Leading New York critic praises Huddersfield’s ‘New Music’

ONE of the leading critics in the USA has included compositions and performances linked to the University of Huddersfield in his selection of 2019’s musical highlights.

Alex Ross is the long-established music writer for magazine The New Yorker and is globally acknowledged as an expert on contemporary music.  The University of Huddersfield is home to the Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM), one of the world’s leading institutes in the field.

In his round-up of notable recordings from 2019, Mr Ross includes the five-CD set of the piano music of Morton Feldman from the University’s Professor Philip Thomas.  It earned widespread critical acclaim on its release.

Also singled out in The New Yorker is the disc Speak, Be Silent, issued by the Huddersfield Contemporary Records label.  Performed by London’s Riot Ensemble, it includes works by composers with strong links to the University of Huddersfield, including Liza Lim, Rebecca Saunders and Chaya Czernowin.

The Director of CeReNeM, Professor Aaron Cassidy, said he was delighted by the Alex Ross article.

“It’s wonderful to have that level of recognition for our work and our partners’ work in such a widely-read publication.”

The article by Alex Ross also ranges over the past ten years, which he describes as “a chaotically great decade for new music”.  His highlights include Tongue of the Invisible, a “fine-spun multicultural song cycle” by Liza Lim,  formerly a professor of composition at the University of Huddersfield.

She is a member of Speculations in Sound, an international research network created and hosted by CeReNeM that is dedicated to cutting-edge developments in new music.  The Harvard professor Chaya Czernowin is also a member and The New Yorker article cites a performance in Berlin of her work Heart Chamber as a highlight of 2019 and her “engulfing war requiem” Infinite Now as one of the key works of the decade.