BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre) is the concert sound system of the University of Birmingham’s Electroacoustic Music Studios. It was founded by Jonty Harrison in 1982 to showcase electroacoustic music produced in the Studios and around the world. In the past 30 years, over 50 postgraduate composers based in the Birmingham Studios have been members of BEAST. As well as winning international competitions and receiving performances, broadcasts and commissions, many of these composers have gone on to teach in universities all over the world. In 2002, BEAST became part of the newly formed Centre for Composition and Associated Studies (COMPASS) in the Department of Music at the University of Birmingham and has, for many years, enjoyed a close working relationship with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
BEAST has performed extensively in the UK and other parts of Europe, including at London’s Southbank Centre, the Edinburgh and Huddersfield Festivals, the Henry Wood Hall in Glasgow, the Adrian Boult Hall in Birmingham, MultiMediale II in Karlsruhe, The Royal Dutch Conservatory in The Hague, The Acousmatic Experience in Amsterdam, the Aspekte Festival in Salzburg, the Inventionen Festival in Berlin (twice), the Echt-Zeit Festival in Basel, Aix en Musique in Aix en Provence and the Sound Around Festival in Copenhagen. It received very high acclaim as the concert sound system at the 1990 International Computer Music Conference in Glasgow and was an important contributor to both Sounds Like Birmingham – UK City of Music 1992, and Birmingham’s Towards the Millennium Festival during the 1990s. BEAST’s own promotions in its home town have included ten years of the Barber Festival of Contemporary Music, several years of rumours… and related events at the Midlands Arts Centre, murmurs… at the Crescent Theatre and, for the past few years, it has been a regular part of The Series at the CBSO Centre.
The BEAST diffusion system uses multiple channels of loudspeakers, whose differing characteristics make them appropriate for a particular position or function. The system includes arrays of tweeters (high frequency speakers which can be suspended over the audience), sub-woofers (low frequency speakers) and full-range speakers of varying characteristics. The performer is able to create a variety of sound images, and to ‘sculpt’ the spatial, dynamic and dramatic implications of the music in a particular performance environment in order to interpret and realise the composer’s intentions.