Hear and Now Leicester Project

MTIRG supoorted and hosted the Philharmonia Orchestra's Hear and Now project in Leicester this year.
Hear and Now is a community music project run in Leicester by the Philharmonia in collaboration with Leicester Musical Memory Box/Geet Sangeet, Leicestershire Music and Drum and Brass Leicester. The project brings together older people living with dementia and their carers, young singers and instrumentalists from grassroots community organisations, with players of the Philharmonia to devise and present a varied programme of music, poetry and movement.  Over four weekends the participants, led by composer and animateur Tim Steiner, developed the performance, which was presented in the Sue Townsend Theatre on 27 April 2025. DMU Arts and Festivals Management students gained work experience assisting the show's producer, Philharmonia Community and Engagement Manager Stephanie Waldron.

Hear and Now in rehearsal, PACE Studio 1

 

 

 

Hear and Now performance, Sue Townsend Theatre 27 April 2025

 

MTIRG Symposium 9 April 2025

MTIRG members met on 9 April in the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Lab for a day-long symposium to share research.

Presentations were given by:

Robert Chafer—Mixed Reality Spatial Audio Composition: a distribution platform for multichannel electroacoustic works
Matt Rogerson—Dromos/Autos: The Autistic Ontology as Performance
Edward Clijsen—Redividing the Octave for Expanded Tonal Spaces: Reflections on Recent Practical Explorations of Formalised Approaches to Microtonal Composition
Matthew London—The Integrated Soundtrack: An Analytical Exploration of the Auditory Elements of Music, Sound Design, and Dialogue Within Horror Cinema
Cristiana Palandri—Materialising sound-based composition: exploring multisensory perception and audience engagement between tactile and sonic spheres
Stefano Catena—Analysis and findings of Intention/Reception questionnaires on spatialisation in acousmatic music
Conor Snape—From Concept to Gameplay: Practical Approaches to IDM Derived Sound Effect & Adaptive Audio Design in Modern Video Game Development)
Joe Stillwell—A Study in Movers and Musicians: A Multidisciplinary Lens of Improvisation)
John Young—The Long and Short of Acousmatic Music).

Presenters at the MTIRG Symposium, clockwise, L-R: Edward Clijsen, Conor Snape, Robert Chafer, Joe Stillwell, Matt Rogerson, John Young, Matthew London. Centre: Stefano Catena, Cristiana Palandri

 

Battey serving as jury member for Gilgamesh Music Festival 2025

Prof Bret Battey is serving as a jury member for the Gilgamesh Music Festival 2025, being run by the Gilgamesh Arts and Culture Foundation in California. The prizes will be announced in Summer 2025.

Battey's 'Clonal Colonies I: Fresh Runners' at Cineteca Madrid event June 20

Spain's Punto y Raya Festival will be screening Bret Battey's audiovisual composition Clonal Colonies I: Fresh Runners as part a 'visual music' series celebrating World Music Day. The screening will be a Cineteca Madrid, June 20, 2025. 

Battey's Estuaries 4 Screening at Carnegie Melon University

Prof Bret Battey's audiovisual composition 'Estuaries 4' was screened 27 Mar 2025 at Carnegie Melon University, Pittsburgh as part of a international selection of works presented by AV@CMU.

Edward Clijsen to present at the Hyperchromatic Music Festival, Goldsmiths

PhD Student Edward Clijsen will be delivering a presentation reflecting on his recent work and processes in composing for the Kingma System Alto Flute; ‘19-div’ and ‘Quarter-tone’ Microtonal trumpets; and his upcoming project composing for 31-EDO Fokker Organ and 96-EDO Carrillo Piano. 

The festivals evening concerts will also premiere Clijsen’s ‘Geïsoleerd’ (2024) for Solo Kingma System Alto Flute – written in collaboration with, and performed by, Carla Rees.

 

This will be the first microtonal festival in London since UKMicroFest in 2012, and the first microtonal festival in the UK since ‘Beyond the Semitone’ in Aberdeen in 2013.

The Hyperchromatic Music Festival will bring together composers, performers, and lecturers from around the world to explore systems of music which use a much wider pallet of notes than those found in 12-note chromatic music. Lecturers and students from Goldsmiths University, Royal Academy of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Middlesex University, Microtonal Projects, Yehudi Menuhin School, and De Montfort University will present their unique approaches to hyperchromatic music.

 

Attendees will have the opportunity to attend two days of lectures designed to provide them with practical and theoretical tools for approaching these new tonal horizons. Following each lecture, all are invited to attend evening concerts in which these tools are put to use. All events are free to attend and are held at Goldsmiths University. Lectures will run from 12-2pm at Room LG01 in the Professor Stuart Hall Building and concerts will run from 5-6:30 at the Deptford Town Hall on April 14th and 15th.

 

Eventbrite bookings:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hyperchromatic-music-festival-tickets-1283827164609?aff=oddtdtcreator

 

Leicester Cathedral Commissioned Student Projects for Richard III Reinterment Anniversary

Leicester Cathedral commissioned four final-year undergraduate BA music technology students to make works for the 10th anniversary of the reinterment of King Richard III. The project, an installation entitled The Last Plantagenet: Stories in Sound, premiered as part of the city-wide Light Up Leicester festival, 12-15 March, 2025. The students crafted immersive sound pieces that were played through eight speakers positioned around Richard III’s tomb. This multi-directional audio experience enveloped listeners with deeply evocative explorations of different aspects of the King’s legacy and his final resting place within the Cathedral.
 

The students had privileged access to recordings of people involved in the reinterment events, coordinated by oral historian Rebecca Hale. They also made contemporary recordings of other sounds such as church bells, various instruments and voices, and music played on the cathedral’s organ, and they captured others such as the timeless sound of water from the stream that runs close to the Bosworth battlefield where Richard III died on 22 August 1485. 

The project was featured in an article in the Leicester Mercury.