The latest in our Scholars’ Spotlight series of short filmed recital by University Music Performance Scholars and Award Holders this week features third-year Film student, Kiyan Agadjani.
Filmed in Colyer-Fergusson Hall on the University’s Canterbury campus, Kiyan performs the opening movement of Schumann’s Kinderszenen.
Congratulations to former Music Scholar and graduate from the School of History, Livy Potter, whose wonderfully intimate, confessional and moving play, Beautiful Man, aired on BBC Radio York last night.
You can listen to the play on BBC Sounds here (scroll to the 18mins 33 seconds mark).
Here, she reflects on the ideas explored in the play, and the influence of Frankie Valli…
I created Beautiful Man for myself, if I’m being totally honest – the actor in me is always demanding parts to play… I wrote it during the summer last year when the weather was glorious and restrictions were half-lifted but life was still very strange. I was in a weird, whimsical, creatively curious state of mind at the time (which you’ll probably be able to glean from listening to the piece).
At its core, Beautiful Man is about carrying on even when the world is falling apart, which I think is something all of us can relate to at the moment. It’s about the small moments that shape relationships, and the hole that opens up when we lose the people we love.
I had been playing around with the character of Hatty in my head for a while, but the structure of the monologue really came together after I listened to Frankie Valli’s ‘Can’t Take my Eyes Off You’ on the radio. I suddenly thought, ‘This song is how I can frame the narrative, how I can make it all come together’. It’s really exciting when this happens – it’s like finding the missing piece a jigsaw you’ve been searching for, to use an obvious metaphor. Music has always been a great creative catalyst for me. I can’t write without having music playing along in the background, and love weaving it into my writing whenever I can.
I hope you enjoy listening to Beautiful Man. I’d like to thank the team at Ilkley Playhouse for encouraging me to write it in the first place, and suggesting that it could work as a radio play.
Livy Potter
If you missed last night’s Zoom For Thought: In Conversation screening with clarinettist, presenter and CEO of the Stapleford Granary venue, Kate Romano, you can either watch it again on our YouTube channel, or – if you prefer your content as a podcast – it’s now on our various podcast platforms, starting with Anchor:
A fascinating discussion, looking at new ways of engaging audiences, performers and listeners, re-thinking traditional concert-models, and looking at the implications of using digital platforms to provide musical experiences.
The world of music is mourning the loss of Chick Corea, legendary jazz pianist and composer, who died on 9th February at the age of 79.
A colossus of the jazz piano stage, his endless creativity can be heard fizzing across the decades, whether as part of the broiling textures of Bitches Brew or Black Beauty behind Miles Davis, or the white-hot cultural meldings of Return to Forever’s fusion; the sinuous partnership duetting with Gary Burton; his Elektric Band and its kinder counterpart, the Akoustic Trio; or the stand-alone intimacy of Children’s Songs.
My ears were first opened to his music after a crate-digging spree with my father in a junk shop in West Worthing when I was around nine or ten; a jazz fan with a burgeoning record-collection, he emerged from the dusty recesses of the shop clutching a brace of cassettes – Secret Agent and the Return to Forever album, the latter adorned with a swirlingly psychedelic cover, the former sporting a young dude in a trilby. The neat, deft, and dazzling intricacy of ‘Fickle Funk’ (featuring Allen Vizzutti) was all it took, and from then on his music became a firm fixture in my listening. OK, the Elektric Band felt a little lacking in warmth, perhaps because Dave Weckl’s drumming was technically brilliant but lacking the loose-limbed fluidity of Jack DeJohnette or the neat trim of Ed Thigpen, or the generosity of Grady Tate – but I loved the tapestry of textures.
I saw him live in a solo piano tour at Leeds Town Hall in 1992, in my first year at university, travelling across to Leeds from York. And I witnessed a remarkable moment. During the concert, Chick announced he was going to play music by someone he truly admired, and opened a copy of Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues, and started to play. And every pianist’s nightmare happened – it must have been a new-ish score, as the pages slowly closed in front of him as he played. Turning to the audience (still playing), he gave a shrug as if to say ‘What can you do ?’ and carried on playing, and slowly moved out of Bach into an improvisation, opening out with a wondrous organic sense from Bach’s language and into his own, improvised extension-cum-response. It was amazing, and rightly received huge applause.
For me, nothing quite beats the gentle melancholy of ‘Crystal Silence,’ particularly in this wonderfully hushed duet with Gary Burton.
And the energy of La Fiesta, Spain and 500 Miles High.
So, jazz has lost one of its most fiercely creative legends; but we have the catalogue of recordings to explore, enjoy, and at which to marvel still. He will be missed.
Our Scholars’ Spotlight series highlighting Music Performance Scholars and Award Holders continues on Friday, with a mesmerising performance by second-year Physics student, Ridima Sur.
Ridima performs Raga Yaman Bandish – Piya, an evening raga celebrating love, filling Colyer-Fergusson Hall with an extraordinary musical soundscape. The film will remain online after the screening.
Filmed in Colyer-Fergusson Hall at the University of Kent.
Filmed and edited by Thomas Connor, Luke McCann and George Morris.
The Music Department is launching a new hour-long webshow, Vinyl Countdown, on Thursday 11 Feb at 2pm, broadcasting on its YouTube channel.
Each week, a group of panellists will be invited into the virtual studio to talk about their nominated album – why they chose it, what they love about it, why it’s important to them – with the other guests, and then at the end of the show, guests and live viewers will be invited to vote for their favourite, resulting in Album of the Week.
Each guest’s nominations will be shared the week before each show, to give everyone a chance to listen to that week’s choices; a great opportunity to explore new albums, revisit familiar ones and vote for your favourite. Later episodes may even involve University staff…!
The first episode airs next week, and includes nominations for Queen’s 1975 album, A Night at the Opera, which spawned ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ by guest panellist Amy Tokel (reading Literature and Drama); Miley Cyrus’ Plastic Hearts nominated by Carmen Mackey (reading Drama & Theatre Studies); Jacob Collier’s Djesse vol.3 nominated by second-year Physics student, David Curtiss and Blondie’s Parallel Lines, released in 1978, featuring ‘Heart of Glass,’ nominated by Sophie Meikle. The show is free to watch here on YouTube, and also on Facebook and Twitter:
Come and explore music old and new…
Image: Jace & Afsoon via Unsplash
This week, our Scholars’ Spotlight series of short filmed performances presents second-year Music Performance Scholar reading Comparative Literature, Joanna Adaran, singing the classic At Last.
The performance screens at 1.15pm and will be available to view on catch-up thereafter.
The Music Department is delighted to announce the launch next week of its new Zoom For Thought: Music Department In Conversation series, which begins on Weds 3 February at 7.30pm with soprano Rachel Nicholls.
The series of Wednesday night sessions features luminaries from the world of music in conversation with Head of Music Performance, Dan Harding. The series will be livestreamed on the Music Department’s YouTube channel, and will be free to watch – viewers will also be able to submit questions live during the event.
It’s an exciting opportunity to bring musical luminaries from the sector to a small screen near you, and to hear from artists working in the creative industry about their working lives and the challenges the current situation has brought.
Later sessions include Kate Romano, clarinettist, writer, presenter on BBC Radio 3 and CEO of the Stapleford Granary in Cambridge, and pianist and Artistic Director of the New Paths Festival, Libby Burgess.
The series gets underway with soprano Rachel Nicholls, one of the most exciting dramatic sopranos of her generation whose performing career has taken her across opera houses and concert halls throughout the world, in productions ranging from Mozart and Tchaikovksy to the role of Brünnhilde in complete Ring cycles for Longborough Festival Opera.
Rachel will be In Conversation on Weds 3 Feb at 7.30pm – everyone is welcome to watch what promises to be a fascinating insight into the working life of one of the country’s foremost sopranos.
Watch live online here:
