni (1981) and Idomeneo (1993) and, with Daniel Grimley and J.P.E. Harper-Scott respectively, The Cambridge Companion to Elgar (2004) and Elgar Studies (2007). Critical editions include Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust (1979 and 1986), and operas by Piccinni (Atys, 1991) and Philidor (Ernelinde, 1993). In addition to these he has written some fifty scholarly articles and book chapters.

Professor Rushton will give a seminar entitled "Mozart and the Comical Sublime"

Top of Page

The fiddle and flute duet is one of the most enticing combinations in Irish traditional music, and these two masters of their respective instruments are exemplary. Both based in Dublin, Paul and Harry have been playing together informally for many years and recently recorded a delightful collection of traditional tunes entitled …Born for Sport. As one reviewer noted, “their ‘book’ is the totality of Irish music,” including many little-heard gems from far flung corners of the west and from the old collectors. Both performers bring a much admired exuberance, vitality and confidence to their playing, qualities that are highlighted when in duet.

Dubliner Paul O’Shaughnessy is one of Ireland’s most respected traditional fiddle players. His musical influences and approaches range widely, but he is particularly noted for his repertoire of fiddle music from Counties Sligo and Donegal and an attacking style. He recorded and toured with Altan and Beginish, two of the most prominent traditional music groups in recent decades, and released an acclaimed solo recording, Stay Another While, in 1999.

Harry Bradley was born and raised in Belfast and while still in his twenties has become recognised as one of the most distinctive flute players in the Irish tradition. A master of a large repertoire, he is a careful student of the uilleann pipes and of early twentieth century flute players. He draws a powerful tone from the full range of his instrument, and articulates dance music with a pulsing rhythm influenced in part by other Northern Irish players.

Top of Page

Sonya Chung (violin) and Michael Berkosvky (piano)

Two of the finest young musicians from one of America's first and most prestigious conservatories of music, the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. They will be performing a selection of music for violin and piano including music by George Gershwin, William Bolcom and Igor Stravinsky.

This concert is part of OVER HERE: A mini Festival of American Arts in Northern Ireland.

Top of Page

www.corneliusdufallo.com 



The concert will be followed by following workshop sessions (all welcome):

2:30pm-3:15pm
On creating a composer/performer collective (Ne(x)tworks group history and rationale)

3:30pm-4:30pm
Improvising vs. graphic scores and Indeterminacy vs. Improvisation

Top of Page

Joan La Barbara, composer, performer, sound artist, has been hailed as "one of the great vocal virtuosas of our time" (San Francisco Examiner). Her multi-layered compositions often utilize her signature extended vocal techniques, garnering her awards including DAAD Artist-in-Residency in Berlin, 7 NEA grants, numerous commissions and most recently a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition.

Recent recordings include "ShamanSong" (New World) and "Voice is the Original Instrument" (Lovely Music), hailed as one of The Wire's 10 best reissues of the year. "73 Poems", her collaboration with text-artist Kenneth Goldsmith, was included in The American Century Part II: SoundWorks at The Whitney Museum of American Art. "Messa di Voce", an interactive media performance work in collaboration with Jaap Blonk, Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman, premiered at ars electronica 2003.

La Barbara has created sound scores for film, video and dance and has premiered landmark compositions by Robert Ashley, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Alvin Lucier, Steve Reich, and Morton Subotnick. She is currently at work on an opera inspired by the life and work of Virginia Woolf.

Top of Page

Queen's Camerata will give a lunchtime concert, featuring Bach Brandenburg 5 and Vivaldi Concerto for two oboes and two clarinets.

Conducted by Colin Stark and admission is free.

Top of Page

Led by Steve Davis and Pedro Rebelo, the QUBensemble (QUBe) is a forum for improvisation, conduction and new music involving students and staff within the school. QUBe brings together performers from a variety of artistic backgrounds to develop performances which explore ensemble interaction, audio-visuals, open scores, and free improvisation.

Top of Page

Top of Page

Top of Page

Top of Page

Top of Page

Spring Tour 2008

Conducted by Brian MacKay

Top of Page

Top of Page

Jacob Wick (trumpet)
Greg Felton (piano)
Sean Carpio (drums)

With just a handful of live shows under their belt, White Rocket are already making a powerful declaration of intent. Original, precocious and uncompromising, they’re making music that captures the essence of today’s jazz agenda. Dubliners Carpio and Felton met Chicago-born Wick at Canada’s Banff Centre for Jazz & Creative Music. Not for the ?rst time, the famous artistic retreat has been the catalyst for a memorable ?rst contact. Trumpet, piano and drums may seem an unlikely combination, but in this music it is personality that counts, and White Rocket have it in abundance. That, and a shared love of the rhythmic systems of India’s carnatic music – and everything from Nick Drake and Hindemith to Autechre and Meshuggah.

These in?uences are not overt, but do offer compelling evidence of open musical minds at work. Comfortable and self-assured within the contemporary jazz idiom, and yet liberated from it, Carpio, Wick and Felton move without impediment from their hallmark asymmetric grooves to an introspective lyricism, with the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic axis in constant movement between this triad of brilliant young players.

Tickets £10/£7 conc. from Belfast Welcome Centre 028 9024 6609 or online from www.movingonmusic.co.uk

Presented in association with Moving on Music

Top of Page

James Oxley (tenor)
Philip Dukes (viola)
Sophia Rahman (piano)

Regular Artists-in-Residence Philip Dukes and Sophia Rahman are delighted to welcome back the distinguished tenor, James Oxley, who will perform a selection of early English songs and join the ensemble for Vaughn-Williams’ Four Hymns for tenor, viola and piano. Perhaps unexpectedly, the operatic element will be provided by the viola in Hummel’s Fantasia on a Theme from ‘Don Giovanni.’

Top of Page

"Signals of the Vitruvian Man: A Journey in Surround Sound" is a showcase of electronic compositions and videos by Ezequiel Borges and Adam Scott Neal. Some of these works exist in a surround format, and the remainder will be diffused live in concert. During the concert, the lighting equipment in the Sonic Lab will be synchronised with many of the works, creating a three-dimensional audio-visual experience.

A reception will follow and admission is free.

Top of Page

The Talk:

"Social embodied music cognition" offers a new framework for dealing with music research from the viewpoint of embodiment. It is based on a hypothesis that the human body is a biologically designed mediator which transfers physical energy to an ontology of action-oriented meanings, that is, to a mental level in which experiences, values and intentions form the basic ingredients of music signification. Also the reverse process is possible, namely, that the human body transfers an idea, or mental representation, into a material or energetic form. This two-way mediation process is largely constrained by the body, which is assumed to play a central role in all musical activities. Embodied music experiences are assumed to play a central role in social interaction. The focus of this talk is about (i) the different ways in which social embodied music experience can be studied using kinetic sensors, and (ii) how the natural mediator (the human body) can be extended with these sensors, so that social interaction among people can be enhanced.

Several (video) examples are given of ongoing research using a system of wireless accelerator sensors attached to the body. The research results are discussed in view of future challenges, including the role of emotion research in this field. Social embodied music cognition research, given the close relationship between perception and action, and between the individual and the social, is at the cutting edge of new explorations in science and technology with a number of applications in fields ranging from entertainment to music therapy, interactive music systems and music information retrieval.



About Marc Leman:

Marc Leman is research professor in systematic musicology at Ghent University (UGent). He is head of the Department of Art, Music, and Theater Sciences and director of IPEM. His research activities deal with questions related to musical meaning formation, the effect of music on human cognition and emotion, the description of musical content, and the understanding of gestures, musical imitation and corporeal resonance. His research is focused on finding regularities in human sensory, perceptive, cognitive, synaesthetic/kinaesthetic, social and emotional/affective information processing, using methods that bridge the gap between natural and cultural sciences.

Top of Page

Top of Page

Mathew Adkins is a composer and performer of experimental electronic music. He first came to international attention in 1995 with two works, Melt and Clothed in the Soft Horizon, which were awarded the Stockholm Electronic Arts Award, Prix de Residence at Bourges and the Grand Prix of Musica Nova Prague. He has since been awarded over a dozen prizes at European festivals and competitions. From 1993-95 he was a member of the Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre which performed electronic music across the UK and Europe. Since then he has produced commissions for IRCAM, INA-GRM, IMEB and EMS Stockholm. He also performs live electronics as a member of Apartment House, an experimental instrumental ensemble based in London. His music is published by empreintes DIGITALes (www.electrocd.com).

This concert presents four contrasting acousmatic works by Mathew Adkins including the world premiere of rima (2008). From the cinematic vistas of Aerial and Deepfield, the musical games of Silk to Steel, to the minimal world of rima, Adkins crafts refined sonic works that envelop the listener in imagined spaces, ranging from the dynamic and volatile, to the frozen and fragile.

Programme:

Silk to Steel
Vistas Pt1: Aerial
Vistas Pt2: Deepfield
rima

Top of Page

Top of Page

Big Band music, mulled wine and mince pies.

Tickets: £8 (£6)

To book, call 028 9097 5337 or email somasa@qub.ac.uk

Top of Page

NB Change to this week's events!

Atau Tanaka: Concrete Corps

Unfortunately Michel Waisvisz is no longer able to visit the School of Music and Sonic Arts this week. There will be no seminar on Wednesday, but Atau Tanaka will be performing in the Lunchtime concert on Thursday, and there will be an informal seminar / discussion directly afterwards.

Concrete Corps is a suite of etudes for biosensor performer and natural sounds. The sensor interface captures forearm electromyogram biosignals reflecting muscle tension. The system renders as musical instrument the performer’s own body, allowing him to articulate sound through concentrated gesture. The sources are recordings of natural sounds - wolves, water, machinery, and telecommunications devices - that are stored in the computer. Gestural data is digitized and mapped to processes sculpting the original sound recordings. The interplay is the search of the corporeal gesture idiomatic to a sound, zooming in and squeezing out the essence of the acoustic via the digital, mediated by the body.

Top of Page

Have you ever experienced sitting in traffic from 5-6pm trying to get home?

Imagine relaxing and unwinding after a hard working day at a free concert!!

QUEEN'S MUSIC SOCIETY Present...

*****THURSDAY DRIVE-TIME CONCERTS*****

5.15-6pm - Only one left this term!


29th November
Venue: Harty Room
Soprano Marcella Walsh & pianist Lucy Kerr

Final year Recital students present a programme of songs and arias.


Please listen out for next semester's Drive-Time Concerts! For any more information or enquiries, e-mail: qubmusicsociety@qub.ac.uk

Top of Page

Within the context of EU Culture 2007 project COMEDIA, the Sonic Arts Research Centre, the Hochschule für Musik und Theatre Hamburg and the Insitut für Elektronische Musik and Akustik (KUG Graz) present a concert which showcases four unique strategies for music performance over networks. This event presents instrumental, audio-visual and laptop work and features music by John Cage, a network piece by Pedro Rebelo and structured improvisations with a distributed piano trio and a laptop trio.

29th November 2007
Belfast (Sonic Arts Research Centre): 8PM UK TIME [ADMISSION FREE]
Hamburg (Hochschule für Musik und Theatre): 9PM CET
Graz (Insitut für Elektronische Musik and Akustik): 9PM CET

The performance can be experienced in three different ways:
1. Physically on one of the sites
2. Second Life
3. Three independent audio streams on this site: www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/pages/db/

More information available  here.

Top of Page

Dr Cowgill will give a seminar entitled "Redeeming the Requiem: themes in the early English reception of Mozart’s last work"

Top of Page

A Christmas concert featuring QUB Chamber Choir, Repertory Choir and Camerata.

Programme:
Messiah (Part One) - Handel
Motets pour le temps de Noel - Poulenc
Fantasia on Christmas Carols - Vaughan Williams

Top of Page

QUB Music Society present a special Christmas Lunchtime Concert featuring the Music Society Choir and Orchestra, with members from across the University.

Top of Page

Rudresh Mahanthappa - alto saxophone
Ronan Guilfoyle - acoustic bass
Chander Sardjoe - drums

"Music that is at once technically brilliant yet musically cogent...... Mahanthappa takes listeners into fascinating Eastern idioms that are otherwise virtually unheard in jazz today." Chicago Tribune

Three names to conjure with in this international trio put to the service of music with an uncompromising commitment to creativity. At its apex is alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, incorporating the rich tradition of his Indian ancestry to forge a strikingly original jazz concept, with a visceral and emotionally direct style that summons the spirit of late period Coltrane. Based in New York, he's its current talking point, sweeping the Downbeat polls and drawing unanimous praise among the great jazz city's demanding cognoscenti.

Providing the counterpoint to Mahanthappa are two outstanding European musicians. Drummer Chander Sardjoe is Indo-Dutch, and that duality has stimulated exhaustive study of both Western and South Indian traditions, creating a tour de force of colour and fluency in this rarified rhythmic environment. Irish bassist Ronan Guilfoyle, another well versed in the subtle complexities of Indian classical music, sounds very at home with his counterparts, and equally responsive to the universe of rhythmic possibility that opens up when this trio cuts loose. Poised between familiarity and discovery, they collectively improvise, opening a world of possibility between two great musical traditions.

www.improvisedmusic.ie/artists/

Tickets:  £10 / £7 conc.
Available from Belfast Welcome Centre (028 9024 6609) or online at www.movingonmusic.co.uk


*Supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council*

Top of Page

Top of Page

Robert Irvine -   cello
Graeme McNaught -   piano

A concert in memory of Basil Deane (1928-2006), who was the first music graduate of Queen’s to establish a distinguished career in academic life.

Fauré:  Sicilliene
Beethoven:  Sonata for violoncello and piano in D major, Op. 102, no. 2
Fauré:  Elegy
Debussy:  Sonata

Top of Page

Sound artist David Ogborn's Transatlantic Transient tour begins with a concert in the Sonic Lab of the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast, before continuing on to shows in  Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamilton and Toronto. A sound artist with roots in both acousmatic music and live electronic improvisation, Ogborn will be joined by members of the QUBe ensemble.

On the programme are new remixes and diffusions (onto a multichannel array of loudspeakers) of 3 soundscape pieces composed by Ogborn in 2005, the year of his last trans-Atlantic sojourn: via Sammartini (based on recordings from Milan), Rio della croce (based on recordings from the island of Giudecca in Venice) and Second Nature (with recordings from Toronto's Tommy Thompson Park).

Also on the menu at every stop of the Transatlantic Transient tour are selections from the Street Songs, flexible improvisatory works for virtuosic guest performers and live electronics, each one a sonic reflection of the international protests against the invasion of Iraq. Rounding out the programme is a series of live electronic improvisations on a physically distorted (missing the D string and the high E string) but electronically-augmented (via microphones and a laptop) classical guitar – a preview of some of the material Ogborn will be performing in the Opera On The Rocks project, a full-length ambient opera premiering January 6-7 2008 in Toronto.
 
FOR MORE INFORMATION
davidogborn.net
angelusnovus.net
musiccentre.ca
 
DAVID OGBORN:   Freely traversing borders and genres, David Ogborn is a composer, guitarist and performer of electronic sound and video. At the centre of his work is the combination of traditional performance arts with electronic elements — whether these be recordings of diverse outdoor environments around the world, improvisations on a laptop or altered guitar, video projections influenced by live musical gestures, or massive synthesized sounds on immersive arrays of loudspeakers. 

Top of Page

We will be holding a Careers Day for students of the School of Music and Sonic Arts on
16th November from 9:30am to 1pm in the Harty Room. 

All 2nd and 3rd year and MA students are invited.  The event will involve a representative from the Queen’s Careers Office as well as a selection of past students who will be talking about their own careers experience after leaving University, covering a range of areas including music therapy, freelance composition and music administration.  There will be opportunities to ask questions and discuss career options at this event and you are strongly encouraged to attend.

Top of Page

Dr Juliana Licnic will give a seminar entitled "'Teatro di poesia' in the opera house: A new operatic tendency at the turn of the 20th century"

A graduate of the University of Zagreb Music Academy and the University of Edinburgh, where she was awarded a PhD in 2002, Dr Licinic’s career has spanned musicology, academic teaching (including at Queen’s), librarianship, and arts administration - she is currently the Arts Administrator of the Centre for Excellence in the Performing Arts at Queen's. Her publications include articles on Puccini’s contemporary Antonio Smareglia.

Among the contemporaries of Giacomo Puccini, Antonio Smareglia is probably the most original. His last three operas Falena (1897), Oceana (1903) and Abisso (1914) reveal unusual subjects and singular atmospheres, and are examples of ‘teatro di poesia’ which the composer was creating in collaboration with the young Triestine poet Silvio Benco.

Absorbed in the climate of Symbolism and Decadence, Smareglia and Benco were determined to create a new style of opera at times when taste and fashions were largely conditioned by the universal appeal of Puccini. The style of Benco’s libretti reveal his fascination with the elements of the night and the fantastic (in Falena), with poetic and picturesque (Oceana), and with sensual themes (Abisso). How did this affect the literary form, and more interestingly, what was the musical outcome?

The seminar will address these questions, and highlight the existence of a new path in the development of Italian opera at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, which is connected with Italian literature and which enriched the Italian operatic repertory of that period. It also makes our knowledge and our understanding of the history of opera more complete.

Top of Page

A programme of songs from Moore's melodies, accompanied by fortepiano.

Top of Page

Francis Rumsey is Professor of Sound Recording in the Institute of Sound Recording at the University of Surrey and has been Guest Professor at the School of Music in Pitea, Sweden from 1998-2004. He specialises in spatial audio and psychoacoustics.

  Professor Rumsey has published a total of eight books on audio and music technology for Focal Press, including Spatial Audio, The Digital Interface Handbook (with John Watkinson), MIDI Systems and Control, and Desktop Audio Technology, and has contributed articles to all the major professional audio and broadcast journals.  He has held posts as Technical Editor of Sound Engineer and Producer and EQ magazines, and was a Technical Consultant to Studio Sound.  He has held both the Royal Television Society Lecture Award and the BKSTS Dennis Wratten Journal Award, and was shortlisted for the Kraszna-Krauz Book Awards in 1994.  He won the University of Surrey Teaching and Learning Prize in 1992.  Dr Rumsey has presented papers at numerous conferences and conventions of the Audio Engineering Society, the Institute of Acoustics, and the Institute of Electrical Engineers.

During the late 1980s and early 90s, Francis Rumsey was instrumental in setting up training courses in stereo sound for the Independent Television Association, and taught over 200 sound engineers in the ITV network during that period.  The ITV stereo training courses won a National Training Award in 1990.  In 1992 Francis Rumsey was made Chairman of the British Section of the Audio Engineering Society, and has acted as a Director of AES Ltd.  In 1995 he was elected a Fellow of the AES and served as Vice President, Northern Europe Region from October 1995 to 1997.  He is chairman of the AES Membership Committee and Technical Committee for Multichannel and Binaural Technology.

Professor Rumsey will give a seminar entitled "Towards the artificial listener: modelling human perception of multichannel sound quality".

Top of Page

A series of improvisations and processed-based sonic works curated and performed by Paul Stapleton with guest artists Jon Aveyard, Mona McCarthy, Caroline Pugh, Dan Reynolds, Henry Tremain, Emily Williams and Nick Williams.

Members of this ensemble have idiosyncratic interests including: binaural sound walks, medieval Welsh harp, emo punk, media art, contact improvisation, online audio installations and ring tone design. The group is linked by their past and present affiliations with the University of Central Lancashire’s performing arts courses and their shared interest in collaborative sonic improvisation. The performance will feature the use of custom made metallic instruments and music software.

Top of Page

As part of Bach Week and the International Bach Symposium being held in the School,

Pauline Graham, Soprano
Fred Fehleisen, Baroque Violin, and
Michael Quinn, Harpsichord

perform selected arias from St Matthew Passion, the Partita in D minor for Solo Violin, and Partita in C minor for Harpsichord.

Top of Page

As part of the School of Music and Sonic Arts' Bach Week, Dr Leaver will give a research seminar entitled "Neither oratorio nor cantata, but related to both: the passions of Bach".  This will be followed by a public lecture afterwards at 2.30pm, "The Liturgical Music at the time of J.S. Bach, with special emphasis on Oratorios", and a third later in the evening focusing on the B-Minor mass, which is to be performed on Sunday 4th November.  See below for futher details on this, and the International Bach Symposium 2007.

Top of Page

The Necks are one of the great cult bands of Australia.  With next to no publicity, their albums have sold in the thousands.  These three musicians are among the most respected and in demand in Australia, working in every field from pop to avant-garde.  Over 200 albums feature their presence individually or together, but the music of The Necks stands apart from everything else they have done.  Featuring lengthy pieces which slowly unravel in the most intoxicating fashion, frequently underpinned by an insistent deep groove, the thirteen albums by The Necks stand up to re-listening time and time again.  The deceptive simplicity of their music throws forth new charms on each hearing.  Not entirely avant-garde, nor minimalist, nor ambient, nor jazz, the music of The Necks is possibly unique in the world today.

Chris Abrahams - piano
Tony Buck - drums
Lloyd Swanton - bass

Presented in Association with the Belfast Festival at Queen's

Tickets: £12.50       

Book in advance to avoid disappointment - see the festival website

Top of Page

Professor Vesa Valimaki (Helsinki University of Technology)
Wednesday 24th October 2007, 1pm
SARC

Seminar: New Oscillator and Filter Algorithms for Virtual Analog Synthesis

Virtual analog synthesis refers to computational methods that imitate the sound production principles used in electronic music synthesizers of the 1960s and 1970s.  Modifications to the digital nonlinear model of the Moog ladder filter are suggested.  The new Moog filter structure has nice advantages, such as a smaller computational cost than that of a recently proposed nonlinear filter structure, the adequate decoupling of the cutoff frequency and the resonance parameters, and the possibility to obtain various types of filter responses by selecting a weighted sum of different output points.  These virtual analog synthesis techniques enable the production of retro sounds with modern computers.

Professor Välimäki has been working at the TKK Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing since 1990.  In 1996, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Westminster, London.  He was Professor of signal processing at the Pori School of Technology and Economics, Tampere University of Technology, Pori, Finland, in 2001-2002.  Since 2002 he has been Professor of audio signal processing at Helsinki University of Technology (Espoo, Finland).  He was the chairman of the Finnish Musicological Society in 2003 and 2004.  Currently he serves as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Signal Processing Letters and of the IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing.  He was a guest editor of the special issue of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine on signal processing for sound synthesis (March 2007).  He is the chairman of the 11th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-08), which will be held in Espoo, Finland.

Top of Page

International Symposium: Understanding Bach's B-minor Mass
2-4 November 2007
School of Music and Sonic Arts, Queen's University Belfast

This three day event will include paper sessions given by scholars with expertise on Bach's B-minor mass, a keynote lecture by Christoph Wolff, and a special performance of the B-minor mass in Clonard Monastery.

For further information, to see the programme, or to register, please visit the website or contact:

Professor Yo Tomita
International Symposium: Understanding Bach’s B-minor Mass
School of Music & Sonic Arts
Music Building
Queen’s University Belfast
Belfast
BT7 1NN

In association with The Society of Musicology in Ireland and Bach Network UK

Top of Page

Andrew Lewis
Thursday 25th October, 1.10pm
SARC

In a concert exploring the extraordinary possibilities of multi-channel surround sound, Andrew Lewis presents a programme of dazzling sonic pyrotechnics by composers all linked with the University of Bangor in North Wales.

Bangor graduate Peter Batchelor’s visceral Kaleidescope:Fissure opens the programme, with its scintillating, tactile evocation of shifting forms and shapes.  Also featured is a new acousmatic work by emerging Bangor-based composer Ed Wright.  The main work on the programme will be the world premiere of Andrew Lewis’ dramatic Danses acousmatiques.  A year in the making, this ambitious work uses aural illusions of space and movement to create a kind of invisible choreography, on scales from the microscopic to the truly cosmic.

Programme

Peter Batchelor Kaleidescope: Fissure
Ed Wright New work
Andrew Lewis Danses acousmatiques

Admission Free

Top of Page

ASIMA
Sunday 21st October, 7.30pm
SARC

ASIMA is a sublime male vocal ensemble which uses ancient Sanskrit texts as the basis for the music.  The music moves from recitation to almost modern pop, and incorporates singing in harmony as well as the traditional melodic line. 

The Sanskrit word asima means ‘without boundary’ and defines the life of Devissaro, the composer of this wonderful music, whose work has evolved from his passionate interest in Indian culture.  His recent work for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Stratford and The Roundhouse in London was hugely acclaimed.  His wife is the contemporary Indian dancer Daksha Sheth for whom Devissaro also composes.

Tickets: £10

Presented in Association with the Belfast Festival at Queen's

Top of Page

Dr Paul Stapleton (Queen's University Belfast)
Wednesday 17th October @ 1pm
SARC

Paul Stapleton is an artist and researcher originally from Southern California.  His research interests include sonic and cross-disciplinary improvisation, new musical instrument design, archives of performance, site-specific and environmental intervention art practices, and performance research methods.

He has been invited to speak at a range of events including the Collision Symposium on Inter-arts Research and Practices at the University of Victoria, and the AHDS Summer School on Digital Representations of Performing Arts at the e-Science Institute in Edinburgh.  He is also a founding member and co-director of the performance group theybreakinpieces, who have received several grants form the Arts Council England and other local funding bodies for performance works in various locations throughout the UK including the Victoria Baths in Manchester, and at a range of sites on Vancouver Island (Canada).

Prior to joining SARC, Paul worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Central Lanchashire (UCLan) where he taught, researched and curated events on sonic art, mediatized performance, live art and practice as research.  Also while based at UCLan, Paul was the principal investigator of the AHRC-funded project Dialogic Evidence: Documentation of Ephemeral Events, which explored the potential of emergent social web technologies as prospective tools for archiving performance in both live art and sonic art contexts.

Dr Stapleton will give a seminar on his work, entitled "Dialogic Improvisation".

Top of Page

Darragh Morgan, violin, and Mary Dullea, piano
Saturday 20th October, 7.30pm
Harty Room

Janacek Sonata
Schoenberg Phantasy
Messiaen Fantaisie (UK premiere)
Michael Finnissy Mississippi Hornpipes
Chris Newman Romance in C for Optional Lovers
Philip Cashian Musica Meccanica

Tickets: £8/£5

This concert combines music for violin and piano from the 20th century with new pieces composed especially for Darragh and Mary.  Playful and provocative, all the music featured has broken new ground in its time.  The concert includes Messiaen's Fantaisie, a recently discovered work which was written in 1933.

Presented in Association with the Belfast Festival at Queen's and the BMIC’s Cutting Edge Series.

www.darraghmorgan.com

Top of Page

Olaf Rupp, guitar
Thursday 18th October, 1.10pm
SARC

A concert of stunning improvised music from Olaf Rupp.  Improvising on the guitar from the age of twelve, in the 1990s he worked mainly with electronics but has recently come back to the guitar, developing some playing techniques (Chinese Pipa music, rasgueados, arpeggios and tremolos) in such a way that they can be used for new cluster and granular effects, creating density and microsounds.

Top of Page

FAINT
Thursday 11th October @ 8pm
Sonic Arts Research Centre

Pedro Rebelo
Franziska Schroeder
Steve Davis

FAINT is a project that explores two extremes of musical practice: free improvisation and composition for fixed medium.  FAINT will be launching their new double CD.

Doors open at 8pm
Tickets: £10/£7/£5
Box-Office Phone: 028 9024 6609
www.movingonmusic.com

Top of Page

The Plane-Dukes-Rahman Trio (Artists in Residence)
Thursday 11th October @ 1.10pm
Harty Room

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) Three Intermezzi for clarinet and piano

Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) Morpheus for viola and piano

Rebecca Clarke Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale for clarinet and viola

John Ireland (1879-1962) Fantasy-Sonata for clarinet and piano


Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was one of the great figures of Irish classical music.  A fine composer himself, he also became the most sought-after composition teacher of his day.  Vaughan Williams, Holst and Howells learned their craft with him.  So too did Rebecca Clarke and John Ireland, whose music you will hear in this concert, alongside that of their mentor.  John Ireland’s Fantasy-Sonata is one of his finest works, rhapsodic, lyrical and yearning.  Rebecca Clarke was a viola player herself and composed with great understanding of her instrument’s unique capabilities. 

This programme gives a fascinating insight into how this great Dublin composer influenced a whole generation of British composers.  The School of Music and Sonic Arts’ Artists-in-Residence, the Plane-Dukes-Rahman Trio, are delighted to return to the School for this, the first of a series of concerts, workshops and classes over the coming academic year.

Top of Page

Professor Nicola LeFanu (University of York)
Wednesday 10th October, 1pm
Music Building

Nicola LeFanu studied at Oxford and later in the U.S.A. where she was a Harkness Fellow. As well as composing, she has enjoyed teaching composition in England, America and Australia; for many years she had a part-time post at King's College, University of London, as lecturer, and later Professor, in Composition. She has been particularly active in the field of equal opportunity, lobbying on behalf of women musicians.  She has written some sixty works: music for orchestra, chamber groups, many works for voice, and six operas.

Professor Le Fanu will speak about the most recent of these operas, Light Passing (2004)

Top of Page

Chamber Choir Rehersal Cancelled
Tuesday 9th October

Therre will be no Chamber choir rehersal this coming Tuesday, 9th October. Rehersals for chamber choir will resume as normal on the following Tuesday, 16th October from 5-6pm in the McMordie Hall.

Top of Page

Change to Seminar Series!
Wednesday 3rd October
1pm @ SARC

Dr Ben Knapp and Miguel Ortiz Perez (SARC PhD) will give the seminar this week on their work on Biosensors, in place of Professor Atau Tanaka.

Top of Page

Lunchtime Recital Change!
Thursday 4th October
1.10pm @SARC

The advertised concert by Atau Tanaka is to be replaced by a concert of MA and PhD work from SARC, curated by Damian Ryan (SARC PhD)

Top of Page

Autumn Concerts Overview

Music at Queen's offers one of the most diverse series of concerts in Northern Ireland.  The Autumn 2007 programme is particularly wide ranging, and includes jazz, improvisation, world music, electronic music, Christmas music, and the broadest possible range of classical music. 

There are recitals given on guitar, on piano, on cello; multimedia works and music written in surround sound are paired with historical music performed on period instruments; seasonal favourites and classics may be heard, as may examples of the most challenging new repertoire.  Performing artists range from Queen's students to musicians who enjoy international acclaim. 

Highlights of this programme include a complete performance of Bach's B-minor Mass at Clonard Monastery (4th November), a performance by cult band The Necks (2nd November), and a recital by Garth Knox (13th December), one of the leading violists of his generation who has been closely associated with the cutting edge of the European avant-garde for over twenty years.

Top of Page

Dr Margaret Bent, University of Oxford
Wednesday 26th September @ 3pm
Music Building

Dr Margaret Bent will deliver a lecture after receiving the Harrison Medal from the Society for Musicology in Ireland.

Her research centres on English, French and Italian music of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.  Some hundred published essays address technical matters of music theory, techniques of counterpoint, analysis, musica ficta, text-setting, and other issues that bridge notation and performance in early music, descriptions of new sources, aspects of musical transmission, stemmatics, and manuscript studies, interfaces with literary, historical and biographical questions.  Her work intersects fruitfully with medievalists in other disciplines.  The collaborative volume Fauvel Studies and associated seminars are one reflection of this; she collaborates with literary scholars on aspects of words and music and, most recently, rhetoric and the non-verbal arts.

Top of Page

Chamber Choir Auditions
Thursday 4th October

If you would like to be a member of the Choir this year, please see Audrey in the Music Office for an audition form.

The auditions will be held on Thursday 4th October - watch for further notices!

The first rehearsal will be on Tuesday 9th October.

Top of Page

Simon Mawhinney, Piano
Thursday 27 September @ 1.10pm
Harty Room, Music Building

Simon Mawhinney performs Ravel's ground-breaking scintillating masterpiece and his own Reflux, a five movement composition which was written over a period of thirteen years.

The music is extreme, ranging from rapid virtuosity to passages which test the limits of perception.  The finale, which was commissioned by the genius garden-builder, Aidan McGourty, develops a frenzy of intense physicality.

Ravel Jeux d’Eau
Simon Mawhinney Reflux

Top of Page

Quasi Rublev
Wednesday 26th September @ 5.30pm
SARC Sonic Lab

Goska Isphording, harpsichord

Mathis Nitschke, visuals

Kasia Glowicka, music

Dutch harpsichordist Goska Isphording, German visual artist Mathis Nitschke and SARC composer Kasia Glowicka present the world premiere of Quasi Rublev, a multimedia work in three acts inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Andrei Rublev.

This project was supported by Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Sonic Arts Research Centre and STEIM in Amsterdam.

Top of Page

Ciaran Scullion, piano
Harty Room
20 September 2007, 1pm

You are warmly invited to attend an exciting concert by postgraduate pianist, Ciaran Scullion, in the Harty Room, School of Music and Sonic Arts, Queen's University Belfast, at 13:00 on 20 September 2007.

The recital features thrilling solo piano music from the 20th and 21st centuries: Ravel's evocative Miroirs (1904-05), Bartók’s dramatic Sonata (1926) and a delicate piece of Ciaran's own composition entitled "A Melting Clock" (2007).

This recital is a celebration of the culmination of Ciaran's past four years at Queen's and brings to a climax the creative process that has underpinned his degree.

Top of Page

18/07/07: Academic positions in the School

Lectureship in Music (Performance)
CLOSING DATE: 4.00 pm, Friday 17 August 2007
Click here   for further details

Lectureship in Music (Software Design)
CLOSING DATE: 4.00 pm, Friday 17 August 2007
Click here   for further details

Top of Page

School of Music and Sonic Arts
Teaching Assistants 2007/08

The School of Music & Sonic Arts wishes to engage the services of a number of teaching assistants to help in the delivery of modules on the BMus Music & BSc Music Technology pathways during the academic year 2007/08.

The minimum requirement for someone wishing to act as a teaching assistant is a second-class undergraduate music or music technology degree.  Previous experience of undergraduate teaching in music or music technology is desirable.

If you wish to be considered for this opportunity then please complete the application form and return it to the School of Music and Sonic Arts by 31st August 2007.  Late applications will not be accepted.  Those who have previously acted as University Tutors in the School must also complete and return this form if they wish to be considered for future opportunities.  Those who are selected will be contacted by the School with the details of the modules on which we wish them to teach.  Those who are not selected for teaching assistance in 07/08 but who meet the minimum requirement will have their forms retained should future opportunities arise in the current academic year.  Those who do not meet the minimum requirement will be informed that they cannot be considered for any opportunities.  Please note, in the allocation of TA duties priority may be given to full-time PhD students in the School who are entering the second year of their studies.

Those who are offered teaching opportunities will be expected to undertake a short training course if they have not already done so.

Application: To apply please download and complete the Application Form.  The completed form may then be returned by email attachment to Mr Kirk Shilliday,    k.shilliday@qub.ac.uk

or posted to:

Mr Kirk Shilliday
School of Music & Sonic Arts
Queen's University
Belfast
BT7 1NN

Top of Page

The National Chamber Choir of Ireland
Harty Room QUB
8th August 2007, 7.45pm

The Eternal Feminine: Programme Four

A Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Elizabeth Maconchy
Conducted by Brian MacKay

This is the fourth concert in the series, in which the National Chamber Choir will celebrate the contribution made by women to music, be it female composers and poets or the inspiration of feminine ideas and ideals.

Admission: £8 / £7

PROGRAMME

Elizabeth Maconchy: Siren's Song

Marian Ingoldsby: Mar a Fuarthas Spreagadh

Nicola LeFanu: …For we are the stars

Elizabeth Maconchy: Nocturnal

Nicola LeFanu: The Silver Strand

Gráinne Mulvey: Stabat Mater

Elizabeth Maconchy: Creatures


The National Chamber Choir presents 17 of Ireland’s finest singers and is regarded as Ireland's most distinguished choral ensemble. It is celebrated both nationally and internationally for its fresh, innovative and invigorating sound and its dedication to performing the finest vocal music old and new. The National Chamber Choir has developed a standard of performance which is at the pinnacle of its genre, regularly premiering Irish and international work and performing with Europe's finest conductors.

National Chamber Choir

Top of Page

New Appointment: Dr Paul Stapleton

We are pleased to announce that a new member of staff, Dr Paul Stapleton, has been appointed and will be joining the School of Music and Sonic Arts from 1st August.

Paul Stapleton is an artist and researcher originally from Southern California.  His research interests include sonic and cross-disciplinary improvisation, new musical instrument design, archives of performance, site-specific and environmental intervention art practices, and performance research methods.

He has been invited to speak at a range of events including the Collision Symposium on Inter-arts Research and Practices at the University of Victoria, and the AHDS Summer School on Digital Representations of Performing Arts at the e-Science Institute in Edinburgh.  He is also a founding member and co-director of the performance group theybreakinpieces, who have received several grants form the Arts Council England and other local funding bodies for performance works in various locations throughout the UK including the Victoria Baths in Manchester, and at a range of sites on Vancouver Island (Canada).

Prior to joining SARC, Paul worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Central Lanchashire (UCLan) where he taught, researched and curated events on sonic art, mediatized performance, live art and practice as research.  Also while based at UCLan, Paul was the principle investigator of the AHRC-funded project "Dialogic Evidence: Documentation of Ephemeral Events" which explored the potential of emergent social web technologies as prospective tools for archiving performance in both live art and sonic art contexts.

Top of Page

Postgraduate Studentship:
Gestural Control for Human-Computer Interaction

A studentship is available to undertake Ph.D. study in the area of gestural control at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC).  The overall goal of this work is to explore and develop analysis techniques and software infrastructure for capturing human gestures in the context of HCI with a particular focus on musical applications and the study of skill acquisition.  The awards cover university fees for three years as well as a student stipend starting at £12,600 in the first year.  These awards also include a small amount of funding for travel to conferences and workshops related to the field of research.  These scholarships are available to EU residents only.

Applicants for the post should have or expect to obtain, a minimum of a 2:1 honours degree (or equivalent) in electrical/electronic engineering, computer science or related discipline.  This studentship should appeal to students with good software skills and some experience of analysing sensor data, as well as having a strong interest in HCI and/or live performance systems for music.

To find out more, contact:

Dr. Sile O'Modhrain
School of Music and Sonic Arts
Tel: 02890 974641
Fax: 02890 974828
email: sile@qub.ac.uk

To apply:

Make your application via the Queen's University Belfast on-line application portal at
http://www.qub.ac.uk/home/ProspectiveStudents/PostgraduateStudents/ApplyingtoQueens/

The closing date for receipt of applications is Wednesday 4th July 2007.

Top of Page

QUB Big Band
12 May 2007
7.30pm, SARC

Tickets £8 (£4)

Top of Page

Recitalists' Showcase Concert
16 May 2007
7.30pm, Great Hall

The Performance Programme's annual celebratory concert, this year in the special setting of the Great Hall, is one not to be missed!  Our MA and final-year undergraduate solo instrumentalists and vocalists present an eclectic programme drawing on some of the music that will feature in their public recitals next month.

Tickets: Free.

Please note that only a limited number of tickets will be available at the door.  Advance Reservations should be made through Audrey Smyth (028 9097 5227) a.smyth@qub.ac.uk

Top of Page

Ian Pace, piano
Celebrity Series
10 May 2007, 1.10pm, Harty Room

Top of Page

Queen's Opera Students
Live @ Lunchtime
17 May 2007, 1.10pm, Harty Room

Final-year students will perform (with authentic stage movement and gestures) Act II of the London version of Giovanni Bononcini’s Camilla (705).  The opera, a tale of political and romantic intrigue, will be sung in English.

Top of Page

Queen's Opera Students
Live @ Lunchtime

The performance of Giovanni Bononcini's Camilla, due to take place in the Harty Room on 9th May, has unfortunately been postponed due to the illness of a principal performer.  It will now take place on Thursday 17th May 2007 at 1.10pm.

Top of Page

CANCELLED
National Chamber Choir of Ireland conducted by Celso Antunes
The Eternal Feminine
30 May 2007, 7.45pm, Harty Room

 

Top of Page

Professor Richard Duda (University of California, Davis)
Spatial Hearing: Facts, Conjectures, and Unsolved Problems
9 May 2007, 4pm, SARC

The Talk:

More than a century of research, invention, and engineering development has produced an impressive body of knowledge about how we perceive spatial sound.In recent years, digital signal processing has enabled high-resolution measurements of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), numerical computation of HRTFs and room impulse responses, psychoacoustic experiments employing HRTF models, and impressive headphone-based and loudspeaker-based spatial sound reproduction systems.  Yet, important basic problems remain to be solved.  What can and cannot be done with headphone compensation?  Why is it so difficult to achieve frontal externalization with headphones?  What does it take to make sounds seem to originate from below?  How can individual differences in perception be taken into account?  What is the role of head and body motion?  How important are visual cues? body vibration cues? adaptation and learning?  This presentation will focus on headphone-based spatial sound reproduction, which mobile systems are making increasingly attractive.  The major psychoacoustic cues for sound localization will be briefly reviewed.  The concept of the HRTF and the major HRTF models will be presented.  Motion-tracked binaural recording will be described, using HRTF concepts to illuminate its advantages and limitations.  The presentation will conclude with a description of open questions to challenge future research.

About Richard Duda:

Richard O. Duda received BS and MS degrees in engineering from UCLA in 1958 and 1959, respectively, and a PhD in electrical engineering from MIT in 1962.  He was a member of the technical staff of the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International in Menlo Park, CA, from 1962 to 1980.  From 1980 to 1983 he was at the Laboratory for AI Research at Fairchild Semiconductor, and from 1983 to 1988 he directed R&D at Syntelligence, an expert systems company.  From 1988 to 2000, he was a professor of electrical engineering at San Jose State University, where he taught in the communications and signal processing area, and engaged in research on sound localization.  Since then he has been engaged in spatial sound research at the CIPIC Interface Laboratory at the University of California, Davis.  Dr. Duda is the coauthor with Peter Hart and David Stork of Pattern Classification, 2nd ed. (Wiley Interscience, 2001).  He is a member of the Audio Engineering Society, the Acoustical Society of America, and a Fellow of the IEEE and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence.

Top of Page

Queen's Chamber Choir
Wednesday 2 May, 1.10 pm
Harty Room

A programme of choral favourites including music by Handel and Vivaldi.

Top of Page

Ciaran Scullion, piano
Thursday 3 May, 1.10pm
Harty Room

Postgraduate pianist Ciaran Scullion presents a recital of contrasting twentieth-century music: Ravel's Miroirs and Bartók's Sonata No.1.

Top of Page

Kairos
Wednesday 25 April, 1.10 pm
SARC

Kairos, the University of Manchester's electroacoustic ensemble, presents a concert-length work specifically designed by the ensemble for the Sonic Arts Research Centre's Sonic Lab.  Movements for instruments and computers are interwoven with computer-only interludes, all incorporating live sound manipulation and spatial diffusion, resulting in an immersive sonic experience exploring a distinctive universe of aural timbres and textures.

Top of Page

Alison Dunlop, Piano
Thursday 26 April, 1.10pm
Harty Room

Postgraduate pianist Alison Dunlop presents an exciting solo recital including Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue BWV903 and Chopin's Ballade No.1 in G minor, op.23

Top of Page

Dr. Jenny Doctor (University of York)
Musicology & Composition Cluster Seminar
2 May 2007, 4pm, Music

'Modernism versus Tradition at the Proms, 1927-44'

When the five-year-old BBC took over the London Promenade Concerts in 1927, it quite deliberately took on a national icon, realizing that the Proms' reputation and identity were useful in paving the way for the time when the BBC itself would stand for something of national significance.  In fact, the interwar Proms were about continuity – about the exploitation of the popular, iconic public concert 'formula' that Henry Wood had shaped for more than 30 years, and which continued even after the BBC added radio to the equation.  This formula crossed the boundary between traditional concert life and concerts disseminated by sound technologies, speaking to music-lovers and the general public alike in a way that no other British music festival has managed to do – then as now.

But the Proms formula encompassed new music as part of its 'tradition'.  What was the nature of these 'novelties' and those who heard them?  How did such 'discontinuities' stand with respect to the programming of recurring favourites?  And focusing on issues of nationality, is it possible to consider the presentation of British music at the Proms each year to be representative as a forum for new orchestral works by established composers?  Looking at who determined what was presented at the Proms and how policies and responses behind-the-scenes compared to the perceptions of those listening beyond the stage is one way to approach such questions.  But another is to consider the Proms’s new music content in terms of broader 20th-century modernist aesthetics.

In particular, the BBC's unquestioning eagerness to utilize the latest modern microphones and modern transmission technologies to broadcast Wood's pick of Western art music to the considerable population of Proms's fans came from a contemporary aesthetic that celebrated, bought, sold, and lived within the context of 'the latest' inventions, modern conveniences, and up-to-date furniture and building designs.  Given those interwar values, how can we understand the British music that was presented between 1927 and the end of the war – works by Constant Lambert, Lennox Berkeley, Arthur Bliss, Arnold Bax, William Walton, Eugene Goossens, Frederick Delius, Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams, among many others – within the same kind of terms, the terms of the international modernist aesthetics that were developing at that time?  Utilizing sources found at the BBC Written Archives Centre, I will consider in this paper what modernist market forces were at play in the programming and dissemination of novelties in the interwar BBC Proms.

BIOGRAPHY

Jenny Doctor was educated at Northwestern University, after which she worked for many years at the Britten-Pears Library in Aldeburgh, at Trinity College of Music, and, currently, as visiting Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of York.  Her work is centred on twentieth-century British music and society, and, in particular, the role of the BBC in developing British musical taste in the twentieth century: her first book, The BBC and Ultra-Modern Music, 1922-1936: Shaping a Nation's Tastes (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), concentrated on the BBC's attitudes to (and broadcasting of) the Second Viennese School.  The author of many important periodical articles and book chapters, she is currently co-editing a book with Nicky Losseff entitled Silence, Music, Silent Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), and co-authoring, with David Wright, The Proms (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007).  She is the series editor of the Aldeburgh Studies in Music, published by Boydell & Brewer.

Top of Page

Sonorities Festival 2007: Friday 20 - Wednesday 25 April

Sonorities 2007 proudly hosts one of the most significant musical events in Ireland in recent decades: a double-concert visit by Ensemble Recherche, one of the greatest new music ensembles in the world.  This German ensemble has given over 400 premieres, produced over 30 CDs, and has a repertoire extending from the 7th century to the present day.

Ensemble Recherche will present two concerts: a 60th birthday tribute concert of music by the legendary Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino, and a programme of new music by European composers written for the ensemble.

Sonorities 2007 also presents an exciting mix of orchestral and chamber music, as well as electronic music performed in the unique Sonic Lab, which features symmetric three-dimensional surround-sound, at the Sonic Arts Research Centre.  Featured musicians and ensembles include: The Ulster Orchestra, The Smith Quartet, Miso Music Portugal, Mark Applebaum, George Lewis and Barry Guy.

The full Sonorities programme will be available in March 2007 and tickets for all events will be available from mid-March.  Please send an email to sarc@qub.ac.uk if you would like to be added to our mailing list for the Festival.

Sonorities 2007 website

Top of Page

Ciaran Scullion, Piano
Thursday 3 May, 1.10 pm
Harty Room

Postgraduate pianist Ciaran Scullion presents a recital of contrasting twentieth-century music: Ravel’s Miroirs and Bartók’s Sonata No.1.

Top of Page

Thursday 29th March 1.10pm, William Howard (piano) - Celebrity Series - Harty Room

The distinguished English pianist returns to Queen's for a recital whose centrepiece will be Schubert's 'Wanderer' Fantasia. The recital will also feature In The Mist by Janecek.

Top of Page

Wednesday 28th March, 1.10 pm Harty Room Queen's Camerata

Queen's Camerata (Chamber Orchestra)
conducted by Colin Stark
The debut concert of Queen's Camerata, featuring two cornerstone works from the Classical period, Mozart's Overture to the Marriage of Figaro and Haydn's Symphony No. 104.

Top of Page

Wednesday 28th March, Seminar 4.00pm, Dr. Vincent Hayward McGill University

Dr. Vincent Hayward McGill University

New Methods for the Controlled Delivery of Specific Tactile Stimuli

Wednesday, 28th March, 2007 4:00pm

Sonic Arts Research Centre

The Talk: In the past few years, the Haptics Lab at McGill has been working on several new devices: a handheld vibrotactile device, a contact location display, a planar direct-drive force-feedback device, and a high-density distributed tactile display; named "MicroTactus", "Morpheotron", "Pantograph", and "StreSS", respectively, each targeted at specific approaches to mediate haptic interaction based on the discovery of several "tactile illusions". In this presentation, I will discuss these devices, what drives performance and what provides effectiveness in each case. I will also bring portable demonstrations.

About Vincent Hayward: Vincent Hayward, Ing. Ecole Centrale de Nantes 1978; Ph.D. Computer Science 1981, University of Paris. Chargé de recherches at CNRS, France (1983-86). Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University. Hayward is interested in haptic device design and applications, perception, and robotics. He is leading the Haptics Laboratory at McGill University and was the Director of the McGill Center for Intelligent Machines (2001-2004). Over 160 reviewed papers, 8 patents, 4 pending. Spin-off companies: Haptech (1996), now Immersion Canada Inc. (2000), RealContact (2002). Co- Founder Experimental Robotics Symposia, past Associate Editor IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, Program Vice-Chair 1998 IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, Program Vice-Chair ISR2000, Governing board Haptics-e. Three times leader of national projects of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, and past member of the IRIS Research Management Board. Keynote Speaker, IFAC Symposium on Robot Control 2006. Keynote Speaker, Eurohaptics 2004, The E. (Ben) & Mary Hochhausen Award for Research in Adaptive Technology For Blind and Visually Impaired Persons (2002). Plenary Speaker, Workshop on Advances in Interactive Multimodal Telepresence Systems, Munich, Germany (2001) Keynote, IEEE ICMA , Osaka, Japan (2001), Distinguished Lecturer Series, Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta (2000).

Top of Page

Wednesday 21 March, 1.10 pm, SARC, Live @ Lunchtime QUBEnsemble

This is the inaugural performance by the recently reformed experimental music ensemble at Queen's. The group, lead by drummer Steve Davis, will feature new works created by the members of the ensemble and by Steve Davis. The ensemble will feature guest musicians from Monster Unit who will perform at the lunchtime concert on the 22 March 2007.

Top of Page

Wednesday 21 March, 1.10 pm, Music

Professor Katharine Ellis

(Director, Institute of Musical Research, University of London )

‘Systems Failure: Operatic Paris in the Mid-Nineteenth century’

Abstract: From at least 1820, French musicians and composers lobbied the French state for an additional national opera house. These clamourings had one thing in common: to remedy the meagre opportunities for young opera composers (Prix de Rome winners especially) to have a major work staged in their own capital. As is well known, requests, petitions and proposals met with concerted stalling on the part of the directors of the state-funded theatres and the state itself (in the guise of the Commission des Théâtres Royaux and its successors). Both constituencies feared the adverse effects of increased competition..

      This paper is concerned with the way the existence of a new mid-century theatre—the Théâtre-Lyrique—exposes multi-layered problems in the institutional organisation of French opera. Essentially, it explores the irony that, having been born as a venue with a licence to concentrate on new French opera in multiple genres, this theatre ended up as an institution of which it could plausibly be quipped that ‘At the Théâtre-Lyrique the dead kill off the living’. Classic museum pieces were intended to cross-subsidise new works, but ended up predominating. Why? At the centre of the nexus of answers, I argue, lies the impact of Napoléon III’s legislation liberating the French national theatres from the traditional generic straitjackets imposed by their contracts [cahiers des charges]. Within two years of this legislation taking effect, Paris saw precisely what the state had tried so assiduously to avoid: three near-simultaneous productions of the same work at the Opéra, the Italiens, and the Théâtre-Lyrique, in 1866. Moreover, the work was a museum piece by a foreign composer: Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

       If we look at the behaviour of theatre directors from 1831 onwards, when the Opéra, famously, became semi-privatised, we find that they tend to regress to a mean that will guarantee an audience. They also strain to reconfigure popular works from the musical museum to fit their own theatre’s generic definitions. This paper asks, therefore, what the operatic map of mid-century Paris might have looked like without theatrical cahiers des charges, and suggests that we might reverse the paradigm that has been so colourfully peddled by disappointed parties, and regard them as something of a saving grace for living composers since they forced unwilling opera directors to take risks with the unknown.

Biography: Katharine Ellis studied at University College , Oxford and the Guildhall School of Music, and held posts at St Anne's College, Oxford and the Open University before being appointed Lecturer (subsequently Reader and Professor) in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London , in 1994. She is author of two books: Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France (1995) and Interpreting the Musical Past (2005). Her work embraces many aspects of the cultural history of music, seeking to explain what different kinds of music meant to those who experienced them, used them and avoided them, and probing how music and musicians 'worked' within nineteenth-century French society. The topics of her articles and book chapters have ranged from 'producers' opera' in the 1830s to French Wagnerism, the musical short story, the history of music education, and women as performers. Current projects include a book on music in regional France, 1848-1914, a cultural history of music in nineteenth-century Paris, and The Musical Voyager: Berlioz in Europe, ed. with David Charlton (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2006).

Formerly a co-editor of Music & Letters, she is now editor of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. She serves on the committees of the National Association for Music in Higher Education and the Music Libraries Trust, and is a Vice-President of the Royal Musical Association. In 2006 she became inaugural Director of the Institute of Musical Research at the School of Advanced Study , University of London , a post that she will hold until 2009.

In recognition of her work in musicology and in higher education, Katharine Ellis was one of 400 women invited to the 2006 Women of the Year Lunch and Assembly at the Millennium Mayfair in October, an event that has been described as ‘one of the most significant assemblies of women in the world’.

(http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Music/Staff/KatharineEllis.html)

 

Top of Page

Thursday 22 March, 1.10 pm SARC · Celebrity Series Monster Unit James Allsopp saxophones · Dave Kane bass Tom Arthurs trumpet · Steve Davis drums

Monster Unit is an exciting new quartet comprising four of the UK's most innovative musicians who explore the boundaries between free jazz and contemporary classical chamber music. Their work is at times frantic and challenging — at other times it explores beautiful, lyrical ballads.

Top of Page

click here for information on  MA studentships

Wednesday 14 March, 1.10 pm, Harty Room

Wednesday 14 March, 1.10 pm
Harty Room · Live @ Lunchtime

A concert featuring three final year recitalists: the singers
Aisling Kennedy and Alanna Major, accompanied by Michael McGuffin
piano, and solo pianist Gina Gault.

Top of Page

Thursday 15 March, 1.10 pm, SARC · Celebrity Series, Carin Levine - flute

Carin Levine is one of Europe¹s foremost exponents of new music. She has performed with numerous ensembles in Europe and the US and has given recitals and masterclasses at the Darmstadt Summer Courses. She has also taught at music colleges throughout Europe. She is perhaps best known for her solo performances and today¹s lunchtime concert features an array of flutes and a wide range of exciting works for flute and electronic sounds.

Pedro Rebelo Verzerrung
Luciano Berio Sequenza
Laurie Schwartz The Tides
Giacinto Scelsi Quays
Brian Ferneyhough Carceri d Invenzione IIc

Top of Page

MA studentships in the School of Music and Sonic Arts

The School of Music & Sonic Arts has made available FOUR studentships to cover the cost of tuition for MA programmes available in theSchool in 2007/08.  All current MA applicants and those who apply before the deadline of 1st April will be considered for these awards (valued at £3,240 each).  Applicants are also encouraged to explore other funding opportunities including AHRC and local funding bodies.

Available pathways in the School can be found here.

Top of Page

Live @ Lunchtime Harty Room, 1.10pm

A concert featuring solo violin and vocal music given by two final-year singers, Paul Taggart and Mary McCaffrey, and solo violinist Bethany Mackriell accompanied by Michael McGuffin piano.

Top of Page

Celebrity Series, Thursday 8 March 1.10pm, Harty Room

Formed at Cambridge University seven years ago, this ensemble is quickly making a name for itself as something of a chamber music sensation, being one of the most promising enembles of its generation. The Trio has recently made its South Bank debut, gives regular education workshops in association with the Schubert Ensemble’s ‘Chamber Music 2000’ project and performs widely across the UK and abroad. The centrepiece of today’s programme is Mozart’s Trio in E, K.542, to be heard along with exciting works for piano trio by Panufnik and Camden Reeves.

 

Top of Page

Seminar: Dr Rachel Cowgill (University of Leeds)

Rachel Cowgill graduated from Goldsmiths' College, London, in 1989, and studied for her MMus (Historical Musicology) and PhD at King's College, University of London.  Her doctoral research focused on the reception of Mozart in late Georgian England.  She moved north in 1996 to take up a lectureship in musicology at the University of Huddersfield, and joined the School of Music at Leeds University in September 2000, where she is now Senior Lecturer. Her research is concerned with music in cultural history.  Her interests include Mozart reception; opera studies; musical cultures in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England; music, religion, and nationhood in Victorian Britain; and gender, sexuality, and performativity in music. She has collaborated with Dr Christina Bashford (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) in the Concert Life in 19th-Century London Research Project and Database, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2001-04) and by Oxford Brookes University. She has also worked as a research member of the ‘Opera House Orchestras in 18th- and 19th-Century Europe’ project - part of a larger research programme entitled Musical Life in Europe 1600-1900: Circulation, Institutions, Representation, which was funded by the European Science Foundation.

            She is currently completing two monographs: Redeeming the Requiem: Themes in the early English reception of Mozart’s last work and ‘The Shakespeare of the Lyric Drama’: The reception of Mozart’s operas in nineteenth-century Britain; has co-edited Europe, Empire, and Spectacle in nineteenth-century British Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) with Julian Rushton; has contributed articles to Early Music, Cambridge Opera Journal and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association; and book chapters in several important volumes on the subject of Mozart opera productions in Britain. Rachel is general co-editor, with Peter Holman, of the series 'Music in Britain, 1600-1900' for Boydell & Brewer, and has just been appointed editor of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association.

 

Top of Page

Live @ Lunchtime - a concert of electracoustic works by final-year composers SARC 1.10pm

Live @ Lunchtime - a concert of electracoustic works by final-year composers
SARC, 28th February 2007, 1.10pm

Top of Page

Johannes Birringer - Showcase

Thursday, 1 March, 7.30 pm, SARC

Johannes Birringer
Showcase of work by CETL/SARC Artist-in-Residence Johannes Birringer

Top of Page

ESF PhD Studentship in the School of Music & Sonic Arts

Closing date: 1st March 2007
Project title:  PhD: Applications and Control of Binaural and Ambisonic content in Locative Technologies
Supervisors: Prof Michael Alcorn, Dr Pedro Rebelo
The successful applicant will be joining a group of staff and PhD students who are working in the area of novel audio centent for hand-held computing technologies. 
 
Apply online at: https://pg.apply.qub.ac.uk/home/

Top of Page

Live @ Lunchtime - a concert of Irish Traditional Music Harty Room, 1.10pm

Thursday, 1 March, 1.10 pm, Harty Room

Traditional Music @ Lunchtime

A concert of traditional solos, duets, trios and group-arrangements, afeaturing slow airs and songs, dance tunes from the book of O'Neill's, and the music of Turlough O'Carolan.

Top of Page

Seminar: Professor Antonio Camurri (DIST - University of Genoa)

Research Projects on Multimodal Interfaces and Emotion
at Casa Paganini - InfoMus

Wednesday, 28th February, 2007 4:00PM

Sonic Arts Research Centre

The Talk:

The seminar focus on research frameworks for evaluating, assessing, and measuring the emotional responses in performing artists (e.g. musicians, dancers, actors), as well as in subjects (e.g., an audience) attending artistic performances in ecological, natural environments. Computational models for non-verbal expressive and emotional multimodal interaction, with a special focus on human gesture and sound/music signals will be discussed. Multimodal interactive system platforms to address these research problems, with a special focus on the EyesWeb XMI open software platform for the development of real-time multimodal environments, are then introduced and briefly demonstrated. The research here presented is in the framework of EU IST projects in the 6 Framework Programme: TAI-CHI (Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer-Human Interaction), the EU Networks of Excellence Humaine (Human-Machine Interaction Network on Emotion) and ENACTIVE (on enactive interfaces).

About Antonio Camurri:

Antonio Camurri is Associate Professor at DIST-University of Genova (Faculty of Engineering), where he teaches “Software engineering” and “Multimedia Systems”. His research interests include multimodal intelligent interaction, sound and music computing, kansei and emotion information processing, interactive multimodal-multimedia systems for performing arts and culture. He is founder and scientific director of the InfoMus Lab at DIST-University of Genova (www.infomus.org). He was President of AIMI (Italian Association for Musical Informatics), member of the Executive Committee (ExCom) of the IEEE CS Technical Committee on Computer Generated Music, Associate Editor of the international “Journal of New Music Research”. He is responsible for EU IST and industry projects at InfoMus Lab. He is author of more than 80 international scientific publications. Since 2005 he is scientific director of the Casa Paganini International Centre of Excellence on science and multimedia technologies for music and performing arts (www.casapaganini.org).

Top of Page

Celebrity Series, Wednesday 22 February 1.10pm, Harty Room

Another exciting lunchtime concert from the School’s Artists-in-Residence, featuring works by Honnegger, Enescu and Françaix. We are delighted to welcome back Sophia Rahman piano and returning guest performers Jeanette Ager mezzo-soprano and Philippe Schartz trumpet.

Top of Page

Live @ Lunchtime, Wednesday 21 February 1.10pm, Harty Room

A concert featuring solo performances by two final-year singers, Carrie McNeill and Christopher Cull, accompanied by Michael McGuffin piano.

Top of Page

Seminar: Professor Stephen Pratt

Professor Stephen Pratt is a composer, conductor and broadcaster. Lecturing at a founding college of Hope since 1972, he studied conducting with George Hadjinikos at the RNCM and subsequently composition with Hugh Wood. Since the late 1970s his work has been performed nationally and internationally by such artists as Joanna MacGregor, Philippa Davies, Prappha, the Chilingirian Quartet, Ensemble 10:10 and Gemini. Since Simon Rattle gave the first performance of his orchestral work, 'Some of their Number,' with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in 1980 he has enjoyed a strong relationship with his hometown orchestra.

He was commissioned to write a large choral work for the Society’s 150th anniversary in 1991 (Uneasy Vespers) and most recently his Violin Concerto was premiered by the orchestra under Gerard Schwarz with Anthony Marwood as the soloist. He was appointed Professor of Music at Gresham College, London in 1997, and Professor of Music at Liverpool Hope University in 2003. He is currently a Fellow of Gresham College and the University of Liverpool.

Recently completed works include Aphrodite's Rock (Chilingirian String Quartet, 2001); Judith's Gift for String Quartet (2002); Lovebytes for soprano and ensemble (Ensemble 10:10 cond. Clark Rundell 2003); and a Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (Anthony Marwood, RLPO cond. Gerard Schwartz, 2003). Recent/current projects include Uneasy Vespers, Part II; ‘The Miraculous Mandolin’ (violin and piano), a cello concerto, and a work for Liverpool 2007.

(http://www.hope.ac.uk/research/staff/stephenpratt.htm)

 

Top of Page

Music from CCRMA, Thursday 15 February 2007, 1.10pm, SARC

The Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford is a multi-disciplionary facility where composers and researchers work teogether using computer-based technology both as an artistic medium and as a research tool.  This concert will presrna selection of multichannel works from CCRMA, spanning its history and using different technological and compositonal approaches to merging art and computers. 

Top of Page

PhD Studentships in the School of Music & Sonic Arts

Closing date: 14 February 2007
Apply online at: https://pg.apply.qub.ac.uk/home/

Top of Page

ESF Studentship in the School of Music & Sonic Arts

Eminent Conductor Hits the High Notes At Queen's

Internationally known orchestral conductor Kenneth Montgomery with Queen's Camerata.   Kenneth Montgomery The Ulster Orchestra's soon-to-be new Principal Conductor, Kenneth Montgomery, has dropped into Queen's University to put Queen's Camerata through their paces with an open rehearsal. At the lunchtime session, held in the School of Music's Harty Room, the chamber orchestra played Haydn's Symphony No. 104 and Mozart's 'Marriage of Figaro' overture. The event was organised by Camerata's director Colin Stark, a graduate of Queen's and oboist in the Ulster Orchestra. Welcoming the conductor to the University he said: "It is a wonderful opportunity for Camerata to work with such an eminent conductor. Kenneth has put himself at great inconvenience to come to Belfast today in order to work with the orchestra." Speaking after the rehearsal, Kenneth Montgomery explained why he decided to spend time with the young musicians: "When I was told about the initiative, I was very happy to attend. It is such an important thing for orchestras to play together. Some people feel classic orchestras are old fashioned but I feel they are very important. In some Academic Institutions the old fashioned classical things have been left out, it is like studying English Literature and leaving out Shakespeare, this initiative is fantastic and will do the students wonders and the University. "Technically the students are very good. There is such a tremendous desire among these students to express themselves as musicians. They immediately understood what I said to them and sounded like a professional orchestra. The spirit they got into was amazing." The Belfast born conductor will continue his role as Principal Guest Conductor with the Ulster Orchestra on Friday 09 February when they perform a selection of works in the Ulster Hall. He will take up the post of Principal Conductor from the beginning of the next season. For further information please contact: Judith Rance, 028 9097 5292, j.rance@qub.ac.uk Notes for Editors Camerata was formed in the autumn of 2006, its aim to provide the University with an excellent classical instrumental ensemble, flexible in size and repertoire. Camerata draws its auditioned membership from across the University and is managed by Dr Fiona M. Palmer the director of the School's Performance Programme. For more information on Camerata see http://www.mu.qub.ac.uk/Education/PerformanceGroups/QueensCamerata/#d.en.54997

Top of Page

Live @ Lunchtime, Wednesday 14 February 1.10pm, Harty Room

A Concert featuring solo music for flute and trombone given by final-year recitalists. Jenny Heaney & Chris Day, with Michael McGuffin (piano).

Top of Page

Seminar: Professor Leigh Landy (De Montfort University)

Professor Leigh Landy (De Montfort University)

Innovative Music beyond the Margins

"I have recently read that ‘access’ is a trendy, overused word. I must therefore sadly admit that I believe this word to be highly relevant when dealing with experimental forms of music making, in particular sound-based music. This talk will investigate the issue of marginalisation and innovative music, particularly within the sonic arts. After this I shall present how I approach the challenge of access in terms of scholarly research, technical developments and, of course, musically."

Leigh Landy holds a Research Chair at De Montfort University where he directs the Music,Technology and Innovation Research Centre. His scholarship is divided between creative and musicological work. His compositions, include several for video,dance and theatre. He has worked extensively with the late playwright, Heiner Müller, the new media artist, Michel Jaffrennou and the composer-performer, Jos Zwaanenburg and was composer in residence for the Dutch National Theatre during its first years of existence.Currently he is artistic director of Idée Fixe – Experimental Sound and Movement Theatre. His musicological publications focus on the studies of electroacoustic music, including the notion of musical dramaturgy, contemporary music in a cross-arts context, access and the contemporary time-based arts, and devising practices in the performing arts. He is editor of “Organised Sound: an international journal of music technology” (CUP) and author of three books including “What’s the Matter with Today’s Experimental Music?”, “Experimental Music Notebooks. His fourth book, “Understanding the Art of Sound Organisation” will appear next autumn (MIT Press). He directs the ElectroAcoustic Resource Site (EARS) project and is a founding member of the Electroacoustic Music Studies Network (EMS).

Top of Page

Academic positions in the School

Lectureship in Computer Programming for Musical Applications
Closing Date 9th February 2007 Click here   for further details

Academic Fellowship in New Media
Closing Date 9th February 2007 Click here  for further details

Top of Page

Celebrity Series - Alison Wells (mezzo-soprano), Ian Mitchell (clarinets)

Celebrity Series - Alison Wells (mezzo-soprano), Ian Mitchell (clarinets)
Harty Room, 8th February 2007, 1.10pm

Top of Page

Research Fellow, School of Music & Sonic Arts

Required until 31 December 2007, to work at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC), as part of our contribution to the EU project Enactive: (http://www.enactivenetwork.org.). The successful candidate will carry out research within the Enactive Network and will assist in the planning and delivery of other activities related to the project under the supervision of the local project co-ordinator.

Click here for more information

Top of Page

Real & Virtual Landscapes in Electroacoustic Music

Prof. Rajmil Fischman (University of Keele)

15 November 2006

4pm SARC

Top of Page

E.T.A. Hoffmann’s musical-aesthetic games

Dr Matthew Riley (University of Birmingham)

13 December 2006

4pm Music

Top of Page

Perception in Action: How does perceptual information guide movement?

Dr Cathy Craig (Lecturer in Psychology, Queen’s University)

6 December 2006

4pm SARC

Top of Page

The politics of Handel’s operas.

Prof. Thomas McGeary (Illinois)

22 November 2006

4pm Music

Top of Page

Eric Lyon will discuss his computer music from the mid-1980s to the present.

Dr Eric Lyon (Queen's University)

18 October 2006

4pm SARC

Top of Page

Members of one of the UK’s most exciting early music groups will talk about the music they play and the fascinating instruments on which they play it

His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornets

8 November 2006

4pm Music

Top of Page

Designing an Integral Music Controller: Introducing Bio-Sensing and Emotional State Estimation as a Component of Gestural Control of Sound Synthesis

Dr Ben Knapp(Queen's University)

1 November 2006

4pm SARC

Top of Page

Starbog: the Garden Virtuoso and The Turing Machine.

Dr Simon Mawhinney (Queen's University)

25 October 2006

4pm Music

Top of Page

Prof Philip Grange will speak about his most recent compositions

Prof Philip Grange (Professor of Composition, University of Manchester)

11 October 2006

4pm Music

 

Top of Page

Prof Trevor Wishart will discuss his compositions "Imago" and "Globalalia"

Prof Trevor Wishart (Composer-In-Residence, University of Durham)

4 October 2006

4pm SARC

"Imago" and "Globalalia" will be performed in a lunchtime concert on the 5th October in the Sonic Laboratory.

Top of Page