Research conferences and symposia

Many of the international conferences and symposia we host in the Music department at Manchester are linked closely to our researchers' own projects, or form part of their large-scale funded projects.

As part of our practice-based research, we hold large biannual festivals of music and sound using new technology and media, hosted by Manchester Theatre in Sound (MANTIS).

We are also regular co-hosts of the biennial New Music Northwest annual festival of contemporary composition, held in conjunction with the Royal Northern College of Music. This provides an important platform for the performance of new works by our composition staff and research students.

Intercultural Musicking: Ensemble Performance, (Inter)Cultural Encounters, and Personal/Professional Transformations

We invite you to join us for a free one-day online event on Thursday, 15 April 2021, 2.00–6.00pm, exploring the world of intercultural musicking with researcher-practitioners Caroline Bithell, Robert Szymanek, Richard Fay and Dan Mawson, together with student members of the University’s gamelan and klezmer ensembles. These ensembles serve as living laboratories for investigating the dynamics of encountering new cultural and musical worlds through learning to perform with others in unfamiliar styles and/or on ‘new’ instruments. Under the umbrella of the Intercultural Musicking group hosted by the department, we share insights into these particular musical adventures within the broader framework of research into the pedagogy, politics and aesthetics of intercultural music-making.

The event is divided into two complementary parts:

  • Show-and-Tell: Encounters and Transformations (2.00–4.00pm)
  • Research Forum: Themes, Issues and Explorations (4.30–6.00pm)

Beyond the Avant-Garde? Rethinking the Vanguard in British Music since 1970

A one-day online symposium investigating different perspectives on how the history and historiography of ‘vanguard music’ in the UK since 1970 can be traced, documented and rethought will be jointly hosted by the University of Manchester Music Department’s States of Flux Research Group and by Goldsmiths, University of London on 25 June 2021.

Conference and symposia highlights

The inaugural conference of the Shakespeare and Music Study Group was jointly hosted by the Universities of Manchester and Huddersfield in an online event aiming to foster research on music in Shakespeare’s time, and music inspired by his works. It featured keynote addresses by Professor Ross Duffin (Case Western Reserve University) and by Claire van Kampen (composer and director for the Globe Theatre) as well as the premiere of John Casken’s The Shackled King, a ‘music drama’ derived from Shakespeare’s King Lear, with Sir John Tomlinson CBE in the title role and Rozanna Madylus (mezzo-soprano) as Cordelia, Goneril, Regan and The Fool.

A three-day online edition of MANTIS’s regular series, featuring guest artist and composer Leah Barclay live from Australia, a concert of winning works from Canada’s 2020 JTTP (Jeu de Temps/Times Play) and work by composers at Novars Research Centre.

Three concerts, plus a workshop and seminar exploring Digital Overlays in the context of Sound, Space and Interactive Art, with special guests including composer Sam Salem, violinist Linda Jankowska and urban anthropologist Jessica Symons from Visioning Lab.

A two-day event of acousmatic, interactive and audiovisual performances, featuring Anna Mahtani, an electroacoustic composer, sound artist and performer working and living in Birmingham (UK).

A two-day event with multiple concerts celebrating the latest creative research in electroacoustic music.

This festival included works for fixed and mixed media by Manchester staff and postgraduate students, and featured guest artist violinist Darragh Morgan. 

A major international conference celebrating the beginning of Weinberg's centenary year. It brought together scholars and practitioners from Russia, Belarus, Poland, Sweden, Germany, France, Australia, the UK and the US, and featured Gidon Kremer as Guest of Honour.

The Quatuor Danel gave seven concerts as part of the symposium, with a further two concerts also incorporated into the event. The conference was co-sponsored by the British Academy and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warsaw.

A two-day event with multiple concerts celebrating the latest creative research in electroacoustic music.

This festival included works for fixed and mixed media by Manchester staff and postgraduate students, and featured guest artists the BEER Ensemble (University of Birmingham), Seed Studios Trafford, Brona Martin and Danny Saul.

A week of concerts and events exploring digital creativity as part of the European Art ­– Science –Technology Network for Digital Creativity funded by the Culture Program of the European Union.

A two-day festival and sonification symposium with keynote speaker/s, presentations on current artistic data sonification research, fixed media concerts, sound installations and live performances.

This festival explored the methodologies and results emerging at the intersection of science and music.