Global success for Huddersfield Contemporary Records

Huddersfield Contemporary Records – HCR – is taking the innovative work of the University’s Centre for Research in New Music onto the world stage.

The HCR label was established in 2009, and has earned an excellent reputation in the field of contemporary classical and experimental music over the course of 18 albums to date. Integral to HCR’s philosophy is presenting the artistic research activity of academics or PGRs from the Centre for Research in New Music - CeReNeM - alongside contributions from international artists and partner organisations. Nearly all of HCR’s releases are world premiere recordings.

"The idea was never to only feature the music of just in-house staff or research students,” says Aaron Cassidy, CeReNeM’s Director and Professor of Composition. “There had to be some clear Huddersfield connection, but always contextualised with some significant international composers and performers. We are presenting recordings of work that we’re interested in and support, from outside as well as within, and that’s one of the main reasons why the label has been successful."

HCR was created by former CeReNeM Director Prof Liza Lim and Prof Monty Adkins, and made its first steps by releasing CDs in partnership with the University Press. Extending the early successes from the first six years of releases, HCR entered into an exclusive distribution agreement with NMC Recordings, the UK’s premier contemporary music label, in 2015, which has helped make HCR’s eclectic output available to more listeners worldwide.

“The NMC partnership has had an enormous impact on our sales figures,” says Aaron. “Last year we had six times as many CD sales as we did in the first year of the agreement, and that was already double what we had prior to 2015. And I’ve just had word that halfway through the current fiscal year we’ve already had as many digital downloads as we had all of last year, so we’re on track to potentially double the figures again.”

International impact

The three albums scheduled for release in 2019 are good examples of the HCR ethos and the label’s global reputation. Australia’s ELISION Ensemble release their fourth disc in collaboration with HCR, while the London-based Riot Ensemble makes its label debut with a project featuring new pieces from five female composers including Prof Lim and Prof Chaya Czernowin (Harvard University), followed by a second disc by Riot featuring the work of Patricia Alessandrini (Stanford University).

“Last year we made a commitment to reach a 50/50 gender balance across all the composers in our catalogue by 2022,” adds Aaron. “It was only 25/75 female/male, but we are a young label, and we knew this could be easily addressed.”

To emphasise this, early 2019 will see the release of Coming Up for Air by flautist and current CeReNeM PhD student Kathryn Williams. It’s a collection of 40 to 50 short pieces, written for Kathryn, that can all be played in a single breath. The collection was curated with an aim towards addressing the label’s gender balance target, and will be an important part of the label’s 10th anniversary celebrations.

Festival and HCR success linked

The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf//), which is on from 16 - 25 November 2018, began at the University in 1978 and is an important annual date in the contemporary music calendar, having played a vital part in HCR’s success. “The hcmf// connection has been very important to the label,” adds Aaron . “Across all our releases, a fairly significant number of them have had some tie-in to the festival. Our first CD, extended piano, was launched with a live performance by Sebastian Berweck at the festival, and since then, another 10 releases have been linked to projects presented at hcmf//.

“Most telling is that virtually every member of CeReNeM staff came to the festival before they came to work here. In our field, everyone knows Huddersfield as a name because of the festival.”

HCR also benefits from collaborations established through Speculations in Sound, an international research network created and hosted by CeReNeM that includes many of the world’s leading institutions for contemporary music. The network has facilitated exchanges and collaborative projects with staff at, for example, Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of Chicago, the University of Montréal, Monash, UCSD, and Stanford.

The label’s next wave of releases, planned into 2020, will feature compositions from academics in the network’s partner institutions as well as from CeReNeM’s many industry partner organisations.

 

 

Partners

ZKM: Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe (Germany), Institut für Elektronische Musik und Akustik – IEM (Austria), Notam – Norwegian Center for Technology in Music and Art (Norway) , Radio Bremen (Germany) , BBC Radio 3, Australia Council for the Arts, RMIT Gallery (Australia), Kairos Production (Austria), hcmf//, Apartment House, Bozzini String Quartet (Canada), ELISION Ensemble (Australia), Ensemble Musikfabrik (Germany), EXAUDI, University of Chicago, CHIME Electronic Music Studios (USA), Northwestern University, Bienen School of Music (USA)