March 2010
WORLDS OF POSSIBILITIES Inside the Fluid Piano
The magazine of
WOLFGANG RIHM Tradition and transgression FINLAND ON FIRE The new Finnish free jazz
Welcome to the March issue of INTO If there’s one thread that ties together the very different features in this month’s INTO, it is perhaps that they all encourage us to look beyond the familiar, outside of our comfort zones. Geoff Smith’s Fluid Piano, the subject of our cover feature, is not only an ingenious invention, but also an instrument with significant implications for performance and composition. Its microtonal tuning system opens up possibilities for players and composers using non-standard and non-western scales, and prompts us to ask questions about musical diversity in today’s multicultural society – are our orchestral instruments, as Smith says to writer and musician Matthew Lee Knowles, “frozen in time”? Ivan Hewett celebrates the music of Wolfgang Rihm, this month the subject of a BBC Symphony Orchestra Total Immersion series, and paints a portrait of a strikingly independent composer whose work is characterised by a belief that tradi-
Published by Sound and Music www.soundandmusic.org Contact: into-magazine@soundandmusic.org
tion, on the one hand, and transgression of what has gone before, on the other, are not contradictory but one and the same. A similar independence of spirit comes to light in Daniel Spicer’s profile of the key players in the little-known Finnish free-jazz underground – a grass-roots network of musicians, record labels and promoters committed to exploring the outer limits of jazz. You’ll notice a new feature called Incoming, which composers and artists can contribute to. It’s as straightforward as updating a social networking profile – email us a 45 word (or less) bulletin about what you’re up to in the month ahead, and we will print a selection every month. Elsewhere, there’s the usual news, blogs and opportunities, and plenty to look at and listen to in What We’re INTO, from Nico Muhly to the strange sounds of the lyre bird.
Frances Morgan Editor
Managing Editor: Shoël Stadlen Editor: Frances Morgan Designed by: Andy McGarity andymcgarity.co.uk
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CONTENTS
C ntents WHAT WE’RE INTO PAGES 6—7
NEWS PAGES 8—15
INCOMING PAGES 16—17
WOLFGANG RIHM: TRADITION AND TRANSGRESSION PAGES 18—25
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FINLAND ON FIRE: THE NEW FINNISH FREE JAZZ PAGES 26—31
CONTENTS
FROM THE BLOGS PAGES 38—44
OPPORTUNITIES PAGES 45—51
WORLDS OF POSSIBILITIES: THE FLUID PIANO PAGES 32—36
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WHAT WE’RE INTO
Video for Polar Bear’s ‘A New Morning Will Come directed by Kira Zhigalina
What we’re INTO is a small monthly round-up of some of the new music and sound that we’ve been enjoying at Sound and Music. Follow the links to see and hear our audio, video and interactive selections. To submit your work for consideration, please see the open call on our website.
Sounds of the lyre bird
Interview wit Baumgärtel, Computerga
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WHAT WE’RE INTO
Expanded Cinema blog
e’,
Mimaroglu Distribution, run by electronic musicians Geoff Mullen and Keith Fullerton Whitman Nico Muhly: Long Line For Solo Violin and Tape
ith Tilman , the curator for ames by Artist
Tuned Into Sound blog
Chris Watson at the South Pole
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NEWS
NEW Photograph: Frans Brood Productions
CROSSING BOUNDARIES AT PARALLEL VOICES
ALEXANDRA GILBERT
Multi-disciplinary artist Carsten Nicolai, also known as electronic musician Alva Noto and co-founder of the Raster-Noton label, curates this year’s Parallel Voices at Siobhan Davies Studios from 17 to 19 March, with a programme that includes Ryoji Ikeda, Blixa Bargeld and Christian Fennesz among its musicians, composers, dancers, choreographers and artists. Subtitled Missing Link, the three-day event celebrates artists who bridge gaps and cross – or disregard – boundaries, with performances, installations and talks including a discussion chaired by the Tate Modern’s Ben Borthwick and including Throbbing Gristle musicians Chris Carter and
RYOIJI IKEDA: TEST PATTERN
Cosey Fanni Tutti. Ikeda’s audiovisual work test pattern will open the festival, while Nicolai presents a large-scale light installation entitled Monitor. www.siobhandavies.com/parallelvoices
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NEWS
IMPROVISATION IN FOCUS AT LEEDS INTERNATIONAL JAZZ CONFERENCE
FASTER THAN SOUND EXPLORES SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF SUFFOLK
Improvisation – Jazz In The Creative Moment is the title of 2010’s Leeds International Jazz Conference, taking place on 25 and 26 March at Leeds College Of Music. Bringing together delegates every year since 1993 to participate in presentations, workshops and performances, LIJC is a leading event for jazz education, research and performance, and is a forum for musicians, academics, educators, students and arts organisers to engage with the latest sounds and ideas in jazz, as well as giving Leeds College Of Music students the chance to showcase their work. This year’s keynote speakers are saxophonist and composer Dave Liebman and Paul Berliner, author of Thinking in Jazz: the Infinite Art of Improvisation.
Norwegian vocalist and electronic improviser and composer Maja Ratkje, British artist Kathy Hinde and New York-based artist and composer Marina Rosenfeld come together for Faster The Sound’s Parallel Lives, a new project curated by Wire magazine that culminates in a performance on 20 March at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh. The three artists will embark on parallel journeys to Suffolk where they will create brand new works with collaborators ranging from schoolchildren and engineering firms to the London Contemporary Orchestra. Also that weekend, Katharine Sandys’s site-specific sound installation Hush House, which uses low sound frequencies in reference to the jets originally tested in the space, will be at the nearby decommissioned Cold War airbase, RAF Bentwaters, the previous home of Faster Than Sound.
www.lcm.ac.uk
www.fasterthansound.com
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NEWS
NEW
BEAST CONCERT LAYOUT
Photograph: Annie Mahtani
SONIC FINGERPRINTS AND STOCKHAUSEN IN BIRMINGHAM
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre present a weekend of electroacoustic music using BEAST’s multi-channel sound diffusion system. Taking place on 6 and 7 March, the two day event celebrates 20 years of empreintes DIGITALes, the Montreal-based CD and DVD label which specialises in acousmatic electroacoustic music, including releases by UK-based composers, some of whom will be featured in concerts on 6 March. On 7 March, Stockhausen’s Kontakte will be performed, featuring Canadian duo Luciane Careassi and Eric Bumstead – an appetiser for the University of Birmingham’s performances of Stockhausen’s 1959 work Carré, for four orchestras and choirs, on 18 and 19 March. www.bcmg.org.uk
MARCH 2010
NEW MUSIC AND VIDEO ART AT RICHARD GRAYSON RETROSPECTIVE Video and installation artist Richard Grayson takes music as his subject matter and includes specially commissioned new work in his current exhibition at De Le Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, running until 14 March. This retrospective of the British artist, who was a founder member of the Basement Group in Newcastle in the late 1970s, brings together work that centres around themes of language and narrative, and includes new work The Magpie Index, which features monologues by singer and songwriter Roy Harper, Messiah, in which Handel’s oratorio is re-imagined by country and western musicians, and The Golden Space City Of God, for which a choral work by composer Leo Chadburn was commissioned, and then performed by a 26-piece choir. www.dlwp.com
NEWS
SATYAGRAHA RETURNS TO THE COLISEUM Philip Glass’s acclaimed opera on the life of Gandhi, Satyagraha, is being performed by the English National Opera at the London Coliseum up until 26 March. First performed in 1980, the opera has become one of Glass’s most popular works, exploring Gandhi’s concept of non-violent resistance to injustice, from which the work takes its title. This current production, which returns to London after a run in New York, has been conceived by Improbable’s director-designer partnership, Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch. www.eno.org
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NEWS
NEW LOUDSPEAKER TRIO BRING THE NOISE Electroacoustic legend Zbigniew Karkowski, extreme computer sound and image artist ILIOS and instrumental and electronic composer Antoine Cheesex work together as The Loudspeaker, making extreme infrasonics with tone generators and sub-bass frequencies. 17 March sees their first UK performance at Corsica Studios, London, presented by Sound And Music, Noise = Noise and Goldsmiths University. Support comes from Lee Gamble of the CYRK collective and Ryan Jordan’s DIY punk electronics, with DJ Wrongspeed of Resonance104.4 FM. www.corsicastudios.com
THOMAS ADÉS LIVE IN CONCERT
This new release from Thomas Adés on EMI Classics is a chance to hear the composer’s work recorded live in concert, with Tevot performed by the Berliner Philharmonic with Simon Rattle, and Adés conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in his Violin Concerto with Anthony Marwood as soloist. The National Youth Orchestra perform parts of Adés’s first opera Powder Her Face. www.emiclassics.com
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NEWS
GRAEME JENNINGS
Photograph: Brian Gilbert
ELISION EXPLORE A NEW TERRAIN
Australian contemporary music ensemble ELISION perform at King’s Place on 15 March, appearing for the first time as a full ensemble in London. The programme includes works by Mary Bellamy, Aaron Cassidy, James Dillon, Bryn Harrison and Liza Lim, and concludes with a performance of Brian Ferneyhough’s Terrain, with violinist Graeme Jennings. The concert is part of the King’s Place Out Hear series, which also includes the Nomad Ensemble’s recreation of Yves Klein’s Anthropométries of the Blue Epoch on 22 March and a mixed media performance by Counterpoise on 29 March. www.kingsplace.co.uk/music/out-hear
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NEWS
NEW WORLD PREMIERES FROM THE YOUNG BRITS PROGRAMME
MICHAEL LANGEMANN
On 31 March the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor André de Ridder will perform a number of works developed as part of the BBC SO Young Brits programme, in collaboration with Sound and Music, including three world premieres. The Young Brits project gave two composers, Gavin Higgins and Michael Langemann, the opportunity to work with the orchestra on new scores through a workshop process that allowed them to develop and experiment with the scores along the way, with the guidance of composer Peter Wiegold. The composers had the chance to listen to recordings of their work during
the process, as well as working directly with the orchestra. Opposite, Gavin Higgins explains how his composition developed through this process, and talks about the inspiration behind Dancing At The Edge Of Hell. As well as Michael Langemann’s Five Movements for Orchestra and Gavin Higgins’ Dancing At The Edge Of Hell, Ian Vine’s Alazarin Sun and Violet and Lloyd Moore’s Diabolus In Musica will also be performed. www.soundandmusic.org
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NEWS
I
n March 2009 I was fortunate to have some sketches of an orchestral piece worked on by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Although I have worked as an orchestrator on a number of projects in the past, including film scores and ballets, this was the first time I had really had the opportunity to write my own piece for orchestra. The workshop was a great chance for me to hear my ideas come to life and also provided me with clues of where I was going to take the piece. One year on, the piece is entitled Dancing At The Edge Of Hell and is a relentless set of dances and interludes. The work is set in an abandoned theatre at the end of time: A ballet company is about to perform its interpretation of an End-Of-Days festival, a party that takes place at the Gates Of Hell in Turkmenistan – a final apocalyptic rave before the end of the world. Though the piece is not programmatic, images of crumbling theatres and fiery crater are at the core of the work. While reading The Divine Comedy I became obsessed with the Gates of Hell as a concept. I soon came across a picture of a fiery crater in the middle of the Turkmenistan desert and knew this would be the perfect setting for my piece; desolate, barren and dramatic – the perfect place for a rave. Recollections of the illegal raves in of the 1990s in the Forest of Dean and the famous
GAVIN HIGGINS
“Burning Man” festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert sparked off the inspiration for the piece. “The Gates of Hell”, as locals affectionately call it, is a massive hole in the middle of the Turkmenistan desert. Although the exact cause of this crater is still rather ambiguous, the hole is not so much an outcome of nature but rather an industrial accident. The story goes that in 1971 a Soviet drilling rig accidentally punctured a large natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the drilling rig to fall in. Noxious gas began to leak from the hole and in a bid to prevent an environmental disaster the Soviets set the hole alight, presumably in an effort to burn off the gas. The flames have been burning now for nearly 40 years and show no signs of stopping. Gavin Higgins www.gavinhiggins.com
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INCOMING
Incoming A news feed direct from Sound And Music’s composers from around the UK, with details of new projects, forthcoming concerts, academic appointments and much more. If you’re a composer or artist and would like to let us know what’s going on in your world in 45 words or less, get in touch at incoming@soundandmusic.org and we’ll publish a selection every month. Jessica Aslan has set up a monthly concert series called !Boom! in Edinburgh, featuring live and fixed digital music submitted by local musicians. www.myspace.com/acissejaslan Jessica Aslan has been given an introduction to Arduino and Hardware Hacking and is looking forward to creating interactive installations and tailoring instruments for community-based projects. www.arduino.cc Dimitris Bakas is undertaking post-doctoral research at Goldsmiths, focusing on his work Cardiogram for amplified string quartet, applied in different media with 8-channel live diffusion of the sound (using Max/MSP) which explores absolute continuity in combination with block form. Edward Caine has been awarded a place on the HCMF and Nieuw Ensemble Composers Professional Development Programme. He had his first weekend of workshops with the Nieuw Ensemble in Amsterdam in February. www.edwardcaine.com Adam Jansch has made a short documentary about a recent collaboration at the University of Huddersfield which included Richard Glover’s in tones organ installation www.vimeo.com/9139324
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INCOMING
Martin Iddon is planning to extend his commission for Ensemble SurPlus, tu as navré, which uses matter from Ockeghem’s motet on the death of Binchois, into a triptych, with a piece looking at Josquin’s motet on the death of Ockeghem and Gombert’s motet on the death of Josquin. Paul Jones started a new collaboration with improviser and drummer Matthew Lovett, abstractly and rather obliquely interpreting jazz standards. So far they have recorded a version on Dizzy Gillespie’s Con Alma, sort of Morton Feldman meets the rhythm section. twitter.com/thingsmake and www.thisispauljones.com Paul Jones is looking to extend his work with the film soundtrack group Dots. We recently worked with six film makers both emerging and established, and performed using conventional instruments and found sounds/bicycles/prerecorded sound. www.myspace.com/dotsfilmband Laurence Rose is preparing to rehearse a piece commissioned by the Yorkshire Late Starters Strings for performance later this year. YLSS are a mixed ability amateur ensemble enthusiastic about creating new sounds. Radek Rudnicki’s newest piece, which involves scored visuals and improvising to an aquarium full of ink, can be found at koshimazaki.com/radek/?aquatusz,44 Tazul Tajuddin has recently been appointed Associate Professor for Composition and New Music at the Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Malaysia.
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WOLFGANG RIHM
Wolfgang TRADITION AND TRANSGRESSION
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WOLFGANG RIHM
ng Rihm
Ivan Hewett introduces the ‘colossally assertive’ music of Wolfgang Rihm, soon to be the subject of a BBC Symphony Orchestra Total Immersion season, and applauds the diversity and intensity of the composer’s wide-ranging body of work.
to music... “Myhasrelationship always an inner free-
dom, but at the same time has something to do with the other, with the strange, with the inner foreign land, where I see the self that I do not know, before which I feel a fascinating insecurity.”1 For anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the music of Wolfgang Rihm, the idea that he might live in a constant state of “insecurity” will come as a surprise. No music of recent years – except perhaps Xenakis’s – is so colossally assertive and expressively violent, even when 1
speaking pianissimo. As for the composer himself, he’s an impressive giant of a man, who under an amiable surface gives the impression of almost alarming strength and determination. The philosopher Adorno once pointed out that a kind of violence is contained in the very idea of focused mental effort. One speaks of “furious concentration”, and few artists of any era have displayed that fury quite as nakedly as Rihm. By the time of his 50th birthday Rihm’s work-list had topped the 400 mark, which puts him on a par with famously productive
adapted from Alastair Williams, ‘Voices of the Other: Wolfgang Rihm’s Die Eroberung von Mexico’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, vol 129 no. 2 (2004)
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Baroque note-spinners like Telemann. Among them are huge music-theatre works, massively ambitious orchestral works, twelve string quartets, twenty song-cycles, miscellaneous ensemble works…the list goes on and on. What makes this achievement almost incredible is that whereas Telemann was working within an accepted style that made note-spinning quite easy, Rihm is under the merciless self-imposed obligation to rethink the nature of musical form and discourse, every time he composes. “Like the self,
WOLFGANG RIHM
shrink from. And yet even as a child, growing up in the SouthWest German city of Karlsruhe (where he still lives), Rihm was willing to grapple with it. At the age of eleven he sneaked into a village church while on a family holiday, switched on the organ, and improvised for hours, just as he did at home on the piano. The villagers were so alarmed by the weird noises coming from inside that they switched off the electric power. “It was my first experience of a real public,” comments Rihm dryly. The boy must have been a source of amazement and even
“A work of music is identical with the search for it” form does not exist a priori,” he says. “Both have to be created. And both remain in a state of change.” It’s an ethical and aesthetic challenge most of us would
awe to his parents, who were modest people “with no intellectual pretensions”, as Rihm puts it. Money was tight, and his grandfather’s help was needed to buy an upright piano. His tal-
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WOLFGANG RIHM
Photograph: Eric Marinitsch
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Studying with Wolfgang Rihm: a composer’s perspective by Naomi Pinnock
When I heard the London Sinfonietta
perform Rihm’s Jagden und Formen back in 2003, I was so gripped by the immense energy of this piece I knew that I needed to study with the person who had written it. At the end of September 2006 I arrived in Karlsruhe and I have been living in Germany ever since. An important feature of my new life was the weekly meetings of Wolfgang Rihm’s composition students. The atmosphere in the class was friendly but challenging and I felt like I’d landed in the right place. For three hours every Thursday morning we would present, discuss and listen to our works. But that wasn’t all. Just as a writer’s life is filled with reading, so a composer’s life is filled with listening and analysing scores. This is something that Wolfgang Rihm believes in – he is a composer who not only owns vast numbers of scores and recordings, but his knowledge of them is keenly studied. This knowledge of music and musicology is something he nurtures in his students and forms a large part of the Thursday seminars. There were also regular class concerts and what was often remarked upon was the variety of compositional voices that were present. Students
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ent soon attracted the attention of the local Music Academy in Karlsruhe, and in 1967, when Rihm was only fifteen years old, he was enrolled there as a composition student. But Rihm tells us the most invaluable advice he ever received was this scribbled note: “Dear Wolfgang Rihm, Please follow only your inner voice. Yours, Karlheinz Stockhausen.” Rihm has never shrunk from doing exactly that. By his early 20s he was already creating a stir, with music that dared to hark back to an earlier era. His Morphonie: Sektor IV for string quartet and orchestra ends with a Mahlerian song of farewell, there are hugely expressive late-romantic gestures in Dis-kontur (1974) and Sub-kontur (1975), and the third quartet of 1976 contains references to late Beethoven quartets. This took some courage in a German musical culture still under the spell of the avantgarde aesthetic. Works were valued more for their con-
WOLFGANG RIHM
structive rigour and “historical necessity” than for the sounds they made, and Rihm’s music appeared to lack both. The abundance of clear tonal and formal signposts led him to be lumped in with the so-called “New Simplicity” school of composers, which included Detlev Müller-Siemens and Hans-Jurgen von Böse. This was never a helpful label for music which was anything but simple, and in any case Rihm soon moved beyond this early style. During the 1980s he embraced a more eruptive world of “sound-points”, made of abrupt gestures etched in strange, sharp colours, punctuated by alarming silences. It’s a style expressed with particular power in the Chiffre (“cipher”) cycle of eleven chamber works. Bild: eine chiffre, one of the works being performed in the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Total Immersion series, is one of them. The word cipher gives a clue to the new sound-world, as does the title of a later cycle of works: Fetzen, meaning shreds
“It is not w produced expectedl
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or fragment. Rihm was now thinking of musical material as something essentially “fissured” and cracked. The immediate musical
what is systematically but what arrives unly that gives life to art” influence on this new direction was the fiercely Marxist composer Luigi Nono. But just as important was the creed of total immediacy and the avoidance of all convention and formula put forward by certain 20th century authors, above all that strange, tormented theatrical innovator Antonin Artaud. Rihm takes it as a given that in our era, nothing can appear as an integrated whole, because wholeness is a state beyond our reach. As he puts it, “a work of music is identical with the search for it”. After the romantic first period and the fissured second
WOLFGANG RIHM
come from all over the world to study with Wolfgang Rihm and in the time I was in the class it comprised of no less than eight nationalities (out of about ten students). But despite our aesthetic differences and backgrounds we still spent a lot of time discussing and grappling with the same fundamental problems that arise again and again. In the group and individual lessons Rihm doesn’t hand out a recipe for how to write the perfect piece, nor does he insist that you should write for this group of instruments and not another. Instead he uses what a student has written as the starting point for probing questions. He gives practical advice about what works well in performance, not just what looks good on the page. In the year that I officially studied with him I wrote many pieces. Maybe some of his ability to write so quickly had rubbed off! I learnt a lot, not just the craft or technique (“The horn can’t start so high!”) nor compositionally (“There are many places you can get your material from – you could write some notes on a piece of paper and hang it outside for three months, and see what’s left!”), but also artistically. I trusted my material more and became bolder in my choices. But there is something else that continues to impress me about Wolfgang Rihm – no matter how quickly his catalogue of compositions expands or how hard he works he always has an unhurried, unflappable air about him and he always has the time to talk.
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period, Rihm’s music entered its present phase, which is much harder to define. The basic preoccupation remains, as Rihm puts it, the “interweaving of projection and retrospection, this constant mutual interaction of now, then, past, before, after, future, in order to engender the substance of music.” But instead of a “vertical placing of sound points”, Rihm says that “these days I try to achieve this through linear thinking, continuing a long line.” That assertion might puzzle anyone who’s encountered the sudden shocks and interruptions of, say, Concerto Séraphin of 2008. But in these recent works the constant reminders of his eruptive 1980s manner are embraced, or held in balance with, things that are spun out horizontally. Rihm has always said that “it is not what is systematically produced but what arrives unexpectedly that gives life to art.” And what better way to engender surprise than by trying to synthesize his two earlier styles, which on the
WOLFGANG RIHM
surface seem so completely incompatible? Now in his 58th year, Rihm has already produced enough music for at least two life-times, but he continues to compose with the same whitehot intensity. He frets constantly about the lack of time, but his natural generosity always overcomes his desire to hide away and compose. He’s constantly in demand by students, or to chair committees, or to lead campaigns to save threatened orchestras. As he ruefully admits, he has a tendency to say yes to these demands on his time without thinking first. As for his view of new music’s place in the wider world, Rihm clings to the old-fashioned belief in the universal relevance of élite culture that one often finds in working-class boys made good, like Terry Eagleton. And he’s proud to claim a place in the great German musical tradition – but with a proviso. “What is tradition? I formulate it as follows: Brahms doesn’t follow Beethoven’s tradition, he is
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WOLFGANG RIHM
Listening Post Beethoven’s tradition. Schoenberg doesn’t follow Brahms’s tradition, he is it. Boulez is Schoenberg’s tradition, Stockhausen Boulez’s ...and so on. Tradition is not something which, once there, never changes. Tradition is transgression, tradition is changing, tradition is alive.” Reproduced with permission of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Total Immersion: Wolfgang Rihm takes place on 12 and 13 March at the Barbican. More info at www.bbc.uk/totalimmersion
Chiffre IV (1995)
Morphonie: Sektor IV (1972) Die Eroberung von Mexico (1987-1991): LISTEN IN-SCHRIFT (1995): LISTEN Translated interview with Rihm from Die Zeit, 2006
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FINLAND ON FIRE
Finland on fire Daniel Spicer lifts the lid on Finland’s simmering free-jazz scene, uncovering a wealth of explosive music, fruitful collaborations and dedicated underground record labels.
TACO BELLS
MARCH 2010
FINLAND ON FIRE
Photograph: Markku Laimo
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T
his month sees a landmark release in Finnish avant-garde jazz, with the reissue of Dingdongtyyny-Europetour-05, a collection of live recordings originally captured by the now-defunct quartet Rauhan Orkesteri on tour in 2005. But don’t expect to hear much about it. It’s a low-key release, trickling out in an extremely limited run of just fifty CD-Rs from the tiny, independent Finnish record label, Tyyfus. Yet, this isn’t some ultraelitist hipster gesture. Rather, it speaks volumes about the largely ignored – and, thus, resolutely underground – status of free-jazz in Finland.
“When we started the Tyyfus label we thought we would probably release material only by our friends. But then our second release was by Corsano and Flaherty!” That’s a far cry from the rude health of avant-jazz in the country’s closest Scandinavian neighbours. Sweden has enjoyed a long-standing love affair with free-jazz stretching back to the 1960s and well-documented visits from American pioneers such as Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor. And Norway’s Rune Grammofon label has, over the last twelve years, released scores of titles by home-grown left-field jazz artists – most recently the triple CD, Bandwidth, by Circulasione Totale Orchestra, led by Norwegian saxophone legend Frode Gjerstad. Meanwhile, the Swedish/Norwegian trio of
FINLAND ON FIRE
saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten has conquered the record collections of avant-rock fans the world over as power-skronk unit The Thing. But what of Finland? Other than pioneering avant-garde drummer and composer Edward Vesala (who died in 1999), its trailblazers are conspicuous by their absence. The reasons are open to speculation. Some blame Finland’s proximity to Russia for preventing US culture – including jazz – from gaining the same post-war foothold as it did in its neighbours. Whatever the cause, even in the capital Helsinki you’d be hard pressed to find a club where you could regularly witness free-jazz, while Finland’s annual jazz festival, the Tampere Jazz Happening, largely relies on big-name internationals. Sure, there are Finnish jazz musicians – such as saxophonist Mikko Innanen – but they are often classically-trained and lacking the outlaw spark that the most incendiary Fire Music requires. All of which makes Rauhan Orkesteri important. This quartet, comprising bassist Tero Kemppainen, drummer Jaako Tolvi and saxophonists Antti Tolvi and Ville Jolanki, was active in the middle of the last decade, making rough and joyously unfettered improvised music at the same time as the so-called free-folk explosion brought bands from the Finnish psych/Noise underground, such as Kemialliset Ystävät, to international attention. Rauhan Orkesteri disbanded in 2006 but today its spirit lives on in the Tyyfus record label and the work of label-boss
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and saxophonist Sami Pekkola. Founded in 2005, Tyyfus has already released vinyl and CDs by some of the biggest names in 21st century international Fire Music – from Mats Gustafsson and Paal Nilssen-Love to American outsiders Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty. It’s not a situation Pekkola ever expected to find himself in. “When we started the label,” he says, “we thought we would probably have to release material only by our friends before we could even talk to the real guys. But then, really quickly, we were talking with that year’s hottest duo of real free-jazz – our second release was by Corsano and Flaherty!” Along with the Ikuisuus label, another Finnish imprint with strong roots in the experimental/psych underground, Tyyfus is providing a platform for two of Pekkola’s own groups: the quartet Mohel and the trio Taco Bells. These
MOHEL LIVE IN HELSINKI: 2009
FINLAND ON FIRE
groups, more than anyone, are keeping the flame of DIY Fire Music burning in Finland. Mohel’s last album, Babylon Bypass, released on Tyyfus in 2008, was a coruscating blast of free-form abandon, taking as a starting point the raw energy and snarling spirit-of-’68 attitude of German tenor titan Peter Brotzmann’s radical massed-horn protest album Machine Gun. And Taco Bells’ most recent piece of vinyl – last year’s Vadelma/Hawaii, released on Ikuisuus – augmented the core trio with violin and electric guitar for two side-long slabs of ragged, clattering, feral music sounding like Albert Ayler’s string-heavy1966 quintet predicting the lysergic free-rock of Germany’s Amon Düül II. Both these groups owe much of their sound to the approach prefigured by Rauhan Orkesteri – which is hardly surprising when one realises that a couple of Rauhan Orkesteri’s ex-members now play
Photograph: Jussi Jänis
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FINLAND ON FIRE
Photograph: Markku Laimo
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RAUHAN ORKESTERI, 2003
in Pekkola’s two groups: bassist Tero Kemppainen in Taco Bells and drummer Jaako Tolvi in both units. In Pekkola’s immediate circle, we find the core of the Finnish out-jazz community, boiled down to just a handful of players. Moreover, one factor that distinguishes the Finnish scene from the avant-jazz of Norway or Sweden is the way these players are so deeply embedded in Finland’s close-knit psychedelic/ noise underground – itself consisting of far fewer musicians than its international profile would suggest. “The scene is pretty small,” says Pekkola, “and everyone knows each other somehow.” Take Hetero Skeleton as an example: a sprawling noise-rock ensemble that incorporates all of Mohel plus various luminaries of the weirdo scene including members of free-folk group Avarus, which itself counts Jan Anderzen of Kemialliset Ystävät as a member. In short, everyone is playing with everyone else. Of course, the aesthetic similarities between free-jazz and noise have been recognised at least since veteran
avant-garde saxophonist Anthony Braxton played with Wolf Eyes at the Canadian Victoriaville festival in 2005, and in 2008 Pekkola himself played at the Colour Out Of Space festival in Brighton – widely regarded as one of the UK’s leading noise-related events. Certainly, he appreciates what his noise brethren are trying to achieve: “It’s nice when someone is really pushing his equipment to find new interesting levels. That’s the same thing I’m after with my music also. Before I started to play, I got really excited when at jazz gigs the sax player screamed a bit or did overtones for a second or two on the craziest part of his solo. But I was always disappointed because the good part was so quickly over. So I thought I would like to play jazz which would start from that point. And I find that also in a good noise act.” It’s a view that’s unlikely to win Pekkola many fans among the Finnish jazz mainstream: “Mohel played at Tampere Jazz Happening in 2005,” he says. “I still don’t know how we got in. Our drummer was pushing things pretty hard and he’s
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Listening Post
FINLAND ON FIRE
Top to bottom: Frode Gjerstad and Paal Nilssen-Love, Day Before One (Tyffus); Mohel, Babylon Bypass (Tyffus); Taco Bells, Vadelma (Ikuisuus)
Private Mohel session
Taco Bells live in Tampere quite a big guy. After that, things have been quiet from that sector!” But even that lack of interest hasn’t deterred him from trying to build bridges: “Tyyfus used to run a happening for free-jazz and improvised music. We tried to ask more serious jazz musicians to join us and we got some of those guys to play – like saxophonist Mikko Innanen. I hope we made those worlds a bit closer to each other for a short moment. But there were only three people in the audience, even though the tickets were just a few euro.” Still, despite apathy and marginalisation, Pekkola remains confident the music will survive. “I think, with free-jazz, there has always been about the same amount of interest in it and that’s why it’s survived pretty well. There’s always a few guys interested in rare LPs by Frank Wright and they smile when someone is pushing music to unknown areas.”
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WORLDS OF POSSIBILITY
WORLDS OF POSSIBILITY Geoff Smith’s microtonal Fluid Piano, “an instrument infused with multiple personalities”, opens up new avenues for pianists and composers, and could impact on piano music across the globe, finds Matthew Lee Knowles.
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I
recently had the pleasure of speaking with Geoff Smith, inventor of the world’s “first multicultural international piano”, an instrument whose microtonal tuning possibilities on every single note has led to it receiving global recognition. A highly skilled performer of the hammered dulcimer, the Brighton-based composer let me listen to brand new recordings over the phone as we spoke for over an hour, concluding that there is so much more to explore with this fascinating new invention. A documentary film of some of these explorations is being created along the way by Rafael Lewandowski. Why the name fluid piano, why not fluid keyboard – is it important to retain the word “piano”? Geoff Smith: Absolutely, definitely. It’s the combination of the words, the two are inseparable to me now. Fluid, because it juxtaposes fixed tuning and the restric-
PAM CHOWHAN PLAYS THE FLUID PIANO
WORLDS OF POSSIBILITY
tions that we are so familiar with and the use of the word piano is very important, to put it within the context of the history of music. Using the word “keyboard” might have affected the size of response received so far – it is a different sort of piano, that’s the significance. The majority of the responses have been extremely positive, but some people have felt threatened because here is a piano no longer restricted to western tuning. It’s not trying to be a piano – it’s a new instrument. You’ve talked about the “restrictions” of the western piano and I’ve read statements which seem to suggest you find a boringness with its “limited” fixed tuning – is this true? This isn’t really my view, it’s just an objective fact. There is an Iranian musician in the US who left Iran just before the revolution in 1979, who retunes the western piano manually so he can use Iranian
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scales – he is, of course, very skilled, but it’s very laborious. We have talked over the past few years, and he has being very excited at the prospect of being able to tune quickly and retune during a performance, whereas, at the moment, he can only explore one tuning during a performance as retuning in a performance with a western piano is not practical. The western piano has facilitated so much fantastic music for hundreds of years, but it is restricted to equal temperament. I’d like to mention at this point that you can play the Fluid Piano in equal temperament, without using any of the mechanisms. The 300-year tradition, the fragility of the sound and the political controversy of mixing sound worlds – is this why some people have been wary when approaching the Fluid Piano? It’s a big area, so many factors come in, the ones you mention are of course present. It comes down to who people are, it’s natural to feel insecure when faced with all these possibilities about changing the tuning, exploring and learning, without the security of fixed tuning. If you have a positive outlook and a willingness to learn, you’ll be able to cope with any insecurities you might have. I’ve listened to recordings of your dulcimer music, particularly for German Expressionist silent film, and thought,
WORLDS OF POSSIBILITY
FLUID PIANO AND FLUID DULCIMER PLAYED BY MATTHEW BOU
with the potential ‘unworldliness’ of the sounds, that the Fluid Piano could also work well – will you be using it for your silent film scores? I probably will do in the future, it would definitely be a great thing to use in film scores in general, for following psychological and emotional plotlines with a wider palette of expressive choice. The piece of music I have written for the Fluid Piano and Fluid Dulcimer that I will be performing at the Purcell Room on 27 March, with Matthew Bourne, Pam Chowhan and Nikki Yeoh, will give a taste of the relationship between the two instruments. I think it’s also good for an audience to get a sense of my work, research and development on the Fluid Dulcimer, and how it fed into the concept of the Fluid Piano. The performance will cover
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WORLDS OF POSSIBILITY
the freedom the Fluid Piano gives. Some big names have also been in touch from a whole variety of different styles of music, but I can’t go into too much detail just yet. Because it’s the only instrument of its kind, whichever event it’s showcased at will have a very big impact and a big part of that will be down to which musician is exploring it.
URNE AND GEOFF SMITH
jazz, improvisation and strict composition that makes use of the fluid tuning, so I’m really looking forward to this broadening out. Acoustically, the instrument is not as loud as a Steinway concert grand, but it’s still extremely powerful and dynamic with its lower string tension and also, because of the nature of the instrument, it is infused with multiple personalities. The individual style and vision of a composer can be expressed to a higher level, because there is more means to do it: a massive range of atmospheres can be explored for the first time. What have been the responses from non-western musicians? I’ve been contacted by a whole range of musicians from different cultures and there is universal excitement because of
If an orchestra were playing music from the Philippines, or South Korea, then bespoke tuning could be created on the Fluid Piano relating to the tuning of that piece of music, so that the orchestra could then tune to that. Are there any more plans for reinventing other acoustic instruments? That’s a really important question; we all need to ask ourselves that. The standard piano has been such a predominant, influential instrument for so long with a restricted tuning: once the piano is changed in this way, suddenly other questions can be asked about other instruments in the orchestra and how they can be developed to incorporate this principle. I hope that everybody will be asking this question. Acoustic instruments in the orchestra have been frozen in time, but we live in a very mixed society in the UK, much more of a global world – I’m talking via skype about the Fluid Piano with musicians in countries across the globe. A multicultural
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society has developed and there are so many good things about that, but the instruments of the orchestra are locked in time. The development and expansion in this direction from an international perspective is positive for the creation of new music, and this in turn will help to increase the diverse nature of the orchestra and the people in it and writing for it. Finally, would you be able to talk about notation for the Fluid Piano and also fluid tuning in choreography? I like to use some of the Iranian symbols in my work, but there are so many options and I’m sure people will evolve their own and make their own notations. This facilitates a person to express their own individual culture more as an individual person, which I think is such a powerful detail. I did a project with a Fluid Dulcimer in Japan a few years back, before the Fluid Piano was built, with an Indo-Japanese dance company, which was really quite scary, but a fantastic chance to research how I felt about it and go through my own insecurities, like changing tuning between compositions. It was fantastic to use in choreography, with a wider palate of creative choices – there is massive potential in relation to the Fluid Piano and choreography.
WORLDS OF POSSIBILITY
The Fluid Piano will be launched at the Southbank Centre, London, on 27 March, with a concert featuring premieres of compositions for the piano composed and performed by Smith (who will also be using the Fluid Dulcimer) and Matthew Bourne, Pam Chowhan and Nikki Yeoh.
Listening Post
Pam Chowhan plays the Fluid Piano
Guardian video feature
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Coming soon... Bill Fontana RiveR Sounding A journey through the hidden sound worlds of the River Thames 15 April - 31 May Somerset House, London In the eighteenth century the River Thames flowed alongside and right into Somerset House, then the Navy’s high office. River Sounding returns the river to the building, immersing you in an acoustic journey through little-known subterranean spaces, exploring the hidden stories and sound-worlds of the river. Co-commissioned and co-produced by Somerset House & Sound and Music Watch this space, somersethouse.org.uk and soundandmusic.org for more...
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).
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05/02/10 Walked the walls Walk The Walls was a 12-hour excursion and performance that was part of The Pigs Of Today Are The Hams Of Tomorrow festival curated and organised by the Plymouth Arts Centre and the Marian Abramovic Institute. As one of the many activities taking place in the three day festival, the walk provided an opportunity for participants to engage with the experience of one of artist Marina Abramovic’s durational and often physically enduring performances. Walk The Walls is based on Abramovic’s 1988 performance where she and her partner at the time, Ulay, embarked on a journey across the Great Wall of China. Beginning from opposite ends of the 6000km wall, Abramovic and Ulay travelled across over months to ultimately meet together in the middle. Apparently performed as an expression of their love, the long wait to gain permissions to access the Great Wall and the
FROM THE BLOGS
FROM THE BLOGS
To read more blog visit the Sound and Music blog.
strain of the performance lead them to separate (rather than come together) following the event. Similarily, Walk The Walls perhaps resisted greater experience of the environment due to the lengthy duration. Scaled down to 6km, the image of the Great Wall is superimposed over a map of Plymouth etching out a path across the city that is to be experienced over the span of 12 hours – from midnight until noon. Artists and organisers Tony Whitehead
gs, d
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and Simon Persighetti take us on an unusual and often surreal journey around Plymouth – taking inspiration from Situationist ideas of drifting and a sound walk as a durational performance. As explained by Whitehead, the idea of the walk is to sensitise the participants to the environment through a shared experience. Participants are encouraged to focus on the walk and the experience of the city and to forget ideas of the past and futures to concentrate on the present being-inthe-world. The idea is to de-familiarise the self with the city, and one way of doing this is to do the walk at a time from which people do not normally walk – after midnight. We have become accustomed to the city as a place for work, the sidewalk as a place for walking, the mall as a place for shopping. Is it possible to see these places as they are and to explore the urban terrain without any goals or aims, but rather allow the city reveal itself to us?
FROM THE BLOGS
Armed with a stick of chalk and a mobile phone, the walk was documented in real-time and blogged on a Tumblr site. To say the least, by the end of the 12 hours, we did have an experience of Plymouth that most residents have never had. Though fatigue, cold and discomfort (possibly from being unprepared for such a trip) restricted mental capacity to truly focus on the walk, it was truly an enduring experience, which I am glad to have completed rather than to have resigned early on. It became less about psychogeography, experiencing the environment as a missionless drift (we had a direct path to follow with the guidance of Whitehead and Persighetti), but more about enduring the 12 hours and walking as a performance and collective experience, which we will not likely forget. www.plymouthartscentre.org/art. html www.walkthewalls.tumblr.com Ashley Wong
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12/02/10 Chamber Music 2000 On Wednesday 10 February the Purcell Room hosted a concert to mark 10 years of Chamber Music 2000, the scheme started by the Schubert Ensemble to commission and propagate new chamber music for student ensembles. The aim has been to create a body of new music by leading composers which is technically accessible to learner players. The concert featured music by twelve composers played by performers ranging from professional groups (the Schubert Ensemble themselves and the Lawson Trio to students from the Birmingham Conservatoire and the Royal Academy Junior Department, right down to a group of eight-year-olds from a state school in north London. As befitted the occasion, most items were world premieres; these included Antonia Bates’s iridescent Twinkling Crystals, winner of a competition for young composers, as well as works from established names like Paul Patterson and David Knotts. The composer who has contributed most
FROM THE BLOGS
to Chamber Music 2000 is Piers Hellawell, and he was represented by four pieces: two for students and two full-scale concert works. Hellawell’s The Building of Curves, with which the Schubert Ensemble opened the programme, was the musical highlight. Starting from a driving, muscular unison in the strings decorated by an ornate piano line at the extremes of the keyboard, the second movement dissolves into an elusive, haunting, slow melody. The Lawson Trio finished with his challenging and eloquent Etruscan Games, which I would like to hear again but felt like one piece too many on this occasion. Hide in the attic, also by Piers Hellawell, was the most successful of the pieces for students, played with impressive self-possession by a very young quartet from Garden Suburb Junior School in London. The piece cleverly mixed notated and aleatoric passages without the joins showing, and the young pianist Mina Masuda gave a brilliantly assured performance. Although there was not a weak piece on display, I did feel at time that eve-
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rything was a bit too polite: a leaning towards slow and quiet music at the expense of the loud and rhythmical – although Cheryl Frances Hoad’s Pay Close Attention bucked the trend enjoyably. I was surprised more than once to hear the ghost of Fauré echoing through the harmony: he may not be the most fashionable of composers, but is unquestionably one of the giants of the chamber music pantheon. A perennial problem with chamber music in a school setting is the shortage of violas. The violists at the Purcell Room were all excellent but there are many schools who would not be able to summon one up, immediately ruling out more than half of the pieces on the programme. If I had a single suggestion for CM2000 it would be: more trios, please, or quartets without viola. This is not to disrespect the treasured viola, but to widen the net for the repertoire. (I understand that some pieces can use an extra violin to replace the viola part if necessary.) So bravo to the Schubert Ensemble for ten years of Chamber Music 2000, and to the Lawson Trio for taking up
FROM FROM THE THE BLOGS BLOGS
the baton. Playing (good) new chamber music is a great experience for young players, and writing it is a challenge composers are clearly keen to take up. Here’s to the next ten years. The scores of all Chamber Music 2000 scores are available from Sound and Music The Earwig
18/02/10 Unmixing sound Something which seems to be happening occasionally now is musicians releasing project files or stems (partial mixes) of recordings. Even illegal versions are also appearing, meaning you can change music to sound like you want it to, or take it apart, rather than the producer and engineer. I’ve just come across a news article in Sound On Sound talking about a company called Audionamix which is now offering the service of ‘un-mixing’
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audio from stereo or mono recordings. This opens up a whole world of creative possibilities in manipulating existing recordings. There are already a couple of prominent examples: Dame Vera Lynn being re-orchestrated and the film soundtrack for the Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose. Although the company only offers the service in-house at the moment, I’m sure it’ll appear as a plug-in in the near future. It’ll also start to bring up some sticky issues with copyright, as a recording may no longer be “final”. The ideas of John Oswald’s Plunderphonics (even though he had a court injunction to desroy all copies of his music as it infringed copyright, they’re still available illegally) and “mash-ups” can now be taken much further. On the other hand I’m sure it’ll also result in a spate of major label re-issues... Richard Thomas
FROM THE BLOGS
21/02/10 Vanity project Composers can’t afford to have thin skins, or they might get their vanity pricked. As William Walton once found at the hands of Lord Berners. The name of Berners (1883–1950) is little-known today. He was unusual amongst the hereditary peerage of his time in showing more interest in the arts than in huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’. He was not only one of the leading composers of his generation (a respected friend of Stravinsky) but also an author and a more than competent landscape painter. During the 1910s, whilst in the diplomatic service in Rome, Berners (then Gerald Tyrwhitt) was one of the most “advanced” and interesting of British composers. This early music is intriguing, and worth a hearing. But he was also renowned as an eccentric and a wit, and certainly no respecter of reputations. During the 1940s Berners wrote a number of novels, often featuring characters thinly disguised from real-life acquaint-
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ances. William Walton heard that Berners’ next novel would be about a composer his solicitors wrote asking that Walton not appear in the new novel.
FROM THE BLOGS FROM THE BLOGS
(Quotations come from the excellent and highly-recommended Lord Berners: Composer, Writer, Painter by Peter Dickinson.) The Earwig
Berners’ reply to Walton was pointed. “Something must have happened to your sense of proportion as well as to your sense of humour. You surely don’t imagine that your personality is sufficiently interesting to appeal to me as a literary theme. If you insist on trying to thrust yourself into my novels in this fashion, I shall be obliged to apply for an injunction to restrain you from doing so.” Not yet satisfied, and warming to his theme, Berners wrote a further letter to Walton’s solicitors: “I am shortly bringing out a book called Ridiculous Composers I Have Known. If your client, Mr William Walton, should consider it necessary to see a copy before publication, will you kindly tell him to apply to Messrs Constable?” Skewered.
23/02/10 Clock-watching in music I’ve just finished reading John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity which, although not as life changing as the blogosphere claims, is still inspirational in its clarity and, well, simpleness. Something that stuck in my mind was his example of progress bars. He says, “When a graphical display of progress, or a ‘progress bar’, was shown, the user would perceive that computer completed the task in less time than when no progress bar was shown at all.” As I pondered this I noticed our cat was watching the wall clock – transfixed by its moving arms. This then reminded me of Uniqlo’s Uniqlock, a weirdly compelling web-
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clock that features dance, music and a clock. Another thing that sprang to mind was a Cut & Splice from a few years ago. Anton Lukoszevieze, the creative director of that particular event, used a clock for the performers to keep the improvisation strictly timed. From my vantage point as a fire-door guard I became, like my cat, transfixed with the countdown clock on the stage and listened more intensely on the music (I often have a tendency to drift during deep listening experiences). I started to wonder if a having a visible display of the time passing, or time remaining, would enable people to focus more intently on sound or music that they were listening to. There is often talk about our attention spans becoming shorter and, with digital media, people listening less – often flicking through things as they become bored. I know that most media players do have a time bar on the bottom but maybe this could be more of a feature – similar to the Uniqlock. I wonder if people are more likely to listen longer and more intently than those without this visual focus? Maybe just focusing
FROM THE BLOGS
on something like that enables you to get as close as most of us can to some sort of Zen state. Of course, I could be over-thinking this. I might do some experiments, though, to find out. David Rogerson
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OPPORTUNITIES
Opportunitie Métamorphoses 2010 – acousmatique composition international competition
evening, a jury different from the preselection jury will determine the ranking and award prizes.
Deadline: 2 April 2010 The Métamorphoses composition competition comprises two categories: Category A for composers under the age of 28 and composition students and Category B for all composers of less than 50 years old who wish to compete in this category. Members of the pre-selection jury receive and listen to all the competing works. Then they meet at the end of June 2010 to listen again to the best entries and choose the five or six works from Category B that will be selected for the October 2010 final and published on stereo CD. This jury also elects the winner of Category A, whose work will also be included on the CD. A spatialization competition will be held during the festival L’Espace du Son in October 2010. The candidates will perform a set work chosen from the works received for the Métamorphoses competition. The jury reserves the right to decide whether this work will be included on the CD. During the final of the Métamorphoses competition, which will take place on 21 October 2010, the finalist composers who wish to do so can spatialize their work in public on the M&R acousmonium (loudspeaker orchestra). At the end of the
Prize for category A: Publishing of the work on CD, performance at the concert of 21 Oct 2010, and 10 copies of the CD. Prizes for category B: 1st prize, 2500 euros; audience prize: 500 euros. M&R prize: residence at the composition studio Métamorphoses d’Orphée. All finalists’ works will be published on CD and 5 copies of the CD will be offered to each finalist. The biennial Métamorphoses competition of acousmatic composition is organized by Musiques & Recherches with the support of Communauté Française Wallonie-Bruxelles de Belgique. Download application form
Jerwood Opera Writing Programme Deadline: 23 April 2010 After its highly acclaimed start in 2007, a new round of the Jerwood Opera Writing Programme is being launched now and Aldeburgh Music is inviting applications for the Foundation Course. Designed for composers, writers and directors who want to widen horizons and equip
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themselves to create contemporary work combining music, theatre and text, the Jerwood Opera Writing Programme is led by artistic adviser, Giorgio Battistelli and a distinguished faculty of experienced practitioners. Full Scholarships are available for the Jerwood Opera Foundation Course (three week-long workshops) starting in November 2010. Following on from this and based on artistic merit, five Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowships may be awarded again, to give mentoring and financial support to develop a specific idea for the stage. Deadline for application to the 2010–2011 Foundation Course is 23 April 2010; those interested are asked to contact Chelsea Lawrence, Opera Administrator, for an application form at clawrence@ aldeburgh.co.uk http://www.aldeburgh.co.uk/
Mr McFall’s Chamber – call for scores Deadline: 30 April 2010 Scottish-based chamber ensemble, Mr McFall’s Chamber, is looking to commission four settings of English poems and one extended four-movement setting of
OPPORTUNITIES
English poems from young composers aged 30 and under. The commissioned works will become companion pieces to Gavin Bryars’ Eight Irish Madrigals, and will be scored for the same unusual combination of soprano, tenor, two violas (or violin and viola), cello and double bass. The chosen works will be performed alongside Bryars’ Eight Irish Madrigals during 2011. The piece submitted should be one which includes a part for voice (or voices) and at least two instrumental parts. The reviewing process will be completed by 1 June 2010, at which point four settings of English poems will be commissioned from the four composers chosen. The four chosen composers will each receive a commissioning fee of £500. They will be performed together early in 2011. One of the four composers will then be chosen and commissioned to write three further settings to make a four-movement piece (one movement of which would be their previously written individual movement). This chosen composer will receive a further fee of £1,000. This resulting four-movement complete piece will be performed during the summer or autumn of 2011. Applicants must be aged 30 or under on the date of submission (30 April 2010) and
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OPPORTUNITIES
Opportunitie the submitted score should be no longer than 15 minutes in duration. For information on how to apply, please contact Jo Buckley: jmkbuckley@hotmail.co.uk http://www.mcfalls.co.uk/
Thornesian Composition Prize Deadline: 1 September 2010 The Thornesian Prize 2010 in association with Chantry Quire of Chichester is a composing competition open to everyone. Entrants must submit a 3 to 5 minute piece by 1 September. The winner receives £300 and runner up £100. Full details on the downloadable application form or email larley@ukonline.co.uk
Simon Carrington Chamber Singers choral composition competition Deadline: 12 March 2010 The Simon Carrington Chamber Singers are pleased to announce a competition for new choral works. The Simon Carrington Chamber Singers enriches the Kansas City culture through its promotion of excellence in choral music. The ensemble’s various activities – from concerts and
recordings to commissioning projects and educational programs – aim to extend to our community the vital aesthetic sustenance that music offers. Composers of any age, of any nationality, are invited to submit up to two works for mixed chamber choir. Duration should not exceed 8 minutes. Difficulty should be comparable to previous works performed. Please refer to http://www. simoncarringtonchambersingers.com to see past programmes. Works may be unaccompanied or with piano accompaniment. An obbligato cello is also available. Works may have been performed previously. If so, please include a performance history. Works submitted should have been composed within the last five years and may be in any language. If in a language other than English, Latin, French, German, Italian, or Spanish, please include an IPA transcription. Texts should be public domain or a letter of permission from the rights holder granting permission must accompany the submission. Non-traditional notation is acceptable as long as there is a clearly notated key provided. Works involving electronics are not eligible. Entry fee is $25 for the first piece and $10
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for the second. The composer of the winning piece will receive half of all entry fees collected, two concert performances in May 2010, and a performance recording. Other submitted works may also be selected for performance but will not receive prize money. For submission requirements please email leehartman@simoncarringtonchambersingers.com
Forum for Innovation in Music Production and Composition (FIMPaC) – call for papers Deadline: 22 March 2010 The Forum for Innovation in Music Production and Composition takes place at Leeds College of Music from Thursday 20 to Friday 21 May 2010. FIMPaC is an annual event focusing on research and practice related to innovations in Music Production and Composition. This year’s event is in association with the Journal for Music, Technology and Education (Intellect Books). FIMPaC’s goal is to bring together composers, producers, music industry representatives, academics, educators and students to discuss their practice, research and industry experiences; FIMPaC encourages participants and delegates that represent the com-
OPPORTUNITIES
mercial music industry and academia. Keynote Speakers: Jazzie B, founder of the collective Soul II Soul, is our Keynote for 20 May and will open the conference. He will discuss his experiences within the Commercial Music Industry. David Toop will open the second day of the conference and address connections between commercial and experimental music and whether we can sustain notions of their independence. David will also be performing in the evening. This year’s call for papers is in association with the Journal for Music, Technology and Education. Proposers are asked to indicate on their submission if they would like their work to be considered for publication in a forthcoming issue of the journal. Presentations that address innovation in compositional practice and music production are welcome (for example, focus on compositional/production process, applications of music technology, pedagogy, dissemination, analysis or critical studies). Proposals should take the form of a title followed by an abstract of not more than 200 words. Proposals may also include up to two minutes of audio or audiovisual clips. Decisions will be notified shortly after 22 March. Any queries about a proposal should be directed to the 2010
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OPPORTUNITIES
Opportunitie Conference organiser Dr Dale Perkins by emailing FIMPaC@lcm.ac.uk. For more information and to make a booking for the conference go to: http://www. lcm.ac.uk/research-conference/fimpac. htm Queries about attending FIMPaC 2010 should be addressed to Louise Wood: L.wood@lcm.ac.uk
International Composer Pyramid – call for scores Deadline: 2 April 2010 This call for scores is a three-year project headed by Sounds New Contemporary Music Festival (UK) in partnership with Coups de Vents (France) and funded by the European Union. Sounds New Contemporary Music Festival 2010: Symbolism and numerology in Music: the number seven Festival dates: 7–16 May The number seven is a number that has many connotations, be they astrological, astronomical, religious or as seemingly mundane as the number of days in a week. This year’s festival takes you on a journey of symbolism, allowing you the chance to discover more about the myster-
ies the number seven holds. With music that stretches from 20th century masterworks such as Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Xenakis’ Pleiades to new works specially composed for this festival such as Jack Hues’ response to Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross and the UK Conservatoire young composers’ new compositions based on this number. Sounds New brings you leading performers Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern and Cantus Ansambl, The Aurora Orchestra, the CBSO Chamber Players and the Ronnie Scott’s Big Band. We invite some of the world’s best young artists, notably the outstanding Polish prize-winning pianist Barbara Drazkowska and Concertgebouw Prize-winning harpist Lavinia Meijer. We also celebrate the influence of Gustav Mahler in this special anniversary year. A major new development for 2010 is the International Composer Pyramid, a collaboration between Sounds New and Coups de Vents, which, over the coming years, will promote the best composers of the new generations. We thank INTERREG IVA 2 Mers Seas Zeeën – European Union for funding this project. Download application form here www.internationalcomposerpyramid. org
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www.soundsnew.org.uk
ROH2 Firsts
Deadline: 31 March 2010 Named by the Telegraph as the “indie” arm of the Royal Opera House, ROH2 invites submissions from creative artists to take part in Firsts 10 in the Linbury Studio Theatre. Now in its eighth year, this season is at the forefront of the work of ROH2 and seeks to present high quality work of originality and diversity across the contemporary lyric art forms including music, dance, puppetry, physical theatre, aerial work and work that defies categorization. Priority will be given to young, vibrant artists working outside of the mainstream and artists from the regions. Firsts presents nine companies over six nights in the Linbury Studio Theatre from 11–20 November 2010 and the following criteria apply: • The piece must be between 10 and 30 minutes maximum. • It must have been created in the last 18 months and completed by the application deadline (below). • Must be UK based. • Each company will have two performances on consecutive nights along with two or three other performing companies as part of a mixed bill. • A basic lighting rig is provided, black dance floor and white or black backcloth.
OPPORTUNITIES
Lighting specials can be provided by negotiation in advance. It is recommended that if you require a projector you supply your own, but this can be negotiated. • The Technical manager will endeavour to meet the requirements of the piece as near as possible, but companies must accept a level of compromise due to the nature of the programming. • The Royal Opera House provides a minimum of four technical staff to run the shows and operate lights and sound. However, it is strongly recommended that you bring your own lighting designer/technician to relight the show and operate the board particularly if your cues are complicated. The cost for this should be included in your fee. • Technical time is usually four hours and will be either the day of the first performance or the preceding day. Other than technical time in the theatre, the Royal Opera House cannot provide further rehearsal space. For submission requirements or any other queries, please email Firsts@roh.org.uk
London Music Matters Composition Competition 2010 Deadline: 25 June 2010 London Music Masters (LMM) is a registered charity which aims to build bridges to excellence through the Bridge Project, a
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Opportunitie long-term music education programme for children, and the LMM Awards, which are given every three years to three extremely talented violinists aged 18–28 (LMM Artists). During their tenure, the LMM Artists receive substantial financial support, performance opportunities and mentoring from key individuals in the Arts industry. The LMM Artists work closely with students from the Bridge Project. They act as inspiring role models by conveying their enthusiasm for playing the violin – giving young children, regardless of their ethnic, cultural and socio-economic background, an opportunity to discover and enjoy a life-long appreciation of classical music.
EXAUDI - ensemble manager
Through its creative partnership with the Royal College of Music, LMM would like to give past and present RCM composers the opportunity to have new works performed at a high-profile fundraising event at the RCM in October 2010, with opportunities for future performances at LMM events.
Hours: ten hours a week. Salary: £7200pa (£15/hour or £600pcm). Initial contract: six months, on self-employed basis. Shortlisted candidates should be available for interview 1 and 2 April 2010, and applicants should be available to start immediately after Easter.
The LMM Composition Competition 2010 is open to past and present composition students from the RCM. http://www.londonmusicmasters.org
Deadline: 26 March 2010 EXAUDI vocal ensemble is creating a new role of Ensemble Manager. The Ensemble Manager will have high-level arts management experience, ideally some legal or financial expertise, and excellent administrative skills. Familiarity with the world of contemporary music would be an advantage. Principal duties will include general accounting, preparing budgets, approving contracts, preparing paperwork for foreign engagements, overseeing logistical arrangements, updating and issuing publicity material, managing the Friends Scheme, and fundraising.
Applicants should email a CV showing relevant experience to juliet@exaudi.org. uk, addressed to Juliet Fraser, Managing Director of EXAUDI.
The magazine of