Currently browsing

Page 59

Study shows some brains are simply not wired for language learning

The Telegraph has reported on a recent study by researchers at McGill University in Canada suggesting that some people “have brains that are not wired for linguistic skills”. According to the study’s findings, it is possible to use brain scans to predict which learners will have greater success in their language learning. To find out more, visit the Telegraph website. Continue reading →

Workshop on Impact in research, education and enterprise Wed 27th January

When: Wednesday 27th January 2016, 5-6.30pm Where: Building 65, Room 1177, Avenue Campus Who: Dr Steve Dorney The University is strongly committed to ensuring that all of our activities – in research, education and enterprise (broadly understood) – are of benefit to the wider society outside the institution. In Humanities, there is now a committee dedicated to promoting the public impact of our work and in ML there is clearly a lot of potential in all aspects of what we do. Continue reading →

Dark Music Days in Reykjavik

Georgia Browne teaches flute in the music department at Southampton University. She is a specialist in historical flute performance and is a member of a Icelandic ensemble Nordic Affect who perform new music on old instruments. Here she reports on their latest venture: On 31 January Nordic Affect take to the stage at the international new music festival Dark Music Days in Reykjavjik, Iceland, where the ensemble is based. Continue reading →

A week with David Owen Norris

David Owen Norris, Professor of Music and Head of Keyboard and Percussion Studies,  gives us a round up of a week’s wide-ranging activities… Some interesting coaching this week – the Banks String Quartet at the Royal College of Music in Frank Bridge’s 1907 student piece, the quartet in B flat, for the Bridge Study Day, where my fellow contributors included Fabian Huss, Lewis Foreman, Anthony Payne and Stephen Banfield. Continue reading →

Italian film showing today: Io sono Li / Shun Li and the Poet (Andrea Segre, 2011)

The Italian film, Io sono Li / Shun Li and the Poet (Andrea Segre, 2011) (93 minutes, in Italian and Mandarin with English subtitles), will be showing in Lecture Theatre B, Avenue Campus, at 6.30pm on Monday 25 January 2016. Review, introduction and discussion by Laura Nera and Gordon Baxter. All welcome! The trailer for this film can be viewed on YouTube. Continue reading →

New recording for old flutes

The Renaissance flute consort Zephyrus Flutes, under the direction of Nancy Hadden, has just released their latest CD, Aux Plaisirs, aux Delices Bergeres.   This is the second in a series of French music for Renaissance flutes, based on research that Nancy completed during her AHRC Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts at Southampton. The recording highlights the unique sound of the early modern flute. Continue reading →

The New Four Seasons

Jane Chapman, renowned harpsichordist and Turner Sims Fellow, tells us about her latest adventure… Jane performing at London Contemporary Music Festival at Peckham car park. I’m just about to go on tour with Nigel Kennedy playing his whacky version of the 4 Seasons and other sundries. I’m doubling on harpsichord and piano, and the score has been translated from figured bass into jazz  chords. Who knows if Vivaldi was around today, he may have written it that way. Continue reading →

A New Mozart Completion

A fragment of an Oboe Concerto by Mozart has been completed by William Drabkin, Emeritus Professor of Music, and published by the Music Haven (London) in full score and, very recently, in an arrangement for oboe and piano. Mozart’s manuscript, in the Fitzwilliam Library, Cambridge, comprises about 70 bars of a first movement in F major, including the complete opening orchestral ritornello. Continue reading →