Salford Sonic Fusion Festival, University of Salford, 21-24 Mar

Following its debut in 2012, Salford Sonic Fusion Festival returns for a four day celebration of cutting-edge experimental composition and leading contemporary music ensembles. Based around the two-site campus of the University of Salford, it offers a fine showcase of music by leading contemporary composers and performers.

Programming-wise, Sonic Fusion is imaginative and has a refreshingly cosmopolitan feel. Listening Cities – the culmination of a number of cultural exchanges between Salford and four European universities – is perhaps the best example of this, and makes for a dynamic series of electroacoustic events in the intimate space of MediaCity’s DockBar. Thursday afternoon’s performances, given by members of the Electroacoustic Music Research Laboratory, Corfu, are packed with brooding soundscapes brimming with dark intent.

Among Friday’s events is an album launch concert from Nottingham-based duo SCAW (Sarah Watts on bass clarinet and Antony Clare on piano), who give the small audience at Peel Hall a taste of their recently expanding repertoire. On bass clarinet, an instrument not renowned for solo play, Watts shows how this deep and earthy-sounding woodwind instrument can be dynamic and full of remarkable multiphonic possibility.

The festival’s sound installations equally impress, with Mark Fell’s Wave Field Synthesis placing you in the otherworldly surroundings of the University’s anechoic chamber. Standing in pitch black and immersed in the sound of 128 speakers for 15 minutes, you get the strange feeling of experiencing sound almost as a physical presence.

With free entrance available to many of the events, Sonic Fusion provides a great chance to see fascinating performances at innovative venues; think Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival but affordable. Perhaps the only shame is poor attendance. Wintery weather certainly doesn’t help, but neither does the decision to host the festival outside of university term time, with barely a student in sight around either campus. Perhaps the main logic is to run at the same time as Manchester’s ever-popular FutureEverything; notably the Carter Tutti: HARMONIC COACTION concert at the University’s MediaCity-based Digital Performance Laboratory, co-produced by the two festivals, is a complete sell-out. [Simon Benger]