World premiere launches £2.5m University music research centre
Posted on 19 April 2004
The Centre is set to become a focus for performance and research in the arts, with areas devoted to electronic music and digital art.
The work, 'New Renaissance', will be played to an audience that includes Roger Wright, Controller of BBC Radio 3, who will perform the official opening of the £2.5million Centre; Dame Janet Baker, Chancellor of the University, Vice Chancellor Professor Brian Cantor; Professor Roger Marsh, Head of the Department; Dr Tony Myatt, Director of the Music Research Centre, and Julian Arguelles, Director of Departmental Ensemble in Residence. The composer of 'New Renaissance', Ambrose Field, is an international award-winning composer and sound 'designer'. He creates music which uses sound to generate drama and impact and has been described by the BBC's Hear and Now programme as 'Music pushing against its boundaries - aspiring to the visual'. The new Centre will provide the University's Department of Music with an international standard facility built to the highest acoustic specification. At its heart is the 150-seat concert hall, the Arthur Sykes Rymer Auditorium, with unique acoustics designed for 'surround sound' reproduction and housing the Department's new Fazioli grand piano. The piano has been bought with funding from the Foundation for Sport and the Arts and was made in Italy, using wood from the Italian Alps.
The Centre also houses the Roslyn Lyons Art Gallery which will display sculptures on a dramatic three-storey wall and aims to use art to help inspire the students, researchers, composers and visiting scholars using the new building.
The Centre has been funded by a partnership between the University, and local benefactors, and successful music professionals who were students of the Department.
Dr Myatt said: "The Centre builds on the extraordinary successes the Department of Music has seen over the last 40 years, and equips the University for its role in the international research communities of the future in fields of research which have become its signatures. It will also be a wonderful asset for the region."
The launch will also be marked by a festival featuring digital audio works, computer graphics, and interactive developments and innovations in 21st Century audio art. The festival, which runs from 26 April to 1 May, brings artists, academics, and performers together to illustrate the breadth of contemporary computer-based art. For further details contact the Music Box Office on 01904 432439.
Notes to editors:
- The University of York is one of the liveliest centres of musical education and research in Britain and annually plays host to more than 200 music students and a large staff of professional musicians and scholars. They play and study a wide range of music from early and contemporary to acoustic and digital, world music, jazz, music for the concert hall, and music for the community.
- In February the University Chamber Orchestra participated in the world's first trial of online coaching for orchestras using the latest broadband technology. The trial was developed by Dr Tony Myatt.