Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Huddersfield, November 2022
Programme manager
Huddersfield, November 2022
Programme manager
HCMF, the UK’s largest international festival of new and experimental music, presented a Ukrainian programme. Ukrainian performances took place in Huddersfield from 18 to 27 November as part of the UK/Ukraine Season of Culture.
Returning to a full-fledged 10-day format for the first time since 2019, HCMF 2022 continued to lead the way for contemporary music and new sounds in the UK in November 2022. The festival featured an abundance of world and UK premieres—simultaneously unsettling, imaginative, and politically expressive—and presented approximately 50 events, including concerts, music theatre, dance, multimedia performances, talks, and film screenings.
The hard-hitting multimedia opera Chornobyldorf, created by Ukrainian composers Roman Grygoriv and Illia Razumeiko, opened the festival. This award-winning production combined folk and classical singing with theatre, dance, video, and unique musical instruments, examining the impact of nuclear power on the world.
On the festival’s opening day, Volodymyr Voyt and Solomiya Moroz performed String Air Synthesis, a programme of composed and improvised works in microtonal and equal temperament for Kharkiv-style bandura and flute. The duo began collaborating through a shared interest in contemporary and electronic music, despite their markedly different instruments and musical backgrounds.
During other days of the festival in Huddersfield, audiences also heard works by Ukrainian composers Anna Korsun and Maxim Shalygin, performed by the Riot Ensemble.