Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival: 23–24 November 2015

Extract

In keeping with now-established tradition, Monday was devoted to ‘hcmf// shorts’, a series of free, mostly bite-size concerts. The format is certainly appealing as a way to encounter a diverse range of musical worlds in one go, and it is valuable as a starting-point for those less familiar with new music; every event I attended was packed, and it was encouraging to see students, school groups and families among the attendees. Concerts in different venues were linked by Stephen Chase's participatory walking pieces, which transformed the journeys between them into enjoyable explorations of the changing acoustic environment (thanks to a route that took in tunnels, corridors, traffic and so on).