This year’s Musica festival began with the Composition Workshop on Tuesday 25 February. Led by Laura Bowler, the session began with a short presentation about how to write for voice, discussing ideas about space, consent, and visuals, with examples of her own works and texts. The second half consisted of Laura guiding us on devising our own pieces. We created vocal works based on numbers and with prompts she had prepared. The students who attended found new and various ways of composing for voice and it was very enjoyable!
The Musica Vocal Concert, following on from the success of last year’s concert, was held on Saturday 1 March and celebrated works composed by women for upper voices. We heard music of various genres, including musical theatre, gospel, choral and opera, with composers ranging from Amy Beach to Lili Boulanger to Sara Bareilles. We were fortunate enough to use Christ Church, West Didsbury for the first time, which gave us the opportunity to open the concert to members of the local community as well.
On Monday 3 March we held a jazz improvisation workshop with Helena Summerfield, which was extremely well attended and received. She spent the first hour presenting an interactive discussion on her role as project manager of Jazz Camp for Girls, and broadened the discussion to women in jazz. The second hour was spent with women and gender diverse musicians learning to improvise together, in a comfortable and safe environment.
On Tuesday 4 March we were joined by Hallé Principal Trombonist and UoM alumni Katy Jones for our ‘Women in Brass’ event. She gave an inspiring talk about her experiences as a professional in the industry and breathing techniques followed by a Q and A!
Thursday 6 March was the day of the Musica Symposium, this year discussing music, gender and the emerging artist. The panel featured composer, performer, curator (and everything else) Dominique LeGendre, composer and performer Laura Bowler, and performer and educator Helena Summerfield. Chaired by postdoctoral student Alexandra Palidda, the panel discussed the current perspectives on the state of the music industry through the lens of women and gender diverse musicians. It was truly an insightful evening, and you could feel the excited and inspired buzz in the room following the talk. Overall, the event was a huge success, to the point where we ended up having to bring in many more chairs as it was so highly attended!
On Friday 7 March, we showcased women, trans and gender diverse performers performing repertoire by gender diverse composers for a well-attended Lunchtime Concert in the Martin Harris Centre.
On Saturday 8 March, Musica held the third Musica x Polyphonic collaboration concert, which aims to celebrate performers and composers in the Manchester student community who are women, non-binary and gender diverse. The concert was hosted by Birch Community Centre in Rusholme, who we are extremely grateful to have worked with. The concert featured music for piano trio, voice, strings, solo viola, and wind quintet, with performers being both music and non-music students andgraduates from the University of Manchester and RNCM. Overall, this Polyphonic concert showcased a wide range of composers’ unique voices, bringing together musicians from different strands of Manchester’s music scene into a community celebrating gender diversity.
On the evening of Saturday 8 March, we hosted the Jazz Jam, a recurring Musica event. The jam was a great success and was our most highly attended event. The opening set was well received and we had plenty of participants getting up to join the jam afterwards. Overall, it rounded off the week perfectly and left everyone in high spirits!