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And so it begins…

Catherine Pope, Professor of Medical Sociology, tells us about her experiences with the University's community choir: January 2016. And so it begins… a cheery email entitled ‘Hello ALL’ from the music-community-choir email list, but actually from Harvey Brough our esteemed and energetic Turner Sims Professor of Music. 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 →

The New Four Seasons

Jane Chapman, renowned harpsichordist and Turner Sims Fellow, tells us about her latest adventure... 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 →

Share the Sound (2016)

Following last year’s huge success, we are all very excited to announce the return of Share The Sound Festival (2016). If you were involved with, or attended the event in March 2015, you will of course be itching to know who will be playing at our next musical extravaganza. If however you haven’t heard about us yet – here’s all you need to know. Continue reading →

Successful Saxophonists!

Three Music students from the University of Southampton have been offered postgraduate places at leading UK conservatoires.  Wayne Hau, Laurence Astill and Emily Cox are all third years studying with Southampton's inspirational classical saxophone teacher Dr Angela Space.  Between them they applied to five of the country's top conservatoires. Wayne, Laurence and Emily all received offers to study Masters in Performance. Continue reading →

Popular Premiere

Associate Professor Matthew Shlomowitz tells us about a forthcoming premiere in his Popular Contexts series: In 2015 I composed a twenty-five minute work for the Norwegian percussionist Håkon Stene, commissioned by The Norwegian Programme for Artistic Research. The work is the eighth volume in my Popular Contexts series, which combine pre-recorded sounds with live instrumental music to investigate aspects of everyday and popular culture. Continue reading →

Improving Verses for Children

Concert at Chawton House, 11th December 2015   David Owen Norris, Professor of Music Performance, says:  Our concert at Chawton went down well. It marked the 150th Anniversary of Edward Loder's death by presenting some of his settings of Isaac Watts's improving verses for children, best known today from their parodies in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland". Watts was born in Southampton. Continue reading →

The Hoosiers Session

Music finalist Jamie Wall reports on a collaboration between The Edge, SUSUtv and Music, bringing bands into the Music Department studios for live sessions to be broadcast on SUSUtv. From the start of this academic year I have been working alongside people from The Edge magazine and SUSUtv on a project called ‘The Edge Sessions’. Continue reading →

Liane Carroll and Julian Joseph workshops

 Thomas Seltz, Head of Jazz and Pop, reports on fantastic visits from great performers: The jazz pianist and singer Liane Carroll took to the stage with jazz and pop performance students on Friday 20 November 2015 for a workshop prior to her amazing performance in Turner Sims with Harvey Brough and the University of Southampton Voices in Songs in the Theme of Love. She covered areas of musicianship and performance relating to original compositions and jazz standards. Continue reading →

In praise of opera

Recent alumnus Beth Coopey describes her surprise discovery of Opera during her studies, and how that changed  everything... I arrived at the University of Southampton with little interest in opera. I had sung a selection of arias but knew little about the operas from which they came. That soon changed: my opera experience here has been so immersive and wide-ranging that I am leaving as (probably!) a lifelong opera lover. 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 →