ABSTRACT
Roberto Gerhard was a pioneer of electronic music in England creating over twenty substantial concert, theatre and radio works from as early as 1954. However, for various political, cultural and personal reasons Gerhard's electronic music has not been published or widely disseminated. Gerhard's electronic music is one of the richest repositories for understanding the development of the composer's late compositional technique as well as the early development of electronic music in the UK. As a result of an AHRC study of the tapes held in the Gerhard Archive at the Cambridge University Library it is possible to understand the composer's technique and thoughts on electronic music and how they evolved as his work with magnetic tape became more and more refined. This lecture will investigate Gerhard's work in this field with specific reference to the Audiomobile series.
ABOUT MONTY ADKINS
Monty Adkins is a composer, performer, and lecturer of experimental electronic music. He has created installations, concert and audio-visual works, and a number of collaborations with contemporary performers.
His works have been commissioned by Ina-GRM, IRCAM, BBC Radio 3, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (HCMF), SpACE-Net, ZKM (Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe) and Sonic Arts Network (SAN), among others. For his oeuvre he has been awarded over 15 international prizes including the Stockholm Electronic Arts Award (Sweden), Grand Prize at Musica Nova (Prague, Czech Republic), and five prizes at the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition (France).
Having read music at Pembroke College (Cambridge, England, UK) where he studied French mediaeval and Italian Renaissance music, Adkins then studied electronic music with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham where he performed across Europe with the Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre (BEAST), and Simon Waters at the University of East Anglia (Norwich, England, UK). He is currently Professor of Experimental Electronic Music at the University of Huddersfield (England, UK).
Adkins is also active as a writer and concert curator. He completed his first book in 2011 on the relationship between art and music (Shibusa – Extracting Beauty) and is currently editing a second on the music of Roberto Gerhard. Adkins also is Co-Artistic Director of the Electric Spring Festival. Held in Huddersfield annually, this festival focuses on live electronic music and experimental performance.