Dr Aaron Cassidy

Biography

Aaron Cassidy is Senior Lecturer in Composition and acts as Coordinator for the MA by Research in the Centre for Research in New Music.

Cassidy completed a Ph.D. in Composition in 2003 as a Presidential Fellowship recipient at the University at Buffalo (State University of New York) under the guidance of David Felder, where he was awarded a Dissertation Fellowship for advanced research. He has studied additionally in masterclass and lesson settings with such composers as Richard Barrett, Chaya Czernowin, Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, Alvin Lucier, and Tristan Murail, among numerous others.

He joined the staff at the University of Huddersfield in 2007. He previously served as Lecturer of Composition at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he also directed the New Music Northwestern concert series, and as Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Buffalo State College.

Research & Scholarship

Aaron Cassidy 's work has been performed by some of the world 's premier contemporary music specialists, including Ensemble SurPlus, ensemble recherche, ELISION, Ictus Ensemble, 175 East, the Kairos, Diotima, and JACK Quartets, and soloists including Mieko Kanno, Garth Knox, Ian Pace, Christopher Redgate, and Carl Rosman. His work has been featured at such venues as the Gaudeamus International Music Week (Jurors Prize nominee, 2002 & 2004), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Warsaw Autumn, Bludenzer tage zeitgemäßer musik, Abbaye Royaumont, Bienal Internacional de Musica Y Tecnologia (Mexico City), Samtida Musik Stockholm, June In Buffalo, Akademie Schloss Solitude, and the ISCM World Music Days (Zagreb 2005), and has been broadcast by BBC Radio 3, Radio France, Deutschland Radio Berlin, Österreichischer Rundfunk, and Polish National Radio. In July 2008, ELISION presented a portrait concert of his work for broadcast on ABC Classic FM (Australia). He has received grants, stipends, and commissions from allerArt Bludenz, the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music, Haupstadtkulturfonds Berlin, New York Foundation for the Arts, Schloss Solitude Sommerakademie, ASCAP, the American Music Center, and Südwestrundfunk/Donnaueschinger Musiktage.

Also active as a conductor, Cassidy has led performances by student and professional ensembles in a diverse range of contemporary repertoire. He has conducted at the June in Buffalo festival and in a wide variety of university settings, currently serving as conductor of the New Music Ensemble at the University of Huddersfield. He recently participated in the Herrenhaus Edenkoben Mastercourse with Peter Eötvös and Zsolt Nagy, conducting the International Ensemble Modern Academy in a radio broadcast for SWR-2.

As an author his contributions include chapters in volumes 1, 2 and 6 of Wolke Verlag's New Music and Aesthetics in the 21st Century series. Additionally, he has been increasingly active as a CD producer, most notably with EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble's critically-acclaimed recent releases on the NMC label.

Research Outputs

Areas for Research Supervision

I am available to supervise all levels of postgraduate research students (MA by Research, MPhil, PhD) in a wide range of subjects connected to composition and new/experimental music. My primary research areas are:

• Composition
• Late 20th/21st Century Musicology and Analysis
• Experimental Music
• Post-structuralist theory (memory & complexity theory, theories of space, Deleuze/Guattari)
• Instrument mechanisms, acoustics, and timbral analysis

While Composition forms the central thread of my research work, I am particularly interested in working with students who engage with larger issues of current musical, cultural, and philosophical thought and practice. In addition to compositional work, I am excited to supervise musicological and analytical projects in connection to recent repertoire, and am available to serve as a part of a supervisory team in Contemporary Music Performance

My current postgraduate students include:

• Julian Brooks, MPhil/PhD, joint supervision with Pierre-Alexandre Tremblay (People, Music, Machines and their Environments: creating a methodology of improvisation, composition, Pd programming and performance within the context of a theoretical framework centred on principles of condensation, difference and repetition, duration, modulation and becoming, and resonance)
• Einar Torfi Einarsson, MPhil/PhD (Composition)
• Ray Evanoff, PhD (Composition; musical haecceity and the identity of musical ‘objects’)
• Timothy McCormack, MPhil/PhD (Composition; developing a compositional lexicon through the investigation of instrumental mechanisms)
• Lefteris Papadimitriou, MPhil/PhD (Composition)

I am also on the supervisory team for Richard Glover (PhD, Composition) and Robert Dahm (MPhil/PhD, Composition) and supervise several Composition students on the MA by Research route. All new music research students are supported through the extensive series of seminars, workshops, lectures and concerts of the Centre for Research in New Music.