News

We are delighted to announce that Cambridge PhD graduate Natassa Varka has won the 2019 International Handel Research Prize for her doctoral thesis ‘Charles Jennens's collection of Handel's sacred oratorios from Saul to Jephtha: sources, contexts, and revisions’. This examination of an unusual and comprehensive collection of Handel's music owned by…

Gresham College, London’s oldest Higher Education Institution, is delighted to announce the appointment of Marina Frolova-Walker, Professor of Music History at the University of Cambridge, as the next Gresham Professor of Music.Past Gresham Professors of Music include John Bull, Iannis Xenakis, John Dankworth, and Christopher Hogwood. Frolova-Walke…

A new orchestral piece by Reader in Composition, Richard Causton was one of just two pieces selected by BBC Radio 3 to represent the UK at the International Rostrum of Composers (an annual forum for national public radio broadcasters run under the umbrella of UNESCO), which was held last week in Bariloche, Argentina. Richard's piece was Recommended…

The Faculty is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Min Yen Ong as a Teaching Associate in the Faculty of Music from 2019-22.Dr Ong is an ethnomusicologist with regional interests in music of Pacific island cultures (Hawaii and Fiji) and music of China – in particular, Chinese opera. She holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from SOAS, University o…

The Faculty of Music is pleased to announce that we have been successful in our application for an Athena SWAN Bronze Award. This award is given to recognise that in addition to institution-wide policies, the Faculty is working to promote gender equality and to identify and address challenges particular to the Faculty and our discipline.Originally …

In the latest music@cambridge research blog post, Dr Sam Barrett reflects on the use of instruments in medieval song and introduces a fascinating new series of performance practice videos made in collaboration with internationally-renowned medieval music ensemble Sequentia.These videos have been created as part of the 'Restoring Lost Songs' project…

The Faculty of Music is pleased to announce that Francesca Vella has received a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award for the project Sounding (Out) 19th-Century Italy, which will run from April 2019 to March 2020.Despite the countless sounds and noises that have characterised the region and its people over the centuries, Italy is still larg…

The Faculty of Music is delighted to announce that Stephane Crayton is the winner of the 2018 Arthur Bliss Prize for Composition. The award is made for the best portfolio of compositions submitted in either the M.Phil or Part II of the Music Tripos.

This year's Cambridge Science Festival includes several lecture-concerts, performances and events featuring members of the Faculty of Music.On 17 March, PhD Composer Darren Bloom will co-present a lecture-recital with physicist Joe Davighli, about their collaboration in the creation of a string quartet based on Carlo Rovelli’s bestseller Seven Brie…

The Faculty of Music is delighted to announce the appointment of Anthony Brice who joins us as the West Road Concert Hall Manager from May 2019, succeeding George Unsworth who leaves after 18 successful years in the role.Following a Music degree from the University of Southampton Anthony first worked with the Orchestra of St John’s, Smith Square be…

Many congratulations to our Reader in Composition, Richard Causton, whose new orchestral piece Ik zeg: NU was premiered last month by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo, to excellent reviews from the national press:'Richard Causton's new work for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Ik zeg: NU, holds two timeframes in play simultaneously, …

The inaugural Cambridge Female Composers Festival launched last month, and runs until March 2019. Here, co-chair Laura Dunkling, an MPhil student at the Faculty of Music, explains the background to the Festival, and picks out some of the Festival highlights.The Cambridge Female Composers Festival was set up to showcase the fact that there is a huge…

On Wednesday 20 February, Dr Sam Barrett will be talking about restoring the lost songs of Boethius, alongside the 11th-Century Cambridge Songs Manuscript as part of the event Manuscripts and Music by Candlelight at the Cambridge University Library. For the second part of the event, Dr Barrett will be joined by his early music ensemble, the Kenderd…

'How best to support music in schools?'  Does a new education initiative,Roots, led by Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge, VOCES8, Cambridge Early Music, Cambridgeshire Music, Anglia Ruskin University and The Brook Street Band hold the answer? Cuts in funding, reduced participation and falling numbers taking music have created an “exis…

PhD student Rashel Pakbaz is currently working on the liturgical music of the Assyrian Church of the East and its role in the preservation of Assyrian ethnic identity after the rise of ISIS in 2014. In our latest Music@Cambridge Research Blog post, Rashel writes about her recent fieldwork trip to Northern Iraq, as part of her extended ethnographic …