Three pieces by Lab members Caitlin Rowley, Luke Nickel and James Saunders were presented last weekend as part of BBC Radio 3’s Why Music? The Key to Memory series at the Wellcome Collection. Caitlin’s Aides Memoire was performed by Bastard Assignments, framing memories evoked by her personal field recordings accompanied by live photography of the performance space….

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In the first lab of our second season we welcome back recent PhD graduate Luke Nickel, who will present a new piece for performers transcribing speech, in advance of its live premiere on BBC Radio 3 on 14 October as part of the Why Music? The Key to Memory event at the Wellcome Collection in London. Luke will…

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We are pleased to announce the visitors for the 2017-18 labs following on from our first series in 2016-17. Each lab is on the first Wednesday of the month in term time from 12-4pm, and features a visiting speaker alongside presentations by staff and PhD students from Bath Spa. The lab is a mix of…

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The September issue of The Wire includes an article by Tim Rutherford-Johnson on scores that are brought to life by performers bodies. It includes discussion of work by current and former lab composers Louis d’Heudieres and Luke Nickel.

Lab members Matthew Sergeant, Louis d’Heudieres and James Saunders have presented papers at three international conferences so far this summer. James’s paper ‘What’s the point? Balancing purpose and play in rule-based compositions’ was given at the Performing Indeterminacy conference at University of Leeds on 30 June, followed by a performance of his piece sometimes we do…

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London-based collective Bastard Assignments were with us this week filming in the Commons TV Studio. This is part of a new project we’re beginning to develop, bringing in performers to make films that use the studio as a resource, trying to do more than is normally possible with concert documentation. Today we filmed two pieces…

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We’re really pleased to announce that Amnon Wolman will be a Visiting Research Fellow in the lab from January-April 2018. Amnon will be developing his work on scores that investigate memory and imaginary sound during his residency. He says ‘In the last fifteen years my research-based music composition focused the use of text to initiate…

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New pieces by Lab members Louis d’Heudieres and James Saunders are being broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Hear and Now programme on successive weeks in June. On 3 June, James’s new orchestra piece alternate between attention and ease was broadcast as part of the feature on the Tectonics Festival in Glasgow where the piece was premiered…

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Last week Material were joined by OUT-TAKE Ensemble from Southampton to perform a set of pieces in the Ludo2017 conference at Bath Spa University. This is part of a developing collaboration between composers at the two universities, and it was great to perform together for the first time. In addition to new pieces by Oogoo…

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Wednesday 3 May, 12-4pm, CM108 In the final lab of the year, composer Tim Parkinson will talk about material and post-history in relation to his recent work. In the first half of the lab, Roger Clarke will present his Record Player Orchestra. 12-2pm: Roger Clarke – Introduction to the Record Player Orchestra Roger Clarke will…

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