In partnership with University Music, Bournemouth, The Open University Literature and Music Research Group are organising a one-day symposium on the theme of Words, Music and Silence, which will take place on Friday 28th June, 2024 at Bournemouth University (BH12 5BB). The day will conclude with a lecture recital exploring words, music, silence and disability given by the concert pianist Duncan Honeybourne, whose career has been shaped by his autism. 

This lecture recital will consider Ralph Vaughan Williams’ settings of 6 sonnets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1904). The first of these to be composed was 'Silent Noon’; singer Julia Hollander and pianist Peter McMullin will focus on this song, its relationship to the rest of the cycle and especially the theme of silence. They analyse the ways Vaughan Williams’ music depicts silence, and consider the role of Rossetti as both painter and wordsmith: calling on both our listening and our (silent) visual powers.

The MNCB conference is a crucial gathering point for scholars from a wide range of disciplines including musicology, cultural, social, and economic history, politics, sociology, and cultural geography.

Music, politics and the importance of understanding the text is a joint inaugural lecture delivered by Elaine Moohan, Professor of Musicology, and Byron Dueck, Professor of Music, who will present their research into religious music from Scotland, England and Cameroon.

In this third edition of the Eco-creativity conference, we invite interdisciplinary, empirical, and ethnographic approaches to understanding the role of arts and creative industries in delineating new ‘emotional landscapes’ of the climate and ecological crises.

Bringing together minority-led scholars from Europe, East Asia and the US, this conference specifically aims to address Western classical music performed by minorities, especially East Asians.

The Open University’s Music Department, the Cowper & Newton Museum and Olney Parish Church are delighted to be co-hosting this conference as part of a year-long programme of events to commemorate the 250th anniversary of ‘Amazing Grace’, widely believed to have first been sung at Olney on 1 January 1773.

The Women’s Musical Leadership Online Network (WMLON) presents a day considering women’s musical leadership within the classical music industries (conceived as broadly as possible). This online event will bring together a panel of four women leaders within the classical music industries, Diana Ambache, Ella Jarman-Pinto, Deborah Keyser, and Karen Power. In the afternoon, Gabriella Di Laccio will present her ground-breaking work leading gender equality in music through her work as founder and curator of Donne Women in Music.

This 2021 Conference is hosted by the Religious Studies, Art History, Music and Politics Departments in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at The Open University. Deadline for abstract submission: 30 September 2021

This online event will bring together a panel of four women leaders who have led Equality, Diversity and Inclusion within music education and/or the music industries, Alice Farnham, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Chi-chi Nwanoku, and Susan Wollenberg. In the afternoon, Gabriella Di Laccio will present her ground-breaking work leading gender equality in music through her work as founder and curator of Donne Women in Music. Classical guitarist, Eleanor Kelly, will conclude the event by presenting a short programme of music composed by women.