News

We are happy to report that the Music Faculty has been rated #1 in the UK by the Guardian. Congratulations to all in our community of researchers, teachers, students and professional staff for their dedication and work. We look forward to continuing to improve our offering across all domains. 

The Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship Internal Competition 2027 will open soon. The University of Cambridge provides matched funding for successful candidates through its Isaac Newton Trust. Full information for applicants may be found at www.leverhulme.ac.uk/early-career-fellowships and www.newtontrust.cam.ac.uk/ECFs/LeverhulmeECF.If you would li…

The Faculty is delighted to announce the prize winners from this year’s Tripos Examinations in Music. We offer congratulations to all our graduands this year, and extend particular commendation to the prize winners below:Part IADonald Wort Prize – Thomas McDonnellPart IBDonald Wort Prize  - Callum MaughanDonald Wort Prize - Thomas SimpsonPart IIDon…

We are delighted to announce that two colleagues have received awards at the Society for Music Analysis Annual Conference, DubMAC 2026.

Mainstream classical concert culture today ‘disembodies’ music and distances performers from their audience, argues Professor Bettina Varwig. Drawing on very different ideas about music and the body from the early modern period, she aims to transform the experience for all involved by restoring classical music's powerful relationship with our bodie…

We are delighted to announce that the Faculty of Music has been rated the top music department in the UK by the Complete University Guide 2027. Congratulations to all — students, staff and academics — for working to ensure continued success and attainment.Music's top rank joins a strong showing from across Humanities subjects in Cambridge. 

The Faculty of Music is delighted to hear that alumnus Professor David R. M. Irving has been named as the 2026 recipient of the Royal Musical Association’s Dent Medal. The RMA has awarded this honour annually since 1961 to a scholar making an ‘outstanding contribution to musicology’. Professor Irving, whose research has focused on questions of musi…

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Kyra Humphreys as the new Co-Director of Performance at the Faculty of Music. Kyra is a distinguished orchestral and chamber musician whose career spans many of the UK’s leading symphony and chamber orchestras. She has appeared as soloist at the Proms, performs regularly with her Zanfonia trio, and se…

Current PhD candidate Edward Campbell-Rowntree (Girton) has been awarded the Irene Alm Memorial Prize by the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music (SSCM) for his lecture-recital “Affective Affordance: Emotive Potentialities in Johann Jakob Froberger’s Death Meditations”, which was presented at the society’s annual conference at the University of No…

In the 2026 QS subject rankings, the Faculty of Music at Cambridge has been ranked the best university department in the UK for the study of music. Congratulations to our academic colleagues, our students and our professional staff for working in concert so tirelessly. Music conservatories are included in the same ranking category, but offer differ…

The Faculty of Music has taken part in this collaborative project with the Maxwell Centre, the Henry Royce Institute, and the Cambridge School for Visual and Performing Arts Graduate School. The project investigates the question: how can the arts engage with material sciences research?Three students from the Faculty will perform their pieces inspir…

We are delighted to welcome Professor Osborne as the inaugural Carmack Composer in Residence at the Faculty of Music, where he will be working with student composers and performers. There will be premiere performances of a number of works, commissioned by Elizabeth Carmack, and there will be a seminar at the Faculty on the 10th of March before a pe…

The third edition of the Faculty of Music’s electro//acoustic day will take place from 9.30am-8.30pm on Thursday 19 March, as part of the Sounds New Festival, a festival celebrating new music across the University of Cambridge (6-22 March).Marta Gentilucci, Artistic Director of the electro//acoustic day, introduces the event:'As electro//acoustic d…

This year's Cambridge Festival programme has just launched, featuring several exciting events led by members of the Faculty of Music:12 March: Riffs and Rights: New music and dance for human rights This event, held in association with the first Carmack Composer Residency, held in 2026 by Nigel Osborne, presents a fascinating and innovative collabor…

Congratulations to Professor Richard Causton, whose piano trio If I Could Tell You, premiered in January 2025 by the Fidelio Trio, has been shortlisted for the 2026 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards in the Chamber-Scale Composition category (supported by Boosey & Hawkes). Congratulations also to two Music Faculty alumni, trumpeter Matilda Lloyd and…