Composers’ dream
Novars Research Centre is a £2.25 million space that brings composers and performers together with the most advanced recording and performance technology. The electroacoustic music facility at the University of Manchester is dedicated to the composition, research and teaching of electroacoustic music.

The 'room-within-room' design of concrete blocks suspended on hundreds of rubber cylinders creates perfect acoustic isolation for the composers and musicians. That, and other innovations, ensures they get the most out of the 24-channel surround sound equipment.

Electroacoustic explained
Work undertaken in the studios is ‘acousmatic’ in nature. Music is specifically composed using material recorded and manipulated electronically and designed to be experienced via multiple loudspeakers. It promotes the creative potential of live electronics and mixtures of acoustic instruments and electroacoustic media in performance, and explores links between sound and image.

Electroacoustic music is a descendent of the ‘musique concrète’ of Pierre Schaeffer and developed by composers such as François Bayle and Francis Dhomont. Its aesthetic practice of sound diffusion allows the performer to manipulate sound reproduction over multiple loudspeakers positioned around a space, recreating dynamically the original sound image in its full spatial detail.

Immersive sound
Director of the studios, composer Dr David Berezan explains, ‘my compositions are not really complete unless they’re experienced on multiple loudspeakers. I can create an immersive listening experience, with sounds moving around you in a dynamic way.’

Berezan is excited by the collaborative opportunities the Centre offers, ‘It might be working with visual artists, or in other media such as film. There's also scientific collaboration, for example in the development of sensor technology, because of the obvious parallels with the tools that we use in electroacoustic music. That's one way that we see ourselves existing beyond the composer in a box.’

Berezan’s desire ‘to create incredible sounds that I'd never heard before and hearing other people do that’, was originally fired up in the early 1990s while studying jazz and music technology. He started MANTIS (Manchester Theatre in Sound), which produces internationally-profiled electroacoustic concerts at the University of Manchester and other venues.

With five planned compositions, Berezan will be busy in the Novars facility, ‘I wouldn't say I go to the head of the queue, all of the people who are researching at the studios have a guaranteed allocation of time for electroacoustic composition.’