News

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…

This Christmas, Professor Catherine Bradley, Associate Professor in Early Music, helped to rescue a carol that had lain silent for ‘hundreds of years’ in the archive of St. John’s College. Only the text survived, and the music was set to music by Master of the King’s Music, and Cambridge alumna, Errollyn Wallen CBE.The story is explained by the BBC…

We are delighted to announce that Benedict Taylor will take up an Associate Professorship in Theory & Analysis in September 2026. Benedict's research encompasses the analysis and philosophy of music from the 18th to the mid-20th centuries; his background specialisation in German and British music is counterbalanced by research interests in a wide r…

We are delighted to announce that Phillip Matty (MPhil, 2024-25) has been awarded the Arthur Bliss Prize for Composition for 2025. The award is made for the best portfolio of compositions submitted in either the MPhil or Part II of the Music Tripos.Phillip is now pursuing a career as a freelance composer and is currently participating in the 32nd e…

Funded by the University’s Enhancing Research Culture Fund, the School of Arts and Humanities-led Approaching Research Culture in the Arts and Humanities project aims to gain a detailed, nuanced understanding of what research cultures from an Arts and Humanities perspective look like. Dr Alisha Lola Jones has been appointed Academic Convenor, leadi…

We are delighted to announce that Professor Katharine Ellis FBA has been elected an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society. This status is made by election and conferred once a year to 'persons who have made outstanding contributions to furthering its stated object and whom the Society wishes to honour.’ We offer our warm congratulat…

Emeritus Professor of Music, the composer Robin Holloway has published a rich and searching overview of the history of Western Classical Music called Music's Odyssey: An Invitation to Western Classical Music. It is the result of a lifetime's learning and was launched at the Wigmore Hall in London with an interview with Petroc Trelawny. Robin speaks…

Selvedge, an orchestral work which was initially written through the Hartley Rodgers King's College/CBSO Scholarship here at Cambridge, has just been shortlisted for performance by the British section for next year's ISCM Festival in Romania. The ISCM Festival is a prestigious international festival for new music which features recent pieces from a…

Congratulations for Professor Richard Causton, whose new piano trio If I Could Tell You, premiered in January by the Fidelio Trio, has been shortlisted by the IVORS Academy for their Classical Awards. The awards ceremony will be held in London next month, with highlights broadcast on BBC Radio 3.