Issue 4. December 2009
What you’re into if you’re into sound and music
Riddle me this A profile of Janek Schaefer
The magazine of
Archaeology of Memory Richard Barrett’s Mesopotamia What We’re INTO This month’s listening selection Bonanzas at Butlins All Tomorrow’s Parties HOW TO... Compose for flutes
Welcome to the December issue of INTO Sound art, says David Toop in our recent documentary film on the subject, is a ‘homeless’ area of practice, falling between the more widely-recognised pillars of music and visual art, out of place in both the concert hall and the art gallery. However, in the twenty-first century, venues with cross-disciplinary set-ups appear to be emerging, albeit slowly. This month our cover story is a profile of Janek Schaefer ahead of a rare major exhibition of a British sound artist at The Bluecoat, Liverpool. Schaefer’s work is playful, enigmatic and nostalgic – do go to see it if you’re in the North West. Can composers today convincingly respond to world events with orchestral pieces? Richard Barrett is perhaps a too-rare example of a composer who does, and we explore his new work for the London Sinfonietta, Mesopotamia –
Published by Sound and Music www.soundandmusic.org Contact: into-magazine@soundandmusic.org
his second, and apparently ‘more considered’, response to the 2003 Iraq invasion. This month All Tomorrow’s Parties takes over Butlins Minehead holiday camp in Somerset for a December line-up of festivals headlined by Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Sun Ra Arkestra, amongst others. If you’ve never been to ATP, we explore what you’ve been missing over the last ten years. In How To… this month you can learn how to write for flutes; and finally, we’re introducing a new section, What we’re INTO, which gives you the chance each month to listen to a selection of audio and video that we’ve found and like. I hope you enjoy… Shoël Stadlen Managing Editor
Managing Editor: Shoël Stadlen Deputy Editor: Eleanor Turney Designed by: Andy McGarity andymcgarity.co.uk Original Design: PostParis, www.postparis.com
03
December 2009
Want to print your issue of INTO? Click here to download the PDF
What’s on in the UK? Click here to visit Sound and Music’s UK Listings
Cover Image of Janek Schaefer by David Stewart The opinions expressed in INTO are those of the authors and not necessarily those of INTO or Sound and Music. Copyright of all articles is held jointly by Sound and Music and the authors. Unauthorised reproduction of any item is forbidden.
04
December 2009
Contents
C ntents What we’re INT . Pages 6–7
Riddle me this: Janek Schaefer Pages 12–19
NEWS. Pages 8–11
Richard Barrett’s Archaeology of memory. Pages 20–25
05
All tomorrow’s Parties Pages 26–31
December 2009
Contents
FROM THE BLOGS Pages 38–42
OPPORTUNITIES. Pages 43–45
HOW TO... Pages 32–37
06
December 2009
What We’re into
Sonia Paço-Rocchia: Pedalling Under London’s Clouds, for bicycle solo
What we’re INT What we’re INTO is a small monthly selection of new music and sound from the vast amount out there. By following the links each month, you’ll find a great way to keep up with what’s happening in the UK through listening, rather than just reading. If you would like to submit your work for consideration, see the open call on our website.
Lucky Dragons live @ The Luminaire, London
Sarah Nicolls, Andrea Machines, Kathy Hind Sonatas, Pianos, Mac
07
Jonathan Harvey: Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco
a Neumann, Felix’s de, Piano Baschet-Malbos: chines & Interludes
December 2009
What We’re into
Basil Athanasiadis: Shonorities, Fantasmata
Colin Riley: Beautiful Wounds from the album ‘fold’
The Music of Electricity HCMF 2009 online interactive piece
Ben Harper: Callington - 5 x 5 choruses for [guitar]
08
December 2009
News
NEW Sounding off about pollution
A new sound installation by Kaffe Matthews, in clean air we fly, will be launched on 6 December. Matthews has made an eight channel audio work that allows the audience to experience ‘clean air paths’, which are caused by the vibrations of eight speakers mounted around Gillett Square’s large public space in East London, an inner city area in close proximity to a heavily polluting major London trunk road. This is the inaugural event for Invisible Dust, an organisation set up by curator Alice Sharp and supported through a research grant from the Wellcome Trust to involve artists and scientists in highlighting air pollution, effects on health and climate change. Matthews has used statistics on local air pollution combined with the voices of local children to illustrate the different levels of traffic around the Square with changes in melody and tone. The piece will be powered by the audience riding fixed bicycles connected to the amps. Staged on the weekend before the UN Climate change conference in Copenhagen, in clean air we fly seeks to re-engage people with the issue of UK air pollution. The installation will continue at The Vortex Jazz Club from 7-12 December.
09
December 2009
Anna Meredith new resident composer at Sinfonia Viva
Anna Meredith has been appointed RPS/PRSF Composer-in-the-House at East Midlands based sinfonia ViVA for 2010-2012. The Composer in the House scheme was created by the Royal Philharmonic Society and the PRS Foundation with the aim of re-establishing composers at the heart of orchestral life. Anna Meredith has previously been resident at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and said about her new appointment: ‘In many ways, I see myself more as a musician than a composer… The creative approach will be broad (with me performing, as well as composing or curating or improvising with ViVA players).’ www.vivaorch.co.uk
News
Kuljit Bhamra awarded MBE
Kuljit Bhamra, the last artistic director of the Society for the Promotion of New Music (spnm), received an MBE from the Queen on 1 December for services to Bhangra and British Asian music. The award follows his work to bring musicians from different cultures and traditions together over a career spanning 30 years, recently showcased in the spnm projects Folk From Here, Bhangra Latina, Raga Mela and Tablature. www.kuljitbhamra.com
010
December 2009
News
NEW Paul Hamlyn Awards
Chris Batchelor, Tansy Davies and Philip Jeck have been awarded the Paul Hamlyn Awards for Composers, 2009. The award is for £45,000 spread in equal instalments over three years, the largest in the UK. The aim of the awards is to give artists the freedom to develop their creative ideas and to contribute to their personal and professional growth.
Sonic advertising
Manchester Camerata is promoting its New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day concerts at The Bridgewater Hall with ‘sonic’ posters, which are triggered to play Mozart, Beethoven or Mahler by the movement of passersby. The posters, currently on display in Manchester’s Oxford Road train station, are the first of their kind in the city.
011
December 2009
News
2009 British Composer Awards announced
The 2009 British Composer Awards were announced at a ceremony on 1 December hosted by BASCA (the British Academy of Songwriters, Composer and Authors) at the Law Society, London. Notable winners included Jason Yarde, winner of the Jazz category in its inaugural year, Mark Peter Wright, winner of the Sonic Art award for his A Quiet Reverie, and Elizabeth Winters, a Sound and Music Shortlisted composer, who won the Making Music award, for works for amateur performers, for her piece, The Serious Side of Madness. The piece was premiered by the Kensington Chamber Orchestra in 2008 and developed as part of the Adopt-a-Composer scheme, which pairs composers from The Shortlist with amateur music societies. The full list of winners: Vocal: John Casken - The Dream of the Rood Instrumental Solo or Duo: Thomas Simaku - Soliloquy V, Flauto Acerbo Liturgical: John Tavener – Ex Maria Virgine Community or Educational Project: Mira Calix - My Secret Heart Chamber: Alexander Goehr - Since Brass, Nor Stone… Sonic Art: Mark Peter Wright – A Quiet Reverie International: John Adams – Doctor Atomic Orchestral: Simon Holt – a table of noises Stage Works: Graham Fitkin – Reel Making Music: Elizabeth Winters - The Serious Side of Madness Wind Band or Brass Band: Adam Gorb – Farewell Choral: Gabriel Jackson – The Spacious Firmament Contemporary Jazz Composition: Jason Yarde - Rhythm and Other Fascinations. www.britishcomposerawards.com
012
December 2009
Janek Schaefer
Rid a profile of
013
December 2009
Janek Schaefer
ddle me this: A major retrospective of a British sound artist is a rare event. Ahead of Janek Schaefer’s exhibition at Liverpool’s Bluecoat this month, Philip Sherburne takes a look at the work on show. If a tree fell in a forest and nobody was there to hear it, would it make a sound? Janek Schaefer answers that hoary philosophical saw in unexpected ways, both genial and profound, in Janek Schaefer: Sound Art, a six-room retrospective at the Bluecoat. It gathers 15 years of the British musician, composer and multi-media artist’s work, including numerous installations, sound sculptures, modified turntables and other playful interpolations of sound, image, chance, technology and narrative. Just as the riddle uses sound as the foil for broader questions of sense and subjectivity, Schaefer’s work plays with
014
December 2009
Janek Schaefer
Recorded Delivery
sound but also the idea of sound. His work is about not just its presence but its absence; not just its immediate experience but its mediated dissemination, to pose questions about lived experience and collective memory. Never pedantic, however, his work is animated by an almost cheerful, DIY-inspired sense of curiosity. The earliest piece in the exhibition, Recorded Delivery (1995) begins, as so many of Schaefer’s artworks do, with a pun. Produced for the Self Storage exhibition, curated by Artangel in conjunction with Laurie Anderson and Brian Eno, it operates under the simplest of premises: it’s a recording captured by
a voice-activated recorder sent via overnight, registered mail to the selfstorage facility serving as the exhibition’s hub. It’s a great tree-falls-in-a-forest moment, capturing the hidden sounds of the postal service from the ultimate fly-on-the-wall perspective. There’s something strangely sympathetic about it, almost as though the boxed-up cassette recorder were a proxy for Charlie Chaplin’s character in Modern Times as he’s sucked through the gears of a factory–perhaps, not to stretch the point, it’s a display of solidarity with all the parcels ever gone missing, a redress to our alienation from the inscrutable depths of the rationalised world.
015
December 2009
Janek Schaefer
Vacant space
It doesn’t hurt that the recorder picked up the sounds of postal employees as they conducted what they imagined were private conversations, complete with obscenity and sexual innuendo, lending the piece a subtly subversive character as a winking rejoinder to the surveillance devices ubiquitous in contemporary life. It also doesn’t hurt that the piece sounds, well, kind of awesome, a cryptic sound essay made of indistinct rustle and cut-up speech, punctuated by the slow-motion zaps of the recorder as it kicks into gear or slows to a halt. With his aleatory composition, Schaefer invites us to reconsider the division between non-signifying sound and
signifying music. (And really, what is the question of 'What differentiates music from sound,' but the question of the tree falling in the forest?) Schaefer’s Bluecoat retrospective underscores the importance he places upon hidden, latent or potential sound. That’s obviously the case with Vacant Space (2006), an installation that pairs images of empty architectural spaces with recordings sourced from similar spaces. Other pieces in the show also play with the idea of latent sound. A diverse set of modified turntables unlocks recorded media in unexpected ways. The Tri-Phonic Turntable (1997),
016
December 2009
a modified record player armed with three tonearms, a reverse mechanism and extreme pitch variation (down to 1.5rpm) has the ability to decode the grooves of any LP from three points at once, exploding the turntable’s linear logic by a combination of surgical precision and chance accident. The result is a suggestion of recorded sound’s dizzying totality, released in arbitrary combinations by the three diamond styli. Another turntable sculpture, Pickup Putdown – part of the mixed-media sound sculpture series Black Magic (2009) – digs into vinyl records in a quite different way, using a helium balloon to suspend the tonearm in the air. Only by taking hold of the balloon can the participant engage the needle in the grooves. It’s a rare Schaefer piece that actually invites interactivity – the artist generally prefers to use chance occurrences to 'activate' his work for the viewing/listening public. A new piece, commissioned for the Bluecoat retrospective, initially appears quite different in scope. National Portrait [the last transmission] documents the final 24 hours of Liverpool’s five remaining analogue television broadcasts, which were turned off at midnight on Tuesday, December 1, 2009, as part of
Janek Schaefer
the UK’s phased implementation of an all-digital television broadcast. Schaefer, trained as an architect, generally works with site-specific materials, and National Portrait is no different. In this case, however, the 'site' is expanded to include Liverpool itself – indeed, not just Liverpool but the entire region that its analogue television signals formerly reached. In National Portrait, only the audio remains, all 120 cumulative hours cut up into 10- or 20-second segments. Their order randomly rearranged, they are played back simultaneously across five antique television consoles set in a semicircle, each snippet beginning at full volume and fading to silence. The result is a poignant cacophony that’s part Tristan Tzara, part high-street television emporium. Crucially, the artwork is grounded in more than mere nostalgia: Schaefer’s requiem for the analogue broadcast medium is also a requiem for the concept of technological 'tolerance': an imperfect or partial analogue signal can still be received and decoded, while the binary logic of digital media leaves no room for half-measures–no fiddling with rabbit ears and tinfoil will make up for a faulty digital converter. Again, Schaefer plays with the idea of
017
December 2009
Janek Schaefer
Extended Play
latent sound, snatching signals from the ether and refusing to let them go, sending them spinning into spliced, shuffled loops of time out of joint. He turns their imminent disappearance into immanent presence, a suggestion of the infinity of acoustic signals ricocheting through space. Extended Play (triptych for the child survivors of war and conflict) (2007), for which Schaefer won the British Composer Award and the Paul Hamyln Prize, also takes broadcast media as its inspiration–in this case, Jodoform, the coded musical messages sent between
London and Warsaw by the BBC World Service during World War II. Based upon a three-note phrase from a Jodoform broadcast in Warsaw on the day that the artist’s mother was born there, the composition was scored for cello, violin and piano, with each instrument’s part recorded separately and pressed on vinyl. Multiple copies of each instrumental voice are played back on nine modified turntables throughout the gallery, to powerfully immersive effect–at once fixing historical memory in place and liberating lapsed time from forgetting. Another new piece in the show, Inner
018
December 2009
Tri-Phonic Turntable
Space Memorial [for JG Ballard] (2009), fixes a similarly potent constellation of sound, space and timekeeping. The science fiction writer lived just a mile from Schaefer on the fringes of London; Schaefer was in the midst of reading his autobiography when the author passed away, thwarting the artist’s plans to pay a neighborly visit. His sonic eulogy takes the form of a pair of stereo speakers fastened together, face to face; a hidden CD player plays a gorgeous, looping ambient drone, the sound forever locked within the sculpture’s closed infinity. It’s a poignant, poetic tribute to a writer who dedicated himself to charting the inner spaces of the mind. It also speaks elegantly to sound’s waning cultural status, as the record industry continues in free-fall and video games and net-
Janek Schaefer
worked entertainments gradually replace music as the default passion and pastime of the young. 'In this piece the music plays softly and appears distant and tender as you listen to it hovering inside the beyond,' writes Schaefer of his sculpture, but its sweeping, massing drones are more than that: as in all his work, they speak to the idea of sound snatched from the grip of time and preserved for the benefit of future ears. Its sculptural qualities – mounted atop a gramophone case that doubles as plinth, and mimicking a long tradition of Duchampian readymades – are tailor-made for the sound-art object as it exists within the context of the gallery or museum. But its unmappable inner dimensions also suggest the ultimate uncontainability of sound – an elegant summation of the entire focus of Janek Schaefer’s work. For Schaefer, all the world’s a forest brimming with potential sound, just waiting to be realised by passing ears. Janek Schaefer: Sound Art is on at The Bluecoat, Liverpool 5 December – 17 January. www.audioh.com/projects/soundartretrospective.html www.thebluecoat.org.uk
019
December 2009
Janek Schaefer
Listening Post Inner Space Memorial (For JG Ballard):
Listen Here Phoenix and Phaedra holding patterns (A Found Sound Radio Play): 'DRAG’ A short film
Listen Here SoundPool (Sound Art in Bradford):
Listen Here Rapture (Collaboration with Noemie Lafrance): Janek Schaefer - Memory
Listen Here Recorded Delivery:
Listen Here
To Nairobi To Manaus To Walton
020
December 2009
Richard Barrett
Richard Barrett
Archaeology of Memor
One of the UK’s most radical composers, both musically and politically, Richard Barrett’s immediate response to the 2003 invasion of Iraq in 2003 was his orchestral work, NO. Ahead of its premiere, Tim Rutherford-Johnson explores his new, ‘more considered’ response, Mesopotamia...
t’s
ory
021
December 2009
Richard Barrett
In March 2003, as a US-led coalition embarked on the invasion of Iraq, Richard Barrett was beginning work on a new orchestral score for the BBC Symphony Orchestra. As the humanitarian and cultural crimes of the Iraq war sank in, the piece gained an emphatic title – NO – and became the first in a projected eight-part series of works entitled resistance and vision. ‘I started to think that the way I had been conceiving the relationship between music and ideas had to make some radical change’, he said then, in an interview with Tom Service. ‘How is an artist like me, who is committed to socialist ideas, to respond to this situation?’ Barrett’s new work, Mesopotamia, written for the London Sinfonietta and first performed by them at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on 28th November, and subsequently at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 3rd December, is the latest completed installment of resistance and vision (a third part, Nacht und Träume, for cello, piano and electronics, was first performed in Huddersfield last year). Six years after NO, the same global concerns – social injustice, neo-imperialist warfare and environmental crisis – prevail, but has Barrett’s approach as an artist changed? How does the anger that was present at the start of work on resistance and vision hold up as a motivation now? Today he tells me that ‘If NO somehow encapsulates an immediate response to a feeling of powerlessness in the face of events in the world, without knowing whether there’s any way of doing so, or any reason outside one’s own self-absorbed concerns for doing so, Mesopotamia is perhaps a more considered response, though I think just as engaged and expressively urgent, and no doubt just as problematic.’ Mesopotamia is particularly concerned with what Barrett calls the ‘archaeology of memory’. He tells me that what
022
December 2009
Photo: Eamonn McCabe/Lebrecht Music & Arts
Richard Barrett
023
December 2009
interests him in particular about the distant past ‘is what we can understand from this about the evolution of human consciousness, of “human nature”, which I don’t believe is the unchanging genetically-determined phenomenon some (political conservatives, for the most part) would have us believe it is. The social organisation of the oldest strata of Mesopotamia seems to have been quite different from anything that exists now, and to have been characterised more by cooperation than by hierarchy.’ Barrett’s piece is structured around a relatively simple formal design that allows for the powerful metaphorical exploration of a particular cluster of ideas. It is in 10 sections, or layers, which gradually become superimposed as the work progresses, bringing to mind the multiple historical strata of society that have existed in the Middle East. As these layers fold over one another, the challenge becomes one of sustaining and organising the multiple identities of each layer and each instrumental grouping in a way that is mutually beneficial, rather than aesthetically destructive. The layers themselves are all sonically distinctive, but related to a common harmonic ‘block’, which gives the piece a particular weight and consistency, as well as a certain slowness. This lends several passages a
Richard Barrett
strange, contemplative quality – not of reverential prayer, but of raucous Tibetan Buddhist ritual. Other passages – the piano’s opening solo, for example – are surprisingly delicate. In his programme note to the piece, Barrett writes: ‘We use our imagination, on the basis of more or less fragmentary information, to recall what seems to be irretrievably lost, to 'make sense' of it, of the history of a civilisation, or the structure of a musical experience’. Barrett’s words here – an attempt to structure memory through music – might recall Feldman’s own endeavours in his long, late works. However, Feldman undertook a deliberate dismantling of memory in order to forge a more vibrant aesthetic present. Barrett seems more concerned with the re-reading of the past within the immediate present, and it is this that determines his approach to form. Long-range formal relationships between sections are necessary in order for connections between the past and the present to be made. The formal conceit of Mesopotamia is to present the deep past as visible through the successive layers of more recent history. As they are introduced in turn, the ten layers are continually overlaid and glimpsed through one another, in an attempt to construct a mental synchronicity from diachronic elements. The horizon-
024
December 2009
tal, left-to-right timeline of history is flipped round and viewed end-on, like a telescope. As the piece develops, the layering process accelerates. The effect seems to be that the committed listener will become increasingly bound to an image of the intractable complexity of human and social evolution, an image that resists easy answers. What were once disparate, awkwardly shaped elements perhaps begin to sound like parts of a larger collaborative whole. At this point, the work’s political dimension becomes apparent. The destruction of the evidence of earlier Middle Eastern civilisations is the conflict that energises Mesopotamia’s formal design. Although, despite its title and creative origins, the piece isn’t about Iraq as such, one only has to note the damage caused by the building of the US military base ‘Camp Alpha’ on ancient Babylonian ruins to see how Barrett’s image of archaeology and recovery through the unreliable media of sound, imagination and memory can become a metaphor of great political force and currency. One object of the resistance and vision series is to present a musical opposition to the sort of complacency that allows such catastrophes to take place: the music – in common with much of Barrett’s work – radically challenges its audience’s expectations, presenting a more optimis-
Richard Barrett
tic, even Utopian vision of the possibilities of human invention and cooperation. Barrett absolutely resists the evaporation of meaning and ideas that seems to dog postmodernism as it rifles through cultural history searching for useful and charming collectibles. Rather, he sees that the central affirmation of the artwork – the only one that is possible in our modern reality – is that it simply exists, ‘as a token of the possibility of human dignity’. Whereas some might argue (as Cornelius Cardew came to do) that political music is ineffective if it is not written in a language accessible to the masses, Barrett’s fundamental adherence to an uncompromising, modernist mode of expression stems directly from his political ideals. His music doesn’t seek to instruct or proselytise from a pulpit or soapbox, but shifts the burden of intellectual responsibility onto its listeners hoping, by these means, to change some minds along the way. Richard Barrett’s Mesopotamia received its first performance by the London Sinfonietta at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on 28 November and the Sinfonietta will perform the piece again at the Southbank Centre, London on 3 December Click here to listen to the premiere of Mesopotamia on BBC iPlayer (available until Saturday 5 December)
025
December 2009
Richard Barrett
Listening Post Richard Barrett on YouTube:
London Sinfonietta podcast interview with Richard Barrett:
Listen Here Barrett’s orchestral piece Vanity, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra: Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer
Listen Here Barrett’s album Transmission, performed by Elision:
Listen Here Listen to the premiere of Mesopotamia on BBC iPlayer (available until Saturday 5 December): Ute Wassermann and Richard Barrett
Listen Here
026
December 2009
All Tomorrow’s Parties
All Tomorrow’s Parties has been promoting festivals of cuttingedge and alternative rock at faded UK holiday resorts for ten years. David Cotner looks at what makes a visit to Butlins worthwhile.
YESTE This past September, in a Village Voice interview with All Tomorrow’s Parties festival organizers Deborah Kee Higgins and Barry Hogan, this rather spectacularly entertaining exchange took place: Higgins: ‘We have a ‘No Assholes’ policy. You can play once because we don’t know you’re an asshole, but you can’t play twice.’
Hogan: ‘Killing Joke and the Butthole Surfers will never play ATP again, and they can both suck my balls. And you can put that in print. The Black Lips will never play again – they’re assholes. They broke into a chalet and started stealing stuff.’ Which, of course, just makes All Tomorrow’s Parties that much more fascinat-
027
December 2009
All Tomorrow’s Parties
ALL UR ERDAYS ing. It makes the musical acts that much more interesting - fanatic fandom and polite society notwithstanding. Between three upcoming iterations of the ATP brand - the sold-out Nightmare Before Christmas (December 4–6, curated by My Bloody Valentine, featuring Sonic Youth, E.P.M.D., Sun Ra Arkestra and others), In Between Days (December 7 through 10, featuring Mum, Tall Firs,
the ever-Google-lovin’ Fuck Buttons, and Crispin Glover), and the sold-out 10 Years of ATP retrospective (December 11 through 13, starring Shellac, Dirty Three, and Papa M playing from inside a shark cage) – it would have been surprising in the extreme if more bile hadn’t gushed forth in one way or another.
028
December 2009
All Tomorrow’s Parties
Fuck buttons
Conversely, seeing the continual number of sold-out live actions produced and proposed by the good people at All Tomorrow’s Parties is, at the very least, a deeply encouraging notion - especially to those of us in the U.S. who labour incessantly in the cultural wastelands, trusting in the intellectual curiosity of John Q. Public and his wife Jane with the same kind of existential naïveté as poor Sisyphus and his eternal lithophilia. In Europe the artist, no matter what his
field, is lauded and applauded – even paid. In the U.S., we have to do things like lure people in the promise of Eddie Vedder before we reshape the concept of the lure with Merzbow. So, ten years after - and wouldn’t it be intensely clever if they had been asked to play as well – are there questions to be asked about the ATP recipe, questions of direction and theme and ground that remains unbroken? Some become tempted to ask, ‘Are groups like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth still cutting-edge?’ and ‘has avant-garde rock
029
December 2009
All Tomorrow’s Parties
had its heyday or are there more exciting bands coming through?’ And this is where the concept of constancy appears. There is the famous Steve Albini quote, ‘There are three things in the world that I endorse: Abbey Road, Nutter Butter sandwich cookies, and All Tomorrow’s Parties.’ All Tomorrow’s Parties, like Nutter Butter sandwich cookies, is a product. An especially interesting and enjoyable product, but a product nonetheless. When, after ten years, a product becomes so trusted as to beggar disbelief that it would in any way erode in quality, it becomes a tradition; not far off are the classic, the chestnut and the warhorse, but give it time. And time – along with encouragement, inspiration, and yes, constancy – is what bands like My Bloody Valentine and Melvins and Sonic Youth have on their side. This is what buoys ATP’s fortunes after a decade. It’s the fact that after all this time there are institutions fraught with competency instead of the ergot of egotism, that there are bands with integrity that can be trusted not to change, and that there are some products that are intrinsi-
photo by stupid pony
030
December 2009
All Tomorrow’s Parties
My Bloody Valentine (photo by neitherfishnorflesh)
cally, unassailably good. Their ‘hits’ are passion, self-respect and artfulness; their top-40 might as well have been drawn up by George Washington. A band like The Pixies or My Bloody Valentine need not be ‘cutting-edge’, they need never make another ‘good’ record again. The laurels on which they rest spring from a garden of ideals that serve to inspire everyone from Nirvana onwards; much like the true avant-garde before them,
they’re still being shot out for being out front with their product. Whether they’re being upfront about such concepts as music-as-product is not immediately known, and the characterisation is a touchy one – but that’s fine, that’s their purview. They are artists, after all. Some bands – like Sonic Youth – are so multisubjectival that their only constant is their consistent lack of constancy. They’ll
031
December 2009
All Tomorrow’s Parties
Sonic Youth (Photo by livepict.com)
forge ahead in every direction as they always do, same as they ever were. Avantgarde rock’s heyday is a never-ending twilight – there are two each day – fueled by nostalgia and the binary sun of digital and the infinite-repeat button. ’Twas ever thus at All Tomorrow’s Parties – yesterday, and today, and tomorrow.
ATP’s festivals at Butlins Minehead in Somerset: Nightmare Before Christmas, curated by My Bloody Valentine (4-6 December) and ATP at 10 (11-13 December) are sold out. In Between Days (7-10 December) is still booking, as is ATP curated by Matt Groening (7-9 May 2010) www.atpfestivals.com
032
December 2009
HOW TO
H WT
Compose for flutes in the st 21 century by Carla Rees
How To is our section dedicated to sharing specific knowledge and skills. From how to write for clarinet, to how to hack electronic devices, to how to find funding, we try to help you go further.
033
December 2009
HOW TO
The twentieth century was a ‘golden age’ for the flute, with composers rediscovering the wide range of capabilities of the instrument after the implementation of the Boehm system in the mid 1800s and the acceptance of the new system by the flute playing community as a whole. New repertoire thrived, with composers such as Prokofiev, Messiaen, Berio, Boulez, Ferneyhough and numerous others writing solos for the instrument. Contemporary techniques also came into their own, largely due to the pioneering work of Robert Dick, and new innovations in instrument design have resulted in a fully quarter tone version of the flute being invented and adopted by a number of leading contemporary music performers. This is an exciting time for the flute. Stereotypes are long gone (even the age-old cliché of the flute representing a bird was dispatched to perfection by Prokofiev in Peter and the Wolf, not to mention by Messiaen in Le Merle Noir) and the instrument has much to offer composers. The flute’s family has also expanded in recent years. Solo repertoire for piccolo has expanded dramatically, and the alto and bass flute, once only played as borrowed instruments on rare occasions, have come into their own with a fast-growing repertoire. Contemporary techniques for the flute have been well documented, especially through the works of Robert Dick, Pierre-Yves Artaud and more recently, Carin Levine (See resources, p35). Sounds such as multiphonics, tongue rams, whistle tones, key clicks and air sounds have entered the common vocabulary of most advanced players, and their use in a wide ranging repertoire has developed their acceptance in the flute-playing community as a whole. Despite this, however, it is important that they are handled carefully; well written music using these techniques can be mesmerising, but it becomes instantly apparent if a composer has not researched the instrument properly. Practical considerations are an important aspect of composing for the flute family, and the suggestions below cover some of the most common techniques and their problems.
034
December 2009
HOW TO
Key-clicks Key-clicks can be used with pitched sound and without, and it is important to specify which in a score. Generally speaking, a cross note head indicates a purely percussive sound, without any sounding note. The clicks will follow written pitches, but bear in mind that they only apply to the low register, as the flute’s higher notes are produced through over-blowing, and are therefore largely controlled by the airstream rather than fingerings. The lower the pitch, (i.e. the more closed keys on the tube), the louder the sound will be. A player will generally use the G key as a striker for best effect, where possible. If the embouchure hole in the flute’s head joint is covered during the execution of a key click, the resulting pitch is approximately a 7th lower than the written pitch. Remember that a sound can only be produced by the action of pushing a key down, so the finger position must be reset in order to create a new sound, and this can slow down the maximum speed of the key clicks. For example, a downwards scale will sound clicks as each of the fingers goes down in turn, but an upwards one will not, as the keys are being lifted to change pitch, so an additional striker is required. Key clicks are particularly effective on the alto and bass flute due to the increased size of the instrument.
Video example: Key clicks drumming on alto flute (click to view online)
Tongue rams Tongue rams are popping sounds created by pushing the tongue fast into the flute’s embouchure hole. The pitch is approximately a seventh lower than the written fingering. As the flute has to be rolled inwards for this effect, time mustt be given both before and afterwards for the player to move the instrument to the required position and back. As with key clicks, the tongue position has to be reset before a new sound can be made, so speed is limited. Audio example: Tongue rams (click to listen online)
035
December 2009
HOW TO
Air Sounds A multitude of air sounds are possible on the flute, from a slightly airy tone to full air sounds, jet whistles and breathing effects. Air sounds can be articulated with consonants (se, sss, ch, ke, te, pe etc.) and can be used in a variety of combinations. Be aware that sustained air sounds use up a lot of air, especially on alto and bass flute, and may require frequent breaths. The sound of breathing in has sometimes been used, but with limited effect; to create a noisy in-breath, the player has to involve the throat in the breathing process, thereby creating an in-breath which is much shallower than would ordinarily be used. On low flutes, this does not allow for enough air to play effectively. Beware also of hyperventilation! Audio example: Air sounds articulated with ‘shhh’ (click to listen online)
Multiphonics There is a wide range of available multiphonics on the flute, and the advent of the Kingma system flute, with its greater venting, has increased the possibilities exponentially, especially for alto and bass. Standard alto and bass flutes have close-holed key-work, so the multiphonic
possibilities are greatly reduced in comparison with an open-holed C flute. The important thing to bear in mind when writing multiphonics is that they will generally only work within a small dynamic range. As a general rule, the closer together the two notes are in pitch, the quieter they will be, and conversely, the wider the intervallic range, the louder the dynamic. Some more stable multiphonics might work over a range of dynamics, but this only very rarely covers the whole dynamic range of the instrument. A list of multiphonics can be found in the resources on page 37. It should be noted that due to the increase in tube size, alto and bass flutes respond differently to certain fingerings than C flutes, and pitches may be altered or non-existent. This is particularly true of notes in the high register, since the bigger instruments have fewer high harmonics in the sound. Audio example: Multiphonics on the alto flute (click to listen online)
Whistle tones Whistle tones are very quiet sounds created through a very slow stream of air breaking across the embouchure
036
December 2009
hole. These are hard to produce and even more difficult to stabilise. Sustained pitches are easiest to produce in the instrument’s top register; low register pitches are very difficult. Composers should notate whether they want a stable or fluctuating pitch (fluctuations will be caused by movements in the air stream and will go through the higher partials of the harmonic series). This technique requires a change of embouchure position and air stream speed, so is most reliable when there is a suitable amount of time given for preparation. The precise beginning of the sound is also not always within the player’s control, and a sound coming from nothing is often the most effective method of production.
HOW TO
that there are no precise microtones and any microtonal alterations in pitch have to be carefully controlled by the player. Kingma system instruments are still rare but becoming gradually more prevalent and allow for full quarter tone scales with no change to tone quality. Video example: Quarter-tone scale on Kingma system alto flute (click to watch online)
Audio example: Whistle tones (click to listen online)
Microtones The standard flute has a limited number of reliable quarter tone fingerings, and approximate fingerings for the remaining pitches. These alternative fingerings can sometimes cause changes in timbre, and depend on the ear of the player for precise intonation. On alto and bass flutes, the close-holed key-work means
Singing and playing This is a technique which has to be written with care. The pitch range of players’ voices can vary dramatically, so it is worth keeping vocal lines simple and with a choice of octave to suit the
037
December 2009
player. Also bear in mind that in order to produce a good sound on the flute, the vocal cords and inside of the mouth change shape according to the pitch of the note played. These are connected with the method of vocal sound production, so care must be made not to cause conflict (for example, by writing a note low in the range of a bass flute and requiring a sung note high in the range of the voice).
HOW TO
Carla Rees is an alto and bass flute specialist and Artistic Director of the ensemble rarescale. She currently holds a DMus studentship in the Centre for Music and Multimedia at the Royal College of Music, where she is researching and documenting contemporary techniques for the Kingma system alto and bass flute. www.altoflute.co.uk
Further Resources Artaud, Pierre-Yves, Flûtes au Présent (Paris: Billaudot, 1995); La Flûte Multiphonique (Paris: Billaudot, 1995) Dick, Robert, The Other Flute (2nd Edition, New York: Multiple Breath Music, 1989); Tone Development through Extended Techniques (New York: Multiple Breath Music, 1986) Levine, Carin and Mitropoulos-Bott, Christina, The Techniques of Flute Playing Volume I: Flute (Kassel: Bärenreiter 2002); The Techniques of Flute Playing Volume II: Piccolo, Alto and Bass Flute (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2004) Rees, Carla and Burnand, David, Composing for Quarter Tone Alto Flute, (London: Royal College of Music, 2003) CD ROM (available on request from www.altoflute.co.uk)
Audio and video examples come from the CD ROM Composing for the Kingma system Alto Flute (2009) © Carla Rees 2009 with permission from the Royal College of Music.
038
December 2009
13/11/2009 The Earwig
From the blogs
FROM THE BLOGS
Rite on the button I have never played in, or conducted, The Rite of Spring, but this week I did the next best thing – the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Re-Rite installation in London. The piece plays on an endless loop throughout the day, and in each of the nine rooms there is a film projection of a different section of the orchestra, filmed from different angles on many cameras, playing the piece, under the expert baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen (who also has his own room). In each room you hear the whole orchestra but with the section in question louder, creating the experience of sitting in the band. The horn room takes this idea further: when you sit on the chair marked ‘Sit here’ then you are magically added to the horn section on the film as they play. In the
To read more blog visit the Sound and Music blog.
percussion room you can play along on bass drum and gong, cued in by the percussionist mouthing: 'Ready… now!' In the conductor’s room you can control the sound from a mixing-desk, bringing instruments up and down to re-balance the overall sound. There are interviews with Salonen (who first heard the piece from the seventh horn’s chair) and players, including the principle bassoon, who has the unenviable job of playing the famous opening with three cameras record-
gs, d
039
December 2009
ing his every move. Hearing the Rite for the first time had a bigger impact on me than any other piece of music I have ever heard. That day I decided it was a work of staggering, unimaginable genius and now, hundreds of hearings later, I still do. I still can’t quite work out how Stravinsky, sitting in an upper landing in a Swiss pension, made this music. I have begun to feel I know the piece in great detail, but every room offered a little nugget I had never noticed before. Details of scoring, the way Stravinsky built up his timbres with incredible sculptural care, whether in delicate or violent mode. It was fascinating to sit and follow a single part for a stretch of the piece, coming in and out of the action, rarely resting for long. My familiarity with the piece presented me with two problems: Firstly, I have no real idea how the event would come over to someone who didn’t know the piece. Clearly it was chosen as an orchestral showpiece, with action in most rooms most of the time. I like to think anyone would
From the blogs
be as entranced as I was, but I know there are people who are unmoved by The Rite of Spring (even some people of good taste and judgment on other matters). I can’t think of a better piece for combining orchestral pyrotechnics with musical substance, but there may be people who would put in a plea for something else. My second concern was that, given that I am so clearly in the category of people likely to enjoy this event, I didn’t hear about it until a chance remark by a colleague a week ago. I would normally expect to have known about something so close to my heart, but I was unreached by any publicity. The day I went, there were probably 30 people in the exhibit at any time, although it was a week day morning. But a project so brilliantly conceived and executed deserves many visitors and an orchestra undertaking something so ambitious and (presumably) expensive should be encouraged to innovate in this way. I don’t know if it will, in the end, be decided to have been worthwhile.
040
December 2009
20/11/2009 Richard Thomas Richard Thomas ponders an electric future. More electric cars are starting to appear on our streets, which has the potential to improve our environment as far as airborne pollutants are concerned, but what about sound? They also have very little engine noiseand research is beig done into making replacement sounds. This would alert pedestrians to moving vehicles, and maybe give drivers some more feedback. However, this would affect our sonic environment. Some of those sounds could more suited to flying cars, which we should have by now! Another advantage of having such low engine noise for sound recordists it that the sound of just the tyre noise can be captured on its own - as shown by engineers working on recording sound for computer games. I’ve also come across an article describing the work of the composer Emily Howell, who is, in fact, a com-
From the blogs
puter programme. Created by composer and computer scientist David Cope, it searches databases for musical material and creates compositions from it. There’s also an online radio programme where you can hear some of the compositions. Don’t start thinking composers are out of a job, though - algorithmic composition (and composition involving computers) is by no means a new thing. Mozart, Cage and Xenakis have all done it - this is just taking it further by incorporating Artificial Intelligence processes. There are even ways of getting computers to improvise with live musicians.
20/11/2009 Frances Morgan Reinventing The Dial. Recordings of the presentations given at Reinventing The Dial: Explorations In Experimental Radio Practice
041
December 2009
are now online for those who missed the day-long symposium at Canterbury Christ Church University last week. Billed as 'an opportunity for discussion between students, practitioners and academics with an interest in radio art and experimental radio', Reinventing The Dial lived up to this broad remit while avoiding a rushed or superficial approach to the subject matter. Producer and radio lecturer Magz Hall’s diverse choice of speakers for the event ensured that almost every presentation felt satisfyingly focussed and in-depth, while covering a fair amount of ground. The day started with a series of historical approaches, as Tom McCarthy read from his forthcoming novel set during radio’s emergence in the 1920s, with the coded radio transmissions of Cocteau’s Orphée cited as an inspiration for this and other work. Radio’s early history was a starting point for exploring ideas of interpretation, transmission, interception and the artist as respondent; Andy Birtwistle likewise focused on the Modernist period, but provided a fascinating account of the work of filmmaker Walter Ruttmann, whose early
From From the the blogs blogs
sound work Weekend prefigured the electroacoustic compositions of Cage and Varese. Keynote speaker Kersten Glandien provided an overview of the relationship between sound art and radio art from an historical perspective, tracing the connections and conflicts between the two forms from the 1960s to the present day. Perhaps inevitably, given the rich subject matter, this was a lot to take in, and Glandien’s presentation rewards a second listen on the Reinventing The Dial blog; it is particularly interesting with regard to the relationship between radio art and public radio commissioning and producing. The afternoon’s sessions had a more hands-on, demonstrative feel, and Peter Cusack’s presentation, opening with a recording of his being questioned by police while collection audio material at a London railway station, was not only funny and engaging, but also opened up debate about privacy, access, the perception of field recording as an activity and the concepts of safety and danger as related to sound. Cusack’s recent work with the Positive Soundscapes project addresses the relationships that people
042
December 2009
have with the sound in their environment, arguing that it’s often at odds with accepted notions of ‘harmful’ or pollutant noise; Cusack demonstrated a soundscape ‘sequencer’ developed as part of this project. I look forward to hearing more of his recordings from the ‘dangerous’ places he cites in his abstract. Taking the focus away from the field and into the studio, Andy Cartwright talked about his work with Soundscape Productions for the BBC, an insight into the tensions between radio art and public service broadcasting, while Lance Dann’s Flickerman - an interactive radio drama - perhaps pointed to a way of overcoming, or subverting, those tensions. Dann’s understanding of Web 2.0 and and demonstration of how dramatic content can be inspired and generated by its users was enlivening stuff, taking a positive approach to developing technologies and their possible effects on radio drama. Angus Carlyle’s more oblique, contemplative talk concluded the afternoon, and was a reminder of radio’s unique character; its ability as a medium to be both intimate and
From the blogs
distant. Carlyle put forward the idea of distance as a ‘creative strategy’, citing examples like Locus Sonus and Global String, and nodded to radio’s occult properties with a mention of the Conet Project. It was a great shame that Kaffe Matthews (can we make this link to the news story about her?) was unable to attend, as her presentation on 2003 project Radio Cycle 101.4FM looked to have touched upon many of the issues brought up in the afternoon’s talks - and indeed, throughout the day, involving public/ participatory art, sonic environments, early radio experiments and new technologies. The day’s final discussion was notably free of participants interested only in putting a pet argument across - a common hazard at such events. In fact, a good deal of listening as well as talking went on as Magz initiated debates about questions of practice, composition techniques, relationships with the media industry, engagement with audiences, experiments with binaural recording and 5.1 surround sound and the new aesthetics created by the Internet.
043
December 2009
OPPORTUNITIES
Opportunitie Musicians to accompany with live visuals!
INTO magazine - call for audio and video
I have developed a system using which a group of musicians can perform interacting synthesized computer graphics and live music, using musical instruments as the primary source of control data for the performance. What I am really looking forward to doing now however is trying the system out with real live musicians!
Each month the magazine will showcase a selection of audio and video representing new work in the UK. If you would like to submit work for consideration, please either send links to embedded audio and video, or send audio and video files (up to 50MB), via Yousendit, to shoel. stadlen@soundandmusic.org. Submissions will be considered on an ongoing basis, so do send them in as soon as possible!
Deadline: 15/01/2010
My proposal is that I will visually accompany your future rehearsals and/or performances, at least until the end of my stay in London which is roughly on February 2010, provided of course that you wish for it to carry on until then. So if you are part of a live group located in or near London, no matter what musical genre, and you find my proposal appealing, do get in touch!
Deadline: 31/12/2009
NB: To submit audio and video you must have the permission of those involved in the creation and performance of the work. You will be asked to sign a disclaimer to confirm you have secured the necessary permissions. shoel.stadlen@soundandmusic.org
Ilias Bergstrom www.onar3d.com
044
December 2009
OPPORTUNITIES
Opportunitie LCO New: Explore ‘Inspired by Architecture’ | Write for London Chamber Orchestra! Deadline: 16/01/2010
CALLING ALL COMPOSERS! Would you like to have your music performed, recorded and published by the London Chamber Orchestra? LCO New: Explore is a contemporary music scheme that aims to forge new relationships between performers, composers and listeners. LCO sees the fostering of new creative talent as vital to this mission. Each year, an initiative is created offering young composers the opportunity to write for a group of world-class musicians of the orchestra, eventually allowing six selected composers to receive performances and recordings of their work. This year’s project, titled ‘Inspired by Architecture’ (in partnership with the GLA EAST Festival) explores the long recognised relationship between the two art forms of architecture and music. Not only can it potentially expose the world of contemporary music to a new audience, this project introduces young emerging composers to the creative concepts behind a comparable art form, stimulating their creative approach to composing music. LCO New Explore student info.pdf STUDY DAY: 23 November 2009, City Hall London
‘Inspired by Architecture’ will include lectures by architects and musicians, providing participating composers with guidance and suggestions in undertaking a project of this type. Visits to the buildings will take place in the afternoon on the day. For details of how to apply click here. LCO New Project Manager: Dónal Rafferty Email: donal@lco.co.uk Phone: 020 7105 6205 www.lco.co.uk
INTO magazine - seeking roving reporters across the UK Deadline: 31/12/2009
INTO is Sound and Music’s monthly online magazine. We are looking for people across the country who are avid concert- and gig-goers to send brief, vivid reports on events, while also conducting research into audiences at events that will build the sector’s audience development knowledge. For more information, and to express interest, please email shoel.stadlen@ soundandmusic.org
045
December 2009
OPPORTUNITIES
Keyboard player wanted for silent film band
Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival
Minima has accompanied silent and experimental film since 2006, at a wide range of spaces, places and events, including the Big Chill and Latitude Festivals, London’s Barbican Centre and Bristol’s Arnolfini Gallery, and the Shunt Vaults in London. We are looking for a sensitive, reliable keyboard player, stylistically open-minded, able to learn set scores and to improvise within a group. There is no limit to the genres of music the band perform in and we are looking for a versatile keyboard player, who can also leave space within the music as well as fill it. Based in London and Bristol www.minimamusic.com
The 2010 Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts, USA, July 12-Aug 1, 2010) is a residency for composers and performers of contemporary music at one of the foremost US contemporary art museums. The Bang on a Can Summer Festival is dedicated entirely to adventurous contemporary music. We will write it. We will perform it. We will think about it and we will talk about it. Faculty includes Bang on a Can founders Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, California EARUnit, eighth blackbird, and more. Our special guest for 2010 is George Crumb.
Deadline: 01/04/2010
Contact: Mick Frangou info@minimamusic.com
Application Deadline: 15/01/2010
www.bangonacan.org/summer_festival
Know someone who loves new music and sound? Buy them Sound and Music membership, putting them at the heart of the UK’s scene. Visit soundandmusic.org to buy online.
Hear & Now
Saturday nights at 10.30pm on BBC Radio 3
December is all about composer profiles. Ivan Hewett visits Simon Holt, Christian Jost and Bruno Mantovani in their studios and gets an insider’s view of how their works are made. With performances from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. And George Crumb features in a special edition from the BBC Symphony’s ‘Total Immersion’ events, earlier this month.
5 December: Simon Holt
Witness to a snow miracle; Syrensong; Sharp end of Night; Minotaur Games. BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Thierry Fischer (conductor), Chloë Hanslip (violin).
12 December: Christian Jost
Odyssee for clarinet and orchestra; Code 9; Adagio 12; Eingefroren. BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Jac van Steen (conductor), Robert Plane (clarinet), Lesley Hatfield (violin), Benjamin Frith (piano).
19 December: Bruno Mantovani
Time stretch (on Gesualdo); Cello Concerto; L’ere de rien; Finale. BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Pascal Rophe (conductor), Sonia Wieder-Atherton (cello), Andrew Nicholson (flute), Robert Plane (clarinet), Catherine Roe-Williams (piano).
26 December: George Crumb
Haunted Landscape. BBC Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins (conductor). Makrokosmos Volume 1 (12 fantasy pieces after the Zodiac for amplified piano). Joanna McGregor (piano). Ancient Voices of Children. Louis Watkins (soprano), Anna Patalong (mezzo-soprano), Guildhall New Music Ensemble, Richard Baker (conductor).
The magazine of