Sennheiser UK is also known for its interest in supporting new talent. Part of this commitment is a long relationship with the Faculty of Music at the University of Oxford, which recently held the final of a new competition for original composition. Sennheiser supported the project with prizes for the winners, while a K-array audio system was used for the performances.
Sennheiser’s work with the university has included support for the Oxford Surround Composition and Research studio (OSCaR), a bespoke, state of the art electronic music studio, which opened last year. This year, the company sponsored the Oxford / Sennheiser Electronic Music Prize (OSEMP), a competition set up by the university to highlight the increasing importance of electronic music in its teaching and research programmes. The aim of the national competition was to find the most innovative new works in electronic music by composers aged younger than 35 years.
“Ever since the introduction of widely-available recording devices, composers have been manipulating sound to push music boundaries. As computers became the main workhorse in the studio, a whole new world of possibilities has opened up for sonic exploration and invention. The idea of OSEMP is to encourage composers to be as innovative and communicative as possible and to give a platform to those who may not otherwise be heard,” says Daniel Hulme, electronic music studio manager at the Faculty of Music.
The competition final was held in November 2014, with 10 finalists chosen from more than 100 entrants to perform their compositions in front of a live audience and a distinguished panel of judges, comprising of Electroacoustic composers Natasha Barrett and Trevor Wishart and the Music Faculty’s own professor of composition, Martyn Harry.
The finalists performed a range of pieces ranging from stereo to eight-channel surround sound. To ensure the audience experienced the compositions with the full surround experience, as the composers intended, an eight-position K-array loudspeaker system was used. Featuring KR202s on the corners and KR102s on the cross position, the lightweight, self-powered K-array units meant that the performers could be situated in the centre of the room, with the audience around them but fully within the sound distance.
After the performance, the panel chose Samuel Barnes and his composition “The Nature in Devices’ as the winner, with Sam Kendall’s “One Fast Move or I’m Gone’ and Daniel Cioccoloni’s “Deep Time’ in second and third places respectively. Sennheiser provided prizes for all three, including headphones and microphones.
