An historic moment on the 250th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven; first-year Music Performance Scholar, Michael Lam, in the Kent and Medway Medical School performs the Piano Sonata no.28 Op 101.
Filmed in one single, continuous take in Colyer-Fergusson Hall, Michael plays from memory one of the most formidable challenges in the piano repertoire.
Filmed by Thomas Connor, Luke McCann and George Morris.
You can watch a series of performances by Michael in a dedicated playlist here, including pieces from the Anna Magdalena Notebook.
The second in our new Scholars’ Spotlight series of filmed recitals is now on our YouTube channel, featuring second-year soprano reading Biomedical Science, Ellie Gould, in songs by Mozart and Copland.
Our new series of short filmed recitals, Scholars’ Spotlight, has launched this lunchtime with a performance of twentieth-century flute repertoire by third-year Music Performance Scholar reading Legal Studies, Meg Daniel.
The developing series showcases Music Performance Scholars and Music Award Holders here at the University, in an ongoing series of closed-door performances filmed in Colyer-Fergusson Hall.
In the final film of the short series featuring Kent and Medway Medical School’s first Music Performance Scholarship student, Michael Lam, the Canadian first-year student plays the Musette in D from the Anna Magdalena Notebook.
You can watch all three performances in the series on YouTube here.
Filmed in Colyer-Fergusson Hall on the Canterbury campus by KMTV.
The second performance by the new Music Performance Scholar at the Kent and Medway Medical School, first-year international student Michael Lam, features the charming Minuet in G from the Anna Magdalena Notebook, attributed to Christian Perzold.
You can see the first piece in the series, and read more about Michael, here.
In case you missed it, you can watch again a live webchat with some of this year’s Music Society members, in which they reflect on getting involved in extra-curricular music as part of their experience at the University, and some memorable moments.
Featuring alto Carmen Mackey (reading Drama & Theatre Studies), soprano Harriet Wilde (reading Psychology), and Maddie Rigby (also reading Drama and Theatre Studies).
Watch out for some surprise moments involving some household pets…
As a means of keeping you entertained / amused / company during lockdown, we’re delighted to present the Music Department Recommends playlist on Spotify this week – your essential guide to differing soundworlds during the current climate.
Each day, we’ve been adding a new piece for your listening pleasure, ranging from laid-back jazz to joyful Baroque, contemporary pop, big band swing or classic tunes. At the moment, Stevie Wonder’s ebullient Did I Hear You Say You Love Me is rubbing shoulders with tracks from Billie Eilish and The 1975, a tranquil summer garden-of-sound from Debussy, a track from Miles Davis’ legendary Kind of Blue album, a beautiful piece by Olafur Arnalds and more – today’s recommendation is the lyrical and mesmerising Strange Birds Passing for flute ensemble by John Luther Adams.
Wherever you’re listening, make sure you Follow our growing playlist as we share songs to entertain, relax, move or transport you somewhere new – the Music Department Recommends playlist is here for you!
If, like me, the music of Philip Glass was a brash, strident and hypnotic part of your growing up, listening to the forthcoming premiere recording of the reconstructed Music In Eight Parts throws open the door to your childhood, and immediately ushers in the familiar stark architecture of Glass’ soundworld that Music in Changing Parts, Music in Twelve Parts, the exuberant 1,000 Airplanes on the Roof and other works created for this impressionable teenager.
Sol Lewitt: ‘Open Cube in Black and White,’ image courtesy of Karkow Witgin Gallery, Boston
As soon as the recording began to play, I was back in my teenage years again, listening spellbound to Glass’ music that was utterly unlike anything I’d heard before, being a classical pianist and steeped in the traditional classical orchestral fodder. Glass’ bold, and at that time refreshingly modern combination of saxophones, voices and electric keyboards, brought an invigorating chamber ensemble sound endlessly turning in and around itself, creating an apparent aural contradiction between a sense of stasis with a slow process of incremental change, all topped off with a restless textural surface, that you don’t really notice if you’re not paying close attention; for me, it was (and still is) endlessly fascinating. I recall a schoolfriend yelling ‘This has all the appeal of listening to A DRIPPING TAP!’ in exasperation at my nth playing of Einstein on the Beach. I could see how this might be, but only if you weren’t listening properly.
Philip Glass in 1993. Image: Pasquale Salerno
And that’s what Glass’ music does best; it dances away on the surface, but if you engage with the unfolding process and the commensurate different rhythmic patterns that evolve, it becomes something completely beguiling. Sometimes, the rhythmic patterns become incredibly nimble, the music dancing on its feet, as the material ducks and weaves through asymmetrical patterns. (Around eight minutes in, it suddenly blossoms and becomes, well, funky, too).
Since the manuscript vanished after a handful of performances in 1970 (only surfacing again in 2017 at an auction in Christie’s), the piece has been reconstructed for the line-up of the Philip Glass Ensemble, the group formed by the composer in the late 1960s and dedicated to taking Glass’ robust chamber music to the masses.
And it’s a recording for the times, too; with performances of the work across Europe cancelled in the face of the Covid-19 crisis, the recording has been assembled from each member of the ensemble recording their part in isolation. Listening to the music unfold for the first time since 1970 under these circumstances, it assumes a greater, almost unstoppable momentum, powering ahead with a relentless force that declares that, even in these challenging times, the power of music will continue.
The premiere recording of Music in Eight Parts by the Philip Glass Ensemble is released on May 22 on Orange Mountain Music.
Because it does. Doesn't it ? Blogging about extra-curricular musical life at the University of Kent.
