City presents two programmes of work by composer Denis Smalley, in celebration of his 75th birthday. An influential figure in electroacoustic music and a pioneer of computer music, Smalley is also Professor Emeritus and former Head of Department at City, where his legacy is deeply felt, through the ongoing work of City’s Sound Studios, which have inspired generations of leading composers, sound artists, sound designers and academics.

This is a rare opportunity to hear Smalley’s work diffused on a large array of loudspeakers, in City’s Performance Space, the acoustic design and layout of which (in its current specification) was supervised by Smalley himself. The programmes include early examples of his use of computer transformations of source material, such as 1984’s Sea Flight, alongside more recent works in stereo, 6 channel and 8 channel sound.

Denis Smalley was born in New Zealand in 1946. He studied music at the University of Canterbury and the Victoria University of Wellington prior to spending a year at the Paris Conservatoire in Olivier Messiaen’s composition class. At the same time he completed a diploma in electroacoustic composition with the Groupe de Recherches Musicales/Paris Conservatoire. He moved to England, completing a doctorate in composition at the University of York. Until 1994 he was Senior Lecturer in Music and Director of the Electroacoustic Music Studio at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. He then moved to City, University of London, as Professor and Head of the Department of Music. He retired in 2009, and is now Professor Emeritus.