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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 →

Cross Channel Collaboration

PhD composer Martin Humphries tells us a little about a recent collaboration between Southampton composers and Belgium based Ensemble Fractales: Over the past five months myself and two fellow PhD Composition candidates have been engaged in an exciting and incredibly rewarding collaboration with Brussels-based contemporary music group Ensemble Fractales. 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 →

Electric guitar conference in Bowling Green

PhD composition student Ben Jameson tells us about his recent trip to a conference over in the USA: The 'Electric Guitar in Popular Culture' conference took place at Bowling Green State University, Ohio at the end of March. The conference was organised by Dr. Matt Donahue from the university’s Department of Popular Culture, and brought together scholars and musicians from around North America and the rest of the world with a shared enthusiasm for the electric guitar. 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 →