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Share the Sound on screen

Wessex Films, the award-winning Students' Union creative industries society, spent the weekend of our Share the Sound festival filming up-and-coming jazz and pop artists from the Music department.  They've produced a fantastic new video for us to help spread the word for next year's edition of the festival.  Check it out below! Coming to Talking Heads in March 2016 . . . .       https://youtu. Continue reading →

The Oriental Miscellany – “Wild but pleasing when understood”

Jane Chapman, our Turner Sims Fellow and principal harpsichord tutor, has just released a new recording of the Oriental Miscellany (1789) - one of the earliest publications of Indian music in the West.  Here she explains the project and talks with journalist Suanshu Khurana from the Indian Express (Delhi). Her disc is currently number 14 in the Indian iTunes Classical Charts (SIGDC415). Continue reading →

Meet the pianos again

In the second of our series of  'Meet the pianos' videos, David Owen Norris introduces an instrument like the ones Jane Austen would have known - a wonderful 1796 Broadwood grand piano. We acquired the Broadwood four years ago, and it has been a hard-working addition to our historic piano collection. Continue reading →

Notes to the new government

Two Southampton composers, Ben Oliver and Michael Finnissy, were commissioned by the London Sinfonietta to produce new works for performance  after the national election.  Ben tells us about the project: Last Saturday my new work, The National Loneliness, was performed by the London Sinfonietta at the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of their Notes to the New Government Project. Continue reading →

La Vittoria – Waterloo in music

Katrina Faulds has recently finished her PhD on dance and dance music in the English country house c. 1800.  She is also an accomplished performer on early pianos, and last week saw her presenting some of her research in sound: In November last year,  Dr Penelope Cave and I were offered the opportunity to perform a concert at Chawton House Library as part of the Music department’s regular collaborative series. Continue reading →

Student rep success

Applause for Louisa Healey (year 3) who has been our academic student president for Music this year.  At last night's Student Rep awards, Louisa was shortlisted in all three categories in which she was nominated - Best Individual Commitment to the Cause, Commitment to the Zone, and Academic Rep of the Year - and she was named one of the winners for Commitment to the Zone. Continue reading →

Hartley Residencies in Music: Laura Tunbridge

In February 2015, the Music Department launched the Hartley Residencies in Music – an annual programme of two-day visits from eminent scholars. Post-graduate research student Xin Ying Ch'ng recounts her experience of our most recent event: We were privileged to welcome Laura Tunbridge, Associate Professor from the University of Oxford, St Catherine’s College for the Music Department’s second Hartley Residency in Music on the 21st and 22nd of April. Continue reading →

Meet the pianos

Almost all of our students and staff use some form of keyboard nearly every day.  They are indispensable for a whole range of our activities - whether for solo performance or accompaniment, for bands and ensembles, or for working out harmony exercises and new composition ideas. Because keyboards are so central to our programmes, they also represent the largest cost in our performance budget.  We are starting a new funding drive to help. Continue reading →

Showcasing our interns

Becky Gribble and Talea Bartlet formed the other half of the inaugural Turner Sims intern team.  While teammates Louisa and Cerys focussed on programme editing and marketing in the concert hall, Becky and Talea were the managers of the Southampton Showcase programme for advanced student performers.  Here's how they spent their year: We applied for the position in the intern team to further our experience in arts management, as this was not an opportunity available to most students. Continue reading →

Cantores in Germany

Choral scholar Emma Bryant reports on a recent tour by the university's choral scholars, who travelled from home base at the ancient city centre church of St Michael's in Southampton to some equally wonderful venues in Germany: Over the Easter vacation Cantores Michaelis, the University of Southampton choral scholars, spent four days in the German town of Lüdenscheid and performed two concerts there and in the nearby town of Herford. Continue reading →

The Cello Suites and Mrs Bach

PhD researcher Nadya Markovska reflects on controversies of authorship and what this says about our attitudes to performance and composition: Bach’s Six Suites for Solo Cello (BWV 1007-1012) are among the most famous pieces in the canon of Western music. Recent claims by the Australian researcher Martin Jarvis about their authorship have become a media sensation, causing heated scholarly debates in normally restrained musicological circles. Continue reading →