The Girl Who Made the Stars - Jostine Loubser

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The inspiration for this composition came from a painting in the SKAO building inspired by the story, “The Girl Who Made the Milky Way”. The painting itself was created by the San group who live in the Northern Cape -  which is also the location of the MeerKAT Telescope. Thus my piece starts by telling the story itself. However, as with any re-telling, we all add our personal bit of spice - thus this is based on two |xam tales. The first was told by Blaitje Snell (“The Children of the First San and the Sleeping Sun”) and the second (“The Girl Who Made the Milky Way”) was told by Jantjie Tooren [as told to him by his mother]. Both were recorded by the philologist Lucy Lloyd in 1873 (http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za).

My piece was thus written, not only with the ensemble in mind but also with a sense of adventure, of humanity striding out, whilst venerating the people on whose lands these structures had been built. Thus, the use of ancient instruments (bullroarers, gourd-bow and didgeridoo) alongside synthesizers and the sonified sound of the Milky Way.

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About the Composer

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Jostine Loubser is a South African ethnomusicologist and composer. Her ethnomusicological research mainly concerns identity and its performativity in Cape Jazz and Capoeira. With knowledge of musics from across the world, she directs the ‘World Music’ ensemble at the University of Salford. By contrast,  her compositions are infused with 20th-century musical innovations and re-interpreted for the 21st century. She frequently works with poetry, art and dance, alongside electronic soundscapes and live performances. Past compositions include works for theatre companies [puppetry, dance and physical theatre] with performances at festivals (theatre and circus), across the UK, including Glastonbury, The International Mime Festival, and more. 

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Stellar Distances - AJ Berriman 

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'Stellar Distances is a temporal painting in five moments. Using knowledge from astrophysics, each movement is inspired by specific astronomical data. Thus,  "Standard Candles" is a musical theme on a single pitch - A Type 1a supernovae which always will explode with the same luminosity. Then there are "Accretion" and "Radiation" - stellar matter that sticks together, with the then-emitted photons making the long journey from the stars to our eyes, at the universal speed limit. "Hertzsprung-Russell" is a painting in a circular musical progression, as the stellar cycle turns. And, finally,  "Quasar" is the moment of peak intensity, the biggest, oldest, most powerful and most distant phenomena that hang in the sky.'
 

About the Composer

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Ajay is a singer, double bassist, and pianist who makes music in the tradition of jazz, informed extensively by their study of both jazz and classical traditions, and of other musics with wide-ranging approaches. Their most recent works are vocalese written for great bebop music, which was included in their performance at the 2024 Manchester Jazz Festival, singing and accompanying themself as bassist with their trio. The trio are continuing to develop works such as these for their upcoming performance at the Burton Agnes Jazz and Blues Festival.

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Celestial Dreams - Ashley McAulay

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Just like any dream, the idea of spectating the stars is one which, I feel, we all have in common, starting mostly as a curiosity of a question… “What is out there?!” With a vast expanding galaxy and potential multiple universes, Celestial Dreams captures a variety of different ideas of what there could be from a creative standpoint. The ideas carried in this piece are stillness, collisions, harmony and much more. This piece was inspired by more current composers such as Brian Eno, Meredith Monk, Kaijah Saariaho and more. The piece itself is semi-improvised, meaning that each performance of this piece will sound slightly different, making every individual performance authentic. 

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About the Composer

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Ashley McAulay, Flautist and graphic score composer, started delving into the world of graphic score performance, music fusion, dance collaboration and world music during his time at Salford University in 2021, which has taken him to some amazing places to perform and share creative ideas with other musicians and artforms. In previous years he has played at festivals such as Greenman Festival (2019), Lancaster Jazz Festival (2023), and Turn (2023)  - frequently collaborating in different genres. He currently works at the Chethams School of Music.

 

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Bio-Transference - Sean Vincent Alexander

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This piece, split up into three movements, sonically explores the discarding of one's biological human body for a non-biological one, directing the acoustic ensemble to place immense drones of whaling doom, whilst the electronic elements of the piece attempt to mimic that of the acoustic, and develop into more organic and constantly metamorphosing sounds. Sean utilised this piece in particular to further his exploration of synthesised sound that mimics acoustic instruments, as well as adapting fellow ACMG member Phil Brisseden's style of conducting to control the ensemble's level and melodic direction.

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About the Composer

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Sean Vincent Alexander – Is a recent graduate of the University of Salford who developed his skills for unconventional composition within ACMG, towards which he gravitated to blend his passion for music technology and unconventional synthesised timbres with the innate chaos of ACMG's unusual ensemble.

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Not for Ourselves - Phillip Brissendan

 

Not for Ourselves is an exercise in “world-building” using music, a teaching resource composed especially for students with an interest in science-fiction, fantasy and gaming. It imagines a world where humans have been abducted since the Upper Palaeolithic. They share their new world with other species, amongst them, the Cordolians, a bird-like species, with remarkable musical and language abilities with whom they make music. This music is Earth-influenced, there is a distinctly Romantic feel to this piece, and you might recognize echoes of a famous Earth-composed piece by Josef Suk. But it is also very different, the musicians of this world value spontaneous improvisation and have a deep interest in tuning. 

 

Not for Ourselves uses two tuning systems; the current, 12-tone-equal-temperament, and another, based on the ratio of 7:5 which yields pitches that wrap around equal temperament – 24 in total. The Cordolian in this piece plays a theremin-like instrument and roves between the two. It commemorates a bitter war. The themes are specific to this event and the feel of the piece is alien, but it puts forward universal values of loss, regret and forgiveness as it intertwines its musical phrase with poetry, and field recordings from the imagined city of Sestossa.
 

About the Composer

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Dr Philip Brissenden originally trained as a classical pianist, composer and music technologist. A practice-based researcher, he is currently invested in the study of musical tuning - how it manifests within culture and how we perceive it. 

His research extends to musical instrument innovation and he completed a PhD in 2015, having invented, patented and prototyped a novel musical instrument design. He now considers it his principal instrument - which he also plays in the ACMG ensemble. He performs, composes and conducts at the University of Salford; most notably within the Adelphi Contemporary Music Group. He is particularly interested in experimental and hybridized music and has collaborated with artists from diverse cultures including Sri Lanka and Iran.

 

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Ascent to Jupiter - David Crawley

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Ascent to Jupiter is a celebration of the achievements of humankind. The piece takes us on a triumphant journey through our solar system for us to become equals with the ruler of the Roman gods, Jupiter. With grand sweeping harmony, victorious melody, and nods to the great composer Gustav Holst and his Planets Suite. This piece is a fanfare to usher in a new era of astronomic achievement.
 

About the Composer

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David Crawley is a Manchester-based composer and guitarist trained at the University of 

Salford. His musical stylings range from metal, to jazz, to structured improvisation and have 

been performing in a variety of ensembles and venues including Manchester’s Contact Theatre. A member of ACMG since 2017, Crawley has written a number of original and exclusive pieces for the ensemble. He is now counted among the senior members of the group and continues to 

compose for the ensemble.

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Chords in Zero Gravity - Alan Williams
 

Chords in Zero Gravity is a piece composed especially for ACMG. Its main material is written using an invented method – a ‘harmonic equilibrium’, where every major and minor triad are used only once, and while the harmony may at times sound familiar, the material avoids being in any one key. So the chords feel suspended, as if in 0-G. Alongside this composed material, our electronic musicians create clouds of noise which in rehearsal we call ‘space junk’.

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About the Composer

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Alan Williams is a composer and writer on contemporary music and culture and a Professor of Collaborative Composition at the University of Salford. He studied at the Universities of Edinburgh and Manchester and also at the Liszt Academy in Budapest. In 2017 he wrote the world’s first ‘Northern’ opera with poet Ian McMillan, and is the originator of the ‘Listening Composer’ method of collaborative composition. He has been musical lead of ACMG since 2011.
 

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Jam Session with the Milky Way - Joe Fowler

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This is an exploration of musical interface. Using sonification techniques to convert hydrogen electronic spin-flips into audible frequencies using float-to-frequency fast-fourier transformations. These frequencies are sonically toyed with to produce a sonic layer of sound created not by humanity, but by the stars which light our sky. Our sonic hyperfine transitions are accompanied by a group of musicians created by the very atoms which birthed our own stars in a call-and-response structure. Join us as we take one giant leap for mankind, and duet with the very universe which houses us.

 

About the Composer

 

Joe Fowler is a sound artist whose work focuses on the marriage of data, sound, and visuals for the purpose of digital data conservation. His work includes code manipulation, microsound, sonification, and the deliberate corruption of common software. His work has been exhibited in hi-fi contexts such as TED events, and lo-fi contexts such as Islington Mill. Outside of his work as a sound artist, Joe has provided composition and sound design to numerous media products, such as the 2023 Royal Television Society Best Animation 'Wild Rides'. Joe is a lecturer in Creative Audio at the University of Salford.