Running from 2025 to 2027, Tuning into Opera is exploring four research themes:

• Opera in Greater Manchester: History, perceptions and visibility
• Place-making and storytelling: Reflecting local identity through opera
• Inclusion and accessibility: Breaking down barriers and opening doors
• Innovation and technology: Imagining the future of opera-making

The project takes a mixed-methods approach, combining surveys, interviews, workshops and creative collaborations. So far, this has included public surveys exploring perceptions of opera and career accessibility, artist and researcher roundtables and stakeholder interviews across the region’s cultural sector. Together, these activities are helping to build a nuanced understanding of opera’s current position in Greater Manchester and its future potential. At its core, this is a project about listening: listening to audiences, to those who feel excluded from opera, and to those already reimagining what it can be.

The project’s themes came into particularly sharp focus at a recent public workshop: Future of Opera: Human–AI Improvisation, held at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in May. The event formed part of both Tuning into Opera and the OperAI: Future of Opera series and explored how digital technologies might reshape opera as a more participatory artform.

Opera meets AI: experimentation and participation

The workshop featured a live demonstration of scenes from an immersive sci‑fi opera developed by Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina, Bicentenary Fellow in Music at the University of Manchester and Operactive Arts.

Audience members were not passive observers. Asked to become Yōkai – playful spirits influencing events – they used their smartphones to submit emoji-based emotional responses and vote on key narrative decisions. This input was aggregated through an ‘emotion engine’, which shaped the performance in real time, affecting scenography, timbre shifts and even the fate of characters within the story. For performers, this created a responsive and partially improvised environment, where they adapted not only to each other, but to audience input mediated through AI.

In conversation: AI, creativity and the future of opera

The performance was followed by a panel discussion to reflect on the broader implications of AI for opera. The conversation featured Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina, Bob Holland, Executive Producer at English National Opera, Dr Jennifer Cearns, Lecturer in AI at The University of Manchester, and Cliona Cassidy, one of the event’s performers, a soprano, composer and experimental vocalist. It was chaired by Lauren Monaghan-Pisano, Director of Strategy and Partnerships at ENO.

Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina framed the workshop’s performance as a cultural intervention: opera was used as a medium through which to explore and communicate the role of AI in society. She emphasised that this is particularly important given that public discourse often positions AI as inherently threatening. By embedding AI within an artistic context, she suggested, we can create a platform for more nuanced and imaginative engagement.

Another key theme was the move from linear narrative structures to interactive ‘storyworlds’, which Alexandra likened to gaming environments. The panel reflected on how this approach can reposition opera as an immersive and participatory experience, where meaning is co-produced rather than delivered. They noted that such an approach opens up new possibilities for audience engagement, while also prompting important questions about how creative control is balanced and how authorship is remunerated within more collaborative forms.

The discussion also touched on the practicalities of integrating AI into live performance. The use of mobile phones, for example, enables real-time interaction and participation, while also introducing considerations around audience focus.

The panel also reflected on the wider implications of applying technologies such as emotion recognition and data aggregation in live performance contexts. In particular, they reflected on how audience responses – such as emoji inputs – are translated into collective datasets that shape the performance, raising questions about how individual emotions are represented within aggregated data. The discussion also looked ahead to more advanced forms of audience sensing, including biometric tracking and facial recognition, highlighting the importance of consent and critical reflection when incorporating these technologies into live cultural experiences.

Questions of access and inclusion – central to Tuning into Opera – also formed an important part of the discussion. AI and digital technologies can be seen as offering new pathways into opera, particularly for younger audiences and those with limited prior exposure. At the same time, the panel recognised that not all audiences will have equal access to or feel comfortable with digital participation.

Continuing the conversation

As Tuning into Opera moves forward, these questions will remain central to the initiative’s research and engagement work. Over the coming year, Tuning into Opera will continue to develop workshops, consultations and collaborations across Greater Manchester, working with communities and partners to explore how opera can become more inclusive, responsive and relevant.

The Human–AI Improvisation workshop offered one possible vision of opera’s future. More importantly, it demonstrated the value of bringing research, creative practice and public engagement into dialogue.

If you are interested in being part of this conversation, we would love to hear from you. Get in touch by emailing tuningintoopera@eno.org.

About the Author

Dr Kamila Rymajdo is a writer and academic. She is an Honorary Research Fellow within the Music Department at University of Manchester and works as a Research Associate for English National Opera. She is also Leader in Residence at the University of Lancashire for her contribution to music journalism. Previously, she was a Research Fellow at University of Lodz.

About ENO

English National Opera are the national opera company dedicated to creating extraordinary encounters with opera, on stage and beyond. Founded in 1931 as Sadler’s Wells Opera to make opera accessible to all, we continue that mission today by presenting opera that’s different, creatively daring and inclusive. From performances at the London Coliseum and in Greater Manchester, to work in schools, communities and public spaces across the country, we are committed to reaching and reflecting the full diversity of our nation.

About Creative Manchester

Creative Manchester is an interdisciplinary platform based at The University of Manchester. The platform champions research in creativity and creative practice, bringing together research communities with external stakeholders to explore new research areas and address strategic opportunities. Please visit the Creative Manchester website for more information.

Andrew Melchior is a British-German creative technologist with over 25 years at the intersection of music, technology, and art. As CTO of Massive Attack and founder of Genotone Ltd, he has spent his career building the infrastructure that connects creative practice to emerging technology, from pioneering work on one of the world's first artist websites with David Bowie in 1999 to encoding Massive Attack's Mezzanine into synthetic DNA with ETH Zürich. 

Andrew advises the UK government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Working Groups on AI and copyright, representing coalitions of over 30,000 artists through the Music Managers Forum, Featured Artists Coalition, and AFEM. He is a leading voice on artist provenance, AI transparency, and the future of creative rights in the age of generative AI. 

At the heart of the visit was the major public lecture Proof of Human: AI, Copyright, and the Fight for Creative Authorship, which took place at the heart of the Innovation District at SISTER. 

In this special lecture and discussion, Andrew Melchior presented a compelling case for strengthening creative authorship in the era of generative AI. 

Drawing on his experience advising UK government technical working groups on AI and copyright, Melchior explored how large-scale AI systems trained on vast datasets of copyrighted material, often without consent or compensation are disrupting established frameworks for protecting creative work. He argued that the challenge facing artists today is not only legal but infrastructural: without reliable systems to verify authorship and trace creative lineage, existing rights regimes cannot be effectively enforced. 

Following the lecture, he was joined in conversation by John McGrath, Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Factory International, and responded to audience questions. 

Earlier in the day, Melchior lead an interactive masterclass for undergraduate and postgraduate music and composition students. 

The session focussed on practical workflows for producing and releasing music while maintaining provenance and control of intellectual property in a rapidly evolving AI landscape. Students engaged directly with Melchior and explored the real-world implications of emerging technologies on their creative practice. 

The visit also included a roundtable discussion bringing together academic experts and policymakers. They examined the relationship between music, culture, technology, and Manchester’s creative heritage; the impact of AI and other technologies on the creative industries and mechanisms to protect the rights and livelihoods of creative practitioners. 

This visit was part of Creative Manchester’s ongoing commitment to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and critical debate at the intersection of culture, technology, and society.

Harriet Hillier, a second-year undergraduate student in Music at the University of Manchester, has been awarded the Stuart Hall Essay Prize for 2026. The prize, worth £2,000, is open to UK-based academics, students, journalists and other writers aged 18-30, and aims to stimulate new contributions to the areas of political, cultural and educational research pioneered by the Jamaican-British cultural theorist and sociologist Stuart Hall.

Harriet’s essay, ‘Choosing a Nation: Identity, Belonging, and Representation in International Sport’, was the unanimous choice of the judging panel. The essay focuses in particular on fencing, a sport at which Harriet has represented Great Britain in international competitions.

The judges, Professor Catherine Hall, Professor Jo Littler and Professor Kennetta Hammond Perry, gave the following comments on the prize-winning essay: “This essay applies Hall’s conjunctural method to read culture at the intersection of political, economic and ideological forces. The case study is of fencing as an international sport and the author applies their experience of it as a participant to discuss what it means to represent a nation at this time, in a post-Brexit world in which borders have become ever more problematic, where sport is transnational yet aims to figure as a key symbol of national unity, and athletes adopt strategic nationalities in order to gain funding enabling them to compete. The essay is beautifully written and engages throughout with different aspects of Hall’s thinking – put to work in relation to the specificity of now. The moment – it is argued – is one of both crisis and opportunity: it raises the question as to what kind of nation we want to be, and insists that the nation’s story can be retold. We appreciated its extrapolation of the hybrid histories of the sport, its grasp of the neoliberal dynamics shaping its present, and its deft threading through of personal experience to tell the story on multiple levels”.

The winning essay has been published on the Stuart Hall Foundation website.

From January to July 2025 broadcaster and producer Karen Gabay carried out research as part of a Simon Industrial Fellowship with the Creative Manchester platform and the Music Department, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at The University of Manchester. 

As part of the fellowship Karen Gabay produced a podcast series entitled ‘You Ought To Know’ that will be published across various platforms, with the first episode premiering on 23 March 2026. Each podcast captures a conversation with musicians that have had and continue to have a significant impact on British popular music. These conversations were recorded at public engagement events as well as in intimate one-on-one settings across Manchester.

You can listen to and watch the podcast episodes on various platforms. To be notified of new episodes subscribe to Karen Gabay’s Substack and the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures’ YouTube channel.

The first podcast is a recording of Karen Gabay’s panel event on Reggae and Dub-Poetry in the UK with Lovers Rock legend Sylvia Tella, Dub Poetry great Levi Tafari and Reggae and Hip Hop artist J.Chambers in the Manchester Museum in June 2025. This episode will premiere on 23 March 2026 at 3pm. You can watch the premiere on this link.

The second episode explores the history of Black British Gospel Music and was recorded in Low Four Studio in Deansgate in May 2025. Manchester musician Luke Smith, gospel pioneer Juliet Fletcher, Mancunian vocalist Yvonne Shelton and Kingdom Choir member and founder of Manchester Inspirational Voices Wayne Ellington star in this episode to be released a few weeks later.

The third podcast episode features a conversation with renowned Soul singer-songwriter and former Ikette PP Arnold known for her work with Paul Weller, Peter Gabriel, and Jimmy Cliff. The recording took place across three sessions at The University of Manchester and Versa Studios Manchester, the iconic home of Granada Television in July 2025.  

The final episode of this series was recorded in July 2025 and features Manchester singer-songwriter Daley. It explores how the musician’s alternative soul and R&B sound is influenced by Black British musicians and led him to pursue collaborations with soul great Jill Scott and UK artist Marsha Ambrosius of Floetry.

These episodes form the beginning of a series of conversations around the unsung legends and influential artists in the UK music industry. Future episodes will be released on Karen Gabay’s channels in the coming months. This bonus content includes in-depth conversations with the Queen of Northern Soul Gloria Jones (Tainted Love) and earlier podcast guests Sylvia Tella and Luke Smith on their lives and work in the Black British music industry. It also features an intimate one-on-one discussion with Sananda Maitreya, who is considered a musician’s favourite and trailblazer in redefining Soul for British audiences.

Throughout her fellowship, Karen was able to build on her interest in uncovering and showcasing forgotten artefacts of Black music history and gained access the British Pop Archive in the John Rylands Library for further archival research. This allowed her to amplify the voices of those working within the UK music sector, in particular Black vocalists, and industry professionals, who have heavily impacted popular music in the UK and globally. She explored how different cultural spaces in Manchester have played a significant role in the lives of these musicians and their path in the music industry over the decades. 

Secondary outputs of the project include Karen Gabay’s reading list and a playlist providing the musical soundtrack for exploring the recent past and present of Black British music and its influences, which can be accessed via her LinkTree.

This Simon Industrial Fellowship laid the foundations for documenting alternative music histories in the UK. It explored and applied ethical and collaborative methods of archiving personal stories of a demographic, who have suffered from experiences of institutional exclusion, absence of fair accreditation and missing commercial opportunities due to their race or geographical location. It is taking steps towards righting wrongs of the recent past and gives talented but previously overlooked creatives a platform to tell their stories on their own terms. 

As such it reasserts the relevance and significance of the John Rylands’ British Pop Archive and is adding more diverse and nonetheless equally relevant archival artefacts to its catalogue. This work aligns with the University’s renewed strategic focus on archives and just archival practices to celebrate, document and bring to the fore the stories that make Manchester the city we know today. 

Sir John Tomlinson and Dr Joshua Brown, Lecturer in Composition at the University of Manchester, both spent their formative years in rural East Lancashire, Oswaldtwistle and Bacup respectively, and their shared Lancastrian heritage and dialect inspired them to work together on new music that celebrates this region. The Wanderer – the commissioning of which was funded by the Vaughan Williams Foundation – is a song cycle for bass soloist, orchestra, and choir setting four poems by 19th century writer Edwin Waugh, who was often referred to as the Lancashire Burns.

Edwin Waugh wrote poetry in the distinct dialect of East Lancashire. Each song paints a picture of a wandering figure reflecting on first love, city versus rural life, the pain of loss, and the healing power of nature.

Sir John Tomlinson and the Hallé Youth Orchestra and Choir, conducted by Euan Shields, will premiere The Wanderer at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester on Sunday 22 March.

Information about the upcoming premiere can be found here: 

https://halle.co.uk/event/youth-showcase-2026/  

Find out more about Josh Brown’s works here: https://composersedition.com/joshuabrown/

With representatives from theatre, music, orchestral production, and music education, the event began with a roundtable discussion that examined routes to finding a home within a community. Presentations covered a breadth of topics spotlighting current initiatives and relocations in arts organisations; experimental AI in collective practice; festival partnerships; the positioning of the arts within (and by) universities; civic capital in classical music outreach projects; ethics, rights, and regulations in the University of Sheffield’s Access Folk’s participant-led research; and preliminary findings from the University’s research partnership with English National Opera. 

This symposium was the third in an ongoing series of Think Tank events, in which themes emerging from a collaborative PhD project are discussed and interrogated by a diverse range of voices and disciplines. The Think Tank series will continue in 2026 with an event focusing on the theme which was considered the most urgent for further interrogation: community. 

This event was funded by the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership, part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Thanks also to Creative Manchester for their generous support. 

For more information on the Think Tank series, please email Rebecca.parnell@manchester.ac.uk

We talked about music, Karen’s interest in uncovering and showcasing forgotten artefacts of Black music history and working with Creative Manchester and the British Pop Archive.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your areas of interest.

Where do I start - My background is in business administration, television, and radio production and in popular culture, music, and social histories.

I specialise in pop culture as I am one of those people who held on to the pop and soul magazines, music releases in its many formats, and artefacts through the years and this ultimately led to the perfect transition into working in television as I had the research in my head and in my home.

I have a deep and declared interest in Black British social affairs and music, which also extends to across the black diaspora as well as the effect of migrant communities on the neighbourhoods of Manchester. I have explored this across Caribbean, Sikh, Irish, Italian, and African communities. Now I have to say that I always bring the international perspective to my work, as international musicians impact our culture, and British culture has a huge impact on international musicians of note.

I have a curious mind and realised some time ago that sharing stories is particularly uplifting to creators, collaborators and lovers of Black music. I also realise it was, and is, deeply upsetting and saddening to those, who feel consistently overlooked, to not have their stories heard and see them in popular culture. Feeding into this is also how much Northerners are overlooked in the general conversation about the culture in the UK, and in particular, the Manchester Black music scene.

For the past fifteen years I have curated for a variety of exhibitions, which has involved curating archival footage and soundscapes. This work includes the Emory Douglas exhibition – Emory is the illustrator of the Black Panthers - and also Belle Vue in Manchester.

I am an advocate for women in music and artists from the R&B, soul, dance, rock, and reggae fields in Manchester. I actively support all genres but artists from these areas find it difficult to have their voices heard in their hometown, irrespective of success.

I am also known for my passion to raise the profile of Black music history. With this Fellowship, I wish to bring a less selective view of how Black British music, and its history are presented. People, who know me, know I am always at a gig, exhibition, live dance or art event.

Why did you apply for the Simon Industrial Fellowship? How did you feel it could help you explore your areas of interest?

This Fellowship appealed to me as I wanted to explore further recent conversations, I had been having about the process of creating hit songs with music producers. When I chatted with Anne-Marie of Creative Manchester she suggested this pathway to explore this further. This Fellowship enables me to reconnect a random conversation that is in fact a hugely important documentation of music history with a social context.

I am passionate about expanding the knowledge base of the history around Manchester music history and also how Black musicians and DJs have impacted popular music in the UK. This fellowship gives me the opportunity to amplify the voices of those working within this sector. Why? Because audiences deserve to know their contribution and we should highlight the people, who have given us so much without recognition.

What work are you carrying out, or hoping to carry out as part of this fellowship?

My research is exploring the roots of British popular music from the Black perspective, speaking with key musicians about their entry points into pop music and what the commonalities are in these experiences. I am speaking largely, but not exclusively, to Mancunian producers and those, who had to leave the city to develop. I am also in the midst of some exciting research conversations, but I will share the results of those later this year.

What is the benefit and impact of the fellowship on Creative Manchester and the British Pop Archive at the John Rylands Library, respectively, and how are you finding working across both organisations?

I am hoping that that the British Pop Archive and Creative Manchester will have a greater understanding of the creative talent that informed the British Pop Music experience. Through the years what is deemed as pop music shifts and changes. Commercial appeal and money-making have squeezed certain popular forms out of the so-called mainstream channels – this has not stopped the music from being loved and being played in homes, clubs, and laptops.

Due to my everlasting eclectic musical tastes coupled with my continued organic access to these music makers I feel that the history of these lived experiences will give a fuller historical context to the British Pop Archive, to the city of Manchester and re-address the narrative of those artists, producers, songwriters, who have brought the seasoning to British pop. I have interviewed hundreds of music creators from Skin and Willard White to Brinsley Forde and Lianne La Havas. 

My interviews have been the spark to a few iconic meetings and music collaborations that have connected British artists to international musicians. Interviews have often been conducted through my TV producing and radio presenting work, but not always. Many of the interviews and musical experiences have been done independently, and via word of mouth. I have also often heard great musical history anecdotes from non-musicians as, of course, music is a unifier.

By continuing to have conversations that will take the form of music panels and podcasts some of these fascinating and valuable histories will be captured. Creative Manchester have been really supportive of my work and ideas over the past few months, and it is exciting to be involved with such an innovative arm of the University. 

I love the fact that The British Pop Archive is based here in the city of Manchester, and it has been fascinating and positively challenging to have an insight into the processes of the foundation of this archive, and to discuss where it is going – for a pop music nerd what could be better?

The event, supported by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) brought together leading experts to explore cutting-edge advancements in AI-driven composition, voice synthesis, and the evolving legal, ethical, and economic landscape of AI-generated music.

His talk explored 30 years of practice-led research, from dataset sonification for composition to disruptive technologies shaping the University of Manchester's NOVARS Research Centre – including geolocative tech, game engines, and AI in music – culminating in works like his concert piece and interactive installation AI Beatboxer (Noh Virtual).

Another highlight of the conference was the UK première of AI Opera Yūrei (Ghost) – an immersive Japanese sci-fi opera that captivated a packed audience of 200 attendees. Designed, produced, and directed by Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina, postdoctoral scholar in Intermediality & Digital Humanities at the University of Edinburgh and Lund University, the opera showcased AI’s potential in reshaping vocal performance and storytelling.

This landmark event underscored the transformative role of artificial intelligence in vocal music, setting the stage for further innovation in the field.

The University of Manchester is delighted to announce a new collaboration with English National Opera, as they announce the first wave of plans for a major new partnership between the company and the city-region of Greater Manchester for the next three years, enabling ENO to be firmly established within Greater Manchester by 2029.  

The ENO Greater Manchester partnership, which includes projects across the city-region, covers every aspect of opera production and celebrates new possibilities for the artform. This announcement represents the beginning of longer-term strategic partnerships with venues and organisations across Greater Manchester. 

It will include major contemporary works, new work development in opera, presenting ENO signature classics, interdisciplinary experimentations, creating operatic experiences by, with and for communities, and developing the opera makers of today and tomorrow.

The first wave of projects and partnerships announced, include collaborative projects with The University of Manchester, Factory International, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, The Lowry, The Bridgewater Hall, Walk the Plank, Royal Northern College of Music, and The Hallé.

The University of Manchester and ENO will work together on Tuning Into Opera. This invites the people of Greater Manchester to explore the opportunities for the artform, engage with new communities and discuss what it means to have an opera company based in the city-region. 

We will bring a range of perspectives together, including artists, local communities, researchers and the wider sector to discuss how the artform can and must continue to grow. The first of these events will take place at Manchester International Festival at Aviva Studios in July 2025.  

Professor John McAuliffe, Director of Creative Manchester at The University of Manchester said: “The University of Manchester is delighted to be working in partnership with colleagues at ENO, as part of their move to the city-region. Together, we are planning a shared programme of work, that will look at opera as part of Greater Manchester's cultural landscape, listening for the sound of new collaboration and creating more opportunities for our students, staff, artists and research in creative health across the music sector.”

Jenny Mollica, Chief Executive of English National Opera, said: “The projects we are announcing today mark the first wave of our developing partnership with Greater Manchester, which will be fully implemented by 2029. Working together over the last year, we could not be more clear that Greater Manchester is the right place to put down roots, a place where we can develop, expand and innovate. Where, building on the region’s legendary reputation as the heart of music making in this country, we can make a difference to audiences and communities, help invest in the next generation of talent and break new ground in the future of the artform – locally, nationally and internationally.”

ENO’s Greater Manchester partnerships and programme will continue to develop alongside the continuation of annual seasons at the London Coliseum, and ENO’s nationwide education and health programmes.

Further information:

• Visit the ENO website.

The Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama welcomes a world premiere on Friday,13 December as De Profundis, a newly crafted musical piece from Emeritus Professor Philip Grange, takes centre stage. 

A story of despair, tragedy and protest, De Profundis is Latin for ‘From the Depths’. The piece reflects on the impact of tyranny, particularly for those who stand up to tyrannical regimes - as such, the piece is dedicated to Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny who died in prison in February.

Switching between time periods, the piece uses multiple languages - Latin, German, Russian and English. It will be performed by the Quatuor Danel string quartet, with Opera North’s Simon Grange – Philips’s son - as bass voice, who is cast as an unnamed journalist.

‘Tyranny through the ages’ is a focus, with the piece featuring quotes from Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, who suffered under Stalin’s regime. 

It then moves back to 523AD, to the Roman Empire and the story of Boethius who fell foul of the Roman Court, being imprisoned and eventually executed the following year. De Profundis quotes from his The Consolation of Philosophy, which he wrote in prison. The piece also uses quotes from Todesfuge by poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan.

A conversation then took place between Philip and the quartet’s first violinist, Marc Danel, who enthusiastically embraced the idea of a work for bass voice and quartet. This ignited a creative journey lasting nearly three years.

For the text, Philip turned to writer Kim Ballard, who he has worked with previously. It was Kim who created the main premise for the piece following numerous conversations with Philip. By October 2023 the text was ready, and over the following year Philip wrote the music.

Friday, 13 December 2024 will be the first performance of the piece. Tickets are available here.

This year was themed around tackling the extremes of our world, with approximately 30,000 visitors having the opportunity to get hands-on with some of science's most cutting-edge developments through multi-sensory experiences, immersive events and hands-on family fun.

A series of interactive events were held throughout the 10 days of the festival. It was in the fun-filled Activity Zones at the Museum of Science and industry where visitors were able to look at the extremes of human performance and our planet.

Colleagues from the NOVARS Research Centre at The University of Manchester showcased a series of hand-on video game activities that emphasise the positive impact we can all have on the planet.

Professor Ricardo Climent, NOVARS Researcher, said:

The Manchester Science Festival is a highlight of the city's cultural calendar and the team are proud to be part of one of the most popular science festivals in the UK.

Discover more about the research on the Keep it Human website.

Grammy award-winning jazz percussionist and Simon Industrial Fellow Carlos Maldonado recently ran workshops for year 6 classes in two local primary schools.

Pupils from Stanley Grove Primary Academy and Abraham Moss Community School had the opportunity to learn about the origins and traditions of jazz, including an introduction to jazz instruments and how to recognise styles and music from Latin America. The workshops also saw the children experience jazz first-hand, with a live performance from Carlos and the chance for pupils to perform and improvise using traditional instruments such as Maracas, Guido, Claves, Cowbell as well as different drums such as the Bongo drums and Cajón. 

The pupils asked great questions about Carlos’ awards, being a professional musician and his favourite instruments and percussion sounds. They described the workshop as ‘Amazing,’ ‘Fun’ and ‘Unique,’ with teachers commenting on how well the session aligned with their music curriculum and how it engaged and inspired pupils who would typically not engage. 

Watch the video below to see highlights of Carlos’ visit to Abraham Moss Community School:

Carlos has also performed with The University of Manchester’s jazz ensemble. Watch the video here:

The University of Manchester's elite chamber choir, Ad Solem, conducted by Robert Guy, have been invited to perform at a celebratory concert this Friday in Hong Kong. 

The concert will include a work by a lecturer from the music department - Dr Joshua Brown's On the Stork Tower.

If you would like to stream the concert on Friday, please sign up via this link.

The Music Department is delighted to appoint Dr Honghsuo Fan as Honorary Research Fellow in Music. Dr Fan is a PhD graduate at the NOVARS Research Centre focused on how AI and Machine Learning can augment interactive multimedia performance systems and interactive music composition. 

His thesis was supervised by Prof Ricardo Climent and emerged novel forms of human-machine musicianship and machine-machine communication in the form of six musical compositions. As part of his portfolio, he developed an evolving real-time interactive performance system using artificial intelligence technology. 

After his PhD, Hongshuo was appointed Research Software Engineer at The RNCM Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music (Royal Northern College of Music) where he works part-time.

Among other things, this Honorary Research Fellowship will allow Hongshuo to keep interacting with the research community, and to access the studios at NOVARS so that he can continue to contribute and support The Machine Learning for Music Working Group at Unsupervised.uk. 

This research group is a community of composers, musicians, computer scientists and audiovisual artists, exploring the creative use of emerging AI and Machine Learning technologies in Music, across NOVARS, AMBS and PRiSM.

A sample of Hongshuo's work:

• Conversation in the Cloud« by Hongshuo Fan, with Rocío Bolaños (bass clarinet)

Dr David Onac Composer and Lecturer in Harmony and Contemporary Music Studies at the University of Manchester has been awarded a substantial commission to write a Requiem (a c.45-minute piece for choir and orchestra) to be premiered in the underwriting room at Lloyd's in London. 

This is sponsored by Lloyd's through the charity Culture& and is part of Lloyd's recently announced response to the recent discovery of documents which show their part in the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. One of the Requiem's aims is to memorialise these enslaved Africans. 

To find out more, please see below a few links to the Lloyd's / Culture& requiem commission:

• Lloyd's Response Film - Black Beyond Data
• Inclusive Futures
• Research at Lloyd's

Composer, performer and Greek beatboxer champion Giorgos Gargalas has just completed his one-month residency at the NOVARS Research Centre (Music, SALC), sponsored by the British Council scheme 'Greek-British short-term scholarship programme 2023', in partnership with the British Embassy Athens and the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY).

As a registered student he spent most of his time at the Sheila Beckles studio experimenting with NOVARS's own Hordijk system, a unique analogue synthesizer designed and launched by instrument maker and guru Rob Hordjik. Mr Gargalas attended a number of postgraduate courses during his stay and interacted with our postgraduate community. 

On November 9th he presented his recent compositions and performance work as part of NOVARS Matinée series #53.

In 2022, Gargalas was invited by Prof Ricardo Climent to participate in his AI for music project entitled Noh Virtual for beatboxer and digital twin and enjoyed the University so much that he decided to come back for more. 

That year, Climent trained an AI machine with Gargalas's beatboxing singing style for 20 hours and his facial and performance body gestures (at VR2) so that Gargalas could sing along with a virtual replica of himself.

The AI was trained with the assistance of Dr Hongshuo Fan using IRCAM's RAVE variational autoencoder and modelled by Manusamo&Bzika. It was presented at Unsupervised #2 festival, the Mantis Festival and at the Science Festival 2022 with 22.000 visits in one week.

Inspired by visits to the Kielder Observatory in Northumberland, Black Fell is a game-for-music, a story in song where a psychological landscape of memory, grief and scientific passion unfolds. 

The story explores the thoughts of a central female character, an astronomer, on a cloudy night. Without the use of her telescopes, she turns inwards, where a psychological landscape of memories and scientific passions unfolds.

Funded by DC Labs, the co-creation of the research practice artefact brought musical development, led by Martin, together with Frances who shaped the poetry narrative. Hailed as a new approach to music, Black Fell is designed to bring a gaming-feel to opera storytelling.
 

Martin Suckling, Head of Music at University of York said:

How does Black Fell work?

Players are situated within a virtual ‘orchestra’ where they can freely move. Where you are positioned gives a unique balance of audio elements coupled with a variation of type of music. This shapes the direction the story takes. Audiences navigate by ear alone, or with the optional aid of a virtual ‘forest’ which provides visual feedback on their movements. Black Fell is designed for solo listening with headphones and is best played using a desktop PC or laptop. The full story only emerges over several iterations and responds to the listener’s choices as to how they move.
 

Frances Leviston, Senior Lecturer in Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester said:

Black Fell is available from Friday 3 November 2023 on the Black Fell website. The piece is performed by Loré Lixenberg (voice) and Jonathan Morton (violin), with software development by Marco Ng.

David travelled to Scotland to adjudicate performances of his pieces as part of the wider jury.

Dr. Önaç's said: "I am excited that my piano études have been selected as the set work for the SIPC semifinals, and I'm delighted to accept the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's invitation to attend the competition in person. This is a fantastic opportunity to hear a wide variety of interpretations of my pieces played by many superb pianists from all over the world all within the space of two days - a composer's dream!"

More information here:

• Scottish International Piano Competition
• Scottish International Piano Competition - Jury
• David's personal website

The 'Virtuoso International Music Awards 2023' is an international classical music competition based in London. 

Dimitra said: 

“I am very glad I received this award for playing Beethoven’s C minor sonata. It's one of my favourite pieces and it is related to my dissertation at University of Manchester. This professional category is the most competitive one, as anyone over 25 years old (with no age limit) could come and perform from all over the world.”

Dimitra's PhD is supervised by Professor Barry Cooper', a distinguished musicologist and Beethoven expert. 
There will be a gala concert in London for selected prize winners in the first half of 2024. 

Links:

• Dimitra Ananiadou's personal website
• Competition winners
• Prof. Barry Cooper

Third-Year PhD student, Murrough Connolly, was one of three composers to win this year’s WCCMF String Quartet Composition Competition with his string quartet ‘Ildaite’. 

The award provides composers with a generous bursary and the opportunity to workshop and record their piece with a featured quartet at this year’s festival (23rd June – 2nd July). 

Murrough will be working with the London-based Calathea Quartet in a series of workshops, culminating in 2 public performances on the 25th and 29th of June in Bantry, Co. Cork.

Murrough says:
 

Murrough is also looking forward to two premieres of his work before the festival:

1. The world premiere of his choral piece, ‘From the Chrysalis’ by Somnium Chamber Choir (Friday 12th May, Holy Name Church, Manchester).
2. The Irish premiere of his orchestral work ‘Litmus Papers’ by the University of Manchester Symphony Orchestra (Friday 16th June, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin).

Senior Lecturer in Music Analysis, Dr. Anne Hyland, announces the publication of her monograph: Schubert’s String Quartets: the Teleology of Lyric Form which appeared with Cambridge University Press in April.

The study challenges the influential but under-explored claim that Schubert could not successfully incorporate the lyric style into his sonatas, and offers a novel perspective on lyric form that embraces historical musicology, philosophy and music theory and analysis. 

Hyland’s exploration of the quartets reveals Schubert’s development of a lyrically conceived teleology which brings musical form, expression and temporality together in the service of fresh intellectual engagement.

As well as providing a broad historical overview of Schubert’s quartets and those of his more obscure contemporaries in Vienna, Schubert’s String Quartets: the Teleology of Lyric Form presents an in-depth study of form in the quartets themselves, especially their first movements.

Hyland’s analyses grant special focus to the relatively overlooked early quartets of 1810–16, isolating the questions they pose for music theory, and employing these as a means of scrutinising the relationship between the concepts of lyricism, development, closure and teleology.

This opens up space for these works to challenge some of the discourses that have historically beset them and offers a reframing of Schubert’s quartet oeuvre as central to the development of a decidedly nineteenth-century conception of lyric form.

A book launch is taking place on June 12th, 4pm at the 'CIDRAL Creations Launch' in the Atrium of the Ellen Wilkinson Building at the University of Manchester. The event is open and it will be followed by a wine reception.

Further information:

•  ‘A Genre of Two Halves? Schubert’s String Quartets Reimagined’ written by Dr Hyland for CUP’s ‘fifteeneightyfour’ academic blog. 

Klassik-Heute, Orchestergraben and Global Music Award have recently praised Pereira's latest piano recording. This is the first recording of the complete 12 Poemas do Monte (Poems from the Mountain) by Portuguese composer Luiz Costa (1879-1960), eight of which were recorded here for the first time. Poemas do Monte are a window to the 1920s’ rural atmosphere of northern Portugal and a prime example of Costa’s bucolic lyricism.

Artur Pereira is a noted pianist and musicologist. In 2016 he completed his PhD at the University of Manchester, Music Department, with a dissertation on Beethoven’s Dedications, under the supervision of Professor Barry Cooper. His dissertation was later revised and published as a book. Dr Pereira also worked as a Teaching Assistant at the University. Previously, Artur studied piano at the RNCM and had also issued recordings of several of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.

• Artur Pereira’s website

Links to Pereira's recent reviews:

1. Orchestergraben (Germany)
2. Global Music Award (USA), silver medal winners
3. Klassik-Heute (Germany)

 scheme.

Cameron Biles-Liddell’s piece Caer Drewyn (The Hill Fort) takes inspiration from an iron age hill fort based in Corwen, North Wales. The piece will be premiered on 7 March 2023 at Hoddinott Hall, Millennium Centre, Cardiff, and will be available to livestream. 

Biles-Liddell is spending the run-up to the concert rehearsing with BBC NOW and principal conductor Ryan Bancroft, while also being mentored by composers Gavin Higgins and Sarah Lianne-Lewis to bring the piece to life.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to have the chance to explore my orchestral music with BBC NOW,” he said. “This piece is quite personal to me as it explores my Welsh heritage, being brought up in North Wales. Really can’t wait for this fab orchestra to bring it to life.”

You can register for the free livestream online.

This event, rescheduled from November 2022, takes place at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library and sees Stephen in conversation with Professor of Popular Culture (The University of Manchester), Jon Savage, about his career and published works, taking the audience from the Joy Division and New Order years, all the way to the present day. Professor Jon Savage is an English writer, broadcaster, and music journalist, with multiple publications to his name, including his latest book, This Searing Light, The Sun and Everything Else, which provides an oral history of Joy Division. Both Stephen’s and Jon’s books will be available to buy at the event, and a book signing will be held afterwards.

Booking information

If you would like to see these two of Manchester’s musical legends in discussion, you can register to attend this FREE event via Eventbrite.

This event ties into the John Rylands Research Institute and Library’s British Pop Archive, the first specifically designated national popular culture archive in the UK. Based at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, it aims to celebrate and preserve the records of British popular culture, such as popular music, recognising its pivotal influence on the world stage.

“What is learned and how it is learned are interconnected.” - (Folkestad, 2006, 142)

The figure of the instrumental or vocal teacher is one of the most significant influences in the education of a music performance student. As part of the “Professional and Pedagogical Skills” course within our new Master’s pathway in Music Performance Studies, you will acquire knowledge and understanding about how to impart expertise and artistry to performance students effectively, and develop as an inspiring and wise instrumental or vocal teacher. You will also develop pedagogical skills to guide performance students as they cultivate technical, expressive and communicative excellence. 

The course will introduce historical and current theories of instrumental and vocal pedagogy to develop a critical understanding of different approaches to teaching and learning music performance. You will discover the role tradition, discourses and institutions play in instrumental and vocal pedagogies and critically evaluate their impact on music performance students. In addition to the idiosyncrasies of musical instruments, the course will also advance your knowledge in instrumental and vocal concert repertoire. 

Moving beyond the master-apprentice model, the unit will present instrumental and vocal teaching and learning as a highly complex, multidimensional and thoroughly collaborative and reflective practice. This course unit will also develop an understanding of the personal qualities that are essential for effective teaching of the science and art of instrumental and vocal performance.

Folkestad, Göran. (2006). Formal and informal learning situations or practices vs formal and informal ways of learning. British Journal of Music Education 23/2: 135-145.

• For more about our MusM Music Performance Studies (Starting September 2023) visit: https://bit.ly/3hDPXCs
• Full entry requirements: https://bit.ly/3NZggif
• Apply Online: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/how-to-apply/

 in a friendly and fun environment.

Geared towards creating a safe space for those who might not feel comfortable in a formal performance environment, the Relaxed Performance will keep the lights on, the doors open and anyone who comes along is free to chat, sing, express themselves and move around however they wish. 

Who is the Relaxed Performance for? The answer in short is: everyone! This performance warmly welcomes babies and children, and people with dementia or learning difficulties. People with disabilities will find the Martin Harris Centre’s Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall to be a venue that is accessible and comfortable. Anyone who feels like enjoying some well-loved  tunes in a friendly and informal environment can come along.

There is no need to book and seats are first-come-first-served, while patrons are free to change seats or step out of the hall at any time. 

The music will be performed by the talented members of the Manchester University Music Society who are happy to chat to audience members throughout the event.

When: Friday 16 December 2022 1.10-2pm 

Where: Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama

How to book: Just turn up!

More information on the event and others like it at the Martin Harris Centre can be found here.

The historic synagogue in Cheetham Hill, north Manchester, will play host to music in memory of lost sisters.

Felix Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op 80, was written in tribute to his sister Fanny Mendelssohn, also a composer, after her death. Felix Mendelssohn himself died just two months after completing this piece in 1847, making this his last great work. 

Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s String Quartet No. 16 in A-flat Minor, Op. 130, will also be played. Weinberg wrote the piece in memory of his sister Ester in 1981, with whom he fled Warsaw when it was invaded by the Nazis in 1939. They had planned to flee to the USSR but Ester turned back and the two would never see each other again.

To add further context to what is sure to be an extraordinary evening of music, Head of the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Professor Thomas Schmidt - The University’s resident Mendelssohn expert - will introduce the quartet.

Tickets for this unmissable musical event are still available here.

At the University of Manchester, we have ca. 30 years of performance tradition with electronics and computers. Our MANTIS Festival, taking place biannually since 2004, features national and international talented performers combining acoustic instruments with electronics or fixed media. 

The MANTIS system includes 56-genelec speakers, one of the largest speaker orchestras in the world. Along with concerts, it often hosts Postgraduate-led music symposia on topics such as: audification, acoustic ecology, analogue music and locative-audio. Our guest performers include: Psappha, Distractfold, KAIROS, Trio Atem, H.E.L.L.O ensemble and The Noise Upstairs, Darragh Morgan (violin), Miquel Bernat (percussion and timbila), Terri Hron (recorder), Marij van Gorkom (bass clarinet), Conrad Marshall (flute), Richard Casey (piano), Philip Marks (Drums), Linda Jankowska (violin), Nina Whiteman (voice), Gavin Osborn (Bass flute), Helmut Lemke (8-cassette recorder), Mark Pilkington (in-game performance at Timbi.world) and ca. 300 fixed media works diffused live.

Our Electronic Music Festivals Sines-Squares celebrates performance with Analogue and Modular Synthesis, featuring Rob Hordjik, Joker Nies, Andrew Duff, Alexander Senko, Ryan Gaston, Sarah Belle Reid, Merkaba Macabre, Epigone, Scrubber Fox, Ross Scott-Buccleuch, Dustin Lyon, Phil Durrant, Chelsea Bruno (aka Eden Grey), Sam Waver, Richard Scott, Rodrigo De León, Joseph Hyde, Philippe Gauthier, Tanya St-Pierre, David Ross, Andy Cox, Udo Moll, Ann Rosén, Sten-Olof Hellström, Matt Omahan, Daniel Warner, Marty Ehrlich, Adam Parkinson, Martin Klang, Leafcutter John and Steph Horak.

Professor Mine Doğantan-Dack publishes new edited volume on The Chamber Musician in the Twenty-First Century (2022, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, Basel). The volume places the performer at its centre and introduces participatory, collaborative, and socially engaged musical practices as defining the emergent activity domain of the 21st-century chamber musician. 

The volume proceeds from a critical scrutiny of the cultural-historical baggage that the term “chamber music” has accumulated as repertoire and as activity over the last couple of centuries and moves through contributions that discuss institutional pedagogical issues and professional concerns, as well as the inner musical and social workings of chamber music ensembles. 

The volume finally turns to an exploration of the experiences, attitudes and values of amateur chamber musicians, an awareness of which is beneficial for the professional chamber musician in the 21st century. 

The contributions go beyond identifying and critically scrutinising the diverse challenges that the contemporary chamber musician faces; they also explore novel developmental and professional paths through which the musical and social practices of the 21st-century chamber musician can become more relevant for and more closely integrated with 21st-century lives. 

For further information on this new publication, visit: https://www.mdpi.com/books/edition/5783-the-chamber-musician-in-the-twenty-first-century

“Knowledge is nothing else than a rumour until you feel it in your muscles.” - Papua New Guinea proverb

Within the various course units that form part of the new Master’s in Music Performance Studies, students will have the opportunity to discover and undertake one of the most recent and most exciting knowledge practices that emerged in academia, namely Artistic Research in Music Performance. 

First recognised in the area of Design and Visual Arts within British university contexts in the 1990s, academic research that is methodologically integrated with artistic practice is now well-established in music scholarship. In the new Master’s course units, students will learn about the ongoing debates in Artistic Research in Music Performance, and explore its unique mode of knowledge production, which is simultaneously cognitive and affective-embodied, objective and subjective, as well as methodical and improvisational. 

They will learn how to mobilise their intensely felt performerly experiences as part of scholarly research undertakings, and develop skills in transforming the minutiae of the pre-conceptual images and sense impressions they have in making music into articulated foundations for systematic enquiry. 

Students will be encouraged to ask the kinds of questions about music and performing that are deeply embodied, culturally-historically situated, as well as personal-idiosyncratic. They will engage in the captivating process of constructing novel meanings about the music they play from their own situated perspectives, acknowledging all the while the plurality of meanings that any musical text or performance necessarily invokes. 

In engaging with Artistic Research in Music Performance, the relevant course units will take the subjectivity, agency and identity behind processes of knowledge production in music seriously, and explore the ways the artistic values and sensibilities of the students can be brought into processes of rigorous academic research.

With Guest Artists:
Rocio Bolaños - Bass Clarinet, Giorgos Gargalas – Voice (beatbox), Constantin Popp
and WEȽ∝KER

Featuring works by:
Anastasios Asonitis, Penelope Bekiari, Mark Mushet and David Berezan, Ricardo Climent (with Giorgos Gargalas, Hongshuo Fan, Alena Mesarosova and Manu Ferrer), George Edmondson, Hongshou Fan, Nicolas Garcia-Peguinho, Ella Kay, Sarah Keirle, Eddie Lansley, Rufus Murphy, Cameron Naylor, Jake Parry, Rachel Beckles Willson, Ryan Woods, Keyi Xu.

All the works will be diffused over our 32-loudspeaker surround sound system in the John Thaw Studio Theatre, Martin Harris Centre, the University of Manchester.

• Location: John Thaw Studio Theatre, Martin Harris Centre, University of Manchester
• Download Programme (PDF): https://bit.ly/3AoyLHs
• Buy Tickets: https://bit.ly/3Aql9LI
• Web: http://mantisfestival.com

In their joint Introduction to the edited volume Taking it to the Bridge: Music as Performance (2013, University of Michigan Press), musicologist Nicholas Cook and Theatre Studies scholar Richard Pettengil wrote that “The wonder is not that music and performance studies have come together but that they ever needed to be brought together. After all, what is music if not performance, real-time collective practice that brings people together as players and listeners, choreographs social relationships, and expresses and constructs individual and group identities?... Take away the performance, and you take away the music.”

In the Researching Performance: Issues and Approaches Course Unit within the new MusM Music Performance Studies, students will discover the fascinating story behind the emergence of Music Performance Studies as a new academic discipline during the twenty-first century, learn about the continuities between artistic performance and performative behaviours in everyday life, and develop the skills to analyse, interpret and evaluate music performances from a variety of genres as culturally and historically contingent, fully embodied practices.

This Course Unit will broaden the aesthetic horizons of music students by introducing alternative ways of thinking about the art of musical performance, through the lens of recent research. It will also encourage students to bring the performative and textual aspects of music into creative dialogue, and inspire them to engage with scholarly knowledge as a creative partner in their artistic practice.

• For more about our MusM Music Performance Studies (Starting September 2023) visit: https://bit.ly/3hDPXCs
• Full entry requirements: https://bit.ly/3NZggif
• Apply Online: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/how-to-apply/

Prof Malone, Professor of Social and Autoethnographic Composition at Manchester, has visited Ukraine 11 times over the past two decades, with over a dozen pieces premiered and broadcast on their national TV and radio networks. 

With Ukraine enduring a war of survival for its identity and cultural, the country's Composers Union reached out to Prof Malone for some new music and support. 

Prof Malone has been providing personal assistance since March 2022, including help with this year's defiant Kyiv Music Fest held from 24 September to 2 October. The organiser, Igor Shcherbakov, stated that – for the first year ever – not one penny was used from state funding so as to not drain any part of Ukraine's fight against Putin's war. 

The Composer's Union President commissioned Prof Malone to write a piano piece, the politically-charged The People Protesting Drum Out Bigly Covfefe (a recent anti-Trump administration work). The music consists of chants Prof Malone has heard at UK and USA rallies over the past six years, carefully notated and then scored as a piano fantasy re-enacting the voice of oppressed and unheard peoples. The piece was performed in Kyiv but not officially listed within the festival programme, since it could be wilfully misconstrued. 

“The sheer bravery of the festival organisers, musicians, venue managers and audience comes as no surprise: their world-class artistry is something to fight for,” said Prof Malone.

The Oram awards (named after pioneer British composer and electronic musician
composer Daphne Oram) celebrate innovation in sound, music and related technologies and elevating the work and voices of Women, Trans and Non-Binary Artists.

Ella Kay is an electroacoustic composer and sound designer studying at NOVARS Research Centre who aims to draw attention to important cultural topics through sound. Focusing on fixed media acousmatic works, she aims to explore the intricacies of sound and humanity through a variety of auditory experiences.

Kelly Jayne Jones is a Manchester based artist making work that combines performance, installation and sound. She began working in experimental concrete music and her practice has expanded to include dance, gesture, sonic drawings, stone sculpture and film. She is interested in creating a multi-sensory experience that creates possible conditions for communication and exchange.

• Oram Awards 2022 video showcase: https://youtu.be/wC3vK1j9sHk
• Oram Awards website: https://www.oramawards.com

Professor Mine Doğantan-Dack, Director of MusM Performance Studies, Department of Music

For more details about the MusM Music (Performance Studies) visit:
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/masters/courses/list/20871/musm-music-performance-studies/course-details/#course-profile

John Chantler is a musician and organiser living in Sweden. He mostly works with synthesizers and electronics to create unpredictable, highly dynamic music where passages of spare, alien beauty bridge held chords, saturated in harmonic distortion. In 2019 he started building a system for performance consisting of multiple battery powered synthesizer/speaker things that can be variably suspended, swung, spun and set in locations without depending on the typical concert/club infrastructure and classical modes of performer/audience interaction. His most recent solo recording ‘Tomorrow is too late’ (October 2019, ROOM40) was originally commissioned by INA GRM for the 2018 Présences Électronique festival in Paris. 

In 2020 he released recordings of two ongoing collaborations: a duo with saxophonist Johannes Lund (Andersabo) and a trio with drummer Steve Noble and saxophonist Seymour Wright (Atlantis). Originally from Australia he spent a decade in London before moving to Sweden in 2014 where he directs a small annual festival for ‘other music’ in Stockholm called Edition. The ‘Fifth Edition’ is provisionally scheduled for early August 2020 2021 February 2022.

• John’s web
• NOVARS Hordijk tutorial series on vimeo

Under the theme of ‘Future Human’, academic researchers, postgraduates and artistic residents at the NOVARS research centre from the University of Manchester are joining the festival’s ‘Family Zone’, with a mission to communicate complex musical research to younger audiences.

The showcase including four interactive works combining Music and AI in partnership with PRiSM (RNCM) explores the limits of human/computer interaction in sound, navigating the relationships between humans and artificial intelligentia through music and exploring future human habitats in sound away from our solar system.

21–30 October 2022 from 10.00–16.00 at the 1830 Warehouse, Science and Industry Museum, Manchester. Free and suitable for all ages!

Book Tickets here.

Installations:

• AURA#1: Algorithmic STEEL sound sculpture’ by Vicky Clarke.
  This research aims to demystify machine learning, break out of the hidden black box and share insights and approaches for other artists to create with sonic AI.
• EXOPLANETS by Cameron Naylor.
  This interactive installation uses the databases collected by scientists, and invites visitors to experiment for themselves how exoplanets may look and sound like, by creating them from scratch.
• AI BEATBOXER (Noh Virtual), a project by Ricardo Climent with Giorgios Gargalas (Greek beatboxer champion), Hongshuo Fan, Alena Mesarošová and Manu Ferrer.
  Masks in Japanese Noh theatre work like mysterious portals to the inner life and narratives of the characters they represent. But what if we use Artificial Intelligence to teach a mask to learn how to beatbox, so that they become your singing companion?
• #UnSupervised highlights: A collaboration between PRiSM and the NOVARS Research Centre at the University of Manchester. This community of composers, musicians, computer scientists and audiovisual artists explore the creative use of emerging AI and Machine Learning technologies in Music.

As a Professor of Social and Autoethnographic Composition, Kevin has decades of experience in interviewing, recording, editing, and creating sonic art from personalised interviews, and along with John and Australian researcher Dr Anh Nguyen, devised an approach to interview a UK-based descendant of the family that owned John’s ancestors. 

Kevin also served as recording engineer and editor for this interview, which took place in Manchester on 26 May 2022, and which will serve as the basis for John’s next work on how understanding and potential reconciliations across racial lines may be achieved.  A group visit to Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum informed more of the group’s research.

Our new concert series starts with two virtuoso performers from Cyprus and Iran playing original music by Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723), a Moldavian prince, statesman, a prolific writer, a philosopher, historian, composer, musicologist, linguist, ethnographer and a geographer, regarded as one of the most significant early Enlightenment figures.

Watch the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2hF-FI7pC8

Born in Nicosia, Cyprus, Giannis Koutis studied Byzantine Ecclesiastical, Classical Guitar and Oud the with the virtuoso Oud player Haig Yazdjian. He completed his Master studies on Ottoman Music at Codarts Conservatory for the Arts (Rotterdam, NL) with the neyzen master Kudsi Erguner (UNESCO Artist for Peace). He actively researches in the field of Modal Music of the Eastern Mediterranean, focusing mainly in sources of unpublished manuscripts of Monasteries’ archives. He performs on an Oud made by Dimitris Rapakousios.

Reza Mirjalali was born in Tehran, 1989. He started music at the early age of seven, while his father, Maestro Shahram Mirjalali, was teaching him Tombak and a Tar, giving concerts already at the age of 14. He is actively performing worldwide and has several collaborations with ensembles of different music genres such as Persian traditional music, Ottoman music, Jazz, Pop while maintaining a duo with his father. Currently, he is working on the release of his first solo album. He performs on a Tar made by Shahram Mirjalali.

British-Bahraini trumpeter Yazz Ahmed and three-times Grammy winner Puerto Rican percussionist Carlos Maldonado have received a Simon Industrial and Professional Fellowship. Working together with Dr Alexander Gagatsis at the Department of Music at the University of Manchester, the team aims to bring together examples of new scholarship and musical production to cast light on the dynamic world of diasporic jazz practices in the framework of dialogue between composers, performers, scholars, and students of jazz.
The project will result in the composition and premiere of a new work on Thursday 15th December (1.10-1.55 pm, Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall), and will be followed by a performance workshop and research forum with Dr Evanthia Patsiaoura that same afternoon.

Yazz says: “It’s an honour to have received this fellowship and I’m very much looking forward to collaborating with the students, Alexander and Carlos. During the summer I played alongside Carlos in New York when I was a guest soloist with Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, and he is a wonderfully talented musician. This experience really sparked my interest in Cuban music and I’ve been having lots of fun learning about its complex rhythms and structures, exploring different ways to blend these characteristics with Middle Eastern rhythms and scales. The piece I have written for this project is inspired by popular music from 60’s Iraq, married with the sounds of Salsa and Montuno. It sounds like a crazy mix, but I feel it will work beautifully!”

Tongue Drum, an electroacoustic composition that explores the sounds of a steel tongue drum, has won second prize in the 2022 Fundación Destellos Competition for Electroacoustic Music based in Argentina, while the piece has also garnered a second runner-up prize in the Canadian 2021 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest.

Listeners can find some of David’s music via Soundcloud. 

Image credit: Marta Zigante (Italy), an artistic interpretation of the work.

Prof Ricardo Climent (Music academic and founder at Keep•It•Human) joined forces with marine biologist Camille Rivera (NGO Oceanus Conservation co-founder) and her team, to record and monitor three contrasting mangrove forests in the Philippines. Visited sites included La Union, Bais (Negros Oriental island) and Makati bay, where they deployed a series of specialised audio loggers. 

The video-game spin-out from The University of Manchester also contributed to the plantation of 400 seedling mangroves and interviewed community leaders with the support of local environmental authorities.

The acoustic analysis of bird and bat species will provide a new understanding of the health of local mangrove areas across the country. However, it will also be part of the sound design of their new video-game Mangrove.world which aims to create awareness of mangroves deforestation, leading players to real-world action. The game prototype was completed last May, in collaboration with Imago Software and supported by the Faculty of Humanities recovery fund and Innovation Factory.

Camille Rivera commented “We have to accept that technology is with us and we have to adapt very fast to these changes. And one of the changes is merging conservation and gamification. I see that we are tapping to an unused potential of gamers to contribute to change in the real world. That’s why I am excited with this project because it's a very nice innovative model to use video-game, and at the same time contribute to a positive impact on the ground, plus everyone loves to play games too!”

Prof Climent said “My body and soul still resonate loudly after this trip guided by Oceanus. One can’t build a game-for-good without a first-hand experience of the problem. It was heartbroken to visit devastated mangrove areas because of urbanisation, pollution, logging and intensive fishponds and aquaculture. However, discovering protected mangrove reservoirs brought us hope and strength to work on the solution.”

Watch the video below to find out more.

Chris Rhodes has been awarded a very prestigious UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Doctoral Prize, for retaining top PhD level EPSRC funded students, at the University of Manchester. This prize was based on his PhD research at NOVARS Research Centre, (Music), which investigated the use of biometrics, machine learning and AI to compose a portfolio of music. 

He will investigate how AI technology can be used to play the guitar. The project starts in July 2022, within the School of Engineering, department of Computer Science, at the University of Manchester, sponsored by Prof. Caroline Jay.

Chris says:
“It was incredible to hear that I was awarded this prize after developing a proposal based on my PhD research within music composition, following the work done in this area with Prof. Ricardo Climent (NOVARS) and Dr. Richard Allmendinger (AMBS). It has been tremendously fun, educational, and rewarding to work with them as a team. It was also incredibly exciting to hear that Prof. Caroline Jay (School of Engineering, department of Computer Science) was joining this Doctoral Prize project as a sponsor at the University of Manchester, and it was vital to have her input and expertise when developing this project proposal.

Prof. Caroline Jay says:
“I am delighted Chris will be joining the department, and looking forward to doing some great research with him and the wider team”

De Richard Allmendinger says:
“It is superb news for Chris to be awarded this fellowship and continue this line of research now also with Computer Science”

Prof. Ricardo Climent says:
“This is the cherry on the cake to Chris’s PhD research; a prize very much deserved. His work at the intersections of Music, Machine Learning and Biometrics has been outstanding but his greatest contribution was his passion and unconditional dedication to our group.

This concert featured the premiere of Erysichthon’s Forest, a melodrama based on the Greek myth of Erysichthon, composed by Richard Whalley, with libretto by John McAuliffe. 

It was performed by Louise Wayman (soprano), Simon Grange (bass), Petr Prause (cello) and Richard Whalley (piano). 

Music from this melodrama will ultimately form part of a chamber opera telling the story of Erysichthon, to be performed in collaboration with Manchester Opera Project.

The work is based on a tale from Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which Erysichthon destroys a sacred forest, and is cursed for his actions by Ceres with the punishment of insatiable hunger: the more he easts the more hungry he feels, until he has consumed all of his wealth, and ultimately consumes himself. 

Analogies between this and the way humans today are consuming Earth’s resources at unsustainable levels are clear and echo the Faculty of Humanities’ priority themes of Sustainable Futures, Global Inequalities and Creativity.

The ‘Songs of Sustainability’ project was built around these values, through which four composers were selected through a call for proposals to set poems that engage with the beauty and vulnerability of nature chosen by John McAuliffe. The selected composers were Amy Crankshaw, Simon Davies, Finn McLean and Jasmine Simons, and the poets are Rebecca Hurst, Frances Leviston, Chad Campbell and Vona Groarke.

The evening concert was be preceded by an afternoon workshop with researchers from different disciplines relating to sustainability, in the hopes of informing further the expansion of the opera.

Ticket sales from the concert went to support Rainforest Foundation UK.

The NIHR School for Social Care Research (SSCR) has awarded researchers at The University of Manchester, Manchester Camerata, and the Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust an 18-month grant to evaluate the impact of Manchester Camerata’s online 20-week Music in Mind Remote (MiMR) programme for people with dementia. 

The main focus of this funded project is on ascertaining care home staff and family carer wellbeing. The MiMR programme is based around music and ‘in the moment’ improvisation and builds on a successful collaboration between The University of Manchester and Manchester Camerata that stretches back to 2014. This collaboration continues, with academics from The University’s Music Department and Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work forming key parts of the MiMR team, and at the end of the project, Creative Manchester will disseminate the project’s research findings in a series of hosted workshops. 

Principal investigator, Professor John Keady, said: "This study is a tremendous opportunity to better understand how change occurs in improvised music making for people living with dementia and the well-being effects that this can have on all those taking part in the sessions, especially care home staff and family carers. 

“We are planning to use creative social research methods in this study and to contribute towards an aesthetic of care practice.”

Commenting on the employment of Dr Robyn Dowlen as the lead researcher on the study, Lizzie Hoskin, Head of Community at Manchester Camerata, said: “We are really excited to be working with Robyn again in her new role as the lead researcher on this study and to welcome her back to Manchester Camerata. 

"The success of her previous ‘in the moment’ PhD research with our in-person Music in Mind programme has meant that we have been able to develop our work in music and dementia even further. It's great that this new NIHR SSCR project will focus again on the benefits that music can bring, not only to those people living with dementia, but for those who care for them as well.”

The MiMR team are: 

·      Professor John Keady (PI): Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, University of Manchester/Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust. Senior Fellow SSCR.

·      Professor Alys Young (Co-i): Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, University of Manchester. Senior Fellow SSCR.

·      Professor Caroline Bithell (Co-i): Music Department, University of Manchester.

·      Dr Alexander Gagatsis (Co-i): Music Department, University of Manchester.

·      Lizzie Hoskin (Co-i): Head of Community, Manchester Camerata, The Monastery, Gorton, Manchester.

·      Cathy Riley (Co-i): Open Doors Service Manager, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust.

Researchers:

·      Dr Robyn Dowlen: Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, University of Manchester.

·      Helena Bull: Manchester Camerata, The Monastery, Gorton, Manchester.

For more information, please contact John Keady.

[Image credit: Rachel Bywater Photography]

One of the Music department's PhD graduates, David Onac, has had one of his piano compositions included in the newly released Grade 5 syllabus of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM). This means that piano students all across the world will be learning and playing his music!

The piece, called 'A Distant Start in the Stillness', has already received rave reviews from musicians and teachers, with one describing it as ‘my standout piece of the new syllabus … it’s an outstanding composition from a name I’ve not come across before. I hope he’s someone we’ll see and hear lots more from in the future’.

David graduated from Manchester with a PhD in Composition in 2013. Last year he held a fixed-term lectureship in composition here.

His piece, which is featuring in a promotional campaign for the new syllabus, can already be heard on YouTube.