MANTIS Festival

Focused on two weekend festivals each year, MANTIS presents concerts of music and sound, featuring compositions and performances enhanced by the use of new technology and digital media.

Concerts include works ranging from the live diffusion of acousmatic works on the unique MANTIS 56-loudspeaker sound system, to live electronics, analogue, audio-visual, new-media and live instrumental and electronics with ensemble groups on stage.

A key aspiration of MANTIS is to promote, disseminate and perform new works by postgraduate electroacoustic composers based at The University of Manchester. Concerts normally take place at the Martin Harris Centre, but we have also taken festival events to a number of venues in Manchester and the wider north-west, such as the Victoria Baths, Whitworth Art Gallery and the John Rylands Library.

MANTIS concerts have also taken place in Salford, Lancaster, Liverpool and Valencia (Spain). A central focus of MANTIS composers' research is experimentation within different acoustic spaces and with new audiences.

Since 2004, the MANTIS festival has hosted many composers and guest artists, including Kees Tazelaar, Jonty Harrison, Francis Dhomont, Annette Vande Gorne, Pete Stollery, Rajmil Fischman, Denis Smalley, John Young, Andrew Lewis, Barry Truax and Adrian Moore.

The festival has also worked with performers Marij van Gorkom (bass clarinet), Esther Lamneck (clarinet), Elizabeth McNutt (flute), Neil Heyde, BBC Singers (with LICA), Kairos Electronic Ensemble, Christophe de Bezenac (saxophone), Christion Sebille (computer), Adam Melvin (saxophone), David Lewis (percussion), Tom McKinney (guitar), Iñigo Ibaibarriaga (saxophones), Idoia Zabaleta (dance), Luo Chao-yun (pipa) and Chen Wai-kai (Tai-chi improviser), Trio Atem and Psappha.

MANTIS has collaborated with EASTN-DC, New Music North West, Sonic Arts Network EXPO, LICA in Lancaster, the North Wales Music Exchange Conference, Digital Media Valencia, IDKA-Sweden, NK-Berlin and empreintes DIGITALes.