Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 1: 15–21 November 2013

Extract

The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival has, for many years, been the date in the UK new music calendar. Every November, friends and enemies gather under the heavy skies of a Yorkshire micro-climate to listen to, perform and discuss new work. When Graham McKenzie took over as Artistic Director six years ago, there were murmurings that it might change out of all recognition. He certainly made a few bold decisions, introducing more multi-media, cross-disciplinary elements, installations and audio walks, and moving beyond St Paul's Hall to more contemporary spaces like the blending shed at Bates Mill. He also gave the festival's branding the once-over, so that HCMF now always appears as hcmf// (perhaps a nod to the trendy Wire magazine-reading audience he was trying to attract). Little of what he instigated at the start of his tenure has changed, but if there were fears that it would spell the end of ‘proper concerts’, one needn't have worried.