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Birmingham Conservatoire hosts Integra 2008 festival

5078/DV 2nd June 2008

This month sees Birmingham at the forefront of innovation and creativity in the arts with two major events – the New Generation Arts Festival 2008 and the Integra 2008 International Festival and Conference “Fusing Music and Technology”, from June 5.

Integra 2008 is the culmination of Integra – a three-year European Composition and Performance Environment project for Sharing Live Music Technologies, coordinated by Birmingham Conservatoire and supported by the Culture 2000 programme of the European Union.

The project brings together new music ensembles and research centres from across Europe and Canada to create a user-friendly, musically meaningful environment for composing and performing live electronic music. So far Integra has commissioned 11 new works and transferred more than 20 works using obsolete technologies to a new software environment.

Lamberto Coccioli, head of music technology at Birmingham Conservatoire, part of Birmingham City University, said: “This event comprises six concerts, including seven new works - of which four will be world premieres - and six works from the history of live electronics.

“The festival is an unprecedented occasion to experience an amazing range of mixed media and live electronic music, including exciting new collaborations between internationally renowned visual artists and composers - Juneau Projects and Ed Bennett, David Coste and Pierre Jodlowski, stalkervideo and Michele Tadini.”

The aim of Integra 2008 is to break the barriers between academic research and artistic practice, and liberate the creative potential of new technologies applied to music. As an example, the collaboration between The Bays and BIT20 Ensemble at Space2 at the Custard Factory shows a novel way of using technology to combine improvisation, real-time composition and live electronics in what promises to be a groundbreaking event.

Alongside the festival, an international conference titled “Solving the tensions between musicians and technology” will take place at Birmingham Conservatoire.

All this is not happening in Birmingham by chance - the city has an established reputation for internationally renowned artists and institutions working with new technologies. Birmingham Conservatoire, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, BEAST at the University of Birmingham and the Supersonic Festival organised by Capsule are all major contributors to the international new music scene.

For further information please contact Birmingham City University Media Relations Office on 0121 331 6738, email press@bcu.ac.uk or out of hours on 07967 271 532.

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