May 2010
What you’re into if you’re into sound and music
ELISION Bridging the gap
THE COMPASS SERIES Uncharted territory ANTI-JAZZ New York’s new free jazz HOW TO... Summer School special
The magazine of
Welcome to the May issue of INTO Every month, we try to present features covering a wide range of music and sound, from conversations with composers to marginal electronica, and much in-between. Sometimes, however, shared themes arise that resonate across genres and ‘scenes’.
multimedia projects of The Compass Series, in which Ross Adams brings together indigenous cultures and new technology for evocative ambisonic events such as Nord Rute, drawn from Sámi poetry and Adams’ recordings of reindeer migration routes.
Of course, all music is communicative. But the artists featured in this issue take it further, exploring communication as a practice in itself. Tim Rutherford-Johnson observes at first-hand how Australian ensemble ELISION reconfigure the relationship between performer and composer, working together to create new works – and even instigating shared dinners where composers cook for the players.
Abi Bliss talks to Adams about the challenges of cross-cultural art, while Daniel Spicer travels to New York to meet the proponents of Anti-jazz, a loose grouping of musicians from jazz, rock and avant-garde backgrounds whose confrontational improvised music springs from bonds made across genre and generational boundaries.
As Tim remarks, such idealism is all well and good, but what of the musical outcomes? It’s a question perhaps best answered by ELISION’s performances of complex, ambitious pieces that rely on relationships of great sensitivity among the group. Another answer can be found in the Published by Sound and Music www.soundandmusic.org Contact: into-magazine@soundandmusic.org
We’re aiming to foster a similar sense of freedom in young composers at the Sound and Music Summer School, with this year’s key tutors introducing some contrasting approaches to composition in a special video-led How To feature. Frances Morgan Editor Managing Editor: Shoël Stadlen Editor: Frances Morgan Designed by: Trond Klevgaard Original Design: PostParis, www.postparis.com
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What’s on in the UK? Click here to visit Sound and Music’s UK Listings
Cover Image: ELISION Ensemble by Justin Nicolas 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.
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CONTENTS
C ntents WHAT WE’RE INT PAGES 6–7
NEW YORK ANTI-JAZZ PAGES 22-29
NEWS PAGES 8–17
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CONTENTS
ELISION PAGES 30-36
THE COMPASS SERIES PAGES 38-45
HOW TO: SUMMER SCHOOL SPECIAL PAGES 46-48
OPPORTUNITIES PAGES 49-51
FROM THE BLOGS PAGES 52-57
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WHAT WE’RE INTO
Ubuweb Interviews podcast, with archive material from John Cage and Pauline Oliveros
Steve Reich, Pendulum Music score
Lydia Kavina at Hands Off Theremin event, Ether Festival
What we’re INT 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. If you would like to submit your work for consideration, see the open call on our website.
Bill Fontana speaks to Pascal Wyse
Arte-Radio Omar Souleyman, ‘Leth Jani’
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WHAT WE’RE INTO
Black Dog’s Music For Real Airports video
Fiona Shaw talks about her ENO production of Henze’s Elegy For Young Lovers
Gavin Russom mix for Fact magazine
Craig Colorusso’s Sun Box installation
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NEWS
NEW SOUNDS NEW FESTIVAL FOCUSES ON NUMEROLOGY AURORA ORCHESTRA
Sounds New returns to Canterbury from 7 to 16 May with a packed programme of events that respond to the festival’s theme of numerology and symbolism. Ensembles take the lead this year, with appearances by the Aurora Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ossian Ensemble, CBSO Chamber Players and Ensemble Modern, among others. Soloists including Julian Warburton, Lavinia Meijer, Loré Lixenberg and Matthew Sharp are among the many highlights of the evening programme, while there is also a vibrant lunchtime concert
series with Christopher Redgate (oboe), juice, Absolution Sax Quartet, Eliza McCarthy (piano) and the UK Conservatoires concerts. Alongside the concerts, Sounds New is committed to a variety of education events including workshops and conferences, and a special Harp Day with a masterclass from Gabriella Dall’Olio. Films and installations complete the programme. www.soundsnew.org.uk
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NEWS
NEW OPERA EXPLORES DEMENTIA A new project by The Opera Group, The Lion’s Face, uses opera and poetry to explore dementia, from the perspectives of patients, carers and scientists. Composer Elena Langer and writer Glyn Maxwell have worked with Professor Simon Lovestone’s team at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London, to create the work, which will receive its premiere at the Brighton Festival on 20 May, before touring the UK. There is also a series of off-stage events where scientists, artists and audiences can exchange ideas and discuss the opera and latest research into dementia, including a symposium with the Brighton Science Festival. Sections of the opera were showcased at a performance in March 2009 at the Alzheimer’s Research Trust Network conference at the Royal Institution in London. The Lion’s Face is part of a UK-wide season of activity about identity from the Wellcome Trust. thelionsface.wordpress.com
CORNELIUS CARDEW THE SUBJECT OF NEW EXHIBITION Cornelius Cardew and the Freedom of Listening is a new exhibition and programme of events focusing on the work of Cornelius Cardew taking from 8 May to 25 June at Culturgest in Porto, Portugal. Curated by Dean Inkster, Jean-Jacques Palix, Lore Gablier, and Pierre Bal-Blanc, the exhibition collects together archives, photographs, scores, films and sound recordings, while lectures and performances feature a number of British musicians including Michael Parsons, John Tilbury, Keith Rowe and Walter Cardew. www.culturgest.pt
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NEWS
NEW NEW MUSIC AT RPS MUSIC AWARDS The shortlists for the RPS Music Awards, for live classical music in the UK, have been announced. Categories include solo artists, conductors and both large and small ensembles, as well as festivals and audience development. Shortlisted for composition this year are composers including Diana Burrell, Colin Matthews, Kaija Saariaho, Huw Watkins and Kevin Volans, and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival has been shortlisted in the Education category. www.rpsmusicawards.com
BENJAMIN, CARTER AND BOULEZ AT ALDEBURGH FESTIVAL Taking place from 11 to 27 June, the 63rd Aldeburgh Festival will be directed by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, with a programme including a number of works by featured composer George Benjamin and a world premiere of Elliott Carter’s What are Years, performed by Ensemble Intercontemporain and conducted by Pierre Boulez. What Are Years, a song cycle for soprano and chamber ensemble, uses text by Marianne Moore, continuing the composer’s interest in American modernist poetry – he has also set to music words by Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound in recent years. Pierre-Laurent Aimard will appear in recital with Christiane Oelze and Thomas Zehetmair and as soloist and conductor with Britten Sinfonia. Alongside the musical programme, there are the usual exhibitions, films, lectures, walks, and masterclasses, as well as collaborations between neuroscientists and musicians on a series exploring music and the brain. http://aldeburgh.co.uk
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NEWS
PHILIP GLASS AT BRIGHTON FESTIVAL
This year’s Brighton Festival, curated by Brian Eno, sees the performance of two of Philip Glass’s key works, Koyaanisqatsi (13 May) and the four-hour Music In Twelve Parts (12 May), both of which are rarely performed in full. Glass will lead his ensemble in both performances, and Koyaanisqatsi will be performed with the 1982 Godfrey Reggio film for which it was initially composed. www.brightonfestival.org
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NEWS
NEW DUNGENESS WEATHER INSPIRES VARIABLE 4 Photography: James Bulley/Daniel Jones
A new installation opening in May will transform the unpredictable weather conditions of Dungeness, on the Kent coast, into a constantly changing musical composition. Variable 4, devised by artists James Bulley and Daniel Jones and supported by PRS for Music Foundation, explores the relationship between weather systems and musical forms using meteorological sensors connected to a custom software environment to generate the composition, which will be heard via a field of speakers embedded in Dungeness’s evocative and bleak landscape. Variable 4 will be live for a 24-hour period between 22 and 23 May, and visitors travelling from London will be able to get there via a cheap coach service, details of which are available on the Variable 4 site, where you can also read about the artists’ research and preparation for the project. www.variable4.org.uk
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NEWS
SWANS RE-FORM FOR SUPERSONIC 2010
Photography: Carlos Melgoza
MICHAEL GIRA OF SWANS
Michael Gira, leader of cult band Swans, announced recently that the band will perform this year at Supersonic festival in Birmingham, 13 years after disbanding. Gira, who
has pursued a prolific solo career as well as supporting other artists through his Young God record label, has brought together original Swans guitarist Norman Westberg and other members of the band’s varied line-ups to play in the ‘reactivated’ group. Swans’ music has been influential upon countless noise, avant-rock, industrial and experimental musicians since the band’s beginnings in the New York No Wave scene of the early 1980s, including many of those who have performed at Supersonic since Birmingham-based promoters Capsule first launched the festival in 2003. Tickets are now on sale for the 2010 festival, which takes place from 22 to 24 October, and more acts are soon to be announced. www.capsule.org.uk
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NEWS
NEW GABRIEL COUTU DUMONT RESIDENCY AT CCA, GLASGOW LONG JEUX/LP EXHIBITION AT WIR GALLERY, BERLIN
Canadian multidisciplinary artist Gabriel Coutu Dumont begins a CALQ (Conseil des arts et des lettres du QuĂŠbec) residency at CCA, Glasgow, in May, which lasts until 15 August. A co-founder of the collectives RACAM and Silent Partners, Coutu Dumont has collaborated with a wide variety of electronic music producers, including Marc Leclair (Akufen), and has also performed at international cultural events, most notably Club Transmediale, MUTEK, Ars Electronica, and FIL.
Coutu Dumont, who trained as a photographer, has more recently focused on video scenography for sound-art events, including video design for two operas, and composition and musical production forms an increasingly important part of his practice. http://cca-glasgow.com
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NEWS
RESONANCES PROJECT BRINGS HISTORIC HOUSES TO LIFE
COUGHTON COURT
Sound UK’s Resonances project brings new music and sound to historic buildings with composer Simon Fisher Turner and cellist Natalie Clein taking part in a series of evocative installations at The Wallace Collection (London), Ickworth House (Suffolk), Coughton Court (Warwickshire) and Nunnington Hall (Yorkshire). Simon Fisher Turner has composed a new soundtrack, while sound designer Matthew Fairclough and director Richard Williams have created a work using fragments of voices and conversations. A new commission by author Jeanette Winterson is an integral part of the installation, capturing the spirit of the houses and the project itself. Natalie Clein will perform a programme of music that alludes to the chamber music heard in the houses over the years, including some of Bach’s Cello Suites and the premiere of a new work by Fyfe Dangerfield, which has been commissioned for the project. www.sounduk.net
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SOUND AND MUSIC NEWS
NEW CHRIS WATSON ADDS A SONIC DIMENSION TO KEW
Chris Watson’s sound installation, Whispering in the Leaves, launches this month at Kew Gardens Summer Festival. Co-produced by Sound and Music and Forma and originally commissioned by AV Festival 08, Whispering in the Leaves is a powerful sound work that uses Watson’s extensive archive of wildlife and location recordings from Central and South America to create the atmosphere of tropical rainforest in Kew Gardens’ Palm House. Monkeys, tree frogs, cicadas and birds are all part of the surround soundtrack of wildlife dawn and dusk choruses, which will be transmitted at hourly intervals throughout the day. Chris Watson is a sound recordist specialising in natural history, renowned for his award-winning work with David Attenborough on productions such as The Life of Birds and The Life of Mammals. He recently travelled to the South Pole for the forthcoming David Attenborough series The Frozen Planet (BBC, 2011), and some of the resulting audio can be heard on Touch Recordings’ website Find out more at www.whisperingintheleaves.org, a new website launching in early May.
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SOUND AND MUSIC NEWS
TWO PREMIERES FOR ADOPT-A-COMPOSER SCHEME Making Music, pairs an amateur music group with an emerging composer, and over the following year a new work is produced especially for the group to première. The scheme is in place all around the UK, with ensembles and composers taking part in London, Hertfordshire and the Midlands as well as Scotland. NINA WHITEMAN AND HECTOR SCOTT
Works by Nick Chamberlain and Nina Whiteman, two composers from the Adopt-a-Composer scheme, will be performed for the first time in May, with concerts in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Colinton Amateur Orchestral Society, conducted by Hector Scott, will perform Nina Whiteman’s A Book of Walks at George Watson’s College, Edinburgh, on 8 May, while Nick Chamberlain’s From a Railway Carriage will be performed by the Glasgow Lyric Choir on 9 May at the RSAMD Concert Hall, as part of a programme on the theme of a ‘musical journey’. The Adopt-a-Composer scheme, funded by PRS for Music Foundation and run by Sound and Music and
The focus of the scheme is on collaboration – the composers have worked closely with the groups to create new pieces in which the musicians themselves have had an input. Nick Chamberlain’s From a Railway Carriage, which sets to music a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, was developed over a series of workshops with the choir, and took shape with their input. Nina Whiteman’s composition was similarly shaped by the Colinton group, based on descriptions, maps and lines of walks taken by the players themselves. The composers have been blogging about their experiences and documenting the progress of their compositions on www.adoptacomposer.org, where there’s also news of forthcoming performances from the scheme.
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SOUND AND MUSIC NEWS
NEW MEMORY AND COLLAGE AT LIVERPOOL SOUND CITY Sound and Music presents a programme of performance and exhibition at this year’s Liverpool Sound City from 19 to 22 May. Memories Are Made Of This brings together a group of electronic musicians and artists whose work explores the nature of memory and narrative using playful, sometimes sinister, collages of sounds and texture that draw on popular culture and skewed visions of the past for inspiration.
MCKENZIE TOMB, LIVERPOOL
People Like Us, aka influential sound and video artist Vicki Bennett, will perform Genre Collage, a new live set that collides sounds and images from film genres ranging from Westerns to war, supported by the mysterious Position Normal and newcomer The Pony Harvest with their own enjoyably distorted takes on electronica. Awardwinning Liverpool-based artist Paul Rooney presents a new installation, commissioned by Sound and Music, inspired by a local Liverpool legend about William McKenzie, a gambler who is said to have made a pact with the devil. POSITION NORMAL
www.liverpoolsoundcity.co.uk
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SOUND AND MUSIC NEWS
SUPPORTING NEW PRODUCERS WITH CAFÉ OTO
SUN RA ARKESTRA AT CAFE OTO, APRIL 2010
Sound and Music is teaming up with London’s hub for underground and experimental music Café Oto to award four grants of £2,000 towards the production of new events. Based in Dalston, East London, Café Oto has programmed a large and eclectic series of events since opening in 2008, with artists from the worlds of jazz, folk, improvisation and noise performing to committed audiences. This open call aims to stimulate event organisers and promoters to take curatorial risks and develop ambitious ideas, and create performance platforms for international artists who rarely visit the UK, and could include a one-off live event, a residency, a festival, or a combination or variant on the above. If you have an event proposal of any genre, format or description with a leaning towards fringe, experimental or underground music then please contact info@ soundandmusic.org for more information and application guidelines. www.cafeoto.co.uk
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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. Edd Caine will be writing for Sound and Music and Cheltenham Festival collaboration as a result of a call for composers – a work for TOEAC Accordion Duo. Really looking forward to working with them! He has also been given ‘Composer of the Month’ for new Sydney based initiative www.emergingcomposerslibrary. com. Honoured and flattered to be chosen. Edd Caine has a new commission to write (very quickly) and produce a film score – a promotional film for the new Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of York. Recording this Sunday! Luckily he has his friend Enrico Bertelli on board – amazing percussionist! Richard Glover has been invited to author a chapter in a forthcoming book on the music of Phill Niblock. Also, his article on Michael Pisaro’s composition pi for the first issue of the CeReNeM journal can be found at www2.hud.ac.uk Terry Mann’s Automata Musica has been shortlisted for the PRD for Music Foundation new music award. Other shortlisted entries are Marc Yeats, Ralph Hoyle and Phill Phelps’ SATSYMPH, Robert Jarvis’ aroundNorth, and liminal’s The Organ of Corti.
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INCOMING
Migrant Sound (founder member Dimitris Bakas) will launch its activities with a concert of premières of works byGreek composers who live, teach, study and produce work mainly performed outside Greece. The concert will take place at the Warehouse on 27 May performed by Ensemble Exposé. www.migrantsound.com Aki Pasoulas’s acousmatic piece Paramnesia has been selected for the ICMC 2010 international conference in New York City. The concert will take place on 1 June. The same composition is also among the six pieces selected for inclusion in the ICMC 2010 CD, published by the International Computer Music Association. Nicholas Peters will be giving a talk on the role of numbers in his recent music at the Music and Numbers Conference which is being hosted by the Department of Music of Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU), on Friday and Saturday, 14–15 May 2010. Radek Rudnicki is working on the audio visual performance for Asolo International Arts Film Festival (August 2010, Italy) in collaboration with Matt Postle and Enrico Bertelli. Tazul Tajuddin’s new works will be performed 7–8 August 2010 in Kuala Lumpur as part of Composers Concert Series UiTM 2010 collaboration with Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac). The work will be performed by UiTM New Music Ensemble with Tazul as the artistic director.
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JAZZ AND ANTI-JAZZ
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JAZZ AND ANTI-JAZZ
JEFFREY HAYDEN SHURDUT AND GENE JANAS
Jazz and anti-jazz Daniel Spicer reports from New York City, where a new strain of free jazz is making waves in the underground, and meets the ‘anti-jazz’ musicians crossing genre and generation in search of extreme sounds.
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'I don’t particularly like it when people express music as being underground or above ground. This music is all around' “We are not inside or outside, we are all sides. We are everybody’s music. The things we do are always new. And the new music will always be the new music.” Multi-instrumentalist Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut has a way with the sort of gnomic phrase you’d expect from an avant-garde musician working at the outer reaches of free-jazz. But his pronouncements disguise a busy pragmatism. Just out on the influential Parisbased (previously Scandinavian) improv label, Ayler Records, comes the latest instalment in Shurdut’s monumental Digital Box, adding almost another six hours of music to his already massive catalogue of live recordings captured in various locations around his native New York over the last few years, These are
uncompromising, large-scale improvisations featuring a likeminded cast of wayward souls including veteran free-jazz saxophonist Daniel Carter, percussionist Lukas Ligeti (son of composer György) and Gene Moore (elder brother of Sonic Youth’s Thurston). Shurdut steers a course through it all, sometimes rumbling away on piano, other times pouring fire from an alto saxophone, or scrabbling in the guts of an electric guitar. It’s a testament to the music’s visceral impact that – still only in his early forties – Shurdut has impressed Ayler Records enough to make him the first living artist to warrant his own box-set on the label. So, perhaps you’d expect him to be a feted artist in his hometown. After all, New York is the home of jazz, instantly synony-
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mous with just about every major development in the music since it migrated north from its New Orleans roots early in the 20th century. From the darkened clubs and cigarette smoke of the be-bop era, to the lofts and dashikis of the free-jazz movement, New York is jazz. But, far from reaping the rewards of fame, Shurdut remains part of a close-knit group of musicians operating on the fringes of jazz, largely unrecognised at home. You won’t see them playing at big-name clubs like the Village Vanguard or the Blue Note, but you might see them up-close and personal at tiny hipster hangouts like the Cakeshop on the Lower East Side, lodged like an unruly thorn in the heart of the world’s jazz capital. You’d probably call this “underground” music, but Shurdut remains dubious (and typically esoteric) about such terms: “I don’t particularly like when people express music as being ‘underground’ or ‘above ground’. This music is all around. It’s not where it’s played, just that it is played. All things that were once considered different are now part of the ‘mainstream.’ I think that no matter how one may want to categorise what we are doing, it is
JAZZ AND ANTI-JAZZ
more about the ‘always now’, and it transcends people of all ages and every culture.” Leave it to Brooklynite bass-player (and regular collaborator with Shurdut), 54-year old Gene Janas, to cut to the nitty-gritty. He’ll tell you exactly why this vibrant, exploratory music is marginalised in its hometown, why they remain outsiders in their own backyard: “Every decade or so we have these guys that come here from elsewhere and they tend to become the ‘free-jazz legends’ or whatever – and it’s usually bullshit. It’s because of some technical skill that they have or whatever. You get them here on a ten-year cycle – what I call ‘Americans’, not New Yorkers. They’re from a thousand miles away, mid-Westerners, not from here and they come and they don’t want anything to do with us. It’s bullshit. But you have to think about what those guys have got invested in this – all their schooling. How could they think that a guy like me is good?” Despite his no-nonsense, bluecollar candour, Janas can also wax mystical about what he calls the “deep spiritual cleansing” properties of his music – and one gets the feeling that, in recent
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JAZZ AND ANTI-JAZZ
SLIPSTREAM TIME TRAVEL, YIPPIE MUSEUM CAFE, NEW YORK CITY
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years, it’s become a quest of life-and-death significance to him. See him drenched in sweat, eyes screwed shut, hunched over the bass sawing wildly and unleashing lunatic vocal yells and you know he means it. After an extended break from music while he lived in Seattle on the west coast, Janas returned to New York in 2002, hungry to play, and wasted no time hooking up with a much younger drummer, Adam Kriney, to form Owl Xounds – a scalding punk-jazz unit whose 2007 album, Teenagers From Mars, garnered them brief notoriety. Since the demise of Owl Xounds in 2008, Janas has gone on to become a key figure in this burgeoning anti-jazz scene – playing in a myriad of trios, quartets and other dynamic ensembles. One of the most fruitful connections Janas has made has been with sexagenarian drummer Marc Edwards – a born maverick whose very first recording was on legendary avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor’s punishing 1976 album Dark to Themselves. Since then, he’s pursued his own highly-charged vision of free jazz, to the cool indifference of the wider jazz world. He’s certainly not expecting to headline at the Blue Note any time soon. “What makes
JAZZ AND ANTI-JAZZ
my music different from the more mainstream venues is what we do is based on the main elements of music, meaning melody harmony and rhythm. We sometimes take what some may consider extreme liberties with these building blocks and rearrange them according to how we’re hearing them on any given day. We play more structured pieces; however, it’s not long before we hit the upper atmosphere and start to leave the earth and head for deep space.” Edwards’ most regular vehicle for astral travel has been through leading Slipstream Time Travel – a wild and multi-headed behemoth featuring Janas on double-bass and up to half a dozen electric guitarists drawn from rock and jazz. Seeing them live is an overpoweringly loud and intense experience with Edwards generating more heat than many drummers half his age. “I’ve kept my body up over the years,” he says, “and now I’m living proof that lifestyle, how one chooses to live, can make a difference as one gets older. I’m playing very close now to the way I played when I was with Cecil Taylor.” Given his commitment to extremity, it’s unsurprising that Edwards has more recently struck up a working
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'I’m interested in hearing superhuman music – fast, violent, complex, alive' relationship with another drummer – Weasel Walter, formerly of irreverent, genre-busting noise-jazz terrorists The Flying Luttenbachers. Walter and Edwards now co-lead an eponymous group and Edwards has just been drafted into Walter’s no-wave power trio, Cellular Chaos. Clearly, Edwards is going to need every ounce of stamina at his disposal. “The music I make isn’t concerned with fulfilling the needs or trends of the status quo or mainstream,” says Walter. “It is an honest reflection of what I’m looking for in music as a listener right now but cannot find elsewhere. I’m interested in hearing superhuman music…fast, violent, complex, alive. Powerful and gushing with hot, red blood. My music has no concern with being idiomatic. It is purely the sum total of its elements. Part of the point of making this music is to create something new, which has never been
heard before. Many people fear the unrecognisable but I don’t. My music doesn’t offer the average person very much beyond a headache if they’re not ready to listen in a different way. This music is about texture, density, momentum and energy. If anyone is looking for that, they’ll find it here.” Walter relocated from California to New York last year, with an eye to future possibilities. “I came here because I saw potential in all these disparate people,” he says. “I feel like I’ve always been really catholic in my approach of putting weird bands together and I just thought there was a whole new pool of people that I could play with. For me, New York’s not really about what’s happening right now, it’s more about the potential of what could happen.” He’s not the only one with high-hopes. “The fire burns brightly in the Marc Edwards
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JAZZ AND ANTI-JAZZ
Listening post
Soundclips from Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut’s Digital Box
Weasel Walter group,” says Edwards, “more so than the rest of the groups that play free jazz. I haven’t heard anyone else that can match this band – no one. Play free jazz twenty-four seven and I know there would be a shift in what the public decides to listen to when it comes to music.” But, if Edwards’ dream of free jazz breaking cover and going overground seems a little optimistic, you can trust the mystically-inclined Shurdut to have the highest hopes of all. “I think that in all things is the chance to change the world,” he says. “This music, though, is more immediate and will always be a way of showing that it all can happen right there in front of you.”
Marc Edwards Weasel Walter group
Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut, Marc Edwards, Gene Moore and Gene Janas
Slipstream Time Travel
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Australia’s ELISION Ensemble have become regular visitors to the UK, with concerts at London’s Kings Place and a residency at Huddersfield. Tim RutherfordJohnson spent some time with the ground-breaking group, getting a taste of their collaborative aproach to contemporary music-making and observing a unique composer–performer relationship that extends all the way to the kitchen.
ELISION ENSEMBLE
MAY 2010
ELISION ENSEMBLE
Photography: Justin Nicolas
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L-R PETER NEVILLE (PERCUSSION) RICHARD BARRETT (LIVE ELECTRONICS) AND DARYL BUCKLEY (ELECTRIC GUITAR)
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ELISION ENSEMBLE
BENJAMIN MARKS, TROMBONE AND RICHARD HAYES, CONTRABASS CLARINET
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Meeting Daryl Buckley for the first time is one of those write-home-about-it experiences. As artistic director (and electric guitarist) with ELISION, a group ferociously committed to exploring the outer reaches of composition and improvisation, he is among the hardest-working people in new music. Your lasting impression of that meeting is not of Buckley’s boundless energy and enthusiasm – although that’s part of it – but of the improbable channeling of such unrelated subjects as Australian politics, Doctor Who and avant-garde music into a single, tightly-wound discourse. You’re soon encouraged to meet as many of the other ELISION players as you can, and you realise that although Buckley’s personality and outlook are distinctive, they’re not out of place. ELISION musicians are characterised not only by their exceptional technique, but also by their magpie minds and refusal to languish in set ideas of what music is or can be, or of what their roles as performers might be limited to. All of them are highly skilled, but they’re not specialists. Each brings a particular interest of their own – be it theatre, body art, historical performance or Aboriginal ethnography – to their playing. New works thus become collaborations, and performers are free to contribute their own knowledge and perspectives. It’s not uncommon in rehearsals for players to offer solutions to a particular moment that doesn’t quite work in a new score – a multiphonic that doesn’t sound properly, or a percussion effect that dominates too much. But the collaborative spirit extends far beyond this local level. In two new solos, Liza Lim’s Invisibility
ELISION ENSEMBLE
and Mary Bellamy’s Transference, both recently heard in London, cellist Séverine Ballon worked closely with each composer. In Transference, Ballon injected her experience as an improviser: “I am constantly searching for new techniques and ways of structuring sound, as well as gaining new insight into the possibilities that that structure affords,” she says. The finished piece contains features of Bellamy’s compositional language but, as the composer herself admits, many of its delicate, almost inaudible sounds were developed through Ballon’s improvisational work. Lim has worked with ELISION since the 1980s – she is married to Buckley – and has developed a working method that relies on regular contact with the players and a constant ear on what they are discovering about themselves and their instruments, as well as their wider developing interests as musicians. For Invisibility, the nature of the collaboration between composer and performer is therefore less discrete than that for Transference: Lim consulted with Ballon over the use of the special ‘guiro’ bow used in the piece, as well as over certain harmonics, but essentially the score drew on a much deeper resource of shared work and observation accumulated over several years. ELISION’s approach at the Centre for Research in New Music at Huddersfield University, where they have been artists-in-residence since 2009, indicates, however, that no one is content simply to keep drawing from the same well. Speaking to postgraduate composers in the department it is obvious that the residency has been a rare opportunity
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to stretch their own musical horizons; and, what is more, that desire to explore unknown territory is mutually shared. I spent two days in Huddersfield watching the group rehearsing before their most recent Kings Place concerts and found it striking that, despite the punishing schedule, several players made time for one-on-one sessions with students to work on their current pieces. “What goes on outside the rehearsal room is just as important as what goes on inside,” one student tells me, “unlike some performers who give you their hour and that’s it, they’re gone.” Composers’ relationships with performers can be built on ingrained or learned foundations leading, at worst, to outright distrust and disdain: the problem becomes more acute as the aesthetics become more avant-garde. In contrast, says composer and senior lecturer at Huddersfield Aaron Cassidy, a group like ELISION provides a platform “not just for impressive displays of virtuosity, nor even a platform for exploration, but more a platform for a kind of direct communication by artists. To put it bluntly, a platform to be yourself as a musician.” The levels of musicanship that ELISION reach are made possible by social bonds of trust. Buckley is fond of referring to a particular hexagram of the I Ching, T’ung Jen: “True fellowship among men must be based upon a concern that is universal. It is not the private interests of the individual that create lasting fellowship among men, but rather the goals of humanity.” Early on Buckley recognised the uneasiness that habitually characterised composer–performer relationships, and he hit on the idea of shared dinners.
ELISION ENSEMBLE
Many composers and conductors, from Franco Donatoni (who made great meatballs, I’m told) to Richard Barrett, have thus cooked for ELISION, particularly during the 1990s when the group was based in Melbourne. “The very act of cooking for someone in a home, of contributing to a dinner, is a great and simple shared intimacy,” says Buckley. “It became incredibly effective in breaking down barriers at rehearsal and in giving people different ways of relating to one another and confidence in doing so.” There was even talk, once, of producing an ELISION cookbook: A 13:12 Tuplet and a Glass of Wine, perhaps? But what of the musical outcomes? Can any of this be heard, or is it just a throwback to the idealism of the hippie commune or the Weimar Bauhaus? In fact it is hard to locate a shared ELISION philosophy. Sounding briefly like Fight Club’s Tyler Durden, Buckley will tell you that, “Pretty much the only reason to be in ELISION is to be in ELISION.” Lim elaborates that what marks out ELISION for her is not the technical virtuosity for which the group is known but a desire to explore the particular energies and sonorities that emerge in a performance: “No one wants to invest huge amounts of effort into anything that’s generic, but they’re willing to climb a mountain and cook an eight-course dinner for the sake of a unique soundworld.” We are back to T’ung Jen: ELISION’s identity resides not in a particular aesthetic programme but on an informal, social commitment to common goals. Yet it is precisely such an unpredictable ecology, a coalescence of disparate personalities and enthusiams, that
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ELISION ENSEMBLE
ELISION PERFORM RICHARD BARRETT’S CODEX IX AT THE JUDITH WRIGHT CENTRE OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS, BRISBANE
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enables ELISION’s players to achieve what they do. It is counter-intuitive to think of highly focused creativity coming from such wild, arborescent underpinnings, but grasping all those strands and bringing them together at once demands unique levels of technical control and interpretive intensity. It is an intriguing parallel that much the same process can be found in the best pieces of ELISION’s repertoire – works such as Barrett’s Opening of the Mouth, Lim’s The Navigator and Brian Ferneyhough’s Terrain – and in many of the new works the group commission. June’s concert at Kings Place offers an opportunity to hear for yourself the effect of this style of music-making. All of it – the dinners, the I Ching, the hours of rehearsal, the books on historical performance practice, the study of Aboriginal culture, the pub conversations – is drawn together in this sound at this moment. Bow touches string, lips touch reed, and so it begins: the first note of a new piece.
ELISION ENSEMBLE
Listening post and further reading
Timothy McCormack’s Disfix (2008), performed in Huddersfield, November 2009
Particle Moves, a collaboration between artist Ed Osborn and ELISION
ELISION perform new works by James Dillon, Richard Barrett, Dominik Karski and Roger Redgate on 7 June at Kings Place, London. www.kingsplace.co.uk Richard Barrett’s d-Construction (2006) performed in Brisbane, November 2009 Australian composer Robert Dahm’s blog, with video footage of ELISION Tim Rutherford-Johnson’s blog, The Rambler
Hear & Now
Saturday nights at 10.30pm on BBC Radio 3
1 May: James Dillon’s Via Sacra
Claude Vivier: Orion, Elliott Carter: Adagio tenebroso, James Dillon: Siorram for solo viola, Via Sacra performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with Rory Macdonald (conductor) and Scott Dickinson (viola).
8 May: New Music from Ireland and Iceland
Frank Lyons: Crosstalk played by Smith Quartet and Simon Jermyn (e-guitar) at Sligo New Music Festival; plus Daniel Bjarnason’s Processions and Haflidi Hallgrimsson’s Narratives from the Deep North played by the Ulster Orchestra at Belfast’s Sonorities Festival.
15 May: Bangor New Music Festival
Adrian Williams: Cello Concerto, Guto Puw: Hologram, Andrew Lewis: Number Nine Dream performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales with Grant Llewellyn (conductor) and Raphael Wallfisch (cello).
22 May: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Four composers who rose to prominence in the 1960s: Feldman and Wolff in the ‘New York School’, while in England, Cardew and Skempton founded the Scratch Orchestra. Howard Skempton: Lento, Cornelius Cardew: Bun no.1, Christian Wolff: Spring, Morton Feldman: Piano and orchestra performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with Ilan Volkov (conductor) and John Tilbury (piano).
29 May: BBC Philharmonic Northern connections David Sawer: the greatest happiness principle, Robin Walker: The Stone King, Stephen Elcock: Hammering, David Sawer: Piano Concerto, Emily Howard: Magnetite performed by the BBC Philharmonic with James MacMillan (conductor) and Rolf Hind (piano).
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RECORDING REINDEER MIGRATION, NORTHERN NORWAY
THE COMPASS SERIES
MAY 2010
THE COMPASS SERIES
Uncharted territory The Compass Series brings together field recording, composition, visual media and ambisonic installation to create a dialogue between tradition and technology; indigenous culture and contemporary art practice. Abi Bliss speaks to founder Ross Adams about an incredible journey that stretches from the reindeer migration routes of northern Scandinavia to the Australian songlines.
Photography: Ross Adams
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Every spring, a great migration of reindeer takes place across Arctic Europe. Herds travel hundreds of kilometres from mountain forests to the warmer coasts, where the females calve. And for centuries they have been followed by reindeer herders from the Sámi, the indigenous peoples of northern Scandinavia. Ross Adams first encountered the reindeer herders in 2007, when he worked on location sound for Susanna Wallin’s short film Marker. “It was set in northern Sweden amidst a Sámi reindeer community,” he recalls. “Being with the Sámi, the reindeer, immersed in such beautiful nature during the summer where there was no darkness, had a profound effect on me. I wanted to know more about the Sámi and to create something out of my experience.” Adams started shaping what would become Nord Rute, a project blending his field recordings with original music by electronic duo Plaid, Sámi poetry, visuals and ambisonic sound. The documentary elements interweave with the representation of the reindeer in Sámi imagination and folklore, inhabiting a landscape whose icy surfaces conceal the spirit realm beneath. Although ambitious in itself, Nord Rute is just the first of four related projects under the banner of The Compass Series. Adams intends each to be a dialogue between the traditional and the contemporary in a range of global locations, incorporating music, visuals, oral tradition, ecology, indigenous
THE COMPASS SERIES
cultures and cutting-edge sound design. This isn’t the first time that Adams has envisioned such collaborations. Now working freelance in location sound and post-production with his company, Tin Roof, he grew up on the edge of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall and became a falconer and assistant gamekeeper before the acid house and free party scene drew him to DJing and electronic music. Around the turn of the millennium he travelled through Africa, living with and recording local musicians and bringing their sounds together with European and South American artists, releasing the results on his District Six record label. Plaid’s involvement in Nord Rute came out of Adams’ longstanding admiration for Ed Handley and Andy Turner’s music. “I loved a remix they did for me back in 2000 of a Zimbabwean artist called William Rusere. I’ve always felt that a lot of their rhythms cross over with those from folk music from different parts of Africa,” he explains. “I felt that their synthetic and otherworldly timbres and textures would fit beautifully with the landscapes of Norway and our interpretation of how the Sámi underworld would be.” During his research Adams discovered the Sámi writer, painter and musician Nils Aslak Valkeapää, who saw no contradiction in being a proud ambassador for Sámi traditions while embracing outside influences. Valkeapää’s poem ‘No. 272’ in his book Beaivi, Áhčažan (The Sun, My Father)
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THE COMPASS SERIES
Photography: Ross Adams
‘I could hear the reindeer breathing, tearing at the brush, their feet scraping at the snow and stones. The soundscape was intense’
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creates an imagistic scene of reindeer migration, as the hundreds of words the Sámi have to describe the animals wind across the page like the herd itself. Valkeapää died in 2001, so in order to capture a surround-sound reading of the poem, Adams turned to fellow Sámi poet, Synnøve Persen. “Synnøve had a very intimate relationship with Nils Aslak when he was alive, so there was a strong connection there. We went out into the forests and I recorded her reciting the words. It was the lilt in her voice and the texture of it that I really enjoyed. Again, it had an otherworldly ICE MAZE, KIRKENES, NORWAY
Photography: Bernt Nilsen
THE COMPASS SERIES
feel to it,” Adams says. Early last year, Adams joined a 400km reindeer migration in northern Norway. He was welcomed warmly by the herding families, sleeping in a lavvu (a traditional tent) and journeying by snowmobile in harmony with the reindeer movements. While there he saw the effects of climate change at first hand: “The frozen lakes on the migratory routes have become thinner and on two occasions we had to jump off the scooter, cut the ropes on the sledge and throw the gear – and dog – to one side or everything would have sunk.”
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The wild reindeer proved more difficult to record than Adams had anticipated. Yet persistence paid off early one morning. “I trudged up to the top of one of the hills surrounding the camp, planted the mic and stood about 20 feet away. I didn’t know where the reindeer were, but I could hear the bells, grunts and the clicking, from a tendon that snaps across a bone in their feet when they walk.” The herd appeared, descending from a nearby mountain and heading for Adams. He tried desperately to remain motionless so that they wouldn’t bolt: “Before long I was surrounded and they were brushing up against me, I could hear them breathing, tearing at the brush, their feet scraping at the snow and stones. Bells were hyper loud. The soundscape was intense. I was stone still for about 45 minutes.” Once back in the UK, Adams set about bringing Nord Rute together. Realising the ambisonic aspect of the sound, with its horizontal 12 speaker set-up, was a new challenge for him. “What I think was tricky was trying to convey the space that I recorded the sounds in, in the live performance realm, which was a totally different space.” Nord Rute’s first performance took place outdoors in Kirkenes, north-eastern Norway, on Sámi National Day, 6 February 2010. The audience roamed around a giant ice maze designed by Eric Mutel. The UK premiere was a few weeks later at London’s Trinity Buoy Wharf. Listeners
THE COMPASS SERIES
NORD RUTE PERFORMANCE, LONDON
snuggled up on reindeer pelts whilst Plaid and Persen performed, accompanied by visuals from Yeast Culture. An appearance at Manchester’s FutureEverything festival is scheduled for this month and Adams and Plaid are currently finishing off a proposed album version. The next part of the Compass Series is Where The Green Ants Dream, an encounter between Australian oral traditions and the pan-continental grooves of London group Eardrum. Adams plans to walk a 1500 km “songline” around the edge of the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Northern Territory home of several different Aboriginal clans. “According to their history, their ancestors sung everything into existence. Those songs have been passed down and each one of the clans held onto the song. They speak different languages
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THE COMPASS SERIES
‘Identity is a very strong topic today. Indigenous artists have more of a voice now, they have a lot of control over what they do and don’t want to do’ EARDRUM
and have different traditions, but each will hold a section of the songline,” he explains. Eric Mutel and sound designer Skip Lievsay are on board and this time Adams is hoping for a periphonic (full sphere) speaker set-up. Eardrum’s Richard Olatunde Baker explains how his group, who previously released two albums on The Leaf Label, will incorporate the songline recordings into their existing mix of West African and Punjabi rhythms, electronics and improvised jazz. “We’re going to be more appropriating stuff than trying to do some version of traditional Aboriginal music,”
he says. “It’s going to be a combination of what we use already with live electronic manipulation of traditional instruments. So if I’m playing Nigerian talking drums, I can play them through effects pedals and take the sound to a different continent, so it sounds otherworldly.” After Europe and Australia, Adams hopes that the third and fourth instalments of The Compass Series will feature artists from South Africa and India. He’s well aware when Western artists encounter those from cultures whose creativity has historically been denied or belittled, the former risk accusations of superficial
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THE COMPASS SERIES
borrowing or exploitation. “I think that’s been going on for a long time,” he says. “But identity is a very strong topic today. Indigenous artists have more of a voice now, they have a lot of control over what they do and don’t want to do. It all comes back to communication and being open with each other.” For him, The Compass Series shares Valkeapää’s spirit of respecting tradition and innovation: “They are different worlds, but when it comes to music or expression of an artform, that’s an opening into both.” www.compass-series.org
Listening post
Eardrum live clip and interview Plaid’s live performance of their William Rusere remix (audio only)
A Norwegian news TV clip showing the ice maze and a snippet of Nord Rute (starts around 3:40 in) ‘Váimmustan Lea Biegga’ sung by Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (audio only)
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HOW TO
H WT
GET READY TO COMPOSE Judith Robinson introduces a selection of videos from the tutors of Sound and Music’s 2010 Summer School, each of which takes a contrasting approach to composition studies.
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HOW TO
Sound and Music’s Summer School for young composers is now in its second year and is the only residential course of its kind for young composers. It’s an inspiring week full of collaboration, fun, learning and creativity. In collaboration with The Purcell School for Young Musicians, it offers young composers aged 14 to 18 the opportunity to learn about all aspects of creating music, working with professional composers and musicians and using the specialist facilities of the Purcell School. Central to the philosophy behind the Summer School is the wish to reflect the range of activity contemporary composers are working in, from conventionally notated music to electronic music, and from jazz to music for film, and young people have the opportunity to experience everything on offer as well as focus on their own interests. The key tutors each lead one tutor group throughout the week as well as running taster sessions. Visiting composers also add to the mix.
Aidan Goetzee on composing for the moving image
Kerry Andrew explores composing for the voice
Issie Barratt introduces jazz composition
Alison Cox looks at crosscultural composition
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HOW TO
Each of the key tutors has worked with us to create a short video outlining some ideas for composition, reflecting the broad range on offer at the Summer School, but also providing a resource for anyone wishing to find new ideas for compositional processes. In the videos, each tutor gives an idea for a starting point for composition and offers ideas for how the idea can be developed; you’ll also hear some outcomes of these ideas.  With the deadline for applications to the Summer School fast approaching, on May 14th, they may even give applicants ideas for pieces to submit! Find out more at http://soundandmusic.org Sound and Music Summer School is supported by The Monument Trust, Musicians Benevolent Fund and The Michael Tippett Musical Foundation.
David Horne delves into advanced instrumental composition, part 1
David Horne delves into advanced instrumental composition, part 3
David Horne delves into advanced instrumental composition, part 2
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OPPORTUNITIES
Opportunitie London Sinfonietta Academy – call for conductors Deadline: 07/05/2010
The London Sinfonietta is delighted to offer, as part of its Academy 2010, the opportunity for three young conductors, at the very start of their careers an unparalleled opportunity to work with one of the world’s leading contemporary music ensembles and conductor Elgar Howarth. The conductors’ programme will take place in sessions within the London Sinfonietta Academy from Sunday 4 July to Thursday 8 July 2010.
4. A DVD of recent conducting work demonstrating, where possible, any work in the field of contemporary music. 5. Repertoire list. Candidates should be of British nationality, or be studying in the UK, or have been resident in the UK for at least three years. For more information about London Sinfonietta Academy 2010, email info@londonsinfonietta.org.uk or call 020 7239 934.
unStatic – call for submissions Deadline: 10/05/2010
Applications should contain the following items: 1. Application form: please complete (download available or email info@londonsinfonietta.org.uk) and use a continuation sheet if necessary. 2. Personal statement of no more than one side of A4 paper (up to 500 words) describing musical achievements and aspirations. 3. A written reference from your conducting teacher/head of department (max 500 words), to confirm your suitability for the scheme.
unStatic is a new venture in association with Leigh Art Trail. The event is in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, on 16 June 2010. unStatic requests submissions for a new night of explorative noise, sound, film and performance art. Applications from any background welcome, the only restriction being that of the small venue. Contact/submissions to lydiahardwick@gmail.com or Williamcheshire@gmail.com
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OPPORTUNITIES
Opportunitie Recital Music – 2010 Composition Competition for Double Bass
2010 Philip Bates Prize for Composers and Songwriters Deadline: 11/06/2010
Deadline: 01/06/2010
The 2010 Recital Music Composition Competition for Double Bass is open to composers of any age and nationality. There are five categories, including an ‘open’ category, and submitted works written in any style are welcomed. Works should be unpublished but may have been performed previously. Works should be written for 4-stringed basses, with the lowest note of E. Theme: The discovery of Jupiter’s four largest moons in January 1610 by Galileo, now called the Galilean or ‘Medician’ satillites, in honour of their Florentine heritage. Prizes: £100 per category, plus publication by Recital Music Full details from www.recitalmusic.net
Birmingham Conservatoire and the Philip Bates Trust would like to invite composers aged 16 to 25 to submit creative and entertaining new works for the 2010 Philip Bates Prize For Composers and Songwriters. Submitted works should be for one or two singers (independent lines) and between two and five players. Works should of six to twelve minutes’ duration and can be from any genre/ background (classical, jazz, rock, Asian etc), but must be suitable for live performance without a conductor. Choice of text at the discretion of the composer. Short-listed works will be performed on Friday 5 November 2010 at Birmingham Conservatoire. One of the winning works will be performed again in 2011 at A Touch of Basil, a concert organised by the Philip Bates Trust. First Prize: £600. Second Prize £300. Audience Prize £100 There is no formal application form. For information on how to enter, down-
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load the Rules and Regulations or check www.conservatoire.bcu.ac.uk for further details. If you have a question that is not answered in the Rules and Regulations, please visit the page above to contact Natalie Smith, Secretary to the Head of Composition.
Radio Papesse – re-design our sounds Deadline: 30/06/2010
Would you like to contribute re-designing our sonic IDs? We’re inviting producers and musicians to create sonic IDs for Radio Papesse, a web radio dedicated to contemporary art and culture. Visit www.radiopapesse.org to listen to the archive and find out more. info@radiopapesse.org
The Buddha’s Footprint Deadline: 30/06/2010
The Buddha’s Footprint is a collaborative project where composers are invited to use a series of field recordings from Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India to create their own works, in any form or style. The finished works
OPPORTUNITIES
may be submitted for inclusion on the forthcoming CD release. The field recordings, made by Francis Booth, include bells, drums and chants from the places where the Buddha lived and taught. Composers are invited to download the samples from this site and use them in any way they like, under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence, crediting Francis Booth as copyright owner. There are also accompanying photos which may also be used freely under the same terms. Download the files from http://harmonograph.co.uk The first works based on them, by London-based producers Steve Ellis and Francis Booth, take very different approaches to the source material. The field recordings are also being used in the recording of Ronald Corp’s a capella choral setting of Francis Booth’s singing translation of Dhammapada – the first time the Buddha’s words have been set to Western music. Contact: francis@cultureshock. co.uk for more information
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FROM THE BLOGS
FROM THE BLOGS
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21/03/2010 The Earwig Interviews: episode 2 After a longer-than-planned delay, here is the second instalment of The Earwig Interviews, in which I talk to professional performers about their experiences of playing new music. This time I spoke to lutenist and guitarist Jamie Akers and asked him my three searching questions. Can you tell me about a good new piece you’ve played recently? “I played for a new opera as part of the Handel Festival in July 2009, put on by the Handel House Museum. It was called 25 Brook Street, written collaboratively by four composers contributing one act each. The composers were Mark Bowden, Larry Groves, Chris Mayo and Charlie Piper and it was about Handel writing his final oratorio.” What contemporary composers write well for your instrument(s)? “I played the theorbo on a CD of
FROM THE BLOGS
Howard Skempton’s songs called The Cloths of Heaven and he understands the instrument properly. Then there’s Stephen Dodgson, of course. He’s amazing. And the lute part in Britten’s Gloriana is very competently written.” What advice would you give to composers writing for lute/guitar? “Get to know the instrument – understand properly how it works and don’t write for it like some sort of piano. Get a feel for the sonority of the instrument: what makes a successful sound? And listen to lots of music for the instrument, hear what sounds good.” The Earwig
06/04/2010 London Word Festival London Word Festival is an cross disciplinary exploration of words, text and language in non-traditional spaces that took place 7 March to 1 April 2010 in cafes, and small
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venues around Dalston and the East End. I attended one of the final events of the festival at the Stoke Newington International Airport, a nice hidden lofty place with homemade chandeliers, found chairs and secondhand decor making an otherwise raw space feel cosy. The night was headlined by a commission by Leafcutter John who did a digital and modern revision of Basil Bunting’s famed poem ‘Briggflatts’. Playing alongside the spoken track, the textural components from Leafcutter John turned words, voice and poetry into sound and music. I know little about spoken word/ poetry, I didn’t know what to expect, but was pleased to find a nice community of dedicated niche followers similar to that of the sound art and experimental music community. The programme of the evening focussed on intersections of words, language, sound and music introducing a both sonic and performative and sometimes musical element of spoken word. With a slightly different starting point, their interests and views in contemporary
FROM THE BLOGS
spoken word is identical to those pursuing the arts in other art forms. They are exploring a plurality of modes of expression that tap into nearby communities of live art, theatre/performance, sound/music and visual art. The work at the festival demonstrated contemporary practices of spoken word, which I was unfamiliar with as my previous conceptions of spoken word had been rather cringe-worthy. I was sure there was new and interesting work out there, and there was at the London Word Festival. I was particularly impressed by Hannah Silva’s cut up spoken word poetry that began as a nervous introduction of herself and then spiralled into a cryptic play of words and the expression of speech by using only the same words used in her first intro. It played on the psychological understanding and meaning of tones and words spliced together almost at random and expressing something quite new. The festival was layered with various activities including storytelling, comic art, game nights (Scrabble), films and a range of
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music, and performances. It might be an interesting way of finding new art and work with sound through artists in the neighbouring communities of spoken word and poetry. www.londonwordfestival.com Ashley Wong
07/04/2010 iPad apps for music-making The bigger picture, indeed: by blowing up the screen of the iPhone to tablet proportions, the iPad has become a lightning rod for discussions about the future of computing. It has also left interface designers with a challenge: what should interfaces look like? Can you simplify designs, as on the iPhone, but also make use of a screen size closer to what’s available on desktop computers? Those questions are especially potent when applied to making this new generation of devices expressive in music. I’ve managed to compile a list of what’s coming, with the kind assist-
FROM THE BLOGS
ance of the best mobile music blog out there, Palm Sounds. Talking to developers reveals some news you likely expect – many (though certainly not all) iPhone developers plan to port their tools to the iPad. But it also includes some surprises, like a renewed interest in other tablet and netbook platforms. (Nothing quite compares to the surprise that a popular Palm developer was switching to open-source hardware design). And as iPad developers reconsider the design of musical user interfaces on Apple’s device, it’s long past time to evaluate how UI design can work in all digital music platforms. Here’s a first look at what to expect. Continue reading at Create Digital Music David Rogerson
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FROM THE BLOGS
16/04/2010
began its life with the release of the Katacombe Vol 3 sampler.
Kormucopia: Korm Plastics celebrates 25 years and a cassette culture resurgence
Each of the 25 artists chosen for the comp were given two minutes and fifty seconds to work their usual noisy magic – in an edition of 250, naturally. Some names: Big City Orchestra, Raymond Dijkstra, Peter Duimelinks, Richard Francis, Freiband, Ben Gwilliam, The Haters, Idea Fire Company, Illusion Of Safety, Edward Ka-spel, Francisco Lopez, Machinefabriek, Stephan Mathieu, Roel Meelkop, Radboud Mens, KK Null, Pickup, The Silverman, Jos Smolders, Howard Stelzer, Asmus Tietchens, The Tobacconists, Mirko Uhlig, Jason Zeh, and Z’EV. “A fine mixture of microsound, noise and popmusic,” de Waard calls it.
Home taping killed music. It unspooled its tape loop around a metaphorical neck and gave it a metaphysical squeeze. Cassette culture – that currently flash and zombified byproduct of the format death whose early reports were so greatly exaggerated – celebrates one particularly vivid milestone with the quartocentennial of Korm Plastics, the Dutch label run by Frans de Waard. De Waard, the leftfield composer known for such avant groups as Beequeen, Kapotte Muziek (“Broken Music”) and Goem, decided to beam himself backwards to arrive at this decidedly dowdy future of post-modern garbage and intentional meaninglessness with The Year 25 – 25 Years Of Korm Plastics. Released on cassette only, it’s a compilation harkening back to the halcyon days of October 1984, in which the celebrated underground label officially
When asked about the latest “cassette culture” revival, de Waard is enthusiastic. “It’s unexpected and it’s great. I was more excited to release this cassette than for any CD in the last 10 years.” As for how many of the bands on the original Katacombe compilation that are still active, de Waard is less sanguine. “Occasionally people return. They browse the internet and find their
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name mentioned on a blog and some even return to doing music like Comando Bruno. Just the true idiots never know when to stop.” As for people on the anniversary release that he’d wanted originally but didn’t make the cut, he’s even more tight-lipped. “Oh, yes – loads. But I won’t say which.” So do cassettes require more patience in listening than vinyl records, or vice-versa? “All music,” he admits, “deserves equal attention, I guess.” www.kormplastics.nl David Cotner
19/04/2010 Notations 21 We’ve recently made a few additions to the books we have in the office here at Sound and Music, out of those new books which have arrived I was particularly impressed by Notations 21. Done almost as an update to John Cage’s seminal Notations (downloadable as a PDF (75MB) from Ubuweb);
FROM THE BLOGS
it’s quite an impressive tome on nice think paper with gorgeous fullcolour print throughout. Again, it’s a catalogue of more unusual practice in score writing, this time from around the turn of the 21st century and each score offers an explanation of the methods and rationale behind notation music in that particular way. You also don’t need to have any experience reading music to get something out of this book, some scores may be equally alien to those who can and cannot read music. It can allow those who are unfamiliar with graphic notation to see why some composers use it, and the wide variety of ways in which it may be used. For other books we’re interested in please see our reading list on Amazon. If you have any suggested additions, please let me know. Richard Thomas
The magazine of