Howard Skempton's distinctive presence on the British musical scene, and his prolific compositional output since the mid-1960s, have presented commentators with certain challenges as they contemplate which labels to apply, and, for music analysts, which techniques to deploy. Skempton's own comments, in various interviews and essays down the years, remain the ideal starting point, suggest a range of contexts, some of which underpin this study. With reference to a few of his smaller vocal and keyboard compositions, the quality of constantly shifting rather than strictly fixed elements is explored. When pitch materials conform more or less exactly to tonal or modal tradition, rhythm is particularly important as a determinant of subtle shifting. But it is often the case that pitches identities themselves shift between functions best defined as tonal scale degrees at one extreme and post-tonal pitch classes at the other. The result is a very personal and unaggressive kind of modernism.

Linda Buckley is one of the leading figures in the thriving Irish new music scene, a composer whose work draws together many different elements, from spectralism, to ambient electronica, to minimalism and Irish traditional music. This article uses five works created in the last decade as lenses through which to examine a creative practice in which these apparently disparate elements have become increasingly integrated. From the 2008 string trio, Fiol, to the orchestral work Chiyo (2011), to Torann for large ensemble and electronics (2015), and finally to two works with string quartet, ó íochtar mara (2015) and Haza (2016), these works represent stages within the evolution of a highly distinctive musical language.

Over the past ten years, performance scores have been radically foregrounded in a variety of performance practices. Whether such notations assume a prescriptive function, visually projected for musicians to interpret, or a descriptive one, unfolding as a documentation of a live coding performance, how might such a foregrounding reframe the listening process for an audience? Does a notational schema help promote a deeper, structural level understanding of a musical work? This article will consider these various questions, exploring how principles of graphic design and the transparency of notation contribute to the listening experience. It will suggest that works featuring projected scores find aesthetic value in the juxtaposition of notation's traditionally mnemonic function and the unique temporal modalities that projected scores establish.

Brazil's foremost ensemble of the late twentieth century, Grupo Novo Horizonte de São Paulo, transformed Brazilian contemporary music by cultivating a new mixed-chamber repertory and giving sustained support to a generation of emerging composers. That this cosmopolitan group took, then outgrew, the Pierrot ensemble as its cornerstone signals the medium it forged: a localized, evolving spectacle with a richly internationalist heritage. This article offers a panoramic view of the musical, intercultural and historical contexts that underpin Grupo Novo Horizonte's practices and legacy. Analysing landmark works by Sílvio Ferraz, Harry Crowl and others allows us to draw further connections between the group, the Brazilianness of late twentieth-century compositional aesthetic, and the realities of contemporary classical music-making in Brazil.

Donaueschingen is three (and a half) days of nearly constant concerts; this review is around 3000 words. I have divided it into two sections. The first details the concerts that either I or the Donaueschingen audience considered to be of particular note, one way or another. The second deals with approaches to musical practice and issues raised by certain talks and performances. The date of composition for all of the pieces mentioned below is 2017 unless otherwise stated.

Elliott Carter's quotable 80s slur – ‘about one minute of minimalism is a lot, because it is all the same’ – was happily not applicable at this year's GAIDA festival in Vilnius. The 2017 programme of the biggest contemporary music festival in the Baltic States displayed many diverse faces of repetitive music and more besides, with a particular focus on eclectic post-minimalist David Lang (who pointedly denounced -isms and post-s in his programmed talk).

My hcmf 2017 started with Montreal's Quatuor Bozzini and pianist Philip Thomas performing three pieces by one of the festival's featured composers, Linda Catlin Smith. Smith's profile has been significantly raised in this country since the release of a portrait CD on Another Timbre, and she featured at Glasgow's Tectonics in May. Her compositional voice is distinct, one that avoids the grand statement in favour of half-familiar nooks and crannies, shading from folkish keening to an elusive chromatic space where Chopin meets Boulez and Feldman. Though each of the pieces, a Piano Quintet and two string quartets, Folkestone and Gondola, shared several aspects in their harmony and gesture, the larger picture as the music unfurled was quite different from piece to piece: the Piano Quintet explored quasi-independence between the bowed and keyed strings, while Folkestone proceeded in short fragments continually beginning again.

King's Place is a singular venue. A relative newcomer to London's range of concert halls, comprising multiple spaces that are of a matching bright and clear acoustic – very well-researched when designed, no doubt. Clean lines and wood panels abound: there are loads of loos and plenty of places to put your coat or pick up a drink. On paper it is the perfect venue for a contemporary classical concert.

Questioning whether new music is ‘losing touch’, Lydia Rilling, in her first edition as artistic director of Luxembourg's rainy days festival, curated a programme which sought, via an exploration of ‘the emotional landscapes of contemporary music’, to ‘reveal’ that this is not the case. The festival's scope extended beyond concerts to sound installations, pre- and post-concert talks, an (all female-presented) conference dedicated to the festival topic, a newly affiliated composition academy, and a closing ‘bal contemporain’ which paired Frank Zappa and Alexander Schubert with onion soup, while composers, musicologists and curators let loose after such extensive reflection upon the question that had been posed at every turn, emblazoned on the yellow telephone book-sized festival programmes (from which all quotations in this review are taken), echoed on individual concert programmes, interrogating the listener from the tickets’ fine print: how does it feel?