In memoriam: Jaco

Today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the untimely death of Jaco Pastorius, the outrageously talented bass-player who redefined the role of the bass in jazz and revolutionised its technical possibilities.

Now hear this…

Also to be heard drumming on ‘Teentown’ on the album Heavy Weather, he also showed his more lyrically melodic (yet no less inventive) side on Hejira, one of several albums he recorded with the great Joni Mitchell.

Here are Weather Report live in 1978, the heyday of jazz-fusion, with Wayne Shorter on soprano sax, Joe Zawinul on keyboards, Peter Erskine on drums, and the great man showing his melodic-playing skills.

Ave, Jaco: we salute you.

At the Welcome Fayre

Today sees the Welcome Fayre as part of Freshers’ Week, as the various Societies flock to campus to entice this year’s students into joining.

Welcome to the Music Society ?

Pictured right is what Hannah P has suggested is the new motivational means to encourage you to pay your subscription to the Music Society this year…

Members of this year’s Society Executive have been on campus since early this morning to prepare; here they are in action in the marquee in Eliot car-park a short time ago. They’ll be at the stand until the end of the day; drop by, say hello, and find out what’s happening musically this term.

Tim P, Emma M, Paris N, Kathryn R, Aisha B, Hannah L and Michael S: the Committee in action!

On Course: Emma Murton on the ABCD convention

Each August, the budding student conductor of the Chamber Choir in the following academic year goes on the Young Conductor’s Course with the Association of British Choral Directors summer school. This year, it was the turn of second-year Scholar, harpist and singer Emma Murton; here’s her story…

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The ABCD choral conducting convention was a fantastic experience for me as a budding conductor. There were several highlights for me, including a session and performance by ”The White Rosette” and learning new tricks to the trade from Amy Bebbington – the leader of the young conductor’s course.

After settling in on the Friday into the amazing Leeds Metropolitan campus I met the other young conductors, all fantastic people I am keeping in contact with. With our free ABCD bags we pillaged all the stalls of their free samples of music and CD’s till they were bulging with new pieces and exciting new composers to explore for this year (and probably many years to come!). We then enjoyed a traditional and truly scrumptious Yorkshire meal with a round of the famous “Sheffield carols”, leaving our bellies full and voices cracked. It was then that I realised my voice was going to be running marathons this weekend!

The next morning we all arose bright and early to enjoy the warm-up session with Rhiannon Gayle, the founder of “Rock up and Sing” – a group which encourages people who have had bad experience with singing in the past to change their negative views on singing and enjoy it again. Her energetic and original warm-up’s will definitely feature in this year’s Chamber Choir warm ups, I can’t wait to use them! In the evening we all travelled to the Gala performance in Leeds town hall. It was an amazing building, full of impressive Victorian architecture and some unique musical history – from its commission and première performance of Belshazzar’s Feast to performances from Elgar and Rachmaninoff. The performance included the fantastic Swedish acapella group “Vocado” who were dressed in bright yellow trousers and bow-ties, a look I am trying to convince Dan to try for concerts this term! [Could be interesting:f or the group, or just me ? Dan.]

Throughout the weekend I experienced a huge variety of conducting and singing, with the highlight being the hugely talented group of young conductors and our workshops with Amy Bebbington. Each of us conducted completely different, enabling us to all gain new ways and techniques on choral leadership. Amy Bebbington lessons will stay with me this whole year as will the confidence the entire course gave me. It was a truly fantastic opportunity which I will treasure and use as the year progresses – watch out choir, we have some fun and hard work ahead!

Emma Murton

A Year in the Life: Music at Kent 2011-12

A chance to turn the pages of memory, and revisit the musical life of the University last year.

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And now on into the new academic year…

New building: look, no hoardings!

There was a very exciting moment partway through this week, when the hoardings around the construction site were removed; hitherto, the building has been largely hidden behind giant boards (bearing, it has to be said, though, some terrific photos of some of the Music Scholars, courtesy of @mickelous). Alas, all good things must come to an end, and the boards were taken away to reveal the exterior of the building’s reception area and practice rooms.

Exterior of the entrance

In the image above, the nature of the front of the building is finally revealed; the north-east corner boasts large windows around the social space, and the view continues down past the entrance lobby along the foyer; the windows along there will afford views of the foyer-space and its small performance stage. The walkway alongside will be bedecked with trees and a grassed area, in what has already been christened ‘The Boulevard’ by the Director of Music.

View along the northern aspect

Above, you can clearly see the northern facade, leading around to the western-side car-park; this section houses, beyond the social space, the ground-floor practice rooms and kitchen, and above, the first-floor ensemble rehearsal rooms and staff offices.

With the move into the new building now only a few weeks away, we’re starting to get very excited indeed; we hope you are too…

Blogging live from Open Day today

We’re at the ‘Making Music’ stand at #kentopenday today. In a change to our usual spot, we’re in Eliot Hall throughout the day, greeting visitors to the campus who want to find out more about making music at the University, music scholarships, and the brand-new music building (the hoarding around the outside started to come down yesterday, and it’s looking very exciting indeed: pictures to come tomorrow, I hope!).

Cathedral
In-spiring future students…

We’ll be keeping you posted as to how we’re getting on throughout the day both here and on Twitter as well.

10.15am; just over an hour since we started, and we’ve see about ten people already; the usual prize for the Visitor from the Farthest-Flung Corner is currently held by someone from Nottingham. Quite a few string-players too… and the coffee is going well.

12pm; halfway through the day now, and over twenty visitors to the stand; the VfFFC award has now gone to a visitor from Colwyn Bay in Wales! Interest in scholarships from drummers, singers and a saxophonist too. Going well, although our voices are starting to tire…more caffeine required, or possibly even lunch…

2pm and we’re into the last hour; a trickle of visitors over lunch means we’ve now met over thirty people. I popped out earlier to take some photos of the exterior of the building, as all the hoardings have now been taken down (they’re on Twitter if you want to view them), which is particularly exciting a milestone to reach: the end is in sight!

3pm and that’s it for today! Good to meet everyone who came to find out about music at Kent, safe travelling home and we look forward to seeing you this time next year, perhaps! We’re off to recover our lost voices, and to go and leap around outside the newly-revealed exterior of the new building in heady excitement. And no, we won’t be tweeting any photos of that

No Sound Resounding: sixty years of 4’33”

It’s almost hard to believe that this year is not just the centenary of Cage’s birth, but also the sixtieth anniversary of Cage’s noiseless yet sound-rich, notorious masterpiece, 4’ 33’’. Premièred by David Tudor on August 29 in 1952, the piece has gone on to cause controversy wherever and whenever it continues to be performed.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra performed the UK’s first orchestral version of the piece in a concert dedicated to the music of Cage in 2004.

Original programme cover
The original programme cover

Cage himself reflected on the first performance:

There’s no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.

Cage’s piece draws to the fore the interaction between performer, audience and environment, raising the significance of the non-directed elements present during the piece’s performance; ambient, unintentional noise, aleatoric sounds, events outside of the performer’s control and yet deliberately included as part of the experience. The piece makes room for all those surrounding elements over which the performer has no direct control, and makes them a part of it; it makes us listen not to an arranged series of controlled auditory events, but to whatever sonic incidents happen to occur during that defined time-period during which the piece is ‘performed.’ In fact, the only controlled element of the piece is the time during which these events unfold, defined by the raising and lowering of the piano lid in the piece’s original incarnation. Aside from dictating the beginning and end of each of the three movements, everything else is left to chance.

Tuesday marked the centenary of Cage’s birthday, and there have been events marking the occasion worldwide throughout the year including a special BBC Prom dedicated to Cage’s work (for which the back-up system on Radio 3 had to be turned off, a system which kicks in when it detects ‘dead air;’) yet it’s 4’ 33’’ that remains his most notorious, most thought-provoking piece, and arguably one of the most significant works of the twentieth-century. For a piece with no prescribed sound, its impact continues to resonate still.