Biography
Job Title: Associate Professor of Sound Design, Composition and Performance
Courses Taught: BA (Hons) Music (Production), BA (Hons) Music (Classical), MA Music
Specialisms: Electroacoustic Music
Professor Rob Bentall is a composer, performer and researcher. His musical output, which has been heard across Europe as well as North and South America, hybridises electronica, folk, and experimental music practices. He is interested in electronic music composition, genre theory, improvisation, and the intersection of ancient and modern music. Much of his recent creative practice focuses around new work for the 16-stringed Swedish nyckelharpa and electronic sound.
He read for a BMus at the University of Manchester, graduating in 2010 with the P.J. Leonard Prize for electroacoustic composition, and then gained an MMus from the University of Sheffield, supervised by Dr Adrian Moore and supported by a Julian Payne Scholarship. In 2015, Rob completed a DELNI-funded PhD at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (Queen’s University Belfast) under the supervision of Dr Paul Wilson and Dr Simon Waters, for which he researched genre hybridisation in electroacoustic music composition.
In 2012, he was the recipient of a Santander Mobility Scholarship to study with Prof. Rodrigo Velloso at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
He has held artist residencies at the Electronic Music Studios, Stockholm (2013), Visby International Composers Centre, Gotland (2014) and Cryptic Arts / Cove Park (2017). Rob was a finalist for the 2013 Franz Liszt Composition Prize in Weimar, Germany, and the 2014 Oxford/Sennheiser Electronic Music Prize. His article “Methodologies for Genre Hybridisation” was published in leading peer-reviewed electronic music journal Organised Sound. From 2015-2017, Rob was a Sound and Music International Embedded composer-in-residence with CMMAS Mexico and the Sound.Music.Image Research Centre at the University of Huddersfield. In 2020, Rob received Arts Council England funding for his project Reimagining the Nyckelharpa.
In the recent years, Rob has co-directed Sheffield-based minimalist improvising ensemble Emergence Collective, which features a mixture of medieval and modern instruments. The group have performed widely, released their first album Fly Tower (2023) featuring 10 improvising musicians, and led pattern-based improvisation workshops. Rob also performs in free-folk improv duo Resonant Bodies – this group had music released on Betwixt and Between Tapes in September 2024. Rob has written electro-acoustic soundtracks for theatre companies including Knaïve Theatre (War With The Newts: 2018), Northern Broadsides (As You Like It: 2022), Mafwa Theatre (The Journey: 2023) and Impermanence (Ballet of the Nations: 2018 / Baal: 2019). In April 2024, Rob performed his new work Flatlands, for nyckelharpa and electronics, at Sonorities Festival.
Rob teaches final-year modules Electroacoustic Composition, Computer-Based Composition, and Practice in Context: Research Project. He is a 1-2-1 tutor for Specialist Study Music Production III, and offers postgraduate supervision for students on MA Music programmes.
