Composers' Workshop: Simon Mawhinney, Lara Weaver

This Composers Workshop hosts two visitors from Queen’s University Belfast:

Composer Simon Mawhinney is currently Professor of Composition at Queen’s. His work as a composer has a notably international focus, with high profile musicians in Germany, France, Iceland, UK and elsewhere regularly collaborating with him on new projects.  His music ranges from quietude to frenetic exhilaration and draws on a wide range of contemporary influences: from complexist music to the colouristic harmonies of post-spectralism to the cantillation of numerous cultures.

He will speak about his recent improvised work Transitional Objects, which he will perform at King’s College shortly after the Workshop at 5.00pm.

A recent graduate of the Cambridge Music Tripos, Lara Weaver is a is a composer and researcher who is currently completing a PhD at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) at Queen’s. Her current research investigates the capacity of sound to observe and give voice to changing ecosystems: specifically, the Northern Irish peatlands and the ‘singing’ sand dunes of the Rub’ al Khali desert (United Arab Emirates), where she undertook fieldwork about which she will speak in this Workshop.