University of Edinburgh’s Enthralling Events Showcase the Delight of Sound
The power of sound is to be celebrated at the first UK-based UNESCO Week of Sound, organised in partnership with the University.
The United Nations cultural occasion offers a stellar line-up of events organised around the themes of hearing health, the sound environment and musical expression.
The UNESCO Week of Sound – which runs from Sunday 16 October – Friday 20 October – has been organised in partnership with researchers at the Reid School of Music, based at the University’s Edinburgh College of Art (ECA).
Highlights include a mind-bending instrument that uses sounds generated by AI and mushrooms, a thought-provoking event on music in places of detention and imprisonment, and a performance by award-winning author Amit Chaudhuri.
Inspiring programme
Across the week 16 entertaining events will showcase the work of world-renowned musicians, composers, sound artists and university researchers.
A performance of the celebrated composer Steve Reich’s 1988 composition Different Trains will launch the week.
The powerful work, which explores Reich’s childhood memories of travelling on trains between New York and Los Angeles and his reflections on his Jewish identity, will be performed by the Signal/Noise ensemble.
Sound environment
Eleni-Ira Panourgia of the Film University Babelsberg and geoscientist and sound designer Karen Mair will explore the relationship between sound and climate change, including field recordings of sound changes in water environments.
Scottish composer, sound artist and musician Michael Begg, will present Sounding the Ice Factory, which spotlights his work with sound and scientific research.
An accompanying discussion will delve into the composer’s residencies at Ocean ARTic Partnership and the European Marine Board where he created music built around research data to increase awareness of the impact of climate change on the polar regions.
Elsewhere Michael Begg will present an event with researchers from the University’s Binks Hub – which works with communities to promote participatory and artistic methods in academic research – and Edinburgh Futures Institute.
The importance of sound in understanding mental health for care-experienced young people will be explored at the panel event.
Music-making events
Another event focusing on music-making beyond the classroom will showcase the benefits of music initiatives working with, and for, young people. The panel discussion – presented by the Binks Hub and Edinburgh Futures Institute will include Jed Milroy, Assistant Director at the Tinderbox Collective, Lockhart Sace of the Music Plus and Musicares at the Scottish Music Centre, and Emma Davidson, Co-director of the Binks Hub.
Audiences can experience the power of deep listening at a discussion featuring Una MacGlone and Nikki Moran of the Reid School of Music, David Overend of Edinburgh Futures Institute and improviser and cellist Peter Nicolson.
Amit Chaudhuri, a winner of the University’s James Tait Black Prize for fiction, will be performing compositions from a celebrated musical project he started as a composer, vocalist, and improviser in 2005.
This is not Fusion will bring together Chaudhuri’s practices as a writer, critic, and musician. He will be joined by musicians Adam Moore on guitar and Matt Hodges on piano/keyboards.
Improvisation workshop
Graham Barton of University College of Arts London and independent researcher Melissa Dunlop are leading an improvisation workshop offering participants the chance to create a sonic musical composition.
The future of deafness and deaf culture will be discussed at a panel event with Philip Gerrard of Deaf Action, Amy White of The ALLIANCE and Issy McGrath of Deafblind Scotland. It will be moderated by Janis McDonald — who provides the secretariat of the Scottish Parliament’s Cross-Party Group on Deafness.
Acclaimed pianist and composer Xenia Pestova Bennett presents All Aglow, an exquisite solo project that employs improvisation to portray the effects of bioluminescence, glowing behaviours exhibited by marine life and bacteria in coastal sea waters.
Concert pianist, performance coach and yoga instructor Dr Xenia Pestova Bennett will explore performance anxiety. Attendees will discover coping strategies such as breathing and movement techniques.
Researchers from the University of Melbourne, the University’s Global Justice Academy and the Reid School of Music are presenting two events to launch a new research project on the sonic conditions of detention.
Sonic environment
The Edinburgh College of Art scheme will explore the sonic environment in which detainees are held.
A talk by Dr James Parker of Melbourne Law School will discuss how audio-recordings made inside Australia’s hotel detention regime explore contemporary border politics.
Elsewhere, a concert at the Reid Concert Hall will address the question, what does prison sound like? This concert contains music and songs from detainees that reference both the sounds they hear and the sounds they miss.
As well as Yiddish songs from the Shoah, and testimony from detainees during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, the concert features music from the renowned Austrian composer and former Edinburgh University lecturer Hans Gál.
Music and technology
A new project that unites improvising musicians, machine learning, and the organic world will present the creation of a new instrument.
The Ostoyae, developed by improvisor and academic Maria Saphho, uses an AI system called Chimère and mushrooms.
Sappho’s instruments work through the placement of electrodermal needles on mushrooms, with their grooves and patterns creating harmonics and other sounds.
The work has been supported by a Royal Society of Edinburgh Network grant.
Sound artists
Four acclaimed sound artists present their experiments in a concert curated by Tom Mudd of the Reid School of Music.
Semay Wu, Marlo de Lara, Akira Brown and Jim Reeve-Baker will share their work which includes music from found objects, sound installations, and sonic experiments.
The closing event features the Plus Minus ensemble bringing new works commissioned by Zubin Kanga as part of Cyborg Soloists, a UKRI funded project hosted at Royal Holloway, University of London.
The performance features three compositions that explore interdisciplinary interactions between music and new digital technologies.
The UNESCO Week of Sound explores how sound connects with some of the biggest issues facing the world today. From climate change and mental health to the sounds of protest and community action to artificial intelligence. “The Reid School of Music at the University of Edinburgh is the perfect place to engage the public and student body with new ideas and performances that connect with global challenges that concern us all. “We are thrilled to host a new chapter of the UNESCO Week of Sound here in Edinburgh.
I’m delighted to welcome the UNESCO Week of Sound to Edinburgh, the first city in the UK to host this global event. “With our 12 UNESCO designations across Scotland—including Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns and the Forth Bridge—our links with the United Nation’s global cultural body is strong. “I greatly look forward to building on this during the UNESCO Week of Sound.