Score to Sound

Judith Weir: Blue-Green Hill
Thomas Adès: Court Studies from the Tempest
Martin Suckling: Visiones (after Goya)
Philip Cashian: Dark Inventions
Alison Kay: Rat-race
Philip Grange: Cimmerian Nocturne
Colin Riley: Backslap Boobytrap

Dark Inventions introduce new audiences to contemporary British music, in association with the University of York & Sound and Music.

The Score to Sound project brings Discovery Days to York, Huddersfield and London. Martin Scheuregger – Dark Inventions co-director and Research Fellow at the University of York – will guide audiences through some examples of British contemporary music, highlighting ways in which it is written and how it can be heard.

The audience will be given the opportunity to see how the ensemble tackles this repertoire in an open rehearsal that starts each day. A talk, illustrated with live examples from the ensemble, will follow, giving an insight into how the works are constructed and how this might influence how they are heard. A roundtable discussion with several of the featured composers will allow the audience to see how the creators of this music themselves understand it, before the discussion is opened out with a Q&A.

Taken together, these elements will equip the audience with the knowledge and context to approach these works in a new light, opening up what can be seen as difficult music. More broadly, participants will have had the opportunity to develop ways of approaching music that enables them to discover new music and broaden their tastes.