Monthly Archives: June 2018

music, news

SMFA Music Lecturer Anna Neale elected to Songwriters Committee at BASCA

Anna Neale, 2018. Photo by Phil Mitchell

 

SMFA music lecturer Anna Neale, multi-talented singer/songwriter, composer, session vocalist and voice-over artist, is now an officially elected member of the Songwriters Committee at the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA), the voice for music writers.

BASCA campaigns in the UK, Europe and throughout the world and is the independent professional association representing music writers in all genres, from songwriting to media and contemporary classical to jazz.   More here: https://basca.org.uk/2018/06/25/board-and-committee-election-results-announced/

Anna has worked professionally in the music industry for over a decade. In that time she has toured the world, and has showcased at major music conferences across the globe and released two albums and two EP’s to critical acclaim.  Related post: https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/news.html?view=2781

 

See also https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/news.html?view=2840 and https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/news.html?view=2886

music, news, research

SMFA Professor of Contemporary Music Tim Howle has new work premiered at the Art & Science Days Festival in France

 

Professor Tim Howle, SMFA Professor of Contemporary Music has a new acousmatic piece premiered on 27th June in Bourges, France at the Art & Science Days Festival. False Memory of Normandy (2018) was composed in collaboration with the poet J M Fox. Link here: https://soundcloud.com/tim-howle/d-day

Professor Howle’s interests include developing composition, primarily sonic art, acoustic music and music for experimental video.  More here: https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/staff/staff-profiles/musicandaudio/3Howle2.html

Additionally, Sarva Mangalam (2017), which was premiered at Electric Spring, at the University of Huddersfield earlier this year, is performed at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival on July 17th. It is also being shown at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), South Korea, 5-10th August. It is an audio-visual piece in collaboration with video maker Dr Nick Cope (https://nickcopefilm.com/) who currently holds an honorary position at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China.  At its premiere, the performance was supported with a paper: Avoidance Strategies relating the ideas in the piece to those of Brian Eno and Cornelius Cardew at Ambient@40 held at the same time.

Link to Sarva Mangalam: https://vimeo.com/255044916

Further, Professor Howle’s piece Phantom Ride (2014) composed with Dr Paul Dibley from Oxford Brookes University, will be performed at ICMC and at WOW- soundMIGRATION, Madrid in September. Link to Phantom Ride: https://soundcloud.com/tim-howle/phantom-ride

music, news

SMFA and CMAT now members of the Music Academic Partnership

The School of Music and Fine Art and new Centre for Music and Audio Technology are members of the Music Academic Partnership (MAP) – a ground breaking collaboration between a select number of educational institutions and the membership of UK Music, a campaigning and lobbying group which represents every part of the recorded and live music industry from artists, musicians, songwriters, composers, record labels, publishers, producers and music licensing groups. Its aim is to prepare individuals who want to build their careers in music.

Academic members, who have to be invited to become part of MAP, will benefit from this membership from a number of initiatives that include exclusive networking, collaborative research, a parliamentary programme, rehearsal spaces, and a range of student opportunities, including the BBC Introducing Pilot, MAP Music Technology Prize, access to exclusive Production Days and industry showcases.

 

More info https://www.ukmusic.org/  and https://www.ukmusic.org/skills-academy/music-academic-partnership/

Alumni, creative events, news

SMFA EED alumnus Chris Carr’s company Lucid Illusions chosen to create new area for 2018 Parklife Festival

 

SMFA BA (Hons) Event and Experience Design (2010) alumnus Chris Carr’s design, fabrication and production company, Lucid Illusions, were chosen to create an amazing new area for the recent 2018 Parklife Festival called The Valley, which took place on 9-10 June at Heaton Park.  They designed an enormous immersive stage set, influenced by brutalist architecture, dystopian film and Carnival, with integrated video and lighting.  See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqeGwRn3ubo&feature=youtu.be

Based in Kent near Sittingbourne, Lucid Illusions are making some groundbreaking projects, with clients who include Adidas, Austrian Tourist Board, Oxford Street Christmas Lights and Max Factor.

 

More here http://lucidcreates.co.uk/about/

Alumni, music, news

SMFA Music Lecturers win University of Kent Teaching Prize

 

SMFA’s Dr Ruth Herbert and Dr Rich Perks have been awarded a first prize of £3000 Humanities Faculty Teaching Prize 2018 for their innovations regarding music performance teaching at Kent.  The award will constitute extra budget for the teaching on the programmes at SMFA.

The Panel considering the applications comprised Dr Simon Kirchin (Dean), Dr Montserrat Roser-i-Puig (Associate Dean, Education), Fran Beaton (UELT), Dr Vybarr Cregan-Reid (previous prize winner) and Rebecca Bailey (student representative).

In their feedback, the Panel referred to, “Sound pedagogical grounding and evidence of student improvement and engagement” with a “strong use of student feedback” and “particularly liked the reflective element of both the teaching strategy and the application”.

A music psychologist and performer, Dr Herbert is SMFA’s Lecturer in Contemporary and 20th Century Music Performance. Also a Lecturer in Music Performance at SMFA, Dr Perks has extensive live, studio and theatre experience in the commercial industry and has toured internationally with many accomplished artists.

 

Related post: https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/news.html?view=2862

creative events, news

SMFA’s Dr Blanca Regina, Associate Lecturer in Event and Experience Design, performing in London on Friday 22nd June at Iklectik

 

On Friday 22nd June, as part of the ‘Unpredictable Series’  SMFA’s Dr Blanca Regina, Associate Lecturer in Event and Experience Design performs in an evening of audiovisual concerts at IKLECTIK in London, with internationally acclaimed artists Sculpture, Zan Lyons, and Noriko Okaku with special guest Steve Beresford.

Blanca Regina is an artist, curator, and tutor based in London who is currently involved in creating audiovisual performances, sound works, installations, and film. She has performed with numerous artists, including Leafcutter John, Steve Beresford, David Toop and Matthias Kispert, and curated a number of events and installations internationally.

A visiting research fellow at University of the Arts London, her research and practice encompass expanded cinema, free improvisation, moving image, photography and audiovisual performance.  In 2010, she received a doctorate in Humanities from University Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, with the thesis The VJ and audiovisual performance: towards a radical aesthetic of postmodernism.

She is curator at the London-based Music Hackspace, Live Cinema Foundation and Strange Umbrellas. With Matthias Kispert she founded the Material Studies Group, developing a series of workshops and performances around the production of sound with everyday objects.

To get tickets for the event – £8 advance or £10 on the door –  go to https://www.tickettailor.com/events/iklectik/171614

Doors open at 7pm for 8pm start.

 

Related post: https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/news.html?view=2761

Alumni, fine art, news

Work by SMFA Fine Art alumna Nadia Perrotta selected by UNESCO for Human Rights Contemporary Art Exhibition

 

A moving image installation about art and children called Because I am, written and directed by SMFA alumni Nadia Perrotta (BA, 2015, and MA Fine Art, 2017) and featuring Lalita Bailey, (BA Fine Art 2017) and the children of Squirrel Lodge and The Rabbit on the Moon nurseries, has been selected for a major UNESCO event in Italy about art and education.

Presented by Associazione Internazionale Arti Plastiche Italia, Spazio-Tempo Arte and Fondazione Opera Campana dei Caduti, Human Rights? #EDU 2018 is an International Exhibition of Contemporary Art from 23 June – 23 September at the Fondazione Opera Campana dei Caduti, Rovereto, Trento, Italy which features 161 artists from 37 countries defending the human right to education.

The event asks the artists to represent and tell, with their own artistic language, a personal vision of the problem of the right to education representing a story, a concept, a complaint, or showing a future perspective as message of hope or as a concrete proposal on the opportunities to be pursued to achieve this fundamental goal for the construction of a fair and right society.

More about the event here: http://aiapi.it/hr-edu-en

Nadia’s film Because I Am was created during her artist residency since September 2016, at The Rabbit on The Moon Nursery in Sittingbourne, and there will be an exhibition – Because I am: A children’s journey across self recognition and discovery of the world around them through the arts  – on Saturday 23rd June, 12-3pm at Kemsley Community Centre, The Square, Ridham Ave, Kemsley, Sittingbourne showing the works the children created with her throughout the past year.

See Nadia’s film here: https://youtu.be/L7y0d5U20oM

Nadia is a film maker and visual artist with experience in exhibiting and organizing events, art writing and curating.  She works mostly with time based, installations, digital work, creative writing and performances. An experienced curator and art director, she was Project Leader for Wetlands Medway.  More info about Nadia here https://nadiaperrotta.jimdo.com/

 

Related posts: https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/news.html?view=2856 and https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/news.html?view=2859

music, news, research

SMFA’s Dr Ruth Herbert a trustee for National Youth Jazz Collective

Dr. Ruth Herbert, 2018.

 

Music Psychologist and performer, Dr Ruth Herbert, SMFA’s Lecturer in Contemporary and 20th Century Music Performance, has been invited to become a trustee of the National Youth Jazz Collective.

Founded in 2007, The NYJC supports the creative & educational needs of the young jazz musician, focusing on small group improvisation within a pathway of progression from beginners to young professionals, supporting music education to increase the ability of 8 – 18 year -olds to play by ear in small groups: to learn, improvise, compose, arrange and lead bands.

Commented Dr Herbert: “I am delighted to have been invited to be a trustee for National Youth Jazz Collective. At a time when arts provision (including music) is being sidelined to the point of extinction in schools, the roles of organisations like NYJC are a lifeline & incredibly important in sustaining music provision. NYJC are doing an amazing job of reaching out- through regional workshops across the UK, through their Summer School, and other initiatives – e.g. inclusivity, particularly getting more young women into jazz. Simply giving young people the time and space to connect/experience/understand loads of different musics and have a good time!”

More info http://nationalyouthjazz.co.uk/

 

Related posts: https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/news.html?view=2703
And https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/news.html?view=2675

Alumni, fine art, news

SMFA Fine Art alumni create art intervention for Whitstable Biennale

 

SMFA alumni Nadia Perrotta (BA Fine Art, 2015, and MA Fine Art, 2017) and Fiona Townend  (MA Fine Art, 2017) together created an art intervention involving photography and creative writing for Whitstable Biennale. The project, called Cuttlefish Bones, ran from 2-10 June, and was an artistic and poetic treasure trail winding through the streets of Whitstable suitable for adults and children alike, a fusion of poetic text, domestic mini tales and photographs of the unnoticed.

More info http://satellite.whitstablebiennale.com/project/cuttlefish-bones-a-treasure-trail/

 

About the artists:
www.fionatownend.com
nadiaperrotta.jimdo.com

Alumni, fine art, news

SMFA Fine Art Alumna Nadia Perrotta Artist in Residence Exhibition in Kent

 

Since September 2016, SMFA alumna Nadia Perrotta (BA, 2015,  and MA Fine Art, 2017) has been artist in residence at The Rabbit on The Moon Nursery in Sittingbourne, and there will be an exhibition showing the works the children created with her throughout the past year.

Because I am: A children’s journey across self recognition and discovery of the world around them through the arts takes place on Saturday 23rd June, 12-3pm at Kemsley Community Centre, The Square, Ridham Ave, Kemsley, Sittingbourne.

Nadia is a film maker, visual artist, art writer and event organiser who works mostly with time based, installations, digital work, creative writing and performances. An experienced curator and art director, she was Project Leader for Wetlands Medway.

More info about Nadia here: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/nadia-perrotta-082a537