Georgia Rodgers

Georgia is studying towards a PhD in Music Composition at City University, London, working part-time under the supervision of Dr Newton Armstrong. She specializes in music for acoustic instrument and electronics, with a particular interest in the construction of space, the perception of sound and the human experience of listening.

Georgia holds a BSc in Physics with Music and an MSc in Digital Composition and Performance, both from the University of Edinburgh. In summer 2014 Georgia will take part in the Sound and Music Higher Education Programme working on a piece for tuba and electronics with Oren Marshall. Georgia also works as an acoustician for a firm of consulting engineers based in Camden. She lives and works (and was born) in north London.

Partial filter for tuba and electronics (9 minutes, 2014): my aim in this piece was to approach the tuba from an unusual angle in order to reveal hidden characteristics and really explore its sound world. I’ve concentrated on the sound made when the player breathes through the tuba without playing a pitch - a filtering of air through the volume of the instrument. Electronic processing techniques are used to magnify these sounds and focus in on the slight changes in grain which occur when the player make tiny adjustments to his breathing. Later we arrive at simple pitched sounds which swell and fill the space, before returning to filtered noise. I value a slow approach to listening. I think that our awareness of the morphology of a sound is heightened when it unfolds gradually. 

Cut it out for piano and electronics (9 minutes, 2014) started by recording works for piano which were processed electronically to highlight particular aspects of their sound. These were cut together to create a fixed electronic part which is mixed with the live piano in performance. The live piano part is derived from the scores of the original works with repetition, deviation and extended sustains. Different versions of the same sound combine to present a shifting and fragmentary whole which inhabits multiple acoustic spaces at once.