This is a recurring event: View all events in the series “Summer Sounds”
Our annual festival celebrating the community of undergraduate and postgraduate students, staff, resident ensembles, performers and composers at City, University of London's Department of Music.
This year, we will present world and UK premieres, chamber music masterpieces, jazz and improvised music, early music, installation and theatrical work, unique collaborations, and electronic music from our legendary studios.
All concert events in the series will be livestreamed on YouTube and will be free to view. Please see the web listings for individual events and register to receive the streaming links nearer to the date of the event.
This year's festival launches with the City Pierrot Ensemble (24 May) performing piano quartets and quintets by Brahms and Fauré, chamber music group rarescale (26 May), with new works for woodwinds and piano, and a piano recital by Ian Pace (28 May) including works by Franz Liszt, James Dillon, Michael Spencer and Marc Yeats.
Innovative jazz and improvised music comes from Moss Freed's large group Union Division (27 May) and Shirley Smart's Sextet and Trio (17 June), who combine diverse influences from across the Middle East and Balkans.
New undergraduate graphic and open scores will also be presented on 7 June, performed by acclaimed improvising musicians Cath Robert and Tom Ward, and mezzo-soprano Lucy Goddard.
The dynamic Explore Ensemble (9 June) makes a welcome return visit with a programme of world premieres by City composers. The festival will also include an online screening of a new installation / performance work by Jonathan Higgins, Man In Regent Street (10 June), featuring a four-metre-long score that is gradually destroyed over the course of the performance.
New audio-visual work from City's Sound Studios will also be broadcast as a showcase screening on 31 May.
City Pierrot Ensemble's second festival appearance will be a performance of Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King (14 June), in a programme that also includes tributes to composer Simon Bainbridge and work by Soosan Lolavar.
Manchester's Vonnegut Collective (15 June) present a new work in collaboration with Tullis Rennie, 48 Hours, which utilises rehearsal and interview footage to explode the process of mounting a performance of Thomas Adès' notoriously virtuosic Piano Quintet.
Early music comes from Gut Instinct (18 June), exploring the music of the English Civil War and Restoration periods, and renowned vocal ensemble EXAUDI, in a specially filmed performance from the church of Holy Trinity Hoxton.
More events are being added to the listings in the forthcoming weeks. For full details of all upcoming concerts, see:
Attendance at City events is subject to our terms and conditions.