Departmental seminars

= Music Department seminars =

The following talks, seminars, or other events are open to virtual attendees from inside or outside of the institution that is hosting them. This page provides links to further information on these events.

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 * 1) Speaker. Title. Date and Time. Host institution. [Enclose this information between two equals signs, to create a heading. Ideally, you should give the time given in several time zones, e.g. CET, GMT, EST, PST.]
 * 2) A link to further information on the event, including registration instructions.
 * 3) An abstract or other information about the event.

Editing the list of events
Please place your advert in the right position on the list, in date order, with the most imminent event at the top. If you notice that some events at the top of the current list have now taken place, feel free to move them to the archive so that the list is kept tolerably up-to-date.

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= Listings, organized by date =

Elizabeth Llewellyn. Black Womxn in the Performing and Digital Arts. 26 February 2021 5pm GMT (6pm CET, 12pm EST, 9am PST) Royal Holloway, University of London
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London-born soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and the National Opera Studio, supported by the Peter Moores Foundation. After completing the ENO Opera Works training programme, she created the role of Ludovina in the premiere of Glyndebourne Festival’s new opera The Yellow Sofa.

Elizabeth made her operatic debut as Mimì in Jonathan Miller’s production of La Bohème at the English National Opera, which led to her being named as “Best newcomer in opera in 2010” by The Telegraph. She returned to the ENO the following year, stepping-in on opening night as the Countess in their new production of The Marriage of Figaro, directed by Fiona Shaw; a role which earned her uniformly glowing reviews.

Elizabeth begins the 2020/21 season with her company debut with Scottish Opera, singing Mimì in a socially distanced outdoor production of La Bohème - one of the first operas to be staged in the UK following the Covid-19 crisis. She also sings Mozart Requiem at the London Coliseum for English National Opera’s first live indoor performance since lockdown, and will return to ENO to make her debut in the role of Ellen Orford Peter Grimes. Later this season Elizabeth releases her debut solo album Songs of the Heart and Hereafter, alongside pianist Simon Lepper, focusing on the work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and his contemporaries. Prior to the release, Elizabeth will perform the programme in recitals at Snape Maltings in Aldeburgh and for her Wigmore Hall debut, broadcast online and on BBC Radio 3 live in-concert. Further performances this season include ‘Easter Hymn’ from Cavalleria Rusticana with Opera North in a live broadcast from Leeds Town Hall, and Bess Porgy & Bess in a semi-staged production at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.

In 2018 Elizabeth made her US debut with Seattle Opera as Bess in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, a role that she went to sing in her house debut at the Metropolitan Opera last season. In more recent years, Elizabeth has established herself as a notable lyrico spinto soprano, singing the title roles in Verdi’s Luisa Miller for English National Opera, Aida at the Theater Bielefeld, Manon Lescaut with Opera Holland Park, as well as Puccini’s Tosca and the role of Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin, both at the Theater Magdeburg, Germany. Elizabeth was also nominated for “Singer of the Year 2013” in OpernWelt magazine for her portrayal of Amelia Grimaldi in Simon Boccangera; a role she later performed with Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra. Elizabeth also sang the title role of Suor Angelica and Giorgetta Il Tabarro for the Royal Danish Opera, and returned there to make her acclaimed debut in the title role of Madama Butterfly. Other roles include Margherita/Elena in Boito’s Mefistofele with Chelsea Opera Group. Magda de Civry La Rondine (Opera Holland Park); Fiordiligi Così fan tutte (Theater Magdeburg; Opera Holland Park), Contessa Le Nozze di Figaro (ENO; Opera Holland Park); Governess The Turn of the Screw (Arcola Theatre); Donna Elvira Don Giovanni (Theater Magdeburg; Bergen National Opera); Bess Porgy and Bess (Royal Danish Opera); title role in The Merry Widow (Cape Town Opera) and the title role in The Iris Murder (Hebrides Ensemble).

Elizabeth’s concert appearances have included Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Richard Farnes, a Rosenblatt Recital, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Esa-Pekka Salonen, Verdi Requiem, Britten War Requiem, Tippett A Child of Our Time with Ryan Wigglesworth, a Gala Concert with Joseph Calleja recorded for Classic FM, and a live performance of Strauss Vier Letzte Lieder on BBC Radio 3 with Donald Runnicles/BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Recently, Elizabeth has recorded Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony with BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the role of Eigen in Elgar’s Caractacus for Hyperion, both under the baton of Martyn Brabbins. Elizabeth won the inaugural Voice of Black Opera Competition / Sir Willard White Award in 2009, and she was the opera nominee for the prestigious Breakthrough Award at the 2013 Times/Sky Arts Southbank Awards.

John Rink (University of Cambridge). The Evaluation of Musical Experience. 2 March 2021 4pm GMT (5pm CET, 11am EST, 8am PST) Royal Holloway, University of London
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John Rink is Professor of Musical Performance Studies in the Cambridge Faculty of Music, and Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at St John's College. He studied at Princeton University, King's College London, and the University of Cambridge, where his doctoral research was on the evolution of tonal structure in Chopin's early music and its relation to improvisation. He also holds the Concert Recital Diploma and Premier Prix in piano from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He specialises in the fields of performance studies, theory and analysis, and 19th-century studies, and has published six books with Cambridge University Press, including The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation (1995), Chopin: The Piano Concertos (1997), Musical Performance: A Guide to Understanding (2002), and Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions (with Christophe Grabowski; 2010). He is a co-editor of Chopin Studies 2 (with Jim Samson; 2004) and the Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music (with Nicholas Cook, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and Eric Clarke; 2009); he is also General Editor of the five-book series Studies in Musical Performance as Creative Practice, which Oxford University Press published in 2017/18. He co-edited one of the books - Musicians in the Making: Pathways to Creative Performance - in collaboration with Helena Gaunt and Aaron Williamon.

He was an Associate Director of the AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM), and he chaired the Steering Committees of the AHRC's 'Beyond Text' and 'Landscape and Environment' Strategic Programmes; he also served on the AHRC's Advisory Board and chaired the Science in Culture Advisory Group. He sits on the editorial board of Music and Letters and Musicologist; is on the Advisory Panels of Music Analysis, the Institute of Musical Research, and several UK research projects; and has been a member of the AHRC's Peer Review College. He holds several honorary appointments, including Visiting Professor in the Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London; Guest Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music; Visiting Professor in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London; and Guest Professor, Shanghai Normal University. In 2012/13 he was Ong Teng Cheong Visiting Professor in Music at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore.

He was a member of the jury of the XVII International Chopin Competition held in October 2015 in Warsaw, and he will serve again on the jury for the XVIII Chopin Competition in October 2020. In 2017 he was invited to join the Society for Musicology in Ireland as a Corresponding Member, and he also became the inaugural Director of Cambridge Digital Humanities, holding this role for two years.

This is a live, interactive session which will be hosted on an online video conferencing platform. To join us, please complete this short form (link embedded). Access details for the session will be emailed to you on the day of the event.

== Aistė Vaitkevičiūtė. Emerging in the Process: Alternative Musical Thinking Recalling Archaic (Female) Existence. 4 March 4pm GMT (5pm CET, 11am EST, 8am PST) Fragility of Sound - KUG University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria ==

Link and further information here

There has already been a long debate concerning the inhibited role of women regarding the development of Western music tradition. While men are usually being granted for creating the great opuses, grounding the basic rules as well as reasoning theoretical fundaments of the art of sounds, female musical practices are often confined to accessory role, i.e., accompanying other activities (e.g., as an element of courteous manner, a part of a ritual or exhilarating a process of work.). This specific area is, however, worth of special attention and is undeservedly left in the periphery of many researchers construing the framework of music history. Notwithstanding, uncovering the so far obscure field may reveal alternative approaches from both extrinsic (socio-cultural context) as well as intrinsic (structural aspects of music) perspectives.

This particular domain may be represented by numerous archaic musical practices throughout the different cultures (Balkan, Slavic, Ainu, Baltic, etc.) which mainly served as accompanying activities to the female daily works. A unique manifestation (among others) may also be detected in the archaic Lithuanian folk genre called sutartinės integrating features of particular activity through many different levels. The monotonous character based on canonical repetition of narrow musical formulas, polyphonic intertwining between two voices resulting in constant recurrence of a second interval, a specific tuning inducing a psycho-acoustic effect of maximum roughness (also called Schwebungsdiaphonie) as well as onomatopoeic nature of meaningless—all these elements somehow reflect the overall nature of the activities women were commonly engaged in (processing linen, cutting rye, grinding grain, etc.). Paradoxically, these ancient forms of musical practice are somehow recalled in the most recent manifestations of music. Some Lithuanian female composers (such as Justė Janulytė, Ugnė Giedraitytė, Justina Repečkaitė) convey the features of monotonous processes into their own musical material, thus distancing themselves from the established standards of a Western musical work-opus. In this paper-presentation, this paradoxical link is inquired while analysing and comparing aspects of musical development, rhythmic and pitch structure, sound effects as well as references beyond the musical domain in both archaic and contemporary instances. The significance of female contribution into the Western musical tradition is exposed which can find its revitalisation in nowadays composing arena.

Aistė Vaitkevičiūtė is a Lithuanian composer and a researcher of a young generation. She got her master degree in composition and music pedagogy at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre and she is working on her doctoral thesis at the moment there. The focus of her research is timbre and its function in compositional practice of the second half of the 20th–21st centuries. She is also one of the coordinators of the annual conference Principles of Music Composing (2018–2020, Vilnius) as well as an assistant co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal following the conference (2016–2020). Aistė Vaitkevičiūtė’s interests encompass such fields as cultural and mentality studies or philosophy in relation to musical field. She also got a bachelor’s degree in Cultural History and Anthropology at Vilnius University.

== Sarah Weiss. Precarious Resistance: On Women Singing Transgression in Ritual Contexts. 4 March 4pm GMT (5pm CET, 11am EST, 8am PST) Fragility of Sound - KUG University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria ==

Link and further information here

In some cultural contexts, even in those that are most restrictive and closed, women can be observed to exploit the ambiguity generated by performance in ritual contexts – whether weddings, funerals, or the fulfillment of personal vows – to express their opinions or to do things they would not normally be allowed to do. Through lamentation, mockery, or the embodied defiance of normative behaviors, women performers generate (an ephemeral) agency for themselves through the articulation and mastery of their emotions in and through their performance. Using case studies from India, Greece, Iran, and Italy, in this presentation I will suggest that expressing these kinds of transgressive sentiments through the performance of music and dance ameliorates the disturbances that might otherwise be caused by the articulation of such words and actions alone. Different from performances for entertainment in these same cultures, the music and dance in these ritually sanctioned contexts shield women from the opprobrium that might normally be heaped on them for expressing themselves in public, visible not only to women but also to men. The protection occurs precisely because the performative moments are temporary and contained by the liminality of the cultural moment. In these contexts, the limited nature of the performative moment actually provides additional freedom for the performers to communicate much more than they would normally be allowed to do in daily life. Any ambiguities about their character or propriety that might otherwise be generated by their performing music and dance on stage or in public, without the shepherding presence of their male family members, are, ironically, ameliorated by the performance itself. The fragility of this kind of performed agency is precisely what makes it powerful.

Privatdozentin Dr. Sarah Weiss (PhD, MA – New York University, BA – University of Rochester/ Eastman School of Music) is a scholar working in Southeast Asian cultures and performance, gender studies, postcoloniality, and hybridity studies. She has recently (2018) finished a term as Associate Professor in the Humanities and Inaugural Rector of Saga Residential College at Yale-NUS College, a new liberal arts and sciences college in Singapore. She joined the Institute for Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz as a senior faculty member and researcher in March 2018. She completed her habilitation in January 2019 with a new book entitled, Ritual Soundings: Women Performers and World Religions published in 2019 by the University of Illinois Press in their New Perspectives on Gender and Music Series. Her earlier and continuing research focuses on the cultural and musical analysis of Javanese gamelan performance, in particular old-style wayang. She has been leading Javanese Gamelan Nyai Rara Saraswati at Kunstuniversität Graz since September 2018.

== The Underrepresentation of Women of Colour in the Classical Music Industry, and How We Can Enact Change: Part of 2021 MUSICA Festival. 11 March 4:30pm GMT (5:30pm CET, 11:30am EST, 8:30am PST) University of Manchester ==

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As part of the student-led Musica festival, we welcome guest speakers Rebeca Omorida (founder of the African Concert Series), Natalia Franklin Pierce (Executive Director of nonclassical) and Dr Ellie Chan (Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Manchester) to discuss the challenges facing the Classical music industry regarding diversity and inclusion. Two of the panelists will present twenty-minute talks on the topic, followed by a roundtable discussion with the rest of the panel. Questions from the audience will conclude the session. Led by Anne Hyland.

This is a live, interactive session which will be hosted on an online video conferencing platform. People external to the University of Manchester are warmly welcome; please email Anne Hyland (email address in link) in advance (by 12 noon on the day in question) with the session title in the email subject and your name in the body of the email in order to be admitted onto the Zoom call. Sessions begin at 4:30pm GMT and last 90 minutes.

Veza Fernandez. Tremor – Video performance and artist talk. 11 March 4pm GMT (5pm CET, 11am EST, 8am PST) Fragility of Sound - KUG University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria
==

Link and further information here

== Chikako Morishita. Composing ‘Narrative Dissolution’: Framing Subjectivity in Music Composition. 11 March 4pm GMT (5pm CET, 11am EST, 8am PST) Fragility of Sound - KUG University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria == ==

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== Joshua Tucker (Brown University). 'My Dear Little Beer'. Alcohol, Emotion, and the Business of Andean Popular Song. 16 March 2021 4pm GMT (5pm CET, 11am EST, 8am PST). Royal Holloway, University of London ==

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Joshua Tucker is Associate Professor of Music at Brown University. Beyond teaching and advising, Professor Tucker is an active researcher in the field of Ethnomusicology, specialising in “sound and society in Latin America, with a particular emphasis on popular music both in the Andean region and Brazil.” During the 2013 academic year, Professor Tucker was on sabbatical leave in southern Peru, studying the changing definition of indigenous identity and its relation to the musical culture of Peru's Quechua-speaking communities. He has authored numerous papers featured in a wide collection of scholarly journals, and his book, Gentleman Troubadours and Andean Pop Stars: Huayno Music, Media Work, and Ethnic Imaginaries in Urban Peru, was published in 2013. This is a live, interactive session which will be hosted on an online video conferencing platform. To join us, please complete this short form (link embedded). Access details for the session will be emailed to you on the day of the event.

== Nicola Dibben (University of Sheffield). ‘Analysing musical new media: music in mobile apps and extended reality’. 5 May 2021, 16.30 GMT+1. Oxford Seminar in Music Theory and Analysis (University of Oxford). ==

Further details, an abstract and sign-up information will be posted shortly on the seminar webpages. You can also follow OSiMTA on Twitter @OxfordAnalysis

The Oxford Seminar in Music Theory & Analysis (OSiMTA) meets two or three times a term. Its convenors are Professor Jonathan Cross and Dr Sebastian Wedler. Our conception of theory and analysis is critical, plural and interdisciplinary. In shaping the seminars, we aim to reflect the broad range of activity taking place under the heading of theory and analysis today, as well as to challenge boundaries, embracing not only ‘conventional’ practices, histories of theory and repertoires, but also new interdisciplinary approaches that engage with cultural studies, ethnomusicology, aesthetics and philosophy, psychology, politics, performance studies, popular music studies, and so on. Speakers include distinguished local, national and international scholars.

Seminars are open to all, including the general public. Sessions will last 90 minutes and lively discussion is encouraged. They take place on Wednesday afternoons, beginning at 16.30 UK time, via Zoom.

Shzr Ee Tan (Royal Holloway). Wearing Ethnomusicology: cultural appropriation/ appreciation and performative representation 1:30pm - 2:30pm, Wednesday 17 May 2001. University of Southampton
This is a live, interactive session which will be hosted on Microsoft Teams. For an invitation, write Matthew Shlomowitz at M.Shlomowitz@southampton.ac.uk

This paper attempts a holistic investigation of multiplicities in the visual performativity of clothing in ethnomusicological practice in the academy, the field and in everyday life. Drawing from my own experiences in research environments, the classroom and conferences, as well as candid interviews with ethnomusicologists and music researchers encountered through social and professional settings, I look at how clothes are worn and presented/ photographed/ imaged and re-mediated. The context of my investigation is set amidst evolving debates on cultural appropriation, feminist movements, notions of professionalism, ritual requirements of dress, the wider societal disciplining of the human body and, finally, ease of comfort. My case studies include how the batik print is gendered, represented and signified in different ways when worn by men versus women performers/ music scholars, and in clothing versus accessories, in the (for example) different territories of Indonesia, Hawaii and sub-Saharan Africa. I also consider how ‘traditional’ and neotraditional ‘fusion’ costumes, as well as ‘concert black’ kit vs casual jeans are worn in ritual or performance settings by insiders versus outsiders, and by cultural (non) bearers on different calibrations of ‘contextual requirement’ and ‘musical privilege’. Here I discuss different approaches to professional representation, decorum and career-branding at conferences, performance arenas, in the classroom and in the course of fieldwork. In the ensuing process, I also consider the conflicting demands of practical convenience in dressing/ travelling/ ‘fitting in’, artist’s license in choice of clothing, and fashion expectations of academic researchers and classroom facilitators in different - often intersecting - playing fields. In doing so, I come to conclusions on how the wearing of ethnomusicology in theory, practice and in constantly-remediated images continue to assemble well as disassemble identities, divides and ways of being. Shzr Ee Tan is a Senior Lecturer and ethnomusicologist (with a specialism in Sinophone and Southeast Asian worlds) at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is interested in impact-based issues of music and decolonisation, aspirational cosmopolitanism, and race discourses in music scenes around the world (including HE), with a view towards understanding marginality through the lenses of intersectionality. In June 2020 with Kiku Day she organised the webinar Orchestrating Isolation: Musical Interventions and Inequality in the COVID-19 Fallout, calling to attention the pandemic-led devastation caused to musicians, freelancers and researchers in precarious labour, even traumatic losses of artists, investigators and teachers to the disease were mourned. In 2019 with Mai Kawabata she initiated the project 'Cultural Imperialism and the 'New Yellow Peril' in Western Art Music', which has gained considerable traction among East Asian music communities around the world and turned her towards more activist-informed scholarship and teaching. Other projects she is developing include musical theorizing on decolonization and issues of cultural appropriation, including an investigation into racist reactions to the ‘problem’ of China as a politico-cultural heavyweight/ new imperialist influence. In her broader work on decolonization she stakes a commitment to collaborative ethnography in a development/ impact-based ethnographic project with transient workers in Southeast Asia, in exploration of Islamic soundscapes in Chinese transnational contexts. She is also exploring alternative ontologies and pedagogies in the disciplining and institutionalisation of musical practices in China in transnational and international interaction with higher education institutions around the world. This research has been motivated in part by changes (and resulting conversations on flashpoint topics of race and immigration) in the global higher education sector, as a result of large-scale transnational (transient) Chinese student enrolment in music programmes around the world, as well American, European and Asian establishment of China-based campuses. Her writings have appeared/ will appear in imprints by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge, among other publishers. Recent scholarly work includes Digital Inequality and Global Sounds (CUP), an article in (and co-editing of) Music, Indigeneity and Digital Media (Univerisity of Rochester Press; Hilder, Stobart and Tan), an article and co-editing of Gender in Chinese Music (University of Rochester Press; Harris, Pease & Tan), plus a monograph, “Beyond Innocence”: Amis Aboriginal Song in Taiwan as an Ecosystem (Ashgate).

David Bretherton (University of Southampton). ‘Schubert’s sexuality and queer music theory’. 19 May 2021, 16.30 GMT+1. Oxford Seminar in Music Theory and Analysis (University of Oxford).
Further details, an abstract and sign-up information will be posted shortly on the seminar webpages. You can also follow OSiMTA on Twitter @OxfordAnalysis

The Oxford Seminar in Music Theory & Analysis (OSiMTA) meets two or three times a term. Its convenors are Professor Jonathan Cross and Dr Sebastian Wedler. Our conception of theory and analysis is critical, plural and interdisciplinary. In shaping the seminars, we aim to reflect the broad range of activity taking place under the heading of theory and analysis today, as well as to challenge boundaries, embracing not only ‘conventional’ practices, histories of theory and repertoires, but also new interdisciplinary approaches that engage with cultural studies, ethnomusicology, aesthetics and philosophy, psychology, politics, performance studies, popular music studies, and so on. Speakers include distinguished local, national and international scholars.

Seminars are open to all, including the general public. Sessions will last 90 minutes and lively discussion is encouraged. They take place on Wednesday afternoons, beginning at 16.30 UK time, via Zoom.