DMU professor headlines ground-breaking music festival in Cape Town
John Young was guest composer at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester USA last week (28.10 – 1.11). He gave two lectures to groups of undergraduate and doctoral students and a 90-minute presentation on his work at the Eastman Composition Department seminar, as well as individual masterclasses for doctoral students.
On the final evening of his visit John also presented two works in a concert hosted by the Eastman electroacoustic music department—EMuSE—sharing the programme with Eastman students and faculty members in the school’s new Hatch Recital Hall: the acousmatic work Arioso (2021) and a new work composed for Eastman DMA students Tremolo (2024) for bass clarinet, viola, piano and electroacoustic sounds.
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| Composers and performers in Hatch Hall after EMuSE concert 1 Nov 2024. |
Three DMU researchers will present music and papers at The University of Greenwich's Sound/Image 2024 Festival in November.
PhD student Stefano Catena will present his paper 'Organised space: the terminology problem of spatialisation' and Bret Battey's audiovisual Estuaries 4 work will feature in one of the concerts along with a paper he will give on that work entitled 'Estuaries 4: Events and Continuums'. Professor Emeritus Simon Emmerson is to present a paper ‘An imaginary Soundwalk’ developed from a talk given at the M4C-funded Spatial Audio Gathering at DMU in June, as well as diffusing his work Near and Far at Once in the opening concert. Battey's audiovisual installation Traces, Molten—first presented at the LCB Depot in Leicester as part of the 2022 British Science Festival—will also feature in the festival.
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| A still image from Battey's Estuaries 4 |
PACE Building, Studio 1 (ground floor)
14:00 - 15:00 Lecture: Composing Intermedia: from Audiovisual Piano to VR
15:00 - 17:00 Opportunities for those who attended the lecture to experience Point-Line-Piano for themselves (circa 10-minutes each). A signup sheet for slots will circulate during the lecture.
17:00 - 18:00 Pre-signup slots will be available for others who want to experience the project. Email Prof Bret Battey (bbattey@dmu.ac.uk) to request a slot. This time slot may be extended if there is need.
Talk: Composing Intermedia: from Audiovisual Piano to VR.
Composer Jarosław Kapuściński specializes in creating audiovisual works across various media. Many of his compositions are interactive, often involving musicians—particularly pianists—who control visual content, or more recently, general audiences who paint audiovisual worlds in VR. Whether animating fruits (Juicy), typewritten poetry (Oli’s Dream), or the traces of music reflected in the faces of listeners from around the world (Where is Chopin), his works form highly intricate yet playful systems interweaving music, visuals, meaning, and performer actions. In this presentation, Kapuściński will discuss his work, as well as demonstrate a recent VR collaboration with the OpenEndedGroup, Point Line Piano.
VR experience: Point-Line-Piano
Point-Line-Piano is a VR project that reimagines the composition, performance, and
reception of piano music by fusing its modes of creating, playing, and
listening. As you interact with it, your ears, eyes, and hands act in concert.
You start by drawing lines freely in the space around you, sparking musical
notes that are notched as points on the lines as you draw them. These notes
quickly accumulate, forming distinct melodic phrases and rhythms, while the
computer generates an intricate audiovisual dance all around you. The work
enables a spatial and full-body experience of abstraction not found in any
other medium. In a live concert setting it can also be used as an audiovisual
instrument. Point-Line-Piano received support from the European Research Council Digi-Score Project: https://digiscore.github.io/ .
Jarosław Kapuściński is an Associate Professor of Music at Stanford University, where he
is affiliated also with the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.
His research focuses on intermedia composition, performance, and Japanese
traditional aesthetics.
Kapuściński has received grants and commissions from numerous international organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Governor General of Canada, and Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA) in France. His works have been awarded prizes at festivals in Canada, France, Switzerland, and the United States, and have been presented at venues such as New York MOMA, Spoleto USA, EMPAC NY, Logan Center in Chicago, ZKM in Karlsruhe, Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid, Media Biennale Wroclaw, Warsaw Autumn Festival, Creative Media Center in Hong Kong, Benz Arena in Shanghai, and National Art Centre in Ottawa.
In addition to his artistic work,
Kapuściński has collaborated on scholarly websites about Japanese Gagaku music
(gagaku.stanford.edu) and Noh Theater (noh.stanford.edu).
https://jaroslawkapuscinski.com/
Marc Downie and Paul Kaiser have collaborated as OpenEndedGroup since 2001. Working in a broad variety of media and venues:, they make art for façade, gallery, dance, stage, 3D cinema, print, and virtual reality. Their works respond to a wide range of materials — drawing, film, motion capture, photography, music, and architecture. They frequently combine three signature elements: non-photorealistic 3D rendering; the incorporation of body movement by motion-capture and other means; and the autonomy of artworks directed or assisted by artificial intelligence. OpenEndedGroup’s films, installations, stage works, and VR pieces have premiered in such venues as MoMA, Lincoln Center, the Barbican, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Hayward Gallery, Sadler’s Wells, and the Berlin, New York, and Rome film festivals. Eight of their 3D digital films were the first of their kind to enter MoMA’s permanent collection.
We are delighted that today two MTI PhD students start PhD funding with the AHRC-funded Midlands Four Cities Doctoral Training Partnership, a consortium of eight institutions in Nottingham, Leicester, Birmingham and Coventry/Warwick.
Matthew London will be embarking on his PhD in the area of film music and sound design in a project entitled The Integrated Soundtrack: An analytical exploration of the auditory elements of music, sound design and dialogue within horror cinema, supervised by Simon Atkinson, Leigh Landy and Laraine Porter.
Edward Clijsen is completing a practice-led PhD on microtonality in music: Practical Explorations of Formalised Approaches to Microtonal Composition, supervised by John Young, Bret Battey and Duncan MacLeod (University of Nottingham).
They join a strong contingent of M4C-funded PhD students in music at DMU with Cristiana Palandri, Stefano Catena, Rob Chafer, Sam Topley and Ross Davidson all current M4C PhD candidates.
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| Edward Clijsen (L) and Matthew London (R) |
MTI alumna Louise Rossiter will present a solo portrait concert and talk at the prestigious L'Espace du Son series on 20 October 2024 in the Théâtre Marni, Brussels. 2024 sees the 31st edition of the festival and Louise shares the bill with other electroacoustic luminaries Jonty Harrison (UK), Martin Bédard (Québec) and Christine Groult (France).
Louise’s concert will include a revised version of an earlier work Black Velvet (2010/2024), with three acousmatic pieces from her Der Industriepalast Suite, based on imagery by the infographics pioneer Fritz Kahn— I/O (2024), Synapse (2021) and Neuronen (2019), along with The Annunciation (2022) commissioned by the Luigi Russolo Foundation, and Rift (2015) one of the works Louise completed as part of her PhD portfolio at DMU.
Der Industriepalast will be resealed on the Oscillations label very soon.
PhD Student Edward Clijsen delivered a paper at the 6th Biennial International Conference of the Progect Network for Studies of Progressive Rock (Prog24) at the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music, Kraków, 5-7 September 2024.
The presentation discussed the position of microtonality in the progressive rock/metal musical landscape.
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| Delegates to the Prog24 Conference, Clijsen pictured standing 6th from right |