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 collaboration between composers, musicians and dancers. The programme, performed by Jinny Shaw (oboe/oboe d’amore), Robert Davey (cello) and Alan Stott (piano) alongside a eurythmy dance troupe led by Maren Stott, will feature world premieres by Nigel Osborne, Christopher Fox, and Howard Skempton, as well as Faculty composers Marta Gentilucci and Richard Causton.
17 March: Music in the FleshThis workshop explores how we perform and listen to music in the Western classical tradition, and how historical insight can inspire us to perform and listen differently. Professor Bettina Varwig (Faculty of Music) will be in conversation with a group of musicians, including the distinguished violinist Maggie Faultless (Director of Performance at the Faculty of Music) and the internationally renowned tenor Nicholas Mulroy. Featuring a range of music from the 17th and 18th centuries (Bach, Corelli, Purcell, Vivaldi), the performers will discuss how this music takes shape gesturally and affectively in our musicians’ bodies, fingers and throats, and will invite listeners, in turn, to attend resonantly with their whole bodies, and thereby tune into the power of this music to transform its participants in body, mind and spirit.
19 March: electro//acoustic day Now in its third year, the electro//acoustic day brings together exceptional musicians - including The Riot Ensemble - performing both classical instrumental and vocal repertoire alongside cutting-edge electronic music, embracing non-traditional ways of experiencing sound to create new relationships between music, tradition, and innovation. The day includes three concerts, a sound-visual installation, and pre-concert talks.
22 March: Four Places of the SoulDrawing out the connections between medieval and modern English music, this concert programme includes Vaughan Williams’ much-loved Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, a fascinating, beautiful and little-known ‘music of the spheres’ by William Byrd contemporary ‘Mr Picforth’ (his only extant work), and Jeremy Thurlow’s new Cello Concerto Four places of the soul. The Creation Ensemble brings together players from the acclaimed Smith Square Sinfonia and outstanding students from Cambridge University, conducted by former Faculty of Music student, Francis Bushell.
23 and 24 March: Vision, Voice and Wisdom – Frauenlob’s Marienleich The visionary 13th century poem Marienleich,
is here reimagined in a unique collaboration between St Catharine’s College, University of Münster, and Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts (CSVPA). The Girls’ Choir directed by Dr Edward Wickham will perform sections of the original medieval score, while CSVPA music students of Faculty alumnus Vijay Prakash, perform new interpretations blending spoken word, electronics, and improvisation. The music performance will be accompanied by a backdrop of unique projections and large-scale drawings by CSVPA’s visual arts students.
23 March: Playing with Machines: The expanded string quartet in the digital ageThis is a series of three short films featuring newly commissioned works for string quartet and electronics by Toby Anderson, Imogen Davey and Adam Possener (PhD student, Faculty of Music), performed by Komuna Collective and directed by Oliver Bradley-Baker. Exploring forms of human–machine collaboration, the films reimagine the string quartet as a dialogue between acoustic instruments and digital systems. The screenings are presented alongside a panel discussion chaired by Professor Matthew Shlomowitz, reflecting on how technology can function as a creative partner in contemporary music-making.
27 March: Behind bars: Music from medieval and Renaissance prisons This concert by the Cambridge Early Music Consort and The Clerks presents works of choral music composed in medieval and early modern prisons or inspired by the experience of incarcerated men. Works by composers such as Richard the Lionheart, Josquin des Prez and William Byrd are accompanied by short talks by Dr Joseph W Mason (Faculty of Music) about the music and the realities of medieval and early modern prison life.
28 March: The Tonality Beneath (Pre-Concert Talk) In this short talk ahead of a performance by the City of Cambridge Symphony Orchestra, Junior Research Fellow and Faculty of Music Affiliated Lecturer, Rajan Lal, introduces Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto (1935).
6-22 March: Sounds New Festival: some of the above events, and many more, are taking place as part of the Sounds New Festival, celebrating new music across the University of Cambridge. Full details can be found on the Centre for Music Performance Website.