Sonic Heritage and Environmental Change on England’s East Coast, 1718–present
Funded by_
UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship
Project Partners_
Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, University of Oxford, Manchester Metropolitan University, National Trust, and Suffolk Archives
Year_
2027-2029
A UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, tracing the intertwined histories of England’s East coast and the Aldeburgh Festival. Tassie’s contribution as Research and Innovation Associate is We Become the Enfolders, a major new body of work made in and around Aldeburgh: a series of landscape instruments and site-specific performances — including an Aeolian Henge installed on the beach and a custom drone organ in Imogen Holst’s house — culminating in films, an album, and live performances.
Resonant Archaeologies
Funded by_
BCU Small Grants Scheme
Project Partners_
Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University, and Liam Byrne
Year_
2025-2026
A research project exploring how the sounding bodies of Early Music instruments can be reactivated through just intonation and digital technologies. Developed with the bass viol player Liam Byrne, the project has produced Earth of Shine and Dark Mottling, a piece for three scordatura bass viols existing as a concert work, a recording in stereo, binaural, and Dolby Atmos, and as film, 360° film, and installation.
The Augmented Harpsichord
Funded by_
Guildhall School of Music and Drama Research Residency
Project Partners_
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Year_
2024-2025
Designed and delivered as part of Guildhall’s Research Residency scheme, the project investigated the technological augmentation of a virginal, using Arduino circuits, force-sensitive resistors, potentiometers, and webcams to capture the player’s movements and the instrument’s response, routed through Max for Live and Ableton Live. The work asked how a sixteenth-century keyboard instrument might be extended with sensitivity to its historical-performance practice.
Renaissance Synthesisers (PhD)
Funded by_
UKRI Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership
Project Partners_
Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Year_
2020-2024
A practice-research project asking what new compositional and performance vocabularies arise from experimentation with Early Music instruments, creative technologies, and mixed or digital media — and how that practice relates to broader cultural frameworks. Situated within the emergent post-HIP scene, the project worked with Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque instruments, both modern copies and originals held in museum collections, alongside new studio and performance technologies, film, and recorded media. Creative practice was the primary means of research, with exegetic reflection drawing on musicology, historiography, philosophy, and sociology to refine an understanding of what that practice means, in particular the relationship between post-HIP and post-postmodernity. Findings are presented in a portfolio of concert and multimedia works and an accompanying commentary. Supervised by Professor Joe Cutler, Professor Jamie Savan, and Dr Andrew Hamilton.
Monograph
Tassie, B. [in preparation] (2028) Ecosystems of Sound: How Music is Made Now.
Articles
Tassie, B. [in preparation] (2027) ‘Resonant Archaeologies: From Monochord to Mp3 – Studio-mediated Bass Viol Performance, Microtonality, and 360° Film as Tools for Re-embodied Musical Experience (a Case Study)’
Tassie, B. & Kanga, Z. [forthcoming] (2026) ‘Augmented Organs, Cyborg Soloists: The Hyperorgan and Re-sacralised Sociality in Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees’, Contemporary Music Review.
Tassie, B. (2026) ‘Sheffield’s classical scene has so much potential – why are we not making the most of it?’ Now Then. 13 April. Available at: https://nowthenmagazine.com/articles/sheffields-classical-scene-has-so-much-potential-why-are-we-not-making-the-most-of-it-music-in-the-round [accessed 27 July 2026]
Tassie, B. (2021) ‘Post-HIP: New Music for Old Instruments in the Twenty-First Century’, Tempo 75(297) pp.61-70. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/tempo/article/abs/posthip-new-music-for-old-instruments-in-the-twentyfirst-century/E85127562247A960BABBCB22F64DAA29
Recordings
Tassie, B. & Kanga, Z. (2025) Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees [CD]. London, UK: Flung.
Tassie, B. (2025) Bad Death Ghosts. Montreal, Québec: Musique moléculaire.
Tassie, B. (2024) ‘Glass Coloured’, on Savan, J. & Dooley, J. The Polyphonic Cornett [digital]. Birmingham, UK: Birmingham Record Company/NMC Recordings.
Tassie, B. (2023) A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time [CD]. Birmingham, UK: Birmingham Record Company/NMC Recordings.
Tassie, B. (2018) ‘Sun’, on Juice Vocal Ensemble, Snow Queens [CD]. Spaunton, UK: Resonus Classics.
Substack
Tassie, B. (2026) ‘Why are they Singing? George Benjamin and Contemporary Opera (an Excerpt)’ Substack. 27 July. Available at: https://benjamintassie.substack.com/p/why-are-they-singing [Accessed 27 July 2026]
Tassie, B. (2026) ‘The Re-enchanted Ear: Reflections on the Orgelpark Symposium 2026’, Substack. 7 June. Available at: https://substack.com/@benjamintassie/p-201037145 [Accessed 27 July 2026]
Tassie, B. (2026) ‘Piano Garden: Annea Lockwood, Instruments, and the Making of Community’ Substack. 29 April. Available at: https://substack.com/@benjamintassie/p-195888074 [Accessed 27 July 2026]
Tassie, B. (2026) ‘Harpsichords & Extinction Rebellion: Part One – Arnold Dolmetsch, William Morris, and Late-Nineteenth-Century Conservationism’ Substack. 16 March. Available at: https://substack.com/@benjamintassie/p-191167031 [Accessed 27 July 2026]
Tassie, B. (2026) ‘To Mend Muisck: Thomas Salmon and the Creative Potential of Historical Dead Ends’, Substack. 23 February. Available at: https://substack.com/@benjamintassie/p-188923047 [Accessed 27 July 2026]
Tassie, B. (2026) ‘Closing Remarks,’ Organ Symposium Orgelpark 2026: OrganCore/Sharing Sounds [invited talk]. Het Orgelpark, Amsterdam, 4-6 June.
Bowler, L., Jones, C., & Tassie, B. (2025) ‘Composing the Landscape in the Twenty-first Century’, Rethinking Landscape: Environment, Place, and Heritage in British Music Studies. Symposium of the North American British Music Studies Association [invited panel]. Online, 10-12 July.
Savan, J. & Tassie, B. (2025) ‘Microtonal Cornett and Live Electronics: Expanding the Historical Performance Practice of the Cornett in Glass Coloured’, AEC European Platform for Artistic Research in Music (EPARM) Conference. Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, 2-5 April.
Tassie, B. (2024) ‘A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time as Case Study for ‘Historically-Informed Ecological Sound-art’’, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Public Research Seminar [invited talk]. Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, 26 November.
Tassie, B. (2024) ‘Intimate Listening: Nature, Place, and Music in A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time’, RMA Music and/as Process Study Group Conference: Environment, Space & Place. University of Glasgow, 28-30 June.
Tassie, B. (2024) ‘Approaching an Understanding of ‘Historically-Informed Ecological Sound-Art’: A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time as Case Study for a Nonmodern Ecological Art’, AEC European Platform for Artistic Research in Music (EPARM) Conference. Academy of Music, Ljubljana, 20-23 March.
Tassie, B. (2023) ‘Augmenting Historical Organs: The Use of Creative Technologies in Earth of the Slumbering and Liquid Trees’, Music Ex Machina: Methods & Methodologies for Technology-centred Practice-based Research in Contemporary Music Symposium. Royal Holloway, University of London, 16 June.
Tassie, B. & Underwood, S. (2022) ‘A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time: Water-Powered Historical Instruments as Ecological Intervention’, Twelfth International Conference on Music Since 1900. Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, 17-18 June.
Tassie, B. (2022) ‘Noticing a Landscape: Historical Instruments, Ecology, and Digital Media’, AEC European Platform for Artistic Research in Music (EPARM) Conference. Royal Academy of Music, London, 7-9 April.
Tassie, B. et al. (2019) ‘Sixty Years of Electronic Music: Female Pioneers and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’, V&A Museum Friday Late: Sonic Boom [invited panel: chair]. V&A, London, 22 February.