The Cambridge University Experimental Music Ensemble (CueMe) was founded in 2021 by composer and researcher Dr Saman Samadi, with support from Dr Peter McMurray at the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, and Lynette Alcántara at Wolfson College. The ensemble developed from an interest in what happens when musical interpretation is allowed to become experimental in its own right: when a work inherited from the repertoire is approached as material whose relations, performance conventions, and historical assumptions may be tested rather than simply reproduced.

CueMe therefore works across composition, interpretation, improvisation, spoken text, and interdisciplinary performance. Its projects may begin from twentieth-century repertoire, contemporary composition, philosophy, literature, or other materials whose established form can be placed under new performative pressure. The aim is not novelty for its own sake. Experimentation becomes useful when it changes what can be heard in a work, when familiar material acquires another relation to time or gesture, or when the act of performance reveals possibilities that remain dormant within a more conventional reading.

This approach also shapes the ensemble’s engagement with living composers. CueMe provides a space in which new work can be developed through rehearsal and performance, particularly where composition crosses disciplinary or stylistic boundaries and where performers become active participants in the formation of the work. The distinction between composing and interpreting can therefore remain deliberately permeable: a historical object may become the beginning of a new performance, while a new composition may itself depend upon processes of quotation, transformation, improvisation, or collective decision.

CueMe gave its first public performances in Cambridge in May 2022, appearing at West Road Concert Hall, Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, on 10 May, and at Lee Hall, Wolfson College, on 14 May. Among the works developed through these performances was Samadi’s Avec Boulez, Mallarmé, et Foucault, in which materials from Boulez, Mallarmé, and Foucault are reorganised through instrumental performance, recitation, fragmentation, and recomposition.

Speaking and Being: A Lecture Performance with Kübra Gümüşay

A lecture performance featuring saxophonist Dr. Peter McMurray on saxophone, sound artist Dr. Saman Samadi on electronics, mezzo-soprano Dr. Lea Luka Tiziana Sikau, and recorder player Dr. Fatima Lahham, with Kübra Gümüşay presenting her latest work, "Speaking and Being." This English rendition of her bestselling book 'Sprache und Sein' (2020) illuminates the profound influence of language on our cognitive processes, perception of others, understanding of the world, and the construction of cultural and political meanings. This event was an exploration of the intricate relationship between language, sound, music, and our existence.

9 April 2022
Cambridge Festival
Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH)
University of Cambridge 

Photo Credits

Pierre Boulez: Joost Evers/Anefo/Nationaal Archief
Stéphane Mallarmé: Paul Nadar/Sotheby's
Michel Foucault: Alexis Duclos/AP/REX/Shutterstock.com

Header photo: Sylvano Bussotti, Piano Piece #3, 1959.