Final-year Music Performance Scholar, Megan Boyle, is one of seven graduating BA Fine Art students from the School of Music and Fine Art exhibiting in next week’s show in Studio 3 Gallery, We Are Human-ish.
Megan has just completed her Fine Art degree, and will be familiar to those who have attended concerts given by the Symphony Orchestra and the Concert Band, with which groups Megan has played clarinet, having also been Co-Principal clarinettist in the orchestra. Her work featured in the Fine Art Degree Show, Reverberate, which took place at Chatham Historic Dockyard last month.
“My work in the exhibition is an investigation into the influence of technology, particularly the Internet, on everyday speech” she enthuses, “including written language and published dialogue, realised through the construction of a new, physical language which questions the nature of interaction and communication methods adopted by human and machine.”
We are Humanish showcases a number of works that explore what it means to be human, questioning ideas associated with gender, culture, language, disability and technology. All the participants are united by their drive to examine human nature and the assumptions, purpose and essence of humanity.
The exhibition takes place from 26 June until 1st July, with site-specific performances arranged for the 1 July, in Studio 3 Gallery in the Jarman Building on the Canterbury campus.
Set against the backdrop of Soft Formalities, the gallery’s new exhibition, the Chamber Choir will unveil a choral programme in the venue’s sonorous acoustic, ranging from Purcell to Alec Roth, taking in madrigals by Hassler and Lassus, and works by Tavener, Peter Warlock and Alexander Campkin.
On Thursday 10 November, a special performance by the Cecilian Choir, conducted by Your Loyal Correspondent, commemorates the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme with a new choral piece written by American composer David Lang in Studio 3 Gallery. Memorial Ground is an evocative, haunting meditation on the Battle of the Somme, but also reaches beyond it to commemorate all those who have lost their lives in conflict ever since. The piece was commissioned as part of the nationwide 14-18NOW project.
On Friday 11 November at 11am, third-year Music Scholar and trumpeter Alex Reid will play the Last Post in the Registry Garden; this is followed at 1.10pm by a lunchtime concert focusing on poet and composer Ivor Gurney. Arranged by Dr Kate Kennedy, the event dramatizes Gurney’s life as musician, soldier and eventually asylum patient, following his progress in his own words and music, with humour and poignancy.
Watch it online 
The backdrop to the event will be a new exhibition of works by Philip Hughes devoted to the strange landscape of Dungeness, including paintings, prints and photographs, as well as a special garden installation made in collaboration with the ceramist, Psiche Hughes (more details 
The ensemble, together with cellist Faith Chan and Your Loyal Correspondent on harpsichord, presented a concert ranging from the Baroque through to an evocative arrangement of Sakura, sakura, the traditional Japanese folk-song celebrating the spring cherry-blossoms. An appreciative audience was held spell-bound as the piece unfurled in the resonant, dimly-lit gallery, winging its way amongst the paintings.
