A summer of music
- michellephillips4
- Sep 2
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 3
‘Summer’, wrote Harper Lee in her classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, ‘was our best season.’ There’s certainly a nostalgic quality to our summer memories – formed during those warm, drawn-out evenings, when we feel a great sense of freedom, be it from school, from work, or even just a big winter coat.
For me, the summer of 2025 stirred up a lot of those great summers gone by, because everything from my 1990s youth seemed to be back in the spotlight. For five warm July evenings, I enjoyed the retro sounds of Oasis floating across the evening air – soaring through the skies from Heaton Park right into my back garden in Salford, UK. I haven’t spent as much time as that with the band since they dominated the mid-1990s, when I was finding my feet as a teenager and Oasis were scoring the first of their seven chart-topping albums. Their comeback tour saw fans wait in online queues for as long as 11 hours to bag a ticket, some of which then appeared for resale online at over £1,500! To be fair, the band’s fans have form in this area; back in 1996, 2.5 million of them applied for just 250,000 tickets for Oasis’ Knebworth shows, and reportedly thousands more turned up without tickets just to listen.
The Heaton Park events themselves were wild: main roads where I live were pedestrianised, my sons' school closed early, and transport was clogged, with waves of bucket-hatted super fans marching en masse to Prestwich. There were also so many wonderful tales of people finding back doors in to see the shows, most famously on the spot coined ‘Gallagher Hill’ – a location tagged on Google Street View before the first show finished, attracting thousands of people to experience the vibe for free (and get the commemorative free t-shirt to prove it). For many, this was a milestone in their lives, and they were willing to go to great lengths and expense not to miss it, in a Greater Manchester steeped in such rich musical history.
In another echo of 1996, everyone was talking about the Euros – only in 2025, it was the Lionesses with the chance to bring home one of the biggest trophies in football. Not only did we witness women footballers from around the world showing such awesome strength, skill, and passion, we were reminded of how key a role music plays in high performance sports preparation, motivation, and daily habit. We heard from England forward Michelle Agyemang about how there isn’t a day “that I go without playing [the piano] … Especially on game days, I probably spend about two hours just playing and enjoying myself!”. Making music is part of her daily life: “I have my piano in my room so I’m spending a lot of time in there just playing and chilling. I don’t think that there’s a day that I go without playing.”
I followed the UEFA European Women's Championship final live online (thanks to BBC Sport) from a theme park in Disneyworld Orlando. The highlight of this wonderfully fun, hot, and action-packed holiday was our visit to the new Universal theme park, Epic Universe. Having only opened two months earlier, this 750-acre park was bursting with the latest in ride technology and visitor experience design and was a treat for all the senses. As Universal knows only too well, music is key in any immersive experience, and in Epic Universe, the right music is central to how we feel in its five new ‘Worlds’. For example, Universal commissioned legendary film composer Danny Elfman (who created the soundtracks to Batman and Spider Man, among many others) to write the music for the Dark Universe World, and the unnerving, uncomfortable, vintage horror feel that you get as soon as you enter is in no small part due the craft of this compositional legend.
While I revelled in the joy of hurtling through Super Nintendo World bashing yellow lucky blocks to collect virtual coins, it was the iconic Super Mario and Donkey Kong video game music themes that whooshed me back to joyous 1990s times playing these celebrated games. Hearing the music from Super Mario 64 (first released in 1996) will always transport me to a very special teenage place, taking turns with the games controller with my sister. Epic Universe is a reminder that music is a core part of how we experience the world; music is key to evoking emotional response, and to a feeling of being transported and immersed.
My current evening video game time is devoted to this year’s gorgeous and imaginative Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, scored by composer Lorien Testard. As you move around this dystopian, sci-fi and dark fantasy universe (one which is evocatively styled around the Belle Époque in France), a sophisticated and complex soundtrack (which is shortlisted for the World Soundtrack Awards 2025) provides a clever and impactful way to allow your ears to follow along with the adventure. The sound world is magnificent, a masterpiece in its own right, and I look forward to unlocking new parts of the game to hear the transition in the orchestration alone.
And of course, underlying all our holiday time, evenings in the garden, games in the park, visits to friends and family, and walks on the beach has been the wonderful Proms 2025 season. We’ve already enjoyed moments such as the Aurora Orchestra’s Shostakovich 5 (from memory!), the legendary Anna Lapwood’s all night prom, and – a highlight for me – my wonderful colleague and friend Stuart McCallum performing as part of his duo The Breath alongside the Paraorchestra. And we’ve still got Chineke! and so many other exciting performances to come!
My summer of music – which also includes the glorious sequel Freakier Friday staring the awesome electric-guitar shredding Lindsey Lohan (who, incidentally, plays the exact same red electric guitar that she first rocked in the 2003 original) – floats joyously through my head. I look back on these moments that underscore the essential role of music in human life and forward to 15 September, when we’ll welcome our new and returning students to the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK. It’s one of my favourite days of the year; momentum builds at the RNCM to this big day and then the building bursts with energy, creativity, innovation, and the future of music in the hands of these incredible musicians.
This summer of music, steeped in nostalgia and reminiscence for me, is just the warm up act for the musically magnificent autumn and academic year ahead – one which, on top of everything else, is also gifting up a new Taylor Swift album, The Life of a Showgirl! As another great English footballing pro Alessia Russo posted on her Instagram, here’s to ‘more memories, more music’.
by Dr Michelle Phillips, September 2025
I've been shortlisted for the I Love Manchester Alan Turing Award! Please vote for me (closes 3rd Oct 2025) at ilovemanchester.com/awards
