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Staff, Page 5

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 →

Studying music and the web

The Department has constructed a new undergraduate joint honours course in Music and Web Science, with the first student intake planned for October 2016 - the video below gives more details.  In this post Anna Kent-Muller (BA Hons Music 2015) explains how her own interest in Web Science started, and describes how she contributed to the new degree programme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1Q7MmdAw0E&feature=youtu. Continue reading →

Harpsichords at Cheltenham

This week postgraduate researcher and harpsichordist Christopher Lewis starred as player and presenter at the Cheltenham Music Festival -  for 'A History of the Modern Harpsichord: An Afternoon at the Salle Cortot'.  Here he tells us more about the purpose of the event : Early on Monday, a small group of us from the University of Southampton departed for the prestigious Cheltenham Music Festival. Continue reading →

Meet the (modern) pianos

In the final instalment of our Meet the Pianos series for this year, David Owen Norris introduces some of our modern concert grands.  Many people will find these more familiar-looking than our rarer historic instruments. But they're not all the same, and modern piano firms, just like their 18th-century counterparts, search to create instruments with their own characteristic sounds. Continue reading →

New video – Composing for voices with Finnissy and EXAUDI

Back in March, our professor of composition Michael Finnissy joined the leading contemporary ensemble EXAUDI for a residency at the Britten-Pears centre at Aldeburgh.  Along with EXAUDI's director James Weeks and soprano Juliet Fraser, Michael directed a course that gave young composers the chance to work directly with six of the singers from Exaudi in practical sessions as they developed new work and explored the challenges of composing for voices. Continue reading →

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 →

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 →