Sound Installation Free event
Cube3 Gallery, Portland Square, University of Plymouth

Columbia livia
Hywel Davies Sound Installation Performance

Columbia livia is part of a two-site installation, Salva me, commissioned by Bath Festivals Trust as part of a Year of the Artist Residency, and shown at the 2001 Bath International Music Festival. Columbia livia was first staged at the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station in London as part of the SPNM's (Society for the Promotion of New Music) 60th anniversary celebrations. The two sites of the original installation (Salva me) were a mortuary chapel and an architectural salvage yard - it is the sound from the mortuary chapel that constitutes Columbia livia.
Promoted in Partnership with i-DAT

Concert Tickets £8 (Students FREE)
Upper Lecture Theatre, Sherwell Centre, University of Plymouth

Partitas & Contemporary Works for Solo Violin
Darragh Morgan, violin

Sally Beamish 'The Seafarer' (1988)

Nigel Morgan 'Rising Falling' (to come)

Joe Culter '(Re) GAIA' (2001)

Morgan Hayes 'Lucky's Speech' (2006)

Tanse Davies 'Loure' (1998)

Salvatore Sciarrino from 'Sei Capricci' (1976)

Philip Glass 'Knee Play II' (1976)

Lecture Free event
Scott Building, Room 105, University of Plymouth

On Composing Music with Insect Calls
Lecture by Eduardo R Miranda

Lecture Free event
Scott Building, Room 105, University of Plymouth

Objects of Curiosity and the Composing Continuum
Lecture by Nigel Morgan
(Composer in residence at ICCMR)

Lecture Free event
Scott Building, Room 105, University of Plymouth

Knotgrass Elegy commissioned by BBC Proms (2001)
Lecture by Sally Beamish

Concert Tickets £10 (Students FREE)
St Andrew’s Church, Plymouth

Premiere of Cortical Songs by John Matthias (Lecturer in Sonic Arts, University of Plymouth) and Nick Ryan

The Day Dawn (1999), by Sally Beamish
Triptych for distributed strings (2005), by Eduardo R Miranda
Objects of Curiosity I (2005), by Nigel Morgan
Descent (2003), by Hywel Davies
String Music I (2005), by Hywel Davies

Ten Tors Orchestra Strings
Sponsored by Mark & Melisande Fitzsimons
Simon Ible, conductor

Composers John Matthias and Nick Ryan have been commissioned by the University of Plymouth and Nonclassical Records (Gabriel Prokofiev) to write a new work string orchestra utilising the rhythms inherent in networks of spiking cortical neurons. The neurons are modelled within a biologically informed computer program inspired by recent theories, which model the interactions between hundreds or thousands of connected neurons in the mammalian cortex. These theories indicate that the neurons tend to ‘self organise’ into groups whose stimulus may form the basis of a simple memory. The dynamics of the system is particularly interesting from a musical point of view, as the firing patterns of the neurons can either synchronise or form correlated rhythmic patterns. These have become known in the scientific literature as ‘Cortical Songs’. John Matthias is a lecturer in Sonic Arts at the Faculty of Arts and a staff memeber of ICCMR.

DJs and Live Music Performers £4 (£3 NUS) on the door only
The Hub, 9 Bath Street, Plymouth

Step Ahead

	This event will be a melting pot of a mix of music performers (DJs and Live Music performers) where musical paths towards the NEW will be explored.
The main performance stage will feature sonic and visual performances bringing together abstract electronic sounds and stylised beats. Simultaneous performances of different electronic music styles will also take place in the lounge area.

Workshop Free event
Scott Building, Room 105, University of Plymouth

The Extended Shakuhachi
Workshop led by Mike McInerney and Zlatko Baracskai

2:00 – 2:30 Demonstration: the possibilities of the extended shakuhachi

2:30 – 4:00 An opportunity for workshop participants to develop and briefly explore their own patch for instrumental extension.

The Japanese Zen instrument, the shakuhachi is one of the world’s instruments which most closely resembles the human voice in the dynamic and timbral range of its sound and in its capacity for subtle inflections of pitch and tone. Using pressure sensitive keys and accelerometers, the extended shakuhachi takes this already natural propensity of the instrument and moves it, through the use of real-time digital sound processing, into unprecedented spaces.

Zlatko Baracskai developed the present hardware and software for instrument extensions at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague. He also plays as a turntablist with bands, and hosts radio shows, in the Netherlands, and Hungary.

Mike McInerney has toured as a shakuhachi player both nationally and internationally and was a featured artist at the Making New Waves festival in Budapest in 2006 playing both traditional Zen shakuhachi music and working with Zlatko on the extended shakuhachi. He is a researcher at ICCMR and Lecturer in Composition, at the Faculty of Education and a staff memeber of ICCMR.

Concert Free event
Scott Building, Room 105, University of Plymouth

The Extended Shakuhachi Performance
Mike and Zlatko will give a performance of The Extended Shakuhachi, a concert combining traditional Zen hon kyoku music with their own compositions for the shakuhachi and extensions.

Opera Tickets £10 (Students FREE)
Upper Lecture Theatre, Sherwell Centre, University of Plymouth
NocOpera Presents a new opera for solo soprano voice and piano

Cape Gloss, Mathilda’s Story

Music by Mike Westbrook
Libretto by Kate Westbrook
Marie Vassiliou, soprano
Brendan Ashe, piano

Carolyn Doorbar, Musical Director

Peter Wild, Technical Director

“I stand on the Cape at the end of the world. I am confronted by memories of childhood, of my tattooed lover, the murder of my mother, of my unaccountable father." The sins of the fathers will fall on the next generation. The Furies are approaching.

Kate Westbrook is a singer and song writer. She began making theatre pieces when she was teaching at Leeds College of Art in the early 1970s She joined the Mike Westbrook Band in 1974 and toured extensively. She and Mike have worked together on a number of opera and music-theatre projects including ‘Quichotte’ for Ensemble Justiniana; and ‘The Ass’ , a music-theatre piece based on the D.H.Lawrence poem, which toured with Foco Novo Theatre Company and was recorded for BBC Radio 3. Her first full libretto ‘Jago’ was for Wedmore Opera in 2000 with music by Mike, and with Marie Vassiliou in one of the main roles. With Aachen based composer Heribert Leuchter, she wrote in 2002 ‘Reich durch Arm’, a music-theatre piece commissioned by WDR. She has done TV and radio broadcasts in the UK and Europe and as far afield as Australia and Canada, and has made many albums,- her most recent recording, The Nijinska Chamber (Voiceprint 383CD ), for voice and accordion, is dedicated to the dancer and choreographer Bronislava Nijnska.

Mike Westbrook has led and composed for a succession of Big Bands and small groups since the 1960's. He has toured extensively throughout Europe and further afield and made 40 albums. He has written for radio, TV and cinema. His principal compositions for Jazz Orchestra include ‘Citadel/Room 315’ featuring John Surman,’ On Duke's Birthday’ dedicated to the memory of Duke Ellington, ‘Big Band Rossini’ which was featured in the 1992 BBC Proms. Compositions for voice include settings of European poetry, notably in ‘The Cortege’ and ‘The Westbrook Blake’. ‘Art Wolf’ is one of a whole series of collaborations with Kate Westbrook that ranges from their jazz cabaret ‘Mama Chicago’ to the current ‘Waxeywork Show’. His opera ‘Coming Through Slaughter’ based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje, was premiered in 1994. ‘Jago’, with libretto by Kate, was commissioned by Wedmore Opera in 2000.His latest album ‘Chanson Irresponsable’, performed by the New Westbrook Orchestra, a group that combines jazz and classical musicians, is released on Enja Records.

MARIE VASSILIOU, soprano studied Viola and Singing at the Royal College of Music, where she won numerous prizes and the Tagore Gold Medal, as outstanding student of her year.
She has recently joined the senior vocal teaching staff at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Marie has performed widely in the UK, including all the major London concert venues, and at such leading festivals as the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the BBC Proms, at which she performed Julian Anderson’s Seadrift. She has recently returned from triumphant début recitals in Zurich & the Far East and has broadcast on BBC Radio 3, 4 & Radio France. In opera she has worked in Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia and the USA, in a wide range of major roles from the baroque to the present day, including Belisa in the Austrian première of Simon Holt’s The Nightingale’s to Blame. She has particularly established herself as an interpreter of Baroque & Contemporary music and has performed as a soloist with the Janiculum, Purcell Quartet, Composers’ Ensemble, Contemporary Consort, Continuum, Endymion and the Philharmonia, giving many premières. This year she premieres Anthony Gilbert’s song cycle Encantos, written especially for her and Endymion, as well as two new operas written especially for her. She will also release a commercial recording of all the song cycles of Matthew Curtis.

Brendan Ashe is a pianist, composer, teacher, conductor, living in the SouthWest, working all over. He has worked in the pop world, and made many recordings, specializing in backing arrangements. He writes across the genres - at the moment he has just finished a trilogy of sacred cantatas, The Waters, The Light, and The Earth, which premières in Exeter on April 21st. His works have been many times performed at the Albert and Festival Halls and he recently coached and accompanied a Saxophonist to the BBC Young Musician final in Glasgow.
He has played many piano concertos and much chamber music, and many of his pupils have gone on to their own careers. He loves absolutely all kinds of music, constantly finding and transcribing obscure stuff from distant lands and distant centuries. He conducts, on May 12th, Karl Jenkins' Armed Man Mass at Wells Cathedral. His a cappella version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody is becoming a standard encore for the Bath Camerata. He runs a piano-only opera group called Opera in a Nutshell. Cape Gloss is just the kind of challenge he relishes.

Carolyn Doorbar is a conductor, pianist and repetiteur. Opera experience as a conductor: Boheme, Falstaff, Traviata, Aida, Tosca. Also music theatre: Into the woods, Threepenny Opera, Cabaret. Composition for the theatre includes: Midsummer Night’s Dream; Under Milk Wood; A Christmas Carol. She has performed as a continuo player both in the here in the UK and Europe. Carolyn originally trained as a flute player with Laurie Beers and Douglas Townshend and worked as a recitalist, chamber and orchestral player. She has been involved in several Westbrook projects.

Sound Installation Free event
Cube3 Gallery, Portland Square, University of Plymouth

Columbia livia
Hywel Davies Sound Installation Performance

Concert Tickets £8 (Students FREE)
Upper Lecture Theatre, Sherwell Centre, University of Plymouth

Spellchecks

Programme includes the premiere of a new work Spellchecks by Edward Cowie

Romeo and Juliet (1977), by Ned Rorem
Prospero’s Music (1984 - 1985 rev. 1994), by Michael Ball
Histoire du Tango (2003), by Astor Piazzolla

Jennifer Stinton, flute
Richard Hand, guitar

Edward Cowie:
“William Shakespeare seems to have been very interested in magic, but then, perhaps all Elizabethans were! It’s not very often nowadays that we speak of coming under the spell of something or someone. Yet, in many Shakespeare plays, several of his characters are placed under the influence of a magic spell, the most famous being those cast (ineptly most of the time) by Oberon’s servant Puck.”