This is a past event
Join us to hear about the research of three of our current PhD students - Yi Wang, Elizabeth Walsh and Conner McCain.
Rethinking the operation of Popular Music Festival in China's Policy-Led Music Industry.
This study focuses on the rapid expansion of popular music festivals in China in the post COVID-19, exploring how these festivals have been reshaped at the intersection of central policy incentives and market mechanisms. The research is primarily based on narrative interviews and policy document analysis. In this seminar, I will be presenting findings from my research which examine the intersection of festival tourism and policy, and discuss how popular music festivals operate within the music industry. As “festivalisation” becomes a strategy for local governments to attract tourists and reshape urban identities, music festivals have taken on significant meanings related to local governance. Policy incentives have altered the organizational structures of festivals, blurring the boundaries between insiders and outsiders in the music industry. This shift has led to the emergence of local governments or their affiliated agencies as intermediary promoters, thereby challenging the traditional role and identity of industry-based promoters. Applying Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production to the context of Chinese popular music festivals—across its macro, meso, and micro levels—reveal important contextual transformations. Music festivals are not merely policy-driven cultural events or market-oriented commodity but dynamic sites of cultural meaning-making. They reflect a distinctive mode of cultural production shaped by the Chinese context, illustrating how individuals act, negotiate, and continually seek position and voice within a shifting cultural field governed by intertwined policy and industry forces.
Yi Wang is a percussionist and music researcher with experience in symphonic and cultural performances across China, including collaborations with the Heilongjiang Symphony Orchestra and appearances at major festivals such as the Harbin Summer Music Concert Series. Her interest in the music industry developed alongside her performance career, leading her to pursue a master’s degree in music management at the University of Leeds, where she deepened her understanding of the live music sector. Her research focuses on Chinese popular music festivals, particularly how performers and promoters construct narratives within state-influenced cultural frameworks, bridging music performance, cultural policy, and creative industry studies.
Joaquín Turina: Sevillian nostalgia and music aesthetics in 20th century Spain.
Joaquín Turina (1882-1949) was one of Spain’s most prolific twentieth-century composers and serves as an exemplary case study for exploring how Spanish composers navigated changes in both international aesthetic values and national concerns around Spanish musical nationalism in the early twentieth century. Like his compatriots Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Manuel de Falla, Turina faced complex demands that extended far beyond the musical sphere. Spanish intellectuals continuously rejected Andalusian imagery as the principal manifestation of “Spanishness” both in Spain and in the foreign romantic imaginary. Instead, looking to achieve cultural regeneration, they promoted the Castilian-centred ideals of regeneracionismo (regenerationism). Similarly, in the musical context, emerging trends of internationalism and a break with nineteenth-century nationalisms and localisms placed further demands on composers, particularly following the creation of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in 1922. Whilst others reacted accordingly, Turina continued in his highly personal and mostly picturesque Franco-Andalusian idiom which united the formalist techniques of the Schola Cantorum – where he studied whilst in Paris (1905-1913) – with a Sevillian-inspired andalucismo (Andalusian style). This formula juxtaposed the avant-garde approaches of his more prominent compatriots, notably Falla whose evolution to a Castilian-based neoclassicism satisfied many of these contemporaneous ideals. I address how Turina’s refusal to submit to avant-garde trends as well as his fidelity to the Andalusian idiom branded him a musical conservative within contemporaneous critical circles and the later Spanish music historiography, thus contributing to his marginalisation. Turina’s case provides a lens through which the correlation between broader aesthetic concerns, changing articulations of Spanish musical nationalism and the historiographical positioning of Spanish composers from this generation can be studied.
Elizabeth Walsh is a second-year PhD in Music student at the University of Aberdeen. Her research re-examines the historiography of twentieth-century Spanish composer Joaquín Turina (1882-1949), particularly his marginalisation from Spanish and international musicological discourse. She is supervised by Chris Collins and Matthew Machin-Autenrieth and is a recipient of the Derek Ogston Postgraduate Music Scholarship. Elizabeth holds an MPhil in Music from the University of Cambridge and a BA(Hons) in Spanish and Latin American Studies from Aberystwyth University. Her undergraduate dissertation on Manuel de Falla’s musical nationalism was published in 2023 in Siglo diecinueve (Literatura hispánica) and she has presented her research on several occasions, including a seminar at Sorbonne Université. Elizabeth is also a violinist, studying most recently with Yuri Torchinsky (BBC Philharmonic), and a former member of the National Youth Orchestra of Wales and Hallé Youth Orchestra. She is a current member of the RMA Student Committee.
Bloom before the Lord forever: The Influence of Gregorian Chant on the Music of Conner David McCain.
This presentation is an excerpt from the commentary which will accompany the portfolio of works submitted for the completion of my PhD in Music Composition. This commentary focuses not only on the musical materials which make up my works but also the faith which inspires those musical choices. As I explore the meaning behind my music, I am constantly returning to Gregorian chant as a major influence on my output, and I would like to explore that influence in this presentation. The early development of both my religious sensibility and my musical imagination can be found in early experiences of Gregorian chant. The simple but supple and expressive melodies immediately grabbed both my musical and my spiritual attention. The meaning of the music was clear and it worked within the confines of liturgical action to lift up that same action to something greater and more beautiful and more numinous. As professional whose full-time work involves liturgical composition, choral conducting, and organ playing, it makes sense that the rich musical tradition of the Roman Catholic church would exert a heavy influence on the music that I produce, even if that influence is largely involuntary. I do not compose in order to “re-present” Gregorian chant. My musical language presents certain qualities of Gregorian chant in an idiosyncratic, though, oftentimes, clear way. My goal in this presentation is to analyze the influence of Gregorian chant on a single work for mixed choir which I wrote in 2023 and received its first performance in August 2024, titled Bloom before the Lord forever. I will speak about the influence of chant on its rhythmic, harmonic, formal, and melodic material and then I will conclude with a presentation of the video recording from last August.
Conner David McCain Professor and Director of Sacred Music at Saint Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, New York, and a PhD Candidate in Music Composition at the University of Aberdeen under Professor Phillip A. Cooke. He holds an MMus from the Catholic University of America and an MA in Philosophy from the University of St. Andrews. His works have been performed all over the world by ensembles such as Voces8, the Choir of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and the Red Note Ensemble. He participated in festivals and masterclasses in Italy, Scotland, and across the United States and has been mentored by distinguished composers such as Sir James MacMillan and Philip Stopford. A recent recording of his Passion triptych, titled Heart of the World, for soprano, men’s choir, violin, and organ, is set to hit streaming later this summer.
- Venue
- MacRobert Building, MR055
- Contact
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If you would like to attend this event via teams, please email Dr Christina Ballico (Department of Music): christina.ballico@abdn.ac.uk.