Category Archives: Notes on Music

The philosophy of music: or the music of philosophy ?

Summer Music Week and Porchlight; interview with Kate Lumley

Ahead of the Big Band’s curtain-raising gig at Deal Bandstand next month in aid of Porchlight, I talked with the charity’s Community Fundraising officer (and Kent alumnus!), Kate Lumley.


Tell me about Porchlight

Porchlight is the charity I work for. Porchlight helps people who are homeless or facing housing issues and also works to prevent homelessness in Canterbury and across Kent.

What sets it apart from other local charitable organisations ?

This is a good question! I think a few things. Firstly, the charity is committed not only to helping people, but also to changing negative attitudes and stereotypes that are connected with homelessness. We want people to understand that homelessness can happen to anyone, that we think everyone has a right to a secure home, and that help is available if anyone finds themselves, or someone they are close to, facing this kind of situation. I also think that the sheer range of our services sets us apart. Porchlight is committed to providing long-term solutions to homelessness, a lot more than a roof over someone’s head and a bowl of soup, but helping someone to tackle the issues that caused them to become homeless in the first place and get their lives back on track. We have such a broad range of services from a 24 hour helpline, a rough sleeper team and different levels of supported accommodation, to prevention work supporting children and adults, so that each person we help can follow a tailored support plan based on their own personal needs and aspirations. It goes without saying that this doesn’t come cheap! And so this is why we are so in need of support from the local community to continue to provide these services.

Kate Lumley
Kate Lumley

Forty years is quite a birthday to be celebrating this year! How are you doing so ?

I feel very privileged to be working for a charity that has been helping people and changing lives for the last 40 years. It’s a very exciting year for us and we are marking Porchlight’s anniversary with lots of different events! We’d really like this year to be about raising the profile of the charity and encouraging people to support us, whether that’s by raising awareness, volunteering or fundraising. Please check out the Porchlight website if you’d like to get involved.

We’re looking forward to our fund-raising event for you: can you guarantee the sun will shine ?!

Haha! No, but I hope it does. And if the Big Band are as good as I remember then it’ll be a great event come rain or shine! Thanks so much to Ian and the band for doing this event for Porchlight, we’re extremely grateful for the support.


PrintFind out more about the Big Band’s seaside gig during Summer Music Week here.

Helping the homeless: Big Band will be supporting Porchlight next month

As part of next month’s Summer Music Week extravaganza, we are especially delighted to be supporting Porchlight, the local charity providing help for homeless people across Kent. The curtain-raiser to Summer Music Week will see the University Big Band, under the baton of the ever-youthful Ian Swatman, playing on the Bandstand at Deal on Sunday 8 June at 2.30pm  in support of the charity, which this year is celebrating its fortieth birthday.

A great Deal of fun...
A great Deal of fun…

Your loyal correspondent writes more about the event over on the Porchlight website here.

New commission to celebrate the University’s fiftieth anniversary

After months of planning, we are delighted to reveal the launch of a new project: a commission by the Music department for a new piece to be performed next year, as part of the University of Kent’s fiftieth-anniversary celebrations.

Part of the year-long events will be to celebrate the achievements of members of the University community, and it seemed therefore fitting to approach composer Matthew King, one of our visiting members of staff here in the music department on the Canterbury campus; Matthew is also a Professor of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. The text will be by poet Patricia Debney, a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing in the School of English.

In searching for a theme for the project, it seemed appropriate to look beyond the University community to the surrounding county of Kent, its landscape and its history, and to the wonderfully atmospheric photographs of Phil Ward, who is also Deputy Director of Research Services here at Kent.

Image: Phil Ward
Image: Phil Ward

50th-ribbonThe piece represents the intersection of music, poetry and photography, and will be an excitingly creative way of celebrating the University, its community and its place in the surrounding landscape.  You can find out more about the people behind the project here.Follow the project on its blog, Iterating Kent, from inception to final realisation in the summer of 2015, and on Twitter @IteratingKent. We’ll be mapping the gradual unfolding of the project, its ideas and inspiration, and its delivery next year.

Summer Music Week: events now online

And with the sound of heralding in the distance, the clarion-call of trumpets and a celestial choir, we are delighted to announce that the full line-up of events for Summer Music Week has now been published online.

summer_music_flowerThe annual music celebration of the end of the University year starts with the University Big Band beside the seaside, performing at Deal Bandstand in support of Porchlight on Sunday 8 June at 2.30pm. Events then continue throughout the week – choral music, jazz, Big Band Gala, Music Scholars‘ recital, period-costume with the Dance Orchestra, foyer-stage gigs and more – culminating eventually in Music for a Summer’s Day on Sunday 15 June at 3pm, in which the combined forces of the University Chorus, Orchestra, Concert Band and Chamber Choir bid a rousing farewell to the end of another musical year.

Venues this year range from the seaside at Deal to the historic venues of St Thomas’ Hospital and the ancient St Peter’s Anglican Church in Canterbury, as well as the lively foyer-stage and the Colyer-Fergusson concert-hall.

Explore the complete programme online here: plenty to look forward to in this, the last term. Follow #SummerMusicWeek or @UKCSummerMusic on Twitter.

Sounds New coming to the Colyer-Fergusson Building

The annual Sounds New Festival of Contemporary Music will blossom around Canterbury towards the end of next week, and we’re very excited to be a partner in this year’s festival as it brings two vibrant headline concerts to the Colyer-Fergusson Building.

SoundsNewlogo_2014The boundary-trashing Icebreaker Ensemble will be here on Saturday 3 May in a performance of Brian Eno’s Apollo for all Mankind, as well as the première of composer Ed Bennett’s Suspect Device and music by Julia Wolfe.

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The Brodsky Quartet will be here on Thursday 8 May with a celebration of the music of prog-rock legend Robert Wyatt; the former Soft Machine founder’s music will be realised in a blend of strings, improvisation and live electronics, including singer Elaine Mitchener and Matt Wright.

The festival also features the Sounds New Poetry strand, with members of the University Centre for Modern Poetry in site-specific residencies in the city. Find out more about all the events happening at Sounds New online here.

Leading British composer in rehearsal with the Chamber Choir

Students from the University of Kent had the opportunity to work with one of the country’s leading composers last week; composer Paul Patterson was in attendance at the University Chamber Choir concert in Canterbury Cathedral Crypt last Friday, to hear the Choir perform his sacred motet Salvum Fac Populum Tuum Domine, and earlier in the afternoon came to the rehearsal to work on his piece with the Choir.

AH4A0390Born in 1947, Paul Patterson was a pupil of Elisabeth Lutyens and Richard Rodney Bennett. He is currently Manson Professor of Composition at the Royal Acadmey of Music. Major compositions include his Mass of the Sea (1983), Stabat Mater (1986), Te Deum (1988), Magnificat (1993), Hell’s Angels (1998) and the Millennium Mass (2000).

Time Piece (1972), was written for the King’s Singers, and has been performed extensively ever since as a staple part of their repertoire. His Cracowian Counterpoints (1977) was toured worldwide by the London Sinfonietta, and the phenomenally-successful Little Red Riding Hood and Three Little Pigs continue to be performed. In 1997, in celebration of his 50th birthday, he was the featured composer on BBC Radio 3’s long-running series ‘Composer of the Week.’ He has also been Artistic Director of the Exeter Festival (1991-97), and Composer-in-Residence of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (1997-2010).

AH4A0466It was a wonderful opportunity for the students to work with someone of Paul’s  calibre. A major figure on the British music landscape, the chance to work with him was a great privilege. Paul leads a hectic life following his music being performed all over the world (he was recently in Holland attending a concert combining his Magnificat with works by Eric Whitacre, and is shortly off to Denmark), and we are tremendously grateful that he found the time to come to the concert, and to be a part of the rehearsal earlier in the day.

Here is the Choir in the Crypt in the afternoon, working with Paul, together with Yours Truly and fourth-year student Matt Bamford rehearsing.

Images © Matt Wilson / University of Kent