Music staff turning music on its ear with shortlist for UK’s most ambitious music prize

A partnership between Dr David Prior, Senior Lecturer in Music: Composition and Digital Media at University College Falmouth and architect Frances Crow has resulted in their proposal being one of five projects shortlisted for the Performing Right Society Foundation (PRSF) New Music Award, one of the youngest, most ambitious and experimental music competitions that offers an impressive £50,000 prize.

Visually reminiscent of a fairground organ and taking its name from the organ of hearing in the inner ear, The Organ of Corti is a mobile structure that filters the noise of its' current surroundings to create subtle shifting harmonies depending on the source of the external sounds and the position of the listener in relation to the Organ of Corti itself.  By carefully designing the Organ of Corti according to the sound character of the site in which it is intended to be placed, locations visited by the Organ of Corti can have a piece of music specifically composed for them.

David and Frances  worked collaboratively with funding from the Wellcome Trust under the name of Liminal exploring the relationship between sound, health, wellbeing and the environment. Their research group included two acousticians, a computational neuroscientist and a clinical audiologist.  During this research they came across the technology of sonic crystals and from this arose their proposal for The Organ of Corti.

The New Music Award was launched five years ago by the PRS for Music Foundation and aims to promote and stimulate a universally accepted and motivated culture of musical innovation.

Invention within the music arena and the pursuit of radically different perspectives to sound is nothing new to David who comments: "I am delighted to have been shortlisted for this award. The experience I have gained by working on this project makes a significant contribution to my  teaching of music at Falmouth and through this experience the students can go on to challenge the status quo, develop their global presence and encourage their entrepreneurial practice."

The Organ of Corti will recycle unwanted sound in the environment to create an unfolding musical composition. In a world saturated with sounds, the Organ of Corti questions whether we need any more noise and instead offers a new frame through which to listen to the sounds that already surround us. Both the origins of the sound and the method of listening are challenged.

The short listed projects will be judged by a panel including Chief arts editor for the Guardian newspaper, Charlotte Higgins; artist Martin Creed; composer and pianist Michael Finnissy; pianist Joanna MacGregor and music journalist Paul Morley with one vote held by the public majority.  Films for each of the projects can be viewed on YouTube and votes can be placed online at the PRSF website.  Voting closes on 6 September 2010.

The films will be shown free at a number of venues across the UK including being shown on a loop at Dartington Hall, Totnes until 5 September.

The premiere of the Organ of Corti will take place in the City of London during the three weeks of the 2011 City of London Festival. Three further performances will take place over the following week as the Organ of Corti travels to the M6 motorway in the Tebay Gorge in the Lake District; the edge of the A419 in the Cotswold Water Park, Wiltshire and finally next to Diglis weir in Worcester.

The winner of the £50,000 award will be announced on 16 September 2010 at the Serpentine Gallery, London and the winning idea developed and realised by the end of 2011.

Previous winners include former Pogue Jem Finer in 2005 for Score for a Hole in the Ground.

Liminal:  David Prior & Frances Crow

Liminal is a collaborative studio established by Frances Crow and David Prior to explore the relationship between sound and the environment.  Liminal's recent work includes Site specific soundwalks,  gallery installations and contributions to masterplanning projects in Birmingham and the Cotswold Water Park. www.liminal.org.uk

PRSF New Music Award

www.prsformusicfoundation.com

PRS Foundation for New Music (PRSF)

The PRS for Music Foundation for New Music (PRSF) is the UK's largest independent funder of new music across all genres. Widely respected as an adventurous and proactive funding body, PRSF supports an exceptional range of new music activity - from unsigned band showcases to composer residencies, from commissions for new music to experimental live electronica.

Since March 2000 PRSF has given more than £12 million to over 3,000 new music initiatives. In addition to stimulating and supporting the creation and performance of new music, it motivates public debate about creative music-making through ground-breaking projects such as the New Music Award. For more information about the PRS for Music Foundation and the New Music Award, please visit www.prsformusicfoundation.com

For further information about Music courses at University College Falmouth, visit www.falmouth.ac.uk/music, email admissions@falmouth.ac.uk or telephone Admissions on 01326 255944.

The UK Government recently announced that they were awarding a handful of Higher Education institutions additional full-time degree places and University College Falmouth has been given 100 such places.  There are therefore even more opportunities to start study this autumn on the range of Media, Performance, Art & Design courses at Falmouth that prepare students for an inspiring future within the creative industries - now firmly acknowledged as one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK economy.

The award of these additional degree places continues the extensive funding for growth that UCF is experiencing, including recent investments in world-class facilities such as an impressive £15.4M Performance Centre that launches this autumn at the Tremough Campus and will house the Dance, Music and Theatre degree courses that are new to Cornwall this year.

University College Falmouth is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the right to award degrees in its own name.  UCF has two campuses - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns and jointly manages with the University of Exeter).

UCF's merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008 created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Dance, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing.  The Dartington-based courses are relocating to Cornwall this summer to a high-specification £15.4M Performance Centre at the Tremough Campus that will launch in September 2010, paving the way for the creation of a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2013/2014 that will be unique to the South West.

UCF is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One and Convergence), the South West Regional Development Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.

Ends

For further information about University College Falmouth, please contact Jilly Easterby Dip CIPR MCIPR, Head of Public Affairs, Telephone: 01326 213792, or email:  jilly.easterby@falmouth.ac.uk

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