International Impact, Notes on Music

Chamber Choir take part in centuries-old tradition of Choral Evensong

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Congratulations to the University Chamber Choir, which on Tuesday sang Choral Evensong at Canterbury Cathedral.

The event was the first time in the history of the University that the Chamber Choir has taken part in the centuries-old tradition of choral evensong, and an auspicious occasion held in the very cradle of the Anglican church itself.

Directed by Deputy Director of Music, Dan Harding, the choir sang music by Stanford, Smith and Fauré, to a packed congregation, comprising regular attenders and parents, as well as overseas visitors, in the Cathedral Quire.

The Chamber Choir is back in action on Friday 1 June, and indeed back in the Cathedral, when it launches this year’s Summer Music Week festival with a performance in the Cathedral Crypt at 7.30pm; see all that’s coming up as part of the annual music festival celebrating the end of the University year here.

International Impact, Notes on Music

Classical Connections: String Sinfonia to perform at the Varley Art Gallery in Toronto

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The #EarBox series of events combining live music with visual art takes on an international flavour next month, as the University of Kent String Sinfonia will perform at the Varley Art Gallery in Toronto as part of a five-day visit to Canada.

The performance on Thursday 14 June is one of two concerts in which the group will be playing, and takes place against the backdrop of the gallery’s new exhibition, which explores the physical and psychological effect of nature for humans and animals, and the intersection of human and arboreal timelines. The exhibition includes two- and three-dimensional works and installations; Refuge by Karen Miranda Abel, Anna Williams’ Canada House and Mother Trees of Future Forests by Lisa Hirmer.

Source Pool (Riverine) by Karen Miranda Abel (2018)

Classical Connections will illuminate the exhibition’s central themes of water, surface, liminal spaces and spatial relationships, and the passage from nature to culture with a pastorally-themed musical programme, complete with birdsong, including works by Elgar, Holst, Warlock, Dvořák and John Williams. The programme, like the players, crosses continents to animate the gallery and resonate amongst the various media on display, setting them amidst an aural backdrop that invites the audience to experience both the art-work and the music in a new way.

The Director of the ensemble, Floriane Peycelon (pictured) – a freelance violinist, performer and teacher who also leads the Folkestone Symphony Orchestra – is particularly looking forward to the event; “It’s a terrific thing for the students,” she enthuses, “giving them the wonderful opportunity to take their music-making abroad and showcase the prolific talent amongst the string-players at Kent – and they are not even reading Music as a degree! The chance to play at an art gallery is very exciting – I love finding unusual spaces in which to perform.’’

The ten players will perform in the evening concert in the gallery followed by a reception and a tour of the exhibition; the group then travels to Scarborough Citadel on the Saturday to play as part of the closing Gala Concert of the Chinese Artists of the Society of Toronto, alongside the CAST Philomusica Orchestra and soloists.

The String Sinfonia performing with the Cecilian Choir in Colyer-Fergusson Hall, March 2018

The String Sinfonia is part of the vibrant extra-curricular musical life of the University of Kent, and brings together students from a range of degree programmes including Law, Psychology, Mathematics, Politics and International Relations and Economics to rehearse and perform throughout the year. The ensemble regularly performs in Colyer-Fergusson Hall, in Studio 3 Gallery and in concerts off-campus.

Performing in Studio 3 Gallery on the University campus, December 2017
The ensemble giving a lunchtime concert in Colyer-Fergusson Hall, March 2018

The Varley Art Gallery opened in 1997, and welcomes around 45,000 visitors annually, a preeminent cultural institution reaching audiences both nationally and internationally. This is the first time that the University Music department will travel to perform in Canada, and we’re very much looking forward to beginning our trip with a special event at the gallery. We are also very grateful to the gallery’s Public Programs Coordinator, Rachel D’Oliveira Fell, for the invitation to perform.

The Frederick Horsman Varley Art Gallery. Image: Gisling / Wikimedia Commons

Find out more about the Classical Connections event online here – and if you’re in the area, book yourself a ticket!

Notes on Music

#EarBox goes electroacoustic: Night Liminal on Thursday 24 May

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In a first for the ever-developing #EarBox series that brings together music and visual art, the next event on Thursday 24 May features the hypnotic soundscape of Night Liminal, an electroacoustic piece by Simon Cummings inspired by the transitional period of Compline, which will be unveiled in the sepulchral environs of Studio 3 Gallery.

Released in 2012, the piece is an enthralling sound-odyssey, a slow-moving exploration of the mystery of the ever-changing moment. Like drifting clouds, sounds blossom gradually, changing as they grow in a way that reflects the creeping changing of shadows as daylight fades and dusk draws on. The overall effect is evocative, hypnotic, creating an equivocal space in which the listener is invited to dwell, but not making it clear whether they should be wholly comfortable. That’s not to suggest that the aural experience is unpleasant; in fact, like a bitter sweetness, it’s a welcoming one that hovers lightly between both sensations. Somehow, it taps into an almost medieval fear of encroaching darkness whilst making the process of change an enchanting one.

Composer Simon Cummings talks about how ‘being in a sacred space at dusk is a profound and paradoxical experience, comforting yet unsettling. One is caught between light and darkness … The night can be a dangerous and uncharted place.’

The glacial grandeur to the soundscape of Night Liminal captures this paradox perfectly. The piece exists in that ambivalent space between tranquil serenity and quiet fear as it maps the process of perceptual change. As an electroacoustic piece, it both harks back to that hard-wired historic fear whilst opening up an undeniably modern space for secure reflection. And make no mistake: the surface soundscape of this piece is beautiful; lulling, warm and utterly, well, bewitching, as you can hear for yourself here.

Dedicated to the memory of organist and composer Jehan Alain, the piece lasts just under forty minutes and will unfold against the backdrop of Studio 3 Gallery’s new exhibition, Enhancing the Frame, which opened last week.

Whether as an aid to active meditation or passive relaxation, my hope is that this music can become an integral part of the gloaming, teasing out and resonating with both its delights and its uncertainties in a gentle act of quiet provocation and peace.

Admission to #EarBox is free, and the event begins at 1.10pm. Prepare for an  immersive experience of contemplative listening; more details online here.

International Impact, Music and Wellbeing, Notes on Music

Lunchtime Concert explores South Indian music on 30 May

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We’re delighted to have been able to reschedule our postponed Lunchtime Concert from February, to bring music from South India on Wednesday 30 May at 1.10pm.Postgraduate University Music Performance Scholar, Ramnath Venkat Bhagavath is studying for a Masters in Applied Actuarial Science at the University of Kent, and brings a strong performing tradition to the campus. In 2016, Ramnath performed in the renowned ‘Swathi Sangeethotsav’ at the royal palace of Trivandrum, an event which attracts musicians from across the globe.

The Lunchtime Concert, taking place in Colyer-Fergusson Hall, will feature a selection of different ragas and thalas in the Carnatic music tradition, accompanied by violin, mridangam and ghatam.

Admission is free, with suggested donation £3.

Furley Page logo
Sponsors of the Lunchtime Concert series
Notes on Music

Summer Music Week details are here

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With the current weather promising the arrival of summer, blue skies and summer sunshine this morning greets the arrival of our new Summer Music Week brochures, to much excitement here in Colyer-Fergusson.

Our annual festival bidding a fond musical farewell to another year of music-making at Kent takes place this year from Friday 1 to Saturday 9 June; as you see, there’s so much packed in to this year’s celebrations that we’ve had to expand it to Summer Music (Just Over A) Week.

This year, #summermusicweek kicks off the with the University Chamber Choir and Consort in the Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral on Friday 1 June in a concert including Pergolesi’s dramatic Stabat Mater; that weekend also sees the Big Band heading out for its customary trip to the seaside for a performance on the Deal Memorial Bandstand at 2.30pm on Sunday 3 June. There then ensues a week of musical mayhem, including a Music Scholars Lunchtime Recital, the String Sinfonia, the usual roof-raising gala for the Concert and Big Bands, the Cecilian Choir and Sinfonia performing in the spacious acoustic of St Mary of Charity in Faversham, and other chamber ensembles performing, all of which culminates in the traditional Saturday Gala concert featuring the Chorus, Orchestra and Chamber Choir followed by cream teas and tears of farewell.

Find out all that’s to come on the online What’s On here, or download the new brochure here. You can also follow the events and the build-up to Summer Music Week on @ukcsummermusic on Twitter; grab your straw boater and parasol, and join us in our last musical hurrah before the curtain falls on what has already been a terrific year of music-making.

Music and Wellbeing, Notes on Music

Into the woods…

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Had you ventured into the woods around Parkwood on Friday, you might have stumbled across a string quartet; not something you might expect, but this year’s student string quartet was involved in a photo-shoot ahead of an unusual performance next month.

The Billhook Nook outdoor theatre space, part of the Creative Campus initiative, will play host to a performance of Dvořák’s American quartet, as the ensemble heads out into the summer sunshine (or so we hope, anyway…) Comprising third-year Law student and Music Scholar, Lydia Cheng, second-year Asian Studies & Classical and Archaeological Studies student, Alice Nixon, second-year Music Scholar reading Mathematics, Molly Richetta on viola, and final-year Law student, cellist Alex Deacon-Viney, the ensemble plans to take Dvořák’s popular work out of the concert-hall and into somewhere you wouldn’t expect to hear it.

Assuming the weather is as good (or even better) than it is at the moment, people are encouraged to bring a picnic and enjoy some fine weather and even finer music on Thursday 31 May at 1.10pm. During what is always a busy term, with students (and staff) working under the pressure of examinations, the chance to hear music in an informal and relaxed environment will hopefully offer a welcome respite from the term’s busy commitments.

Admission is free, event details here.

Music and Wellbeing, Notes on Music

Back through time: the Lost Consort

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One of the smallest ensembles this year, the eight-voice Lost Consort has been quietly working away on ancient repertoire over the past couple of terms in preparation for two unique performances.

The group has been focusing on plainsong, including the luminous Kyrie by Hildegard von Bingen, in a sequence of music combined with Renaissance polyphony by William Byrd, exploring the remarkable contrast that occurs when a piece of plainchant suddenly blossoms into a four-part motet.

Yesterday, the group (or most of them, anyway…) met to rehearse in the sonorous acoustics of Studio 3 Gallery, the University’s art gallery in the Jarman Building, where unfurling Ave maris stella and Victimae paschali laudes into the richly resonant space was a breathtaking experience; the pacing of these whorling lines needs different considerations when compared to the way we’ve been pacing them in rehearsals in the concert-hall. And Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus bloomed into a hugely expressive, lachrymaic ode in Studio 3, taking on both an emotional grandeur and contrastingly a greater sense of intimacy (six voices raised in such an echoing space) at the same time.

We’re preparing the sequence to perform amidst a sonic backdrop of a forest soundscape – and no, not just to play on Byrd/bird song… – which we were experimenting with yesterday, which created a wonderful sense of space, and which we are performing on Tuesday 3 April at 1.10pm; the change from musical colours to the natural sounds of birdsong leads the listener to a completely different place. And later, in June, the group will present the programme in the historic Undercroft of the 12-century Eastbridge Pilgrim’s Hospital in the heart of Canterbury as part of Summer Music Week.

If yesterday’s rehearsal was anything to go by, the two events promise to be revelatory; come and experience time-out-of-time for yourself on Tuesday 3 April…

Notes on Music

Strings attached ? Energy-filled concert from the String Sinfonia

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Congratulations to all the performers in the University String Sinfonia on a lunchtime concert today, delivered with fierce energy and some ravishing colours.

Directed from the violin by Floriane Peycelon, the programme included ebullient dance-rhythms in Warlock’s Capriol Suite, movements from Parry’s An English Suite redolent of the English countryside, and Holst’s St Paul’s Suite, concluding with John Williams’ depiction of Dartmoor before the FIrst World War in an excerpt from War Horse.

The players are back in action next week, when they team up with the University Cecilian Choir in Ola Gjeilo’s popular Sunrise Mass; details here.