This Thursday the Ether Festival opens at the Southbank Centre. Ether is an annual music festival, “of innovation, art, technology and cross-arts experimentation” (Southbank Centre website).

Iannis Xenakis
This year there is a strong focus on the work of the French composer, Iannis Xenakis. This includes an International conference comprising several talks, workshops and performances of the composer’s work. Xenakis is known for his use of processes and the application of mathematical theories as compositional tools. As well as writing instrumental and vocal music, Xenakis also wrote electronic music and devised a computerised musical composition tool called UPIC which he used for the composition of some of his electronic work. The festival is running a series of workshops on the use of UPIC.

One of Xenakis’ pieces that is to be performed is Rebonds which is for solo percussionist. Here is a taste of what could be expected at the festival concert on 3rd April:

The Fitkin Band
On the opening day of the festival (24th March) there is a performance by the Fitkin Band. This is the British composer Graham Fitkin’s nine-piece band, formed in 2009. They are joined by musicians and dancers from Trinity Laban Conservatoire in creating a site-specific event. Below is an extract from a live performance by the Fitkin Band:

Fitkin Band live in Nottingham from Fitkin Band on Vimeo.

Another event worthy of note is the world premiere of Will Gregory’s (of Goldfrapp fame) opera, Piccard in Space. For more details on this and plenty of other events, visit the Ether programme which is linked below.

Ether runs from 24th March to 28th April at the Southbank Centre. For full details about the festival, visit the Southbank Centre website: www.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/festivals-series/ether

For more information about Iannis Xenakis on this website, visit: Xenakis, Iannis – Info
To see and hear more of Xenakis’ work, visit YouTube and type his name – you’ll get plenty of hits.

For more information about the Fitkin Band on this website, visit: Fitkin Band – Info
To see and hear more of the Fitkin Band, visit: www.vimeo.com/fitkin

It has been announced this evening that Susan Philipsz has been awarded the Turner Prize 2010. She won the award with her sound installations, Lowlands and Long Gone. Philipsz will receive a cash prize of £25,000 whilst the three unsuccessful nominees will each receive a cash prize of £5000. It is the first time that a sound installation has been nominated for the award and thus the first time one has won it. Below you can see footage of the announcement and Philipsz’s acceptance speech:

The Medium of would like to know what you think about the judge’s decision. Do you think the right person has won?

For further information about the prize award you can visit the Channel-4 website and the Tate website.

This Friday, the UK’s biggest festival of contemporary and experimental music will launch for 2010. Over ten days it will consist of approximately 50 events spanning a variety of music/sound forms. The festival programme combines work by established figures such as John Cage and Mauricio Kagel with that of emerging composers such as Juste Janulyte, Patrick Allison, Edward Caine, Stephanie Conner and Johnny Herbert.

Huddersfield Festival is an important event for this art-form and almost certainly the largest collection of contemporary music works in one place over a given time span in the UK. What is worrying is that in comparison with the currently ongoing exhibition for The Turner Prize*, a comparable event in terms of credibility and standing for contemporary art, Huddersfield Festival is not very well known. This contrast in popularity is indicative of a wider issue concerning the place of contemporary (experimental) music within contemporary arts as a whole.

Lots of theories about why this may be the case have been proposed. In fact, in researching this article, I came across a post on The Wall Street Journal by Paul Sharma which points to a new theory on the matter in the form of a short book by David Stubbs entitled, Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don’t Get Stockhausen.

Irrespective of the reason why, contemporary experimental music does not seem to enjoy the same popularity as other contemporary arts forms and The Medium of is keen to at least redress the balance a little bit. We will be giving the same level of coverage to HCMF as we do to The Turner Prize. During the course of the festival we will be featuring some of the composers whose work is appearing at the festival. We will be featuring both established and emerging composers and hopefully bring you some contemporary arts that you may not have heard of before!

Please check back over the next few weeks to find out more.

And if you have any thoughts or opinions on the issues touched on within this post, please do let us know. This is a debate we’d really like to open on this site.

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival runs from Friday 19th November to Sunday 28th November. For further details, please visit Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival’s official website

*For further details regarding The Turner Prize, you can visit the official Turner Prize website and/or check back here over the next few weeks for details on the 2010 nominees.