Awards for John Young & Louise Rossiter at Musica Nova competition

The 2019 Musica Nova competition in Prague has recognised two MTI composers this year:

Prof. John Young has received an Honorary Mention for his orchestral work 'Spirit', while alumna Louise Rossiter has received an Honorary Mention for her acousmatic composition 'Neuronen'.

Congratulations to both!

These and the other winning works will be celebrated in a concert in Prague on Tuesday December 10th 2019:

https://musicanova.seah.cz/cds/MusicaNova2019/index.htm

This weekend: Aural Diversity Conference 2019!

Join us for the first Aural Diversity Conference, which will take place this weekend, on Saturday November 30th and Sunday December 1st 2019 at the University of Leicester:

http://auraldiversity.org/conferences.html

PROGRAMME SUMMARY

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 30th, 2019

9.00-9.30 Registration. University of Leicester, George Davies Centre (GDC)

9.30-9.45 Welcome. Prof. Andrew Hugill/Prof. John Levack Drever (GDC)

10.00-11.30 SESSION 1: Hearing & Listening 1 (GDC). Chaired by Prof John Drever.

• Keynote 1: Dr. Alinka Greasley (University of Leeds) “Exploring the music listening behaviour of people with hearing impairments: patient and practitioner perspectives”.
• Prof. William Davies (University of Salford) “Autistic Listening”
• Lena Batra (Independent Hearing Therapist) “Assisting the Musically Diverse Patient”

12.00-13.00 SESSION 2: Composing, Music & Sound Art 1. Attenborough Arts Centre (AAC). Chaired by Prof Andrew Hugill.

• Jay Afrisando (composer) “The (Real) Laptop Music :))” (multimedia performance)
• Simon Allen (composer) “After Cornell” (multimedia performance)
• Josephine Dickinson (composer/artist/poet) “ALPHABETULA” (performance)
• John D'Arcy (digital media researcher) "Do You Hear What I Hear?" (presentation)

14.00-14.10 Welcome address by Professor Paul Monks, Head of the College of Science and Engineering, University of Leicester (GDC)

14.15-16.00 SESSION 3: Hearing & Listening 2 (GDC). Chaired by Dr. Alinka Greasley.

• Keynote 2: Prof Peter Rea (University Hospitals Leicester) “Aural Diversity: the consequences of pathology and treatment. A surgeon’s perspective”.
• Dr. Samuel Couth (Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness) ”The show must go on: understanding the effects of musicianship, noise exposure, cognition and ageing on real-world hearing abilities.”
• Dr. Marie Thompson (University of Lincoln) & Dr. Patrick Farmer (Oxford Brookes University) “Tinnitus, Auditory Knowledge and the Arts”
• Ed Garland (Aberystwyth University) “Textual hearing aids: how reading about sound can improve sonic experience”
16.00-17.00 SESSION 4: Panel Discussion - Aural Diversity (GDC). Chaired by Dr. Simon Atkinson (De Montfort University).
• Panel includes keynote speakers (John Drever, Alinka Greasley, Andrew Hugill, Peter Rea). Contributions from the floor invited.
19.30-21.30 SESSION 5: Aural Diversity Concert #2 Led by Duncan Chapman.
***
SUNDAY DECEMBER 1st
9.00-9.30 Late registrations, organisational questions.
9.30-10.30 SESSION 6: Composing, Music & Sound Art 2 (GDC). Chaired by Prof John Drever.
• Keynote 3: Prof. Andrew Hugill (University of Leicester) “Consequences of Ménière’s Disease and other forms of hearing impairment for musicians, their music-making, hearing care and technologies”.
• Christopher Cook (Goldsmiths College) “Co-composing with Trevor, who has Mild Cognitive Impairment”
11.00-12.00 SESSION 7: Composing, Music & Sound Art 3 (GDC). Chaired by Prof John Drever.
• Dr. Balandino Di Donato (University of Leicester), Dr. Tychonas Michailidis (Solent University), Christopher Dewey (University of Huddersfield) “SoundSculpt: sculpting and experiencing sound-objects through mid-air haptics and holographic projection.”
• Prof. Matthew Sansom (Sunway University, KL, Malaysia) “Aural and other perceptually diverse inclusivity in an example of interdisciplinary arts practice”
• Dr. Matthew Spring (Bath Spa University) “Thomas Mace: a functioning deaf musician and music theorist in the seventeenth-century”.
12.30-13.30 SESSION 8: Soundscape, Environment & Acoustic Ecology 1 (GDC). Chaired by Dr. Alinka Greasley.
• Keynote 4: Prof. John Levack Drever (Goldsmiths College) “Phonating Hand Dryers: exploits in aural diverse composition and co-composition”.
• Dr. Karla Berrens Torruella (University of Barcelona) “Sound, discomfort and the making of place in an urban environment.”
14.00-15.00 SESSION 9: Artists’ Statements (GDC). Chaired by John Drever
• Alan Jacques (musician and trustee of the Ménière's Society) “A Tale of Two Inner Ears - Learning to live with Cochlear Amusia”
• Josephine Dickinson (composer/artist/poet) “ALPHABETULA”
• Lena Batra (Independent Hearing Therapist) “Embracing the Inbetween”
15.30-16.30 SESSION 10: Soundscape, Environment & Acoustic Ecology 2 (GDC). Chaired by Prof Andrew Hugill.
• Dr. Meri Kytö (University of Eastern Finland) “Cochlear implant as soundscape arranger: rethinking the signal-to-noise ratio”
• Johan Malmstedt (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) “Ecological Ears: Modes of Listening in the Writings of Murray Schafer and Bernie Kraus”
• Additional item: David Holzman (concert pianist) “Deep River - A Pianist’s Journey With Hearing Loss”
16.30-17.00 SESSION 11: Plenary discussion (GDC). Chaired by Prof John Drever. Questions to be sought from delegates in advance of the conference. The discussion will also focus on planning of future events and research.
17.00 Close
ADDITIONAL EVENT: CONCERT
Sara Stowe (soprano) and Matthew Spring (early instruments) Apollo, Orpheus, Midas and Pan. Hearing and mythology in early song. December 3rd 2019, 12:45-1:45pm (approximate) in the Main Hall, Attenborough Arts Centre.

Bret Battey: 'Three Breaths in Empty Space' Installation

Bret Battey's new installation Three Breaths in Empty Space was commissioned by Phoenix Cinema, Leicester, to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of their move to the Cultural Quarter. It will run mid-November to the end of December 2019, filling the Phoenix Gallery with abstract computer animations and surround sound generated with custom software systems. The work invites participants to contemplate continuous change and shimmering instabilities in everything from subatomic activity to the level of the cosmos. Are we witnessing quantum foam on invisible waves, nerve patterns in the body-mind, maps of social structures coalescing and transforming, or transfigurations of some vast nebula? As ghostly fragments of Maurice Ravel’s piano work Ondine occasionally materialise and dissolve at peaks of audiovisual intensity, we can ponder how phenomena arise and pass in Emptiness.

For more information: https://www.phoenix.org.uk/event/three-breaths-in-empty-space/

Simon Atkinson: Night Music, Greenwich October 16th

On Wednesday October 16th, MTI's Simon Atkinson will be performing a solo concert at St. Alfege Church, Greenwich, London, as part of the University of Greenwich's Loudspeaker Concert Series:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/simon-atkinson-loudspeaker-orchestra-concert-tickets-73423173689

"Simon Atkinson presents a programme of acousmatic and lowercase music inspired by the nocturnal and evocative of the night, projected over the Loudspeaker Orchestra.

"Simon is Associate Professor and a founding member of the MTI: Institute for Sonic Creativity at De Montfort University, Leicester. His work is primarily in musical composition made possible through digital technologies, exploring the evolution of timbre and texture through time. He has worked in a diverse and eclectic range of musical projects, mediums and contexts over the years, recently in notable collaborations with dance and digital dance.

"The Loudspeaker Orchestra presents immersive acoustic experiences through programmed concerts of multichannel sound design, sonic art and electroacoustic music. Regular concerts, featuring work by international artists alongside students of Sound Design, take place in and around Greenwich."

Further Concert Dates: http://bit.ly/2lZacgS

New article by MTI² director Leigh Landy

The latest issue of Cambridge Journals' Organised Sound, on the theme of 'Borrowing, Quotation, Sampling and Plundering', includes a new article by MTI² director, Prof. Leigh Landy, titled 'Re-composing Sounds … and Other Things':

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/organised-sound/article/recomposing-sounds-and-other-things/6AA9E8D99FF45A1E44F02643C2FFBAE5

"In this article, based on four decades of experience of using samples in diverse ways in experimental, particularly electroacoustic compositions, the author investigates the world of what he calls ‘sample-based sound-based music’ and suggests that there is a relative lack of scholarship in this important area. The article’s contextual sections focus on briefly delineating this world of sonic creativity and placing it within today’s sampling culture as well as dealing with two political aspects of sampling, a musician’s attitude towards the reuse of sonic materials and the legality of sampled sounds, including musical passages, in the discussion of which current legislation related to sampling is challenged. Following this, a number of categories are presented in terms of the types of sampling material that is being used as well as how sample-based works are presented. The subsequent section is perhaps the most poignant in the article, namely the opening up of this form of innovative composition from a more traditional ‘artist creates work’ mode of operation to a more collaborative one which is essentially already part of most other forms of sampling culture. The objective here is to suggest that such collaborative approaches will enable sample-based sound-based music to become part of the lives of a much broader group than those currently involved with it."

John Richards: '101 Ways to Make the Sound xcstZhhh!'

MTI's John Richards recently keynoted the 'Heretical Sound Synthesis' conference in Helsinki, with a talk entitled '101 Ways to Make the Sound xcstZhhh!'

Video link:
https://youtu.be/LmbCzZfQL0w

More info about the 'Heretical Sound Synthesis' conference:
https://hereticalsoundsynthesis.wordpress.com

Simon Emmerson keynotes 'Bowed Electrons' in South Africa

MTI's Professor Simon Emmerson has recently returned from South Africa, where he was keynote speaker at the ‘Bowed Electrons’ conference and symposium.

This is a unique countrywide event which took place at the Universities of Cape Town, Pretoria and Witwatersrand (Johannesburg). Professor Emmerson gave his keynote address, a masterclass and performances of his works (Aeolian and Memory Machine) at all three locations within five days!

The conference aims to bring together local, regional and international practitioners and academics in music made with technology. South Africa is a unique society in rapid development with a rich and diverse range of cultures and arts practices. Professor Emmerson commented: “I hope this is the start of a fruitful exchange between MTI² and this great range of musicians across South Africa”.

Professor Emmerson shared the keynote platform with Neo Muyanga, who co-founded the ‘Pan African Space Station’ in 2008 as a continually evolving host of cutting-edge Pan-African music and sound art on the internet and across stages in Cape Town and other parts of the globe; he will be producing a new commission for Liverpool Biennial 2020. (See the local Cape Town newspaper preview of the conference below.)

https://www.sacmmt.com/bowed-electrons-2019