HCMF - Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival

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The UK’s largest international festival of new and experimental music, taking place over 10 days each November and featuring 50+ events including performances, exhibitions, talks and workshops, plus a year-round Learning & Participation programme. hcmf// is an annual, international festival of contemporary and new music, taking place over 10 days and consisting of approximately 50 events – includi

ng concerts, music-theatre, dance, multi-media, talks and film – with a related Learning & Participation programme devised and implemented to reflect the artistic programme and respond to regional need. hcmf// aims to provide life-changing and unique artistic experiences to as wide an audience as possible; to be an international platform for new music and related contemporary art forms in Britain; to enthuse existing audiences and draw in new ones through adventurous programming and informed, stylish presentation, and to be an active cultural partner within the region.

2025/2026 has been an incredible year at hcmf//, and we wanted to share some of our highlights with you. From a brillian...
28/05/2026

2025/2026 has been an incredible year at hcmf//, and we wanted to share some of our highlights with you.

From a brilliant festival with Sarah Hennies as our Composer in Residence, to a jam-packed HAF holiday workshop programme full of creativity, collaboration and experimentation, it’s been a year shaped by artists, audiences and communities coming together through new music and sound.

Across the year we’ve welcomed adventurous performances, inspiring conversations, first-time participants, returning collaborators and bold new ideas — from Huddersfield and beyond. Whether you joined us for a concert, took part in a workshop, volunteered your time or supported us from afar, thank you for being part of it.

We’re proud to continue creating spaces for curiosity, risk-taking and collective listening, and excited for everything still to come.

Here’s to another year of pushing boundaries, making noise and building community together.

With the final instalment of hcmf// 2025: Rewind, we pause to reflect on the moments where music, sound and art intersec...
01/05/2026

With the final instalment of hcmf// 2025: Rewind, we pause to reflect on the moments where music, sound and art intersected with urgent questions about our world — and hcmf// x Cultures of Climate was a striking example.

Launched in 2022, our ongoing programme The Current Climate explores how the cultural world can respond to the climate crisis, connecting artists, researchers and audiences through workshops, discussions, performances and installations. At hcmf// 2025, we joined forces with the University of Huddersfield’s Cultures of Climate programme and CeReNeM, curating a day of free events that highlighted how sound, space and art can amplify our relationship with the environment.

From Laura Campbell's soundwalk 'Betweenness' to immersive installations by Monty Adkins + Claire Barber ('Tipping Point') and Stewart Worthy ('Reclaimed Land'), from Geoffrey Cox's evocative film 'Tell It To The Trees' to performances including 'When I grow up to be the apocalypse' (Maria Sappho + Colin Frank), 'Paradoxical Symmetries: A Huddersfield Polytope' (Nic Clear + Hyun Jun Park), and Monty Adkins + Ria Bagley's 'Sonic Ecologies', the programme revealed the myriad ways creativity can make the climate visible, tangible, and urgent.

Across a day-long journey, audiences encountered work that was simultaneously reflective, experimental, and deeply rooted in place — a reminder of how art and research together can spark dialogue, empathy, and action.

As we near the end of our hcmf// 2025: Rewind, we look back at moments that pushed the boundaries of collaboration and s...
30/04/2026

As we near the end of our hcmf// 2025: Rewind, we look back at moments that pushed the boundaries of collaboration and sound — and XN was a day-long reminder of why experimentation matters.

Part of a three-year exchange between two leading UK and German experimental music festivals, XN brought artists, ideas and audiences together in a programme defined by curiosity, dialogue, and risk. From solo to quintet, each performance explored new ways for instruments, voices, and improvisation to meet.

Stefan Schultze opened the day with the UK Premiere of 'Hyperplexia', ripping up the rule book with his reimagining of the piano for the 21st century. Acoustic mastery collided with futuristic tech in a performance that felt equal parts experiment, improvisation and spectacle.

Later that day, vibraphonist Evi Filippou and double bassist Robert Lucaciu wove Balkan folk, jazz, and avant-garde textures into a duo of stark contrasts and rich interplay, while Akiko Ahrendt, Annie Bloch, and Emily Wittbrodt explored deep listening and shared transformation as a first-time trio, dissolving boundaries between violin, organ and cello.

The evening culminated in a quintet performance bringing together German composer, conductor and violinist Carolin Pook with four UK musicians selected via open call. Over three intensive days of collaboration, they created a series of works that balanced individual voice with collective identity, resulting in a performance alive with invention, trust, and creative daring.

“Adam Denton, Alexander Painter, Gloria Yehilevsky, and Jui Ying Huang (who received her musical training in the Taiwanese military!) roam through a wide variety of soundscapes, drifting apart and coming back together again in a way that is a joy to behold. And in doing so, they present “in a nutshell” the appeal of this special festival.”

Stephanie Grimm (taz.de)

From the meticulously crafted to the wildly improvised, XN reminded us why the edges of sound are worth exploring — a celebration of international exchange, experimentation, and fearless artistic dialogue.

Next in our hcmf// 2025: Rewind series, we revisit a performance that shifted perspectives — and lifted the roof.In Olga...
27/04/2026

Next in our hcmf// 2025: Rewind series, we revisit a performance that shifted perspectives — and lifted the roof.

In Olga Kokcharova’s 'Signal-to-noise ratio', the background became the message. Noise, residue and sonic “imperfections” moved to the foreground, challenging the hierarchy between signal and interference. What is usually filtered out revealed itself as intimate, affecting and alive with detail. It was a work of close listening — precise, thoughtful and quietly transformative.

Then the atmosphere turned electric.

In the second half, composer/darbuka player Wassim Halal and a fully amplified ensemble unleashed 'Sang d’Angle' — darbuka-driven, percussion-heavy and unapologetically bold. Playing with imitation and illusion, Halal refracted musical traditions through groove, amplification and rhythmic force. The result was intense, joyous and propulsive: smiles spreading, energy building, the room moving as one.

From forensic subtlety to ecstatic release, it was a night that captured the full emotional range of the festival — and one of its true highlights.

As part of hcmf// 2025: Rewind, we return to works that transformed space as much as sound.'Marlaut' — co-created by Deb...
24/04/2026

As part of hcmf// 2025: Rewind, we return to works that transformed space as much as sound.

'Marlaut' — co-created by Debbie Armour .armour.sound Maria Sappho Nadya Hatta .hatta and Arum Dayu — unfolded as a performance-installation of sound, textiles, film and site-specific instruments. Drawing on stories, songs and visual traditions from Indonesia, Puerto Rico and the UK, it wove a contemporary folklore attentive to what is discarded, overlooked or unheard.

Presented at hcmf// in its first complete performance, the work invited audiences to move through the space — tracing themes of waste and resource, care and mothering, domestika, and the entangled fates of Mother Ocean and humanity. Developed through our Networking Archive: UK–Indonesia Contemporary Music 2024 residency in partnership with Perempuan Komponis: Forum & Lab, 'Marlaut' became both artwork and living archive: of women’s voices, of process, of objects reimagined.

Looking back, it remains a journey through earth, sea and sound — an invitation to listen differently, and to notice what endures.

With hcmf// 2025: Rewind, we’re revisiting performances that expanded the horizons of sound.Making their hcmf// debut, F...
23/04/2026

With hcmf// 2025: Rewind, we’re revisiting performances that expanded the horizons of sound.

Making their hcmf// debut, Finnish ensemble Saxtronauts — Anna-Sofia Anttonen , Nanna Ikonen , Nanako Lammi and Sikri Lehko — treat the saxophone not simply as an instrument, but as a vehicle for exploration. Moving from whispering lyricism to volcanic force, the quartet revealed the instrument’s full expressive spectrum with a programme that traced Baltic and Nordic sound worlds.

Featuring UK premieres by Meriheini Luoto, Osmo Tapio Räihälä and Mioko Yokoyama alongside the spectral shimmer of Justė Janulytė and the luminous clarity of Arvo Pärt’s 'Summa', minimalism, microtonality, electronics and folk-inflected textures met in a performance both grounded and expansive.

Looking back, the concert felt true to the ensemble’s spirit of discovery: the saxophone as telescope and compass, guiding listeners through uncharted constellations of sound.

XN at Moers Festival (moers festival) 2026Curated by Graham McKenzie, the second year of XN (X perimental N counters) be...
20/04/2026

XN at Moers Festival (moers festival) 2026

Curated by Graham McKenzie, the second year of XN (X perimental N counters) begins with a distinct group of artists whose practices stretch, dismantle, and reimagine the possibilities of sound.

Kicking off this year's international exchange is Erosion Control — Sophie Cooper, Tom Hawkins & Flo Christman — working at the threshold of noise and materiality, where sound is pushed into something physical, volatile, and unstable.

This sits alongside Jan Hendrickse’s Black Noise, a stark and process-led solo work in which the flute is burned, transformed, and revoiced — a meditation on fragility, destruction, and what endures.

Extending this exploration of dialogue and exchange, Heather Roche leads a collaborative residency with emerging Germany-based artists, culminating in a live performance shaped through shared experimentation and collective authorship.

Completing the programme, Shahbaz Hussain & Helen Anahita Wilson bring a deeply attuned cross-cultural practice — bridging South Asian traditions with contemporary classical and jazz — grounded in rhythmic precision, improvisation, and an intuitive musical connection.

Together, these artists reflect the breadth of approaches within experimental music today: from raw sonic enquiry to intercultural collaboration, from material transformation to collective creation.

📅 22–23 May
📍 Moers

Read more at the link in our bio.

Today's instalment of hcmf// 2025: Rewind reflects on a night where tradition was not preserved in glass, but set vividl...
20/04/2026

Today's instalment of hcmf// 2025: Rewind reflects on a night where tradition was not preserved in glass, but set vividly in motion.

Córas Trio Córas Trio — Kevin McCullagh, Paddy McKeown and Conor McAuley — brought the restless energy of the Irish seisiún into a new, exploratory frame. Rooted in jigs and reels yet propelled by electronics and free improvisation, their music stretched and compressed time, distilled melodies to their essence, and unfolded as a fully improvised three-way conversation. It was tradition deconstructed and reimagined in real time: bold, quick-witted, and alive to the present.

Making her hcmf// debut, Brìghde Chaimbeul Brìghde Chaimbeul offered a different but equally powerful invocation of cultural memory. A master of the Scottish smallpipes, she drew from Gaelic language, folklore and the eternal pull of the drone, blending minimalism and experimentation with deeply rooted tradition. Performing music from her album 'Sunwise' alongside earlier works, Chaimbeul created a sound world that felt ancient and immersive — winter-dark, hypnotic, and luminous.

Together, this double bill traced two distinct yet connected paths: music of the land, of story, of shared inheritance — reshaped for now, and resonating far beyond it.

Lauri Supponen traces vast ideas back to the smallest of turning points—where a tree falls, a line is crossed, a directi...
17/04/2026

Lauri Supponen traces vast ideas back to the smallest of turning points—where a tree falls, a line is crossed, a direction quietly shifts.

His music, including 'Ave Maris Stella', 'Picea', and the new work 'east' (all at hcmf// 2026), unfolds from overlooked histories and fragile geographies. From Alpine spruce forests to Renaissance echoes, from NASA’s hidden figures to imagined sonic ecosystems, Supponen finds connection in unlikely places—where past and present, science and myth, all begin to blur.

An oboist, double bassist, and composer, his work moves between the tactile and the conceptual: garden-hose instruments meet Gabrieli chorales; violin histories grow from trees; directions fold in on themselves until east becomes west.

Supponen’s music reminds us that the smallest shifts—a detail, a decision, a moment—can carry consequences far beyond themselves.

‘The further east you go, the more west there is.’

Read more: hcmf.co.uk/composer-in-residence-profile-lauri-supponen/

Words by Tim Rutherford-Johnson

Photo © Tuomas Tenkanen

Address

Room RS1/10, University Of Huddersfield
Huddersfield
HD13DH

Opening Hours

Monday 9:30am - 5:30pm
Tuesday 9:30am - 5:30pm
Wednesday 9:30am - 5:30pm
Thursday 9:30am - 5:30pm
Friday 9:30am - 5:30pm

Telephone

+441484430528

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