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Composition, Page 4

Musical Mondays

by Harry Matthews, Music undergraduate student.  Mondays at Southampton always seem to be the busiest days of the week for me. On one Monday recently I started my morning rehearsing new pieces for my ensemble with David Owen Norris. The piano and percussion ensemble rehearsed ‘Workers Union’ by Louis Andriessen and a brand new work by third year composer Millie Aldridge. Continue reading →

Composition PhD partnering

by Ben Jameson, Composition PhD student. During the summer of 2015 I was working on a piece called Construction in Metal, for electric guitar and Guitar Hero Xbox controller, that was due to be performed in November of that year. As usual during the compositional process, I was periodically sending drafts to my supervisors in order to get valuable advice and feedback on my progress and how well the piece was working. Continue reading →

Ekanayaka Visit

On Monday 18th April, Dr Tanya Ekanayaka, a classical pianist and composer from Sri Lanka signed to Naxos records gave a recital in Turner Sims concert hall and led a workshop with Southampton University Music Department students on the topics of piano performance, composition and improvisation. Dr. Thomas Seltz, Head of Jazz and Pop. The post Ekanayaka Visit appeared first on SOUNDINGS Music at Southampton. 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 →

The Fraser-Jackson Project

Final year composer, Camilla Aldridge, tells us about the experience of working on a recent composition project with soprano Juliet Fraser and clarinetist Tom Jackson: Rehearsals On Friday 4th December, an audience gathered in Turner Sims to watch Juliet Fraser and Tom Jackson perform works by finalist composers in a concert of new music that came to be called ‘The Fraser-Jackson Project’. Continue reading →

Coming soon – The Trembling Line

We are looking forward to the opening of Aura Satz’s new show at the University’s John Hansard Gallery, running from 3 December 2015 – 23 January 2016.  The show, The Trembling Line, is the result of Aura’s year as Artist in Residence at the university, sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust, and featuring collaboration between the artist, the Department of Music, and the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research. Continue reading →

Bad Music in Oslo?

Can a piece of music can be inherently bad, or are all such judgements purely subjective? Associate Professor in Composition Matthew Shlomowitz reports on a recent premier in Oslo addressing such issues. I was commissioned by the Ultima Festival in Oslo to compose a forty-minute work for the Plus Minus Ensemble, a group I direct with English composer Joanna Bailie. For this commission I decided to do something different: instead of writing a piece, I wrote a ‘lecture-piece’. Continue reading →