REFRACTED SOUND
REFRACTED SOUND
SOUTHBANK CENTRE QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL
The London Sinfonietta acknowledges Arts Council England for its support of the ensemble, as well as many other individuals, trusts and individuals who enable us to realise our ambitions. This concert is produced by London Sinfonietta. The broader work of the London Sinfonietta is significantly supported by the Garfield Weston Foundation and the John Ellerman Foundation.
6.15pm - 7pm
Tim Rutherford-Johnson in conversation with Jack Sheen and Rowland Hill
7.30pm Evening Concert
Samuel Beckett Quad I + II (17’)
Morton Feldman For Samuel Beckett (50’)
There is no interval in tonight’s performance
Jack Sheen conductor & co-director of Quad
Rowland Hill co-director of Quad
Dancers:
Trinity Laban Student & Alumni
Kaya Blumenthal-Rothchild
Sandy Hoi Shan Yip
Mary Sweetnam Timea Szalontayoya
Royal Academy of Music
Manson Ensemble
London Sinfonietta
Tony Simpson lighting designer
Juliet Dodson costume designer (Quad I + II)
The Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble will be performing side-by-side with the London Sinfonietta as part of our Playing the Future talent development programme.
This concert is dedicated to Sir Stephen Oliver QC, a long-serving member of the London Sinfonietta Council and supporter of the organisation, who passed away earlier this year.
WELCOME
ON BECKETT AND FELDMAN
Welcome to tonight’s concert, which for us is the moment in our season when we celebrate working alongside early-career performers in staging remarkable contemporary works.
We are excited to return to this Morton Feldman score, and yet this time perform it side-by-side with brilliant early career musicians from the Royal Academy of Music, to whom we are grateful. For us in the London Sinfonietta this is a continuation of a tradition to support the next generation of early-career musicians that has already included, in past seasons, some important works by Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin and Tom Adès. We know from their feedback that these young musicians have benefitted from training and inspiration, encouraging them to focus on contemporary music in their musical careers. Successful new contemporary orchestras and festivals have been created as a result. We already work sideby-side with teenage musicians from London schools, and yet plan to support more of them in future.
It’s also very good to be working again with Jack Sheen whose enthusiasm for this project led to his suggestion we include the performance of Beckett’s Quad which will be a hugely fascinating addition to this programme. We need to add our thanks to Trinity Laban, Hilary Stainsby and the dancers who will realise the work with us. Finally thanks to Tony Simpson for our ongoing collaboration over lighting. His understanding of what works for our musicians as well as the audience is essential.
The final collaboration I want to celebrate is with all those who believe in the London Sinfonietta project and demonstrate that with their support. That primarily includes you for coming tonight. And to the Southbank Centre for our important Residency here, and to our funders who see the importance of our commitment to championing the repertoire of the past 100 years and commissioning new music for the 21st century. Many of you know we use music and composition as the way to inspire young people and communities – at a time when financial support for the arts has shrunk and their place in the curriculum has been diminished. If you want to help us continue our work we would love to hear from you. Our season contains an exciting mix of repertoire, commissions, work with young people and communities – and we hope you will return again later this year to another of our performances and follow our projects.
Andrew Burke
Chief Executive & Artistic Director London Sinfonietta
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There couldn’t have been a more poetically fitting first meeting. On 20th September 1976 Morton Feldman arrived in Berlin at the Schiller Theatre: ‘I was led from daylight into a dark theatre, on stage, where I was presented to an invisible Beckett. He shook hands with my thumb and I fell softly down a huge black curtain to the ground’.
Feldman invited Beckett to lunch (he only drank beer) where they discussed a potential collaboration. A conversation of negation began: ‘I don’t like Opera.’ ‘I don’t blame you!’ ‘I don’t like my words being set to music.’ ‘I’ve written a lot of pieces with voice, and they’re wordless!’ ‘But what do you want?’. ‘I have no idea!’
And a lot happens. Both works contain a soft, teeming energy, yet refuse to play by the rules of linear time. Instead, through real and imagined repetition they strive for an almost sculptural form: they present themselves for us to observe and sink into.
After their lunch, Beckett and Feldman did end up collaborating on an opera, Neither, and a radio play, Words and Music. In the end, Beckett outlived Feldman, who died months after completing For Samuel Beckett Thus Feldman’s composition is not a memorial, but a token of deep respect and gratitude from one of the century’s most influential artists to another, whose shared vision is epitomised and celebrated in these two works tonight.
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Negative space underlines Quad and For Samuel Beckett. They share a common goal of reducing their materials to a crystalline form. In Quad, Beckett erases theatrical language, characters, and plot into ‘A piece for four players, light, and percussion’. In For Samuel Beckett, Feldman flattens the discursive contours of sound that have underpinned Western music from Bach to Boulez into a weave of individual sustained tones.
Yet these are not gruelling exercises in austerity. In bypassing the core tenets of their respective mediums, we enter a darker space through which our senses are heightened. We become attuned to the subtlest of shifts in the dramatic fabric of what is happening on stage.
Jack Sheen
Quad, a series of minimalist experimental television plays made by Beckett in the 1980s for the broadcaster Süddeutscher Rundfunk, operates with a serial game involving the motional pattern of four actors, but equally accommodating four soloists, six duos, and four trios. Four actors, whose coloured hoods make them identifiable yet anonymous, accomplish a relentless closed-circuit drama. Once inside the square, they are condemned to monotonously and synchronously pace the respective six steps of the lengthwise and diagonal lines it contains, in part accompanied by varying drumbeat rhythms. The mathematical precision and choreography is made possible by the exactness of the timing. Choreographic variation is confined to the number of performers, and the resultant changes in colour constellations. The middle of the square, which is marked by a dot, must always be bypassed on the left-hand side. Quad (here you see the first version) is, for all its reducedness, the most dramatic of Beckett’s last teleplays. The playwright also shot a black-and-white version with four figures dressed identically in white and acting to the beat of a metronome.
*This programme note was written in reference to the original TV production of Quad and some details will be different to our performance this evening.
© Rudolf Frieling
The London Sinfonietta was the first ensemble in the UK to launch a dedicated music education programme in the early 1980s. This pioneering spirit has continued and flourished ever since, creating new music in education, the community and with emerging composers and players.
Through our Composition Challenges programme we invite young people, teachers and schools to create new music for the London Sinfonietta, inspired by the works and musical idea of living composers. These compositions and other co-created works are played by the London Sinfonietta in live concerts such as the annual Sound Out Schools concert, our birthday concert Decades in January 2024, and on our digital channel in the Composition Challenges Summer Celebration. Our work takes us across the UK, with over a third of activity taking place outside of London. In the past year we have travelled to Leeds, York, Bristol, Gloucestershire, Southampton and Portsmouth and look forward to deepening our partnerships with the North London Music Hub and South Coast Music Partnership in the coming years.
During the 2023-24 season the Composition Challenges programme:
• Reached 806 pupils in 5 live concerts
• Across 19 schools, 503 students took part in creative composition workshops
• 441 compositions were received and 48 of these compositions were performed by London Sinfonietta musicians.
• 58 schools and other education settings took part remotely
• 76 teachers took part in CPD sessions
The 2024 Sound Out concert featured:
• 3 UK premieres
• 5 World premieres, 4 of which were created by or with young people.
• 2098 pupils attending the live concert
• 11,000+ young people watching the concert online in over 53 schools across the UK.
• During the concert, 30 young instrumentalists joined the London Sinfonietta on stage to form the Sound Out Ensemble.
Our work in the community is realised through our In Town residency at St Ignatius College and projects in other community settings in the London Borough of Enfield. During our 2023-24 season, we delivered a second residency at St Ignatius College, expanded our work to the adult community with our Untold Stories project in Edmonton and held a concert at Dugdale Arts Centre, featuring core works from our repertoire and new pieces co-created with the community and pupils of St Ignatius College. To celebrate the end of our second year of work in the area, we took part in the Untold Edmonton Festival, with two events in the new Edmonton Green Pavilion.
We continue to work with emerging artists through our Writing the Future and Playing the Future schemes. Four composers have joined us for the fifth edition of Writing the Future, workshopping their ideas and pushing the boundaries of their creativity with the London Sinfonietta. Keep an eye out for the premiere of their works towards the end of this season and into the 2025-26 season. Playing the Future continues our work with young players, working in partnership with the Royal Academy of Music and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance to pass on the extraordinary tradition of the London Sinfonietta.
FOR SAMUEL BECKETT (C.50’)
TONIGHT’S ARTISTS
The piece was commissioned by the Holland Festival for the Schönberg Ensemble. The concepts for creating musical light effects are radicalized in it. The use of rhythmic patterns plays an expanding role. At the beginning, the composition develops from a six-tone sound that is constantly permuted within the individual orchestra groups (woodwinds, brass, percussion instruments and strings) and is given new color accents by swapping voices and changing positions. This permutation process is also used individually in each orchestra group. At the same time, there is rhythmic asynchrony between the groups. Piano, celesta, harp and vibraphone (as instruments with a “built-in decrescendo”) act between the other orchestra groups and pulse through large parts of the compositions with faster sequences of notes. Over the course of the roughly forty-five minute work, the range of tones expands. At the same time, the continuous mixing of voices is replaced by a rhythmic mixing between the orchestra groups with relatively rigid chords.
Feldman used this compositional technique in analogy to the way Turkish carpets are made in the 19th century, where the patterns are tied together using countless small loops. Irregularities arise due to the nature of the materials used. No sound structure appears unchanged. It is given new color, even later, when individual groups of bars are repeated more and more often. These repetitions are usually changed in a differentiated way at the edges, not a simple “again”. The music achieves its relentless self-intertwining nature through a mixing of the orchestration and the smallest rhythmic shifts in the formation of chord sounds. There are no jumps, no edges (similar to many of Rothko’s paintings), only the boundary of the beginning and the end of the composition.
Morton Feldman died on September 3, 1987 in Buffalo, New York, a few months after completing work on For Samuel Beckett
Martin Hufner © Universal Edition
Rowland Hill co-director of Quad
Jack Sheen is a musical polymath, in demand as both conductor and composer, as well as a creator of dynamic cross-arts projects. At home in modern and contemporary music, he brings his compositional insight to interpretations of core repertoire that have been highly praised. His rare set of talents and passions drives a vision for the future of classical music, and he is an active force for change.
Sheen has worked with leading orchestras including London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, Britten Sinfonia, Royal Northern Sinfonia, and Manchester Camerata.
His own music encompasses concert works for orchestras, ensembles and soloists, alongside immersive performance-installations that disperse live musicians, audio, film and dancers around spaces such as galleries or warehouses. He has been commissioned by orchestras including London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Aurora Orchestra and Manchester Camerata.
Rowland Hill is a Manchester-based artist working across the visual and performing arts. Rowland studied Drama and English before graduating in 2018 with a Masters from the Slade School of Fine Art, where she received the Clare Winsten Memorial Award. Her performance and installation work has recently been commissioned by and presented at institutions including Raven Row, the Turner Contemporary, Castlefield Gallery and Pase Platform (Venice). She has interpreted and performed the work of leading artists such as Yvonne Rainer and Vito Acconci for events at Tate Britain, London Contemporary Music Festival, Five Years Gallery and the Lowry, amongst others.
Jack Sheen conductor & co-director of Quad
ROYAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC
MANSON ENSEMBLE
“A remarkable feat of ensemble, prescision and sheer virtuoso performing skills”
The Times (Stockhausen’s Gruppen: performance by Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble and London Sinfonietta at the Royal Festival Hall)
The Aldeburgh Festival in 1968 saw the first concert of the Manson Ensemble, the Royal Academy of Music’s specialist contemporary music ensemble.
Since its inception it has performed major works — in the presence of the composer — by Abrahamsen, Benjamin, Berio, Birtwistle, Carter, Donatoni, Henze, Kagel, Knussen, Kurtág, Lutosławski, Maxwell Davies, Messiaen and Penderecki, among many others. The group has also collaborated closely with student composers from the Academy, as well as composers and performers from The Juilliard School, New York.
DANCERS: TRINITY LABAN STUDENT & ALUMNI
Regular side-by-side performances by the Manson Ensemble and London Sinfonietta started in 2002, and have included the UK premieres of Nono’s Prometeo and Grisey’s Les espaces acoustiques, Thomas Adès’ In Seven Days, Beat Furrer’s Nuun, conducted by the composer; Stockhausen’s Gruppen and Hymnen and, most recently, a tribute to Sir Harrison Birtwistle, all at Southbank Centre.
CD recordings include Zappa in 2013 with Franck Ollu and in 2016 a Stravinsky CD for Linn Records conducted by Oliver Knussen, which also included premiere arrangements of tributes to Stravinsky by Harrison Birtwistle, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Oliver Knussen.
In 2023, the ensemble performed at the Gran Canaria Contemporary Music Festival. Other recent performances have included works by Hans Abrahamsen, Brett Dean, Bára Gísladóttir, Helen Grime, Hannah Kendall, Helena Tulve, Augusta Read Thomas and Michel van der Aa.
Born in Hong Kong, Sandy started dancing at the age of 4. She moved to London to pursue a Graduate Certificate in Dance at Trinity Laban in 2022, where she received the Leverhulme Trust Scholarships Award to further her study in the Master of Dance Performance in 2023. Sandy has worked with Choreographers from across the globe and participated in international dance festivals and competitions in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc at a younger age. She enjoys collaborating with different artists and multidisciplinary performance. Sandy aspires to become a sophisticated dance artist who touches, connects with and impacts the audience.
Mary Sweetnam (she/her) is a dance artist, maker, and teaching artist based in London who roots their work in lightness and joy. She recently completed her Master’s in Dance Performance at Trinity Laban, researching play in the creative process. Earlier this year, she cofounded a performance collective called Perpetual Folly and has presented work at spaces in London including The Cockpit Theatre, Jack Studio Theatre, Chisenhale Dance Space, and St. Thomas Hospital. She co-created their first work which will be performed at The Place’s Resolution festival in February 2025.
Sandy Hoi Shan Yip
Mary Sweetnam
Timea Szalontayova is a versatile Slovak contemporary dancer, performer, mover, and teacher based in London. A graduate of Trinity Laban Conservatoire with a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Dance, and an MA in Dance Performance at the London Contemporary Dance School, also known as The Place. Passionate about movement in all its forms, Timea is dedicated to sharing her love for dance with others. Furthermore, Timea is passionate about becoming a versatile performer working internationally. Live work in theatres, site-specific performances, the movement for film, and commercial works captivate her interests. She is ready to explore and dive deeper into these areas.
Kaya Blumenthal-Rothchild (she/her) is a dance artist based in London and a second-year MFA Dance Performance student at Trinity Laban. Originally from New York, she completed her undergraduate studies at Connecticut College majoring in Dance, minoring in Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectionality Studies, and receiving a research certificate in Community Action and Public Policy.
At Trinity Laban, Kaya has had the opportunity to work with Clod Ensemble, Temitope Ajose, and Company Wayne McGregor. Kaya is now a part of the dance collective Perpetual Folly and a proud recipient of the Leverhulme Trust Dance Scholarship and the South Square Trust Scholarship.
TONIGHT’S PLAYERS
Helen Keen flute
Efrem Workman** flute
Michael O’Donnell oboe
Guimel Bebiano Alves** oboe
Mark van de Wiel* clarinet
Louisa Buchan** clarinet
Fraser Gordon bassoon
Rory McGregor** bassoon
Nicholas Korth horn
Longgang Ji** horn
Bruce Nockles trumpet
Alexander Hancorn** trumpet
Ruth Molins trombone
Benjamin Haslam** trombone
Nona Lawrence** tuba
Jonathan Morton* violin
Hilaryjane Parker violin
Paul Silverthorne* viola
Sally Pendlebury cello
Enno Senft* double bass
Elizabeth Burley piano
Joe Richards percussion
Jess Wood percussion
Guozhi Long** percussion
Paddy Davies** percussion
Olivia Jageurs harp
*London Sinfonietta Principal Player
** Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble Member
LONDON SINFONIETTA
The London Sinfonietta is one of the world’s leading contemporary music ensembles. Formed in 1968, our commitment to making new music has seen us commission over 470 works and premiere many hundreds more. Resident at the Southbank Centre and Artistic Associate at Kings Place, with a busy touring schedule across the UK and abroad, London Sinfonietta’s Principal Players are some of the finest musicians in the world.
Our ethos is to experiment constantly with the art form, working with the world’s best composers, performers, and artists to produce projects often involving film, theatre, dance and art. We challenge audience perceptions by commissioning work which addresses issues in today’s society, and we work closely with our audience as creators, performers and curators of the events we stage. We support and encourage musical creativity and the skills of composition in schools and communities across the UK as well as working in partnership with Higher Education Institutions to give emerging musicians the opportunity to experience specialist training in understanding and playing contemporary classical music.
The London Sinfonietta has also broken new ground by launching its own digital channel, featuring video programmes and podcasts about new music. We created Steve Reich’s Clapping Music App, a participatory rhythm game that has been downloaded over 600,000 times worldwide, while our back catalogue of recordings has helped cement our world-wide reputation.
Timea Szalontayova
Kaya Blumenthal-Rothchild
CURRENT SUPPORTERS SUPPORT US
Help us create world-class new music projects, reach thousands of young people each year and enable us to provide world-class training to the next generation of performers, composers and conductors
Fundraising accounts for 32% of our annual income. Without the generous support of individuals, sponsors and charitable trusts, we simply would not be able to achieve the scale of work that we are able to deliver with your help – inspiring a wide audience around the UK and internationally with the best music of today.
BECOME A PIONEER
London Sinfonietta Pioneers provide a bedrock of support for all the work that we do – supporting all areas of London Sinfonietta’s new music-making and enabling us to reach an ever-wider audience with the music of today. And you’ll gain a closer insight into our work, with access to open rehearsals and exclusive behind-the-scenes updates.
London Sinfonietta Pioneer membership starts from just £50. Scan the QR code to visit our website, find out more and join us in pioneering new music.
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The London Sinfonietta would like to thank the following organisations and individuals for their support:
Trusts and Foundations
Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne
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Honorary Patrons
David Atherton OBE
Alfred Brendel KBE
Gillian Moore MBE
Entrepreneurs
Anthony Mackintosh (supporting Enno Senft)
Robert McFarland
Michael & Patricia McLaren-Turner (supporting Michael Cox)
Sinfonietta Circle
Susan Costello
Susan Grollet
John Hodgson (supporting Gareth Hulse)
Andy Spiceley
(supporting David Hockings)
Paul & Sybella Zisman (supporting Jonathan Morton)
Artistic Pioneers
Anton Cox
Philip Meaden
Simon Osborne
Creative Pioneers
Ian Baker
Keith Brown
Frances Bryant
Andrew Burke
Jeremy & Yvonne Clarke
John Goodier
Sir Andrew Hall
Frank & Linda Jeffs
Andrew Nash
Julie Nicholls
Malcolm Reddihough
Iain Stewart
Plus those generous Artistic and Creative Pioneers who prefer to remain anonymous, as well as our loyal group of Pioneers.
Principal Players
Michael Cox flute (supported by Michael and Patricia McLaren-Turner)
Gareth Hulse oboe (supported by John Hodgson)
Mark van de Wiel clarinet
Simon Haram saxophone
Byron Fulcher trombone
Jonathan Morton violin (supported by Paul & Sybella Zisman)
Paul Silverthorne viola
Tim Gill cello
Enno Senft double bass (supported by Anthony Mackintosh)
Helen Tunstall harp
David Hockings percussion (supported by Andy Spiceley)
London Sinfonietta Council
Fiona Thompson Chair
Sud Basu
Andrew Burke
Tim Gill (principal player)
Annabel Graham Paul
Kathryn Knight
Paul Silverthorne (principal player)
James Thomas
Ben Weston
Stephen Reid
Mark van de Wiel (principal player)
Fay Sweet
London Sinfonietta Staff
Andrew Burke
Chief Executive & Artistic Director
Frances Bryant General Manager
Elizabeth Davies Head of Finance
Susan Evans Finance Officer
Natalie Marchant
Head of Concerts & Touring
Alice Kirker Concerts Producer
Evie Jones Development Officer
Lily Caunt
Head of Participation and Learning
Jonah Baldwin Head of Marketing
Etta McEwan Marketing Officer
Freelance & Consultant Staff
Lesley Wynne
Orchestra Personnel Manager
Tony Simpson
Lighting Designer WildKat PR
The London Sinfonietta is grateful to its auditors and accountants
MGR Weston Kay LL
COMING SOON
LOVE LINES
An evening of music by Scottish composers exploring the idea of love and our deepest need for human connection. Hear rarely performed works by Peter Maxwell Davies and a world premiere of James MacMillan’s Love Bade Me Welcome.
Fri 6 Dec 2024, 8pm
Hall Two Kings Place
For full details and to book visit londonsinfonietta.org.uk or southbankcentre. co.uk and join our e-list to receive further details of workshops and open rehearsals throughout the year.
THE BOULEZ/ CAGE LETTERS
Discover more about the relationship between Pierre Boulez and John Cage, two iconic composers of the post war period, through their correspondence and performances of their music.
Sun 9 Mar 2025, 7pm
Purcell Room at
Queen Elizabeth Hall
HIDDEN VOICES
Themed around the world premiere of a new Laurence Osborn composition come works by Hannah Kendall and Luciano Berio exploring lost, hidden, obscured and suppressed voices from history.
Thurs 3 Apr 2025, 7.30pm
Queen Elizabeth Hall
IN C
London Sinfonietta and dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests join forces to present their vision of Terry Riley’s In C, trailblazing piece of musical minimalism.
Tues 29 & Wed 30 Apr 2025
Queen Elizabeth Hall
HUMANS
Two exclusive premieres from rising stars of contemporary classical music. Sun Keting will collaborate with visual designer Ke Peng and dancer Lico Kehua Li to combine traditional and electronic music with dance, whilst Pablo Martinez will show you society through the eyes of a drug addict.
Thurs 12 Jun 2025, 7pm
Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall
