Dr Monty Adkins

Biography

Monty Adkins is a sound artist involved in electronica and electroacoustic music. He read music at Pembroke College, Cambridge and then, in 1993, became a member of the Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre (BEAST). He studied electronic music with Jonty Harrison and then Simon Waters. It was at the age of 22 that he first came to international attention with the electroacoustic works Melt and Clothed in the Soft Horizon. Between them these works were awarded the Stockholm Electronic Arts Award, Prix de Residence at Bourges and the Grand Prix of Musica Nova, Prague. He has since won more than a dozen international prizes for his work which has been performed and broadcast throughout Europe, USA, Canada, Australasia, China, and Asia. He has worked in a number of prestigious European studios, including EMS Stockholm, the GRM and IRCAM in Paris, Césare in Reims, and the Heinrich Strobel Studio in Freiburg.

In the early 1990s he concentrated predominantly on acousmatic concert music but has since diversified into composing electronic works for contemporary dance, multimedia works, and electronica. What he is particularly drawn to in writing such works is the collaborative process that evolves between the composer and artist/performers. The most notable of these have been Neurotransmission, an hour-long dance score written for Wayne McGregor and Random Dance in 1998, Still Time (2001) for the flautist Alejandro Escuer. Symbiont (2002) a multimedia collaboration with Miles Chalcaft and nights bright daies (2003) for the Ictus Piano/Percussion Quartet premiered at the Agora Festival at IRCAM in June 2004. Currently he works as a part of the live-electronics duo nemoika, a collaboration with the audio-visual artist Lee Mills.

His works are currently featured on three solo cds and ten compilation cds. His latest solo dvd-a Mondes Inconnus was recently released on the Canadian label empreintes DIGITALes

'Composition is, for me, like a giant puzzle in which the overall shape is fixed but the pieces and the picture itself change and undergo subtle transformations as one is constructing it. The computer tools that I use, enable me to fix the edges - the large scale rhythmic and harmonic movement and other global parameters, whilst also allowing me to improvise with these materials at the surface level. Using these tools allows me to manipulate and play with sound - like a child with a chemistry kit - reveling in the novel colours and explosive concoctions that result. '

Research & Scholarship

• Experimental Electronic Music Composition
• Acousmatic Music
• Aesthetics of Digital Music
• Sonic Art and Installation
• Sound Spatialisation

Research Outputs

Areas for Research Supervision

Dr Adkins will supervise research students in the following areas: Electroacoustic Music, Acousmatic Music, aesthetics of digital music, composition, sound art, electronica. His current PhD students are undertaking research in the following areas

• Exploring the use of the Glitch as a Medium and Aesthetic in generating artwork
• Re-inventing Harmony in Electroacoustic Music
• Composing and performing using real-time sound synthesis
• Frozen Music – an investigation into Neolithic and bronze age sound through electroacoustic composition
• Sonic Art and audience perception
• The aesthetics and composition of open-form electronic composition

Dr Adkins’ current MA by Research students are investigating the following areas:

• the integration of popular music and electroacoutic music
• the synthesis of sound and image
• electronica