Project Spotlight

  • Rhythm Changes commission
    16/01/12
  • PULSE - new media project at the Maijazz Festival Stavanger
    09/05/11

    Over the next week, several Rhythm Changes team members will be working together on a web and performance project.  There will be a performance at the Maijazz festival in Stavanger on Thursday 12 May featuring the Kitchen Orchestra and two Japanese visual artists.  Leading up to that event, Rhythm Changes researcher Andrew Dubber will be live-blogging, using video and other online tools to provide an insight into the process and the thinking behind that event.

  • Kitchen Orchestra/Pulse New Media Study
    09/05/11

    Over the next week, several of the Rhythm Changes team members will be working together on a web and performance project. Pulse is a multimedia production based on a commissioned work by composers John Lilja and Dag Egil Njaa, in collaboration with the two Japanese multimedia artists Nagato and Suzuki. The project comprises structures based on pulse: pulse as in the smallest building block of sound, rhythm, human interaction, biology. In short, pulse in everything.

  • Metropolis at the CMPCP conference
    15/04/11

    Metropolis is a highly creative group working at the forefront of the 'progressive improvised jazz' movement in the UK.  The group features Rhythm Changes team members Dr Petter Frost Fadnes and Nick Katuszonek as well as bassist Colin Sutton and the Perrier Award winner, pianist Dr Matthew Bourne.  The group has been invited perform at the AHRC's Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice Conference (CMPCP) in July.  The performance will be followed by a plenary session involving members of the band tha

  • CMPCP/IMR Seminar, ''Music from the hybridies': jazz as national and trans-national practice'
    12/04/11

    Taking its title from an album by the Norwegian group Farmer's Market, this seminar examines the concept of national sound in jazz and the ways in which European jazz practice has previously been understood as a vehicle for asserting national identity. Drawing on performance examples from a range of European musicians, from Jan Gabarek to John Tchicai, Django Bates to Han Bennink, I suggest that European jazz practice works more effectively as a model for challenging cultural stereotypes and geographical boundaries than as an embodiment of national sound.

  • Rhythm Changes panel at the Current Issues in European Cultural Studies Conference
    12/04/11
    Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities
  • Rhythm Changes at the Maijazz Festival
    12/04/11

    The Rhythm Changes team will be participating in the Maijazz Festival in Stavanger.  Andrew Dubber will be working on a new media project on jazz collectives, working alongside Dr Petter Frost Fadnes and the Kitchen Orchestra.  There will also be a Rhythm Changes symposium on Saturday 14 May featuring Andrew Dubber in conversation with the Punkt festival founder and live sampling artist Jan Bang.

  • Rhythm Changes at Tou Scene
    18/01/11
    The first in a series of European Rhythm Changes concerts took place on 14 January, as Irish composer and bandleader Dave Kane conducted the Bjergsted Jazzensemble at Tou Scene in Stavanger, an ex-brewery that has now become a cultural centre and hub of creativity in the Norwegian city.  ‘It was one of those magical live moments where space, audience, and musicians, blend together into a genuinely communal experience’, said Principal Investigator Dr Petter Frost Fadnes
  • Rhythm Changes headlines Leeds International Jazz Conference
    21/12/10
    Tony Whyton, Project Leader for the Rhythm Changes project, will deliver a keynote presentation at the 2011 Leeds International Jazz Conference. The conference will explore the theme 'Time Captured - Jazz Composition, Composing and Composers' and Tony’s keynote will be entitled, ‘Jazz, Composition and Critical Discourse’. The presentation will feed off research questions addressed by the Rhythm Changes project, from exploring tensions between high and low culture to examining the shifting status of jazz as a canonical artform,
  • Another Place? Why Jazz Festivals Matter
    06/12/10

    The Rhythm Changes team and the London Jazz Festival hosted an international panel on the value of jazz festivals in November 2010.  This public forum featured contributions from jazz festival organisers and researchers from the Rhythm Changes team and explored the critical tensions between global and local jazz scenes, and the politics of place in festival programming today.  To hear an audio file of the event click on the external web address above. 

  • Rhythm Changes: Jazz and National Identities Conference
    03/12/10

    The first Rhythm Changes Conference will take place in September 2011 and will be hosted in partnership with the Conservatory of Amsterdam. The three-day Conference will explore the theme of ‘Jazz and National Identities’ and will include presentations from an international line up of jazz researchers.