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Press Releases
Â鶹Éç Scottish Symphony Orchestra presents first UK IRCAM Academy
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The Â鶹Éç Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Paris-based IRCAM, the world's leading centre for composition and research in electro-acoustic music, are collaborating to host the UK's first IRCAM Academy of New Music from 7 to 12 April 2008.
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Offering exciting learning opportunities for composers, alongside a series of contemporary music concerts, this week-long festival in Glasgow is led by a team of IRCAM experts and Jonathan Harvey, the Â鶹Éç SSO's distinguished Composer-in-Association.
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Based in the Â鶹Éç SSO's home at Glasgow's City Halls, specialists from IRCAM, assisted by Â鶹Éç Scotland and composers from leading educational institutions in Scotland, will run a week-long workshop focused on composition techniques using the latest computer technology.
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Interest in the academy from the UK's contemporary music community is high, and participants in the workshops comprise several eminent composers including Sally Beamish and Sam Hayden.
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The Â鶹Éç SSO, and Chief Conductor Ilan Volkov, will also be joined by guest musicians to present a series of concerts exploring the sound worlds that new technology and traditional instruments can produce together.
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The concerts will feature music by one of the founding fathers of electro-acoustic composition, the late Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Korean Unsuk Chin – a rising star of contemporary music – as well as established masters including Jonathan Harvey, Xenakis, Richard Ayres, Yan Maresz and IRCAM's founder Pierre Boulez.
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The Â鶹Éç SSO will be joined by sound artists and musicians including French clarinettist Alain Billard, the acclaimed young Diotima Quartet from Paris, the Scottish Ensemble and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
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The Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) was founded in Paris by composer Pierre Boulez and remains the only centre of its kind in the world dedicated to contemporary musical research.
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Devoted to Boulez's Utopian aspiration to bring science and art together, the institute shares the research carried out in its labs and studios in the Centre Pompidou by offering a wide range of training programmes across the world for music professionals, academics and students.
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This collaboration with the Â鶹Éç SSO is the first time that IRCAM has brought its training syllabus to the UK.
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Jonathan Harvey – who was recently awarded the inaugural Giga-Hertz award, one of the most prestigious awards for electronic music in the world – has been at the forefront of orchestral and electronic music for more than 50 years and is regarded as Europe's preeminent composer of electro-acoustic music.
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April 2008 also sees the release of a new recording by the Â鶹Éç SSO on the NMC label of Jonathan Harvey's music, featuring two works commissioned by the Â鶹Éç: ... Towards A Pure Land and Body Mandala.
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Speaking of his relationship with the Â鶹Éç SSO, Dr Harvey said: "When I first came to Scotland to work with the Â鶹Éç SSO, I thought I would be working with a great symphony orchestra; what I discovered instead was one of the world's leading contemporary music ensembles."
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The Â鶹Éç SSO/IRCAM Festival begins on Monday 7 April 2008. For further information, please go to bbc.co.uk/bbcsso.
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