Tag Archives: Studio 3 Gallery

Minerva Voices @ Studio 3 Gallery Weds 1 June for an evocative lunchtime concert

Ahead of its performance in the Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral next month, our upper-voices chamber choir, Minerva Voices, will fill the resonant acoustic of Studio 3 Gallery on the University’s Canterbury campus with music ranging from across the centuries.

From Hildegard von Bingen, through works by Brahms, Gounod and Alvin Lucier to contemporary pieces by Russell Hepplewhite and Sarah Quartel, the half-hour programme will ring round the art gallery in an immersive sonic treat for the audience.

The performance is on Weds 1 June at 1.10pm in the gallery in the Jarman Building; join the choir for an evocative celebration of sacred and secular song.

More details on Facebook here.

#EarBox: art and music in dialogue returns to Studio 3 Gallery

After a lengthy absence, it was good to be back in the richly-resonant acoustic of Studio 3 Gallery, the University’s art gallery, for a performance by the String Sinfonia yesterday.

The #EarBox series of events bringing music and visual art together returned with a programme relating to Le piazze [In}visibili, an exhibition of photographs documenting empty Italian piazzi during the first lockdown in 2020, when normally vibrant social spaces became suddenly silent.

The ensemble’s opening piece, the Chacony by Purcell, took on a greater emotional significance as it rang out against the backdrop of the images, Purcell’s aching dissonances assuming more of an impact. Vivaldi’s Spring picked up on the Italian connection, and in a wonderful moment of serendipity, birdsong in the spring afternoon outside the gallery could be heard in between the movements. Music Scholars Jeni Pang, Alice Nixon and Kammy Pike each took a movement.

Music Scholar Kammy Pike warming up with Vivaldi in front of a photograph of an empty St Mark’s, Venice

Matt Brown’s Solitude at Dusk had one or two ravishing chords, and the performance ended with the weighty Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis, whose main melody (When rising from the bed of death) somehow again took on different overtones in light of the photographic evidence of the impact of the pandemic which surrounded the audience.

Congratulations to the students, and to its director, Floriane Peycelon. #Earbox will return to Studio 3 Gallery again in the future…

Empty squares, unknown shores: #EarBox returns to Studio 3 Gallery

Images of empty Italian piazzi find echo in music for string orchestra, including John Woolrich’s Ulysses Wakes, as the #EarBox series bringing music and images together returns to Studio 3 Gallery with the University String Sinfonia on Weds 23 March at 1.10pm.

Charlotte Cane
John Woolrich: image by Chesney Browne

Woolrich’s piece is a transcription of Ulysses’ first aria in Monteverdi’s opera Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, first performed in 1640. Washed up on the coast of Ithaca, Ulysses wakes on the shores and asks ‘Am I sleeping or awake? / And what country surrounds me?’ as he fails at first to recognise his home. In Woolrich’s reimagining, Ulysses’ questioning aria is sung not by a voice, but by the darker-hued tones of a solo viola, played here by Music Performance Scholar, Kira Hilton.

The University String Sinfonia

The programme will also include Purcell’s Chacony and Vaughan Williams’ reflective Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis. as well as Vivaldi’s vivacious ‘Spring’ from The Four Seasons.

The concert is set against the backdrop of the gallery’s current exhibition Le Piazze [In]visibili – Invisible Squares, which was created during the early days of lockdown in Italy in 2020, and reflects the desolate emptiness of town squares which traditionally throng with residents and tourists, but which suddenly became empty like so many social spaces around the entire world.

Admission free

Find out more about the exhibition here.

#EarBox goes electroacoustic: Night Liminal on Thursday 24 May

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.

Image Gallery: Chamber Choir #EarBox and Breathing Space events

Many congratulations to the University Chamber Choir, which Friday performed at two very different events on the same day.

The lunchtime concert in Studio 3 Gallery saw the Choir fill the resonant space against the backdrop of the gallery’s latest exhibition, ‘The Ash Archive,’ to an audience that just kept on arriving – never have so many chairs been called for! Thanks to Rose Thompson, the gallery’s co-ordinator, for helping to bring the event together.

Later that evening, the Choir travelled out to the village of Hernhill, to sing at the church’s Breathing Space event, a sequence of music and silence by candlelight that afforded an hour-long period of tranquility, calm and reflection. Our thanks to Reverend Paulette Stubbings for making the Choir so welcome, we hope to return to St Michael’s in May – watch this space…

The Chamber Choir is back in action this Friday when it performs in the Eastern Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, in a programme including Pergolesi’s vivid Stabat Mater.

‘Tis the season…

As usual, there’s a steady crescendo of events leading up to the end of the Christmas term; on Monday night, the University Chamber Choir performed amidst the candle-lit hush of Canterbury Cathedral as part of the University Carol Service.

Image: Matt Wilson / University of Kent

Second-year Matthew Cooke made his conducting debut with In Dulci Jubilo, and other carols the Choir sang included Russell Hepplewhite’s Star of the East, fresh from having performed it live on BBC Radio 4 last week.

Image: Matt Wilson / University of Kent
Image: Matt Wilson / University of Kent

On Tuesday, the String Sinfonia gave a seasonal concert amidst the current exhibition in Studio 3 Gallery as part of the continuing #EarBox series, in a programme that included Corelli’s Christmas Concerto.

Final-year student Lydia Cheng was the featured soloist in a dynamic, energy-filled performance of ‘Winter’ from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

And there’s no respite, as the Big Band prepares for its annual Christmas Swingalong in a few hours’ time, the final event in our Christmas hamper…

Music meets movement: #EarBox at Studio 3 Gallery in December

The #EarBox series exploring the meeting point of visual art and music returns to Studio 3 Gallery in December, as the String Sinfonia performs amidst the gallery’s current exhibition, Capturing Movement.Curated by MA Curating students, Capturing Movement explores how artists have transformed contemporary dance into inspiring representations in sculpture, painting and photography. For the #EarBox event on Tuesday 12 December, the musicians of the String Sinfonia, directed by Floriane Peycelon, will bring a programme including music by Vivaldi, Corelli and Peter Warlock. With dance rhythms lying at the heart of much of the music from the Baroque, as well as Warlock’s Renaissance-dance inspired Capriol Suite, it will be fascinating to explore the synergy between the live music and the exhibited moments of dance frozen in time…

The concert starts at 5.15pm and will last approximately 45 minutes; admission is free, the audience is welcome to sit among the exhibits or view the exhibition whilst the performance is underway, and leave as they wish. More details online here.