ISAD music

Listen to music composed by Professor Hywel Williams for the ISAD 2014 conference. Enjoy and share the songs for personal use. They may not be used for commercial use without expressed permission, and all copyright rests with Hywel Williams.

Fanfare

I thought it would be fitting for the Sheriff of Nottingham to be greeted by a fanfare when presenting the best oral and poster prizes. My brother told me that it sounded a bit like Karl Jenkins, whom I listen to a lot.

Theme 2

Here, I wanted to create a mystical and medieval theme to start each session off with. We played this at the start of each day. Just think of the mist rising in Sherwood Forest.

Circus

This was an up-beat slightly mad bouncing snippet that was played at the end of each sessions with the intention of helping conference participants get out of the main lecture theatre into the coffee area quickly. The imagery used when writing this song was a group of a mad and almost macabre circus troupe that was teetering on the brink of going out of control, like characters from a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

Cool jazz

This is more in my normal mainstream jazz style. This was played during the coffee and lunch breaks.

Come to Nottingham

Another little snippet that was sung at Moshi as an overture to the Nottingham ISAD. It is just a siren-like riff to draw you back to Nottingham. You may remember we used this when the choir left their tables to assemble on the stage in readiness for the Georg Rajka song.

Rajka song

Not the same without the words, I know, but here is the basic song which comprises three verses and lots of choruses. The thinking behind the song was to create something that was not sombre but not too up beat – more like an uplifting Gospel-style song that our backing chorus would sway to.

The Loners

I actually wrote this song 36 years ago when I ran a band as a medical student, but I have revamped it here. We played it at the end of each day as a sort of cool wind-down.