Simon Emmerson (electronics), with Carla Rees (flutes) and Philip Mead (piano)

Programme

• Simon Emmerson Spirit of ’76 (1976)
• Simon Emmerson Microvariations 2 (2015)
• Simon Emmerson Solo flute quartet (Premiere)
• Simon Emmerson Memory Machine (2010)

A portrait concert of composer and electronic music pioneer Simon Emmerson, who founded and directed City’s sound studios for thirty years. The concert will include the first performance of Solo Flute Quartet, a new work for Carla Rees, and Microvariations 2, written for and performed by Philip Mead. Spirit of ’76 for flute and electronics is a piece composed while a PhD student at City of which Carla recently gave a 40^th birthday performance. This live electronic music is contrasted with a ‘concert installation’, Memory Machine, a studio work that plays on our memory of places, spaces and music heard as if through the opening and closing of doors in a ‘memory theatre’ (after Frances Yates).

Simon Emmerson is Professor of Music, Technology and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester. From 1975 until 2004 he was director of the Electroacoustic Music Studios at City. Commissions include IMEB (Bourges), GRM (Paris) and Inventionen (Berlin) festivals; Darragh Morgan, Philip Mead, the Sond-Arte Ensemble (Lisbon), Carla Rees.

Recordings of his works are available from Sargasso. Principle writings include The Language of Electroacoustic Music (Macmillan, 1986), Music, Electronic Media and Culture (Ashgate, 2000) and Living Electronic Music (Ashgate, 2007). He was founder Secretary of EMAS (The Electroacoustic Music Association of Great Britain) in 1979 and a Trustee of its successor organisation ‘Sound and Music’ 2008-2013. In 2009-2010 he was DAAD Edgard Varèse Visiting Professor at the TU, Berlin, and Keynote at ICMC 2011 (Huddersfield).