John Young's work Le Chant en dehors was programmed at the 2026 Electroacoustic Spring, an annual international music festival and conference bringing together cutting-edge academic research, sound art, and electronic performances. Hosted by the Music Technology & Acoustics Lab at the Hellenic Mediterranean University in Rethymno, Greece, the 2026 edition took place on 29-30 May.
MTIRG again supported the Philharmonia's Leicester Hear and Now project.
Led by Tim Steiner, musicians from the Philharmonia, Leicestershire Music and Leicester Musical Memory Box/Geet Sangeet worked alongside people living with dementia to design, create and perform an hour-long show at The Venue@DMU with song, poetry and dance. The ensemble of musicians included a full complement of strings, bassoon, two harps, keyboard and mridangam and the voices of 35 young and elderly participants.
Following two weekends of preparation, the 2026 show was presented on 16 May. It was based on the theme of food, including lively renditions of songs such as 'Yes, We Have No Bananas' and 'Khaike Paan Banaras Wala', as well as an experimental percussion accompaniment to a walk-through video featuring Leicester's 'Golden Mile' and a live musicalised demonstration of roti making.
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| Participants in the 2026 Leicester Hear and Now show |
The Sonic Arts Forum, a national/international UK workshop for electroacoustic and experiemental sonic arts was held at DMU on Saturday 18 April.
The event, organised by Leeds-based composer Coryn Smethurst, has run for over 20 years at many different UK venues and is an opportunity for creative people working with sound and
technology as a significant element in their practice to introduce
their work and receive feedback from an audience in a friendly,
supportive environment.
This was the first time it has been hosted by DMU, giving participants the opportunity to hear their work in the PACE Studio 1 immersive audio space, including a number of ambisonic and audiovisual works.
Participants:
Tom Williams – Clouds and Clocks
Matt Brombley – Collaborative improvisation
Salma Ahmad Caller – Counter Sonic archives
Jonty Harrison & Pete Stollery – Aides… mémoires… project
Holly Gowland – Natural vs artificial
Sibylle Pomorin – Colour sound flow
Tristan Kersten – Process based composition
Bruno Quast – Acousmatic film sound design
Andrey Chugunov – Astrophysical sonification
John Biddulph – Digital and analogue microtonality
PhD candidate Edward Clijsen has a chapter in a new book Innovation in Music: Innovative Creative Practice, just published by Routledge. The book’s contents have been developed from selected papers given at the Innovation in Music 2024 conference in Oslo.
Clijsen’s chapter, titled “Redividing the Octave for Expanded Tonal Spaces: Preliminary Practical Explorations of Formalised Approaches to Microtonal Composition”, discusses the outcomes and implications arising out the compositional process for an early version of his piece Geïsoleerd (2024) which represented an exploration of methods for intuitive utilisation of microtonally-informed extended techniques on the Kingma System alto flute, to provide insight on the location of new affective potentials. The score for Geïsoleerd is now also available via Tetractys Publishing.
Clijsen also delivered a lecture at the recent Hyperchromatic Music Festival at Goldsmiths, entitled: “Redividing the Octave for Expanded Tonal Spaces: Reflections on Recent Practical Explorations of a Formalised Approach to Microtonal Composition”. The lecture reflected on the development of a formalised approach to microtonal composition by tracing its development through the portfolio of works encompassed within his PhD.
The festival's Saturday evening concert also premiered Clijsen’s Äußern (2024) for “19-div” and “Quarter-Tone” Microtonal Trumpets in 38-/48-divisions of the octave, written in collaboration with, and performed by, Stephen Altoft of Microtonal Projects.
Members of the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Group met for a one-day symposium on 17 April.
Presenters included
Robert Chafer: Foundations, Potentials, and Practice of Mixed Reality Spatial Audio Composition.
Edward Clijsen: Redividing the Octave for Expanded Tonal Spaces: Reflections on Recent Practical Explorations of a Formalised Approach to Microtonal Composition.
Matthew London: The Integrated Soundtrack: An Analytical Exploration of the Soundtrack Elements of Music, Sound Design, and Dialogue Within Horror Cinema.
Samvaran Rai: Is dramaturgy an invisible locus of control? An enquiry on dramaturgy and what it could mean for ambiguity in electroacoustic music.
Joanna Cogle: Hypersourced Scoring Practice And Expanding The Integrated Soundtrack In Contemporary Media Scoring.
Conor Snape: Navigating the Oddverse: Adaptive Audio and Interactive World Design.
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| Symposium participants: Front row (L-R) Pawel Wietrzykowski, Matthew London, Samvaran Rai, Bret Battey. Back row (L-R) Edward Clijsen, James Andean, Simon Atkinson, Robert Chafer, Joanna Cogle, Conor Snape, John Young |
