Staff Profile

Introduction

I am a composer, improviser, and musicologist, with particular interests in European modernism, electroacoustic music, environmental arts, and free improvisation. As theorist my particular interests are in the relationships between the human body and technology, the human voice, the mid-twentieth-century avant-garde in music, literature and the fine arts, and artistic perspectives on and engagements with the natural environment. I am currently working on the pre-WWI atonal music of Anton von Webern, exploring alternative approaches to understanding his work, from perspectives of embodiment and theories of space and place.

Background

Bennett Hogg completed his undergraduate degree in music at Nottingham University in 1982 and also has an MA in ethnomusicology from Durham University and an MMus in electroacoustic composition from UEA, supervised by Denis Smalley. He has worked as a composer in both electroacoustic and "conventional" media and has received several prestigious commissions and awards for his work, including commissions from the Royal Opera House's "Garden Venture", Sarajevo Winter Festival, Sonic Arts Network and Welsh Jazz Society, organisations whose diversity attests to his pluralistic creative outlook.

He is currently a senior lecturer in music and deputy head of department.

He was a key member of the Leverhulme Trust Bee-ing Human project (2022-2025) and contributed extensively to the publication of the interdisciplinary digital book produced through the project: see Bee-ing Human

He was Newcastle University's lead on the cross-institutional "Project RADICAL" exploring data sonification with Prof Paul Vickers at Northumbria University 2020-2023, also funded by a major Leverhulme grant, and continues to work with sonification as Newcastle lead on the joint UKRI interdisciplinary research project "Sonic Intangibles" (2024-2026), one of the first joint research council projects funded in the UK.

From February to September 2014 he was co-researcher on an Austrian Science Fund project "Emotional Improvisation" at University of Graz, Austria, directed by Prof Deniz Peters.

With "Landscape Quartet" http://landscapequartet.org/, an AHRC-funded research project he led from 2012-2014, he has held artistic-research residencies in Gavle, Kalv, Klagshamns udde, and InterArts Centre, Malmo (all Sweden) and in Morpeth, Allenheads Contemporary Arts, and Cheeseburn Grange, Stamfordham. With Sabine Vogel and Deniz Peters he was featured in the European Project for Artistic Research in Music conference [EPARM], Graz, the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, and the exploratorium, Berlin. He was curator of Environmental Sound Art and Music for Cheeseburn Grange Sculpture Garden, Northumberland, between 2006 and 2024, and a regular collaborator with Alan Smith of Allenheads Contemporary Arts.

He is currently collaborating with artist Mike Collier, with whom he has worked on multiple music/sound and visual arts projects since 2017, on a new audio-visual work for The Queen's Hall Arts Centre in Hexham based on the music and botanical activities of the Austrian composer Anton von Webern (1883-1945). He is also a frequent visitor to the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland, where he is researching the early atonal music of Webern. He regularly acts as a reviewer for a range of musicological publications, recent reviews have been for Leonardo, Organised Sound, Contemporary Music Review, Geographica Helvetica and The Journal for Artistic Research (JAR).

Roles and Responsibilities

• Senior Lecturer in Music
• Deputy Head of Music
• Degree Programme Director Master of Music (PGR)

Qualifications

• BA Hons in Music
• MA in Ethnomusicology
• MMus in Composition
• PhD in Music

Previous Positions

• Lecturer (PT), Norwich Institute of Art and Design
• Lecturer (PT), University of East Anglia
• Lecturer (temporary sabbatical cover), City University, London
• Lecturer, Muzicka Akademija, Sarajevo
• Lecturer (PT), Edinburgh College of Art

Memberships

• Performing Rights Society
• MCPS
• UCU

Languages

• English
• French
• Serbo-Croat/Bosnian

Informal Interests

Walking in the country, gardening, watching decent films, cows, travel, Sweden, alchemy, surrealist literature, Max Ernst, punk rock, free improv, British folk musics - especially playing the fiddle.

Research Interests

the music and ideas of Anton von Webern

electroacoustic music composition and sound art

free improvisation

the voice and technology

psychoanalytical informed hermeneutic approaches to culture

environmental sound art

politics and philosophy of the natural environment 

modernist music and thought

Other Expertise

Mostly gardening

Google scholar: Click here.

Current and Recent Work

Co-investigator (Newcastle University lead) on Sonic Intangibles, a two-year joint UKRI-funded interdisciplinary project exploring data sonification.

Co-editor of special issue of Seismograf, a Danish music and sound art journal specialising in the innovatory "audio paper" format, on Sound and the More-Than-Human World.

Composer for Dr. von Webern's Alpine Garden in Maria-Enzersdorf, a collaboration with artist Mike Collier, commissioned by Queen's Hall Arts Centre, Hexham, for March 2027.

Member of interdisciplinary art-science project Sensing Remoteness based at Northumbria University.

Ongoing archival research into the music and thought of Anton von Webern at the Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel, Switzerland.

Director of Landscape Quartet - formerly an AHRC-funded environmental sound art project.

Publications include the co-edited and curated book Songs of Place and Time, with contributions from artists, poets, environmental scientists and humanities scholars on birdsong. Contributions of academic scholarship and musical composition to Bee-ing Human, an interdisciplinary digital publication arising from the Leverhulme Trust "Bee-ing Human" project. Invited book chapters for Routledge Sound Studies Reader (ed. Michael Bull) and OUP Sound and Imagination (ed. Mark Grimshaw, et al). "Weathering" for Landscape Research Journal, "Healing the Cut" in Contemporary Music Review, "Aesthetics of Sonification" with Paul Vickers and David Worrall for Routledge Sonification Handbook (ed. Clemens Wollner), a critical position piece for the Canadian journal Critical Studies in Improvisation, and a co-authored journal chapter with Stefan Ostersjo for Contemporary Music Review among others.

Future Research

Anton von Webern

environmental sound arts.

instrumental and vocal composition

mid-century English music

Bodies and technologies.

Research Roles since 2013.

PI Landscape Quartet

researcher Northumbrian Exchanges 

researcher and project director ArCCADDE

participant Creative Exchanges

co-researcher "Emotional Improvisation" Graz, Austria from Feb to Sept 2014 

Co-director of Postvernacular Music Research Project (CETL funded)

Co-organiser of "Music and machines" seminar series (with S J Norman)

Co-organiser of conference "Improvisation: Freedom and Tradition"

Co-organiser of "Music and Machines VII" associated with Newcastle-Gateshead AV Festival 2008".

Postgraduate Supervision

Current supervisor of PhD students Andrew Mosely, Imogen Gunner, John Garner, Nell Catchpole, David de la Haye.

Esteem Indicators

• conference papers accepted through peer review at Music and Sonic Arts conference, Karlsruhe July 2018 and Literary Birds, Durham, October 2018.
• invited participant at Interference#5, an interdisciplinary symposium on artistic research in music, Malmo, January 2018

invited curator for environmental sound art and music, Cheeseburn Grange, Northumberland 2016

• invited participant in EIM-Live (Embodied Intelligence in Music), Leicester De Montfort University, April 2016.

• invited as co-researcher for "Emotional Improvisation" research project at University of Graz (beginning Jan 2014)

• speaker at "Beyond Soundscape", Sonorities Festival Belfast (April 2013) 

• panel member for revalidation of BA in Music at Havering College on behalf of Open University

• recipient of SACS Strategic Research Fund, 2013, to develop ArCCADDE project 

• external PhD examiner at UEA, SARC Belfast, York University, Goldsmiths London University, and internal examiner at Newcastle

• external examiner Huddersfield University (2012-2015)

• Guest lectures at Sussex University, Queen's Belfast, Kingston University, Edinburgh University, EMS Stockholm, Kunst Universitat Graz, University of East Anglia, Bath Spa University, etc. 

• invited critical respondent at (re)thinking improvisation, Lund University, Malmo, Dec 2011 

• Invited as performer and speaker to GEM Days at Huddersfield University, January 2010.
• Invited to contribute to collectively produced composition for the retirement celebration of Prof Denis Smalley, City University, October 2009.
• peer reviewed papers given at "The Musical Body, IMR, London" (April 2009), and "Music Since 1900, Keele" (July 2009).
• Joint keynote with Magnus Williamson at "Nothing new: Understanding newness in medieval and contemporary music", Huddersfield (April 2009).
• Invited presenter at "Creativity, Innovation and Labour in Music" at The Open University June 22-23, 2009.
• Member of CILM Research Network based at OU, Milton Ketnes.
• Music broadcast by BBC Radio 3, CKCU-FM Ottawa, QRSoundhour Belfast, ArtRadio Manchester, and featured in installation in FutureSonic07 Manchester.
• Member editorial board ARiADA text (webjournal).
• Member editorial collective Radical Musicology (webjournal).
• Reviewer/reader for "Organised Sound" journal
• Keynote speaker at Music and Surrealism study day Leicester DeMontfort University, July 2006.
• Guest research papers at SOAS, Bath Spa University, UEA, De Montfort, Norwich School of Art, University of Aberdeen
• Conference papers IASPM UK (Newcastle), IASPM International (Montreal), "British Forum for Ethnomusicology" (Brunel), "Music and Gesture" (Norwich), "ConferenceCATH" (Leeds), "Surrounded" conference on electroacoustic music (Keele).
• Solo and group perfromances at Stockholm Konstakademien and Fylkingen. residencies at EMS (Stockholm) and STEIM (Amsterdam).
• Co-organiser of conference associated with Newcastle-Gateshead AV Fetsival 2008.
• CD of collaborative project "my little pop group" released on Clinical Archives label, Moscow, 20-21st october 2007, release of two other projects scheduled for later in 2007-early 2008 - "wormhole" (with Will Edmondes and John Ferguson) and "january 2007" (with Sten-Olof Hellstrom)

Industrial Relevance

slim

Keywords

Undergraduate and Postgraduate Teaching 2025-26

Themes in Musical Modernism (MUS2004)

co-taught modules

Wagner and Wagnerism (MUS3051)

Understanding Music History (MUS1012)

Researching Music (MUS8020)

Major Creative Project (MUS8266)

Postgraduate Supervision:

Anna Heslop (MMus)

Amy Plummer (MPhil)

John Garner (PhD)

Nell Catchpole (PhD)

Andrew Mosely (PhD)

Imogen Gunner (PhD)

David de la Haye (PhD)

• Articles

  • Hogg B. Weathering: perspectives on the Northumbrian landscape through sound art and musical improvisation. Landscape Research 2018, 43(2), 237-247.
  • Hogg B. Improvisation in Process. Critical Studies in Improvisation 2017, 12(1), 1-7.
  • Hogg B. Healing the Cut: Music, Landscape, Nature, Culture. Contemporary Music review 2015, 34(4), 281-302.
  • Hogg B, Ostersjo S. ‘Patterns of Ecological and Aesthetic Co-evolution’: Tree-guitars, River-violins and the Ecology of Listening. Contemporary Music Review 2015, 34(4), 335-349.
  • Hogg B. When Violins Were Trees: Resistance, Memory, and Performance in the Preparatory Experiments for Landscape Quartet, a Contemporary Environmental Sound Art Project. Contemporary Music Review 2013, 32(2-03), 249-273.
  • Hogg B. The Violin, the River, and Me: Artistic Research and Environmental Epistemology in Balancing String and Devil's Water 1, Two Recent Environmental Sound Projects. Hz 2013, n/a(18), n/a.

• Book Chapters

  • Hogg B. 'This So Profitable Government of Bees': Shifting Relations Between Bees and Humans in Early Modern Beekeeping Books. In: Richards J; Smith O; Sousa-Garcia T, ed. Bee-ing Human: Inspired by Charles Butler's 'The Feminine Monarchy'. Newcastle upon Tyne: Newcastle University, 2025.
  • Hogg B. Sound in The Feminine Monarchie (1623). In: Richards J; Smith O; Sousa-Garcia T, ed. Bee-ing Human: Inspired by Charles Butler's 'The Feminine Monarchy'. Newcastle upon Tyne: Newcastle University, 2025.
  • Hogg B. Bees in the Early Modern Soundscape: An Overview of Sound in Seventeenth-Century Beekeeping Books. In: Richards, J; Smith, O; Sousa-Garcia, T, ed. Bee-ing Human: Inspired by Charles Butler's 'The Feminine Monarchy'. Newcastle upon Tyne: Newcastle University, 2025.
  • Hogg B. Meetings, Spaces, Desires: Some Personal Reflections on the Work of Ann Rosen. In: Sten-Olof Hellstrom, ed. Recycling the Work Process. Borrby: Schhh Publishing, 2023, pp.40-43.
  • Boehringer J, Pietruszewski M, Bowers J, Hogg B, Newbold J, Sharma GK, Shaw T, Vickers P. Listener-Centred Sonification Practice as Trans-disciplinary Experimental Artistic Engagement. In: Murillo, A;Monreal, I;Tejada, J;Carabias, D, ed. New Paradigms for Music Research: Art, Society and Technology. Vanecia, Spain: ARTSLAB Contemporary Art Education, Universitat de València, 2022, pp.167-194. In Preparation.
  • Hogg B. 'The notes that did so haunt me': Birdsong, Twilight and the Great War. In: Collier M; Hogg B; Strachan J, ed. Songs of Place and Time: Birdsong and the Dawn Chorus in Natural History and the Arts. Gaia Project Press in partnership with Art Editions North and Bath Spa University, 2021, pp.84-99.
  • Hogg B. Geographies of Silence. In: Bull M, ed. The Routledge Companion to Sound Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2019, pp.166-176.
  • Hogg B. ". . . they call us by our name . . .": Technology, Memory and Metempsychosis. In: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard, Mads Walther-Hansen, and Martin Knakkergaard, ed. Oxford Handbook of Sound and Imagination, volume 2. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019, pp.219-236.
  • Vickers P, Hogg B, Worrall D. Aesthetics of sonification: taking the subject-position. In: Wollner,C, ed. Body, Sound, and Space in Music and Beyond. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016, pp.89-110.
  • Hogg B. "A violin by any other name . . .". In: Rose, J, ed. The Museum Goes Live Catalogue. Sydney, Australia: Performance Space, 2016.
  • Hogg B. Dry Stone - Bennett Hogg and Matthew Sansom. In: Edit2.0 / What Does Green Really Mean?. London: London College of Communication, 2015.
  • Hogg B. not here, not yet: thinking improvisation. In: Ostersjo, S., Frisk, H, ed. (Re)thinking Improvisation: Artistic Explorations and Conceptual Writing. Malmo, Sweden: Lund University Press, 2013.
  • Hogg B. Music Technology, or Technologies of Music?. In: Clayton, M., Herbert, T., Middleton, R, ed. The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2012, pp.217-226.
  • Hogg B. Enactive consciousness, intertextuality, and musical free improvisation: deconstructing mythologies and finding connections. In: Clarke, D., Clarke, E, ed. Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp.79-93.
  • Hogg B. Who's Listening?. In: Randall, AJ, ed. Music, Power and Politics. New York: Routledge, 2005, pp.211-230.

• Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstracts)

  • Freeth B, Bowers J, Hogg B. Musical MESHWORKS: From networked performance to cultures of exchange. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques (DIS 14). 2014, Vancouver, BC, Canada: ACM.
  • Freeth B, Bowers J, Hogg B. Musical Meshworks: From Networked Performance to Cultures of Exchange. In: DIS 2014. 2014, Vancouver, Canada.
  • Hogg B. Embodied Consciousness as a Site of Cultural mediation in Thinking About Musical Free Improvisation. In: Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts. 2010, Lincoln, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press.
  • Vickers P, Hogg B. Sonification Abstraite/Sonification Concrète: An `Æsthetic Perspective Space' for Classifying Auditory Displays in the Ars Musica Domain. In: The 12th Meeting of the International Conference on Auditory Display. 2006, London.

• Edited Books

  • Hogg B, Östersjö S, Stefánsdóttir HS, Visi F, ed. Seismograf Peer: Sound and the More-Than-Human World. Denmark: Seismograf, 2025.
  • Collier M, Hogg B, Strachan J, ed. Songs of Place and Time: Birdsong and the Dawn Chorus in Natural History and the Arts. Gaia Project Press in partnership with Art Editions North and Bath Spa University, 2021.
  • Hogg B, Norman SJ, ed. Resistant Materials in Musical Creativity, Special issue of Contemporary Music Review. Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2013.

• Editorial

  • Hogg B, Norman SJ. Resistant Materials in Musical Creativity INTRODUCTION. CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW 2013, 32(2-3), 115-118.

• Exhibitions

  • Hogg B, Collier M. LISTEN: Singing the World (exhibition curated by Helen Ottaway and Melanie Day). 2019. Frome, UK: Black Swan Art Centre, Three musical compositions.
  • Hogg B, Collier M. Dawn Chorus: Mimesis and Birdsong (exhibition curated by Mike Collier). 2019. Middlesborough: Platform A Gallery, 2 musical compositions.
  • Hogg B, Collier M. A Dawn Chorus (exhibition curated by Mike Collier and Anita Taylor). 2018. Trowbridge, Wiltshire, UK: Drawing Projects UK, 2 musical compositions.
  • Hogg B, Collier M, Tani A. Singing the World (exhibition curated by Mike Collier). 2017. nr. Stamfordham, Northumberland, UK: Cheeseburn Grange Sculpture Gardens, 2 musical compositions.
  • Hogg B. Flow. 2012. Newcastle University: Gallery of Wonder.

• Musical Compositions

  • Hogg B. "Song". . Multiple performances, 2024.
  • Hogg B. Water into Stone. . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cheesburn Sculpture Gardens, 2019.
  • Hogg B, Snell M. Reflected Absence. . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cheesburn Sculpture Gardens, 2019.
  • Hogg B. Out of the wood of thought that grows by night. . 2018.
  • Hogg B, Williamson MG. Lost Voices. . 2017.
  • Hogg B. . . . singing every minute high up in the golden-green blossom. . 2017. In Preparation.
  • Hogg B. . . . a note touched upon the instrument of night. . 2017.
  • Hogg B, Sansom M. Dry Stone. . London, UK: London College of Communication, 2015.
  • Philadelphy M, Gruendler S, Klammer J, Hogg B. Razer (live at Stockwerk). . Vienna, Austria: GELP, 2014.
  • Philadelphy M, Gruendler S, Klammer J, Hogg B. Pace (live at Stockwerk). . Vienna: GELP, 2014.
  • Philadelphy M, Gruendler S, Klammer J, Hogg B. How (live at Stockwerk). . Vienna: GELP, 2014.
  • Philadelphy M, Gruendler S, Klammer J, Hogg B. Delock (live at Stockwerk). . Vienna, Austria: GELP, 2014.
  • Hogg B. “l’oiseau chante avec ses doigts” for classical guitar and live electronics. . 2011.
  • Hogg B, Ferguson J. untitled [rumple]. . York: kakutopia, 2010.
  • Hogg B. "l'oiseau chant avec ses doigts" for guitar and live electronics. . 2009.
  • Wormhole, Hogg B, Ferguson J. Steaming Priest. . Moscow: Clinical Archives, 2008.
  • Wormhole, Hogg B, Edmondes W, Ferguson J. Breath Wood Bone. . Moscow: Clinical Archives, 2008.
  • Hogg B. What did you find?. . 2007.
  • Ayers J, Ferguson J, Hogg B, Schrimshaw W. A dark room on a summer's day. . Moscow: Clinical Archives, 2007.

• Performances

  • Hogg B, Peters D, Vogel S. nature table # 3. 2017. Berlin, Germany: Exploratorium.
  • Hogg B, Peters D, Vogel S. nature table # 2. 2015. Graz, Austria: Mumut.
  • Hogg B. The Resistant Violin. 2007. STEIM, Amsterdam.

• Reports

  • Hogg B. The Cultural Imagination of the Recorded Voice, 1877-1940. Newcastle: Newcastle upon Tyne, 2008.
  • Hogg B. Meetings, Spaces, Desires: Some Personal Reflections on the Work of Ann Rosen. Stockholm, 2005.

• Review

  • Hogg B, Sansom M. Perspectives from Practice. Contemporary Music Review 2015, 34(4), 259-261.