The Clore Space, Hay Castle, Hay-on-Wye HR3 5DG. Doors open at 10.00am. Refreshments.
Tickets: £15 (under 25s £7.50). Weekend Saver £110.
‘Music as a treatment’
A discussion with composer Nigel Osborne and Michael Trimble, Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience at Queen Square and UCL chaired by composer and educator Christopher Best.
Professor Michael Trimble is a Neuroscientist who has examined how music affects the brain. He has collaborated with the composer Nigel Osborne to examine how Music can be used as part of the treatment of clinical illness – in particular epilepsy. Nigel himself has pioneered methods of using music and the creative arts to support children who are victims of conflict. He began this work during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, an approach that has been implemented widely across the world. He has gone on to work in other war zones such as Syria and currently in Ukraine and has published on the therapeutic use of music. Expect an unusual and highly expert discussion on this fascinating and important topic.
Nigel Osborne MBE is a British composer, teacher and war zone aid worker. He served as Reid Professor of Music at the University of Edinburgh and has also taught at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover. He is known for his extensive charity work supporting war traumatised children using music therapy techniques, especially in the Balkans during the Bosnian War.
Michael Trimble is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a Member of the Association of British Neurologists. His publications include three editions of Biological Psychiatry (1988 and 1996) and over 30 titles dealing with the interface between neurology and psychiatry, especially in the field of epilepsy. Other books include The Soul in the Brain, John Hopkins University Press 2007, Why Humans Like to Cry, Oxford University Press 2012, the Intentional Brain: Motion, Emotion and the Development of Modern Neuropsychiatry, John Hopkins University Press 2016. He has written papers on music and the brain, notably with the effects of music in people with epilepsy and PTSD. He has a special interest in opera, his books include Sudden Death in Opera, (Cambridge Scholars 2021) and Symbols and Metaphor in Opera – The Power and the Glory (Cambridge Scholars 2025). In addition, he has published papers in the Wagner Journal and works with Nigel Osborne and others with music therapy.
Christopher Best is a composer specialising in concert, dance and acousmatic music. Commissioning groups have included the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, the Fisarchi Ensemble of Florence, Scottish Dance Theatre, Emilyn Claid & Co., Jamaican National Dance and Bimba Dance Theatre. Works have also been written for ensembles including Aquarius, Jane's Minstrels, Kokoro, the choir of Selwyn College Cambridge and Onyx Brass.
Chris places particular emphasis on collaboration and has worked with such distinguished artists as pianists Michael Finnissy and Ian Pace, dancer-choreographers Emilyn Claid, Kenneth Tharp, Janet Smith, Gill Clarke and Sarah Whatley, accordionist Miloš Milivojević, trumpeter Alan Thomas, cellist Rohan de Saram, guitarists Aleksandra Sapok and Matthew Marshall, organists Simon Hogan and Daniel Hyde and harpist Ruth Wall. His music has received widespread critical acclaim and been performed and broadcast internationally.
Recent output includes 'Lakewood' for solo guitar; 'Missa Mensura', a setting of the Latin mass for chorus and chamber ensemble; 'Hawaiki - Six Conceptions' for chorus and orchestra; acousmatic compositions 'Once It Is Over' and 'Worlds I-V'; 'Clarion Song' for trumpet and organ; 'Odes and Episodes' and 'Echoes of a Lost Music', both for electric guitar; and 'Scending' for flutes and accordion.
Chris took undergraduate music composition at Lancaster University under Edward Cowie, gained a Masters degree at Churchill College Cambridge under Hugh Wood and completed a doctorate at Nottingham University under Nigel Osborne and James Fulkerson. His professional life has combined lectureships at Coventry University, Dartington College of Arts and Falmouth University with freelance teaching, composing and creative writing. He has worked extensively throughout the UK and abroad, and co-directed residential music and dance exchanges in Devon, Manchester, London and Madrid