Notes on Music

Music Scholarships highlighted in Sunday Times feature

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We’re delighted to see that the University of Kent’s Music Scholarships were mentioned in an article in the Sunday Times recently – ‘Top tips for funding university.’

Only three UK universities were mentioned in connection with offering scholarships, and Kent was the only one directly connected with music.

The article assesses the potential costs to future students given the rise in tuition fees, and offers guidance on how to lessen the financial burden of studying at university.

With the capping of tuition fees looking set to disappear following Lord Browne’s proposal, allowing universities to charge as much as they might wish for their courses, students are facing increasing debt in order to obtain a degree. The article looks at the implications for three-year courses of study, and avenues of potential financial support that can be accessed to help. Kent’s music scholarships are one such means of lessening the impact of continuing into higher education.

Not to mention having a fantastic musical experience whilst doing so.

Click here to read the article (subscription may be required).

Keeping It Real: reviews.

Packed house for Scholars’ Festival concert

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I’ve done three Scholars’ Festival Lunchtime Concerts in the Canterbury Festival since my time at Kent began, and I’ve never seen the Festival Club as packed as it was on Friday.  The audience were crammed into every available space, with extra seating having to be put out along the sides, and the view from the stage was rather intimidating.

Festival Scholars
Sarah Davies, Anna Beth Saffrey, Andrew Kitchin, Will Rathbone, Chris Gray, Alice Godwin, Kate Lumley, Lena Younes

Not intimidating enough, however, to dismay the array of Music Scholars, who performed a diverse and entertaining programme that clearly delighted a packed house.

Politics student and flautist with the University Orchestra, Alice Godwin, opened the concert with a pair of charming pieces by Benjamin Godard, and was followed by Anna Beth Saffery, reading Drama, who sang Mozart’s breathless Voi che sapete and gave a lulling rendition of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.

Architecture student Chris Gray performed the first movement of Gregson’s Tuba Concerto, and demonstrated that, whilst it may be the largest of the instruments in the orchestra, it can also be one of the most light-footed – he gave a deft performance, full of agility and lyricism.

Clarinet tutor and Big Band conductor Ian Swatman led a clarinet trio in an arrangement of music by Bach, with Kate Lumley (English Language) and Sarah Davies (English Literature), who are stalwarts of both the University Orchestra’s clarinet section and the Concert Band.

Jazz Katz
All that jazz...

The mood then shifted to jazz, as guitarist Andrew Kitchin (Maths) and saxophonist Will Rathbone (Drama) played two standards, The Nearness of You and Blue Bossa, with Ian Swatman sitting in. Both Will and Andrew have been bastions of the ‘Jazz @ 5’ series in the Gulbenkian each month, and here showed the same relaxed attitude to playing that has made them so indispensable to the series.

Lena YounesBringing the concert to a sparkling conclusion (and not simply because of her shoes) was soprano Lena Younes (History and Drama), who sang Lullaby of Birdland before giving a crowd-pleasing and characterful performance of Flanders and Swann’s The Warthog.

Accompanied throughout by Deputy Director of Music, Dan Harding, the concert proved once again that the University’s music department is rich in young, talented musicians, even though there is no formal music degree on the Canterbury campus. Congratulations to everyone who performed.

Festival logoThank you to Ian Swatman, and to Sarah Passfield who hosted the event and assisted us in setting up, and who made us feel very welcome.

Keeping It Real: reviews.

Going for a song: Cantus Firmus blog

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With all the various choral exploits at the University this year, I’m pleased to say that one way of keeping up with all that’s going on has now been launched. Already going strong, Cantus Firmus is the new choral blog, following the Chamber and Cecilian Choirs through their various projects this year.

With the Chamber Choir heading full tilt towards their Advent Concert by Candlelight in five weeks’ time as well as preparing for their Crypt Concert in February, and the Cecilians preparing their spring repertoire, there’s lots to follow. Also appearing is a regular column on the art of the choral conductor, ‘Not drowning by waving,’ offering insights into the role of the conductor, aspects of rehearsal technique, advice on working with a choir and developing its sound, and there’s the first post from one of the basses on life inside the Chamber Choir.

Cantus FirmusThere’ll be articles focusing on repertoire the groups are preparing, and audio extracts of some of the pieces being learnt along the way.

Make sure you add Cantus Firmus to your RSS reader or list of Favourites, to keep in touch with choral life at Kent. Something to sing about.

Notes on Music

Scholars to star in Canterbury International Festival this Friday

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With a programme to include Mozart, Gregson, Godard, Bach as well as a selection of jazz standards, this year’s Scholars’ Festival Lunchtime Concert is going to be a wholesome musical treat. The renowned Canterbury Interntional Festival is currently in full swing, and this year’s recital promises to add a lively and diverse element to the diary.

Featuring Music Scholarship students from various departments including Architecture, Drama, History and Politics, the performers are illustrative of the all-embracing nature of the University’s Music Department, and a tribute to the high standard of music-making that it fosters.

Yours truly will, as usual, be the recital accompanist this year, and there’s an added bonus in the form of clarinet teacher, Big Band and Concert Band conductor and all-round whizz Ian Swatman, who will be playing as part of a clarinet trio. There’ll be an aria from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, French flute repertoire by Benjamin Godard, part of the Gregson Tuba Concerto, as well as jazz tunes including A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square and Blue Bossa.

The Festival Club, St. Alphege Lane, Canterbury; 1pm; admission free. Further details on our on-line events calendar here. Bring along a lunch and a coffee, and relax whilst we entertain you. Don’t miss it.

Jazz Booth, Now Hear This!

Jazz into Classical goes anew: Officium Novum

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Album imagePursuing the line of thought about the relationship between jazz and classical music: recently released on the great ECM label is Officium Novum, the follow-up to the world-wide phenomenon that was 1993’s Officium, featuring a collaboration between saxophonist Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble,

I’ve written before about the incorporation of improvisation into classical music; here, it’s taken back even earlier in musical history.

The first album presented music by Perotin, de Morales and Dufay, Gregorian chant and anonymous Hungarian and Czech composers from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Garbarek paints lyrical arabesques around the Hilliard’s singing, decorating and embellishing their archaic repertoire with very modern improvised lines.

There’s something deeply contemplative about the result; Garbarek’s meditative ruminations on the unvoiced lyrical potential of the music sung by the Hilliard seems to open up a door onto a different plane, to which the singing aspires but cannot reach. Garbarek’s improvised melodies ought to sound anachronistic against the medieval repertoire: and yet they don’t. Somehow, the synergy works to make the sax lines sound ancient, and, at the same time, to make the ancient songs sound modern.

Officium Novum widens the musical geography to include Armenian music, Arvo Part and compositions by Garbarek himself.

Detractors have lamented the intrusion of a saxophonist and improvised lines onto the music and the Hilliard, and point to the ensemble’s disc of Perotin (called, simply, Perotin), as a purists’ dream (and it is a fantastic disc). But, as the sales figures for Officium proved, and as they no doubt will for the new album, there is a niche for this type of ‘cross-over’ music. The link between ancient and modern continues to beguile modern listeners, divide critics, and foment debate: all to the good.

Arts and the Consumer

Attracting younger audiences to concerts

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As reported in the Evening Standard today, research at concerts by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Chamber Orchestra shows that younger audiences are put off attending traditional concerts.

A survey of people aged between 24 – 36 showed that they feel alienated by concerts. With cuts to the Arts Council of 30% announced today, it’s getting more and more difficult for orchestras, ensembles and arts organisations in general to survive. Classical music needs to find ways to re-invent itself in order to continue, and the format of presenting music in traditional concert settings also needs adapting, if younger audiences in particular – the Ticket-Buyers of Tomorrow – are to be drawn in through venue doors.

The OAE has created the ‘Night Shift,’ concerts where audiences are encouraged to clap when they feel moved to do so, rather than waiting until the end of a piece, and ticket-prices are student-friendly and include the cost of a beer.

I’ve written before about expected audience behaviour at concerts, both in terms of applause and in terms of amplification and accessibility for younger audiences more used to rock gigs. Whilst there will always be a place for traditional symphonic concerts, there’s space as well for a more flexible and creative approach to concert programming and attracting new audiences to concerts.

And beer as well: now that’s an idea…

Be My Guest, Keeping It Real: reviews.

Be My Guest: Will Rathbone reviews Kasai Masai!

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An occasional series featuring guest posts and contributions: this week, Drama student and saxophonist Will Rathbone reviews Kasai Masai’s lunchtime concert.

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Kasai Masai are a 5-piece band based in London and led by Nickens Nkoso. Named after a region in Congo, their sound is a very authentic African one, full of infectious rhythms and driving guitar hooks.

Playing at the Gulbenkien Theatre as part of the Lunchtime Concert series last Monday, they opened their set with “Esale”, a piece with a gentle Bossa Nova feel to it, and it immediately had the audience tapping and nodding along. Throughout the set, as I looked around the auditorium, everyone was bobbing their head, caught up in the effortless groove that the band had. Nickens’ voice is a powerful one, at one point during the song he held a very long note, leaning away from the microphone so as not to deafen us; such was the power he could get from his voice.

They continued with “Omela”, a song about a boy who gets lost in the forest but meets a bear who helps him to get home. This song was more upbeat and featured a catchy chorus. Every member of the band was continually moving the beat, the bass and drums pushing, the djembe a constant pulse. It showed the life in their songs, with Kawele Mutimanwa’s beautifully clean guitar sound throwing out riff after riff while the tenor sax floated solos over it all.

With both “Jambo” and “Muana Muke”, the audience got involved. We were given a vocal line to sing and encouraged to clap along and join the music. I’m often not a fan of rhythmic clapping from an audience, as it can often drift in and out of time, however here, such was the strength of the groove, and the tightness of the band, that the claps stayed in time, and the audience sang.

“We call this music, happy music”, said Nickens. I couldn’t put it better myself. Watching him dance for the finale, everyone was grinning. A really great show.

Furley Page logo
Sponsors of the Lunchtime Concert series
Was It Good For You ?

Was It Good For You: Keri Sherman.

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Continuing the series profiling former musical students at the University of Kent. This week, Keri Sherman.

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Keri Sherman
Laying down the Law: Keri Sherman

When were you at Kent ?  

Autumn 2003 – Spring 2006

What subject did you study ?

Law & Business Administration

What occupation are you now engaged in ?

I am currently a Barrister in The Bahamas.

If music is not your profession, do you participate in any musical experiences now ?

Yes, I rejoined the Bahamas National Youth Choir {a touring Choir and the official national choir of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas} in the Fall of 2008. In addition to performing with the Choir as a chorister and soloist, I have begun freelancing, as it were, as a classical soloist in New Providence. As a freelancer I have had the opportunity to sing for the past two years at the Lyford Cay International Golf Tournament.

How were you involved in music whilst at Kent ?

I received private voice lessons from Sophie Meikle, who is amongst other things a musical assistant at the University, from January of 2004 – 2005. At Sophie’s urging I joined the University Chorus in the fall of 2005 and took part in the Christmas concert at the Canterbury Cathedral. With the University Chorus Itackled singing in Hebrew for the first time when we performed Leonard Bernstein’s work, the Chichester Psalms in the spring of 2006.

What did you gain from your University music experience, and has this helped you in any way since leaving Kent ?  

My University music experience made me comfortable as a performer and gave me confidence in my ability as a soloist. And it goes without saying but I received invaluable training and advice from Sophie which has helped me to blossom a musician. 

What was your most memorable musical experience at Kent ?

I would say my first performance as a soloist at a student concert in Keynes I believe. I trembled like a leaf through most of the song “Caro Mio Ben”, but I got through it and it was an exhilarating experience!

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If you’re an alumnus and would like to be featured, get in touch via the Music Department website: we’d love to hear from you!