Drums. And Tape. And Drums. And Drums.

Matthew Whiteside is a regular co-host on  The Vile Arts Radio Hour: bringing a touch of intelligence and knowledge to my usual vague understanding of contemporary classical music, he is a tireless supporter of new composition. He's part of the wonderful Said Ensemble, a group committed to bringing classical music into unfamiliar places, like the pub, and he has been known to compose a cheeky electro-acoustic number, or two. In fact, he is prolific. 

His entry into the next Edit-Point show explains why he is a good match for the Vile Arts ethos. It's called Sanshen and early indications suggest that it is going to be a big drum solo. Edit Point have got young percussion Glynn Forrest on board to bash some bits - six new compositions, and the full range of percussion, from maracas (Javier Alvarez’s  Tamazcal sees the instrument made popular by Bez face off against tape) to a rock'n'roll style kit.

Edit-Point are in one of those marginal areas that I love so much: not purely classical composition, not purely electronic and intrigued by the possibilities of sound in specific spaces. Of course, every experimental musician likes to say something like that, but Edit-Point back it up by having a constant programme that challenges emerging composers to think about sound as "cinema for the ears." 

It might be said they are John Cage's children, in their fascination with the complete listening experience. Then again, maybe Cage had an affair with Stockhausen, because these kids like to get plugged into the machine. 

Edit-Point are performing as part of the Sound Lab series: 7.30pm, Wednesday 27 February, Recital Room, City Halls, Glasgow

Edit-Point: Sight/Sound/Place

Sound competes with vision. Sense competes with  non-sense. Edit-Point presents three audio-visual works in which various kinds of chaos are brought to order.

In Lexicon, a poem by Tom, age 12, is the source for a poignant visual and sonic meditaDon on dyslexia. Words, image and text, distort and reform. There is at once a sense of kaleidoscopic brilliance and thwarted progress as the child’s poem slowly unfolds.

Vanishing Point describes the moment when abstract images pivot on the point of becoming tangible. They fleetingly become real and then collapses back into the unknown. The soundtrack, based on the noise of an old valve radio, glues everything together.

Taking an almost entirely different approach, Are You Everybody distils the chaos of the Kosova war into moments of quiet reflection.

The films are framed by a series of six, new, sonic postcards based on field recordings made in Scotland. Just as the photographer can tweak an image on a computer, there may be digital sleights of hand here too. Less than two minutes each, these sound pieces reveal as much as any photograph: capturing a place and a moment.



Andrew Lewis: Lexicon / John Young: Are you Everybody? / Jo Hyde: Vanishing

Point. Sonic postcards by Timothy Cooper, Nick Fells, Diana Salazar, Pete Stollery,

Nicholas Virgo and Matthew Whiteside

7.30pm Wednesday 25 September, Recital Room,

City Halls, Candleriggs, Glasgow G1 1NQ Tickets £6

(£3)






sound lab:

Edit Point and Sound Lab

Sound Lab has been working steadily at developing opportunities for new composers working in the electro-acoustic arena: sitting between the rigour of classical composition and the infinite potential of the modern machine, their events cultivate emerging artists and the hook up with Edit-Point (Timothy Cooper, Matthew Whiteside and Nicholas Virgis) is a comfortable fit. Taking a closer look at the way the violin and viola interacts with electronics, the programme goes back to Ligeti, a pioneer of experimental composition, and towards the future with two world premieres from Michael Cutting and Gordon McPherson.

String Factory, from Ed Bennett, begins the evening and sets out a clear agenda:  Kay Stephen sets her live violin part against precorded violins. While Reich has used similar techniques to emphasis the pounding energy of minimal grooves, Bennett makes a case for composition as a reflection of a very contemporary isolation. The broken sounds of the violin encase Stephen within a ricocheting racket of noise, disorientating and brutal: her playing is all-too-human, vulnerable and ultimately lyrical.

Next up, Shimmering is a melancholic and episodic reflection on light playing across water - more gentle than String Factory, it harks back to the romantic era, without losing the more modern enthusiasm for eastern  melody. Meditative and calming, despite occasional pizzicato attacks, composer Timothy Cooper combines a sensitivity to elegance with an ear for the exotic.

After the interval, Ligeti's Sonata is an almost deceptive introduction to the second half: against McPherson's Lamenta Infracta, it sounds traditional and ponderous. For McPherson, the technology is all about liberating sound from the limitations of the human player - the subtitle, Stunt Double reveals his intentions. A synthesized version of the instrument plays along, echoing and illustrating Stephen and deepening the sound with languorous additions and chiming notes.

It makes a perfect seque into the finale,  Kaija Saariaho's Vent Nocturne, an almost apocalyptic vision that slides between violence and reflective interludes.

Edit-Point's programme makes a series of bold claims: placing electro-acoustic music firmly in the classical tradition - no tacky nods to dance music here - it suggests that it is capable of addressing contemporary concerns without ignoring the past. The electronics provide the depth equally available through acoustic instruments, but offers a different sort of bed. Not always comfortable, often bracing but ever emotive, the connection between human and machine is imagined as battle and collaboration.

If there is a trend for composition to chase increasingly obscure strategies, these selections balance between accessible and challenging: the lessons of serialism are present, but alongside a respect for older faith in melody. The booming ferocity of much minimalism has been replaced by a more nuanced use of electronic possibilities. Yet at the centre, Stephen's virtuosity brings soul to the mechanical roar and hum.

Recital Room, City Halls

April 17th 2013, 7.30pm

Churnalism.... from art to music and back again...

Here are  three events that I think will be good, and details of a season's programme by an orchestra I rather like They are all about music. Except the second one, that's about visual art. As always, press release in plain text, Vile comments in italics

Edit-Point: Axe! Music for Electric Guitar and Electronics

Persistently intriguing Glasgow-based contemporary composers Edit-Point dial it up to 11 with music performed by guest electric guitarist, Peter Argondizza. An eclectic set of live guitar and electronics and fixed media music played over a multi-speaker sound system. 

The classical modernist meets the post-minimalist in Luciano Berio’s Sequenza XI and Jack Vees’ National Anthem. Gilles Gobeil’s small, but perfectly full-on Associations Libres takes on Alistair MacDonald’s sparse and intriguingly angular Quite Still. All of this is contrasted by lush, fixed-media works by Manuella Blackburn and Oliver Carman.

7.30pm Friday 15 November, Recital Room, City Halls, Candleriggs. Tickets £6 (£3)

This next one could provoke an intriguing article about how visual art made in Glasgow, at one point excluded from GOMA and the 'mainstream' has become part of Glasgow's Cultural Capital. These artists are getting to go in the Big Important Museum  -have a cheeky keek at Social Sculpture, the book, to see how complicated that relationship is...

The first programme details for a landmark series of exhibitions celebrating 25 years of contemporary art in Scotland have been revealed. GENERATION will bring an ambitious and extensive programme of works of art by over 100 artists to over 60 galleries, exhibition spaces and venues the length and breadth of the nation between March – November 2014, with the majority of exhibitions taking place over the summer of 2014, as part of the Glasgow 2014 Cultural Programme.

GENERATION has been in the making since 2011. The programme will continue to grow in the coming months, and featured artists announced today include Charles Avery, Sara Barker, Karla Black, Christine Borland, Martin Boyce, Roddy Buchanan, Steven Campbell, Duncan Campbell, Katy Dove, Graham Fagen, Moyna Flannigan, Douglas Gordon, Ilana Halperin, Charlie Hammond, Iain Hetherington, Louise Hopkins, Callum Innes, Jim Lambie, Lorna Macintyre, Sophie Macpherson, Alan Michael, Rosalind Nashashibi, Toby Paterson, Ciara Phillips, Alex Pollard, Charlotte Prodger, Mary Redmond, John Shankie, David Shrigley, Ross Sinclair, Simon Starling, Clare Stephenson, Corin Sworn, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, Cara Tolmie, Sue Tompkins, Hayley Tompkins,  Zoë Walker & Neil Bromwich, Alison Watt, Cathy Wilkes, Richard Wright and many more.

Yep, totally need to deconstruct and elaborate on that line-up... 

WEST SIDE STORY

King’s Theatre 15 - 25 January 2014

West Side Story - based on a conception of Jerome Robbins

Book by Arthur Laurents. Music by Leonard Bernstein. Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

Entire original production directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins

Originally produced on Broadway by Robert E. Griffith and Harold S. Prince

by arrangement with Roger L. Stevens

“WEST SIDE STORY” changed the course of musical theatre when it opened on Broadway in 1957 and it still remains one of the most successful stage shows of all time. The 1961 film version won ten Academy Awards. Based on Romeo and Juliet, “WEST SIDE STORY” is set on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and explores the rivalry between two teenage gangs; one white, the other Puerto Rican. When Tony falls in love with Maria, the sister of the rival gang’s leader, the feud takes on a new dimension, and as their love blossoms so begins a fatal journey overshadowed by violence and hatred.   The score includes the unforgettable songs ‘Maria’, ‘Tonight’, ‘Somewhere’, ‘America’ and ‘I Feel Pretty’.

“WEST SIDE STORY” originally directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, has a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein with Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

This production is directed and choreographed afresh by Joey McKneely - former assistant to Jerome Robbins. Joey has worked extensively on Broadway where his choreography credits include “Smokey Joe’s Café” (Tony Award nomination) and “The Boy From Oz” starring Hugh Jackman. His other credits include Hal Prince’s production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Whistle Down the Wind” and Nicholas Hytner’s production of “Twelfth Night”.

West Side Story

15 - 25 January 2014

Box Office 0844 871 764

The Scottish Ensemble’s 2013/14 Season 
Musical journeys around Scotland and EuropeThe Scottish Ensemble will launch its 2013/14 season at the Music Hall in Aberdeen on Friday 7 June 2013. The choice of location is not accidental: it underlines the Ensemble’s commitment to its innovative regional touring model, the City Residencies programme. In October 2012 SE launched residencies in Inverness and Dundee, and in June 2013 Aberdeen and Perth also receive their first–ever Scottish Ensemble residencies.

Throughout the 4-day residencies SE undertakes a wide range of on- and off-platform events designed specifically around individual communities. Events have included: coaching sessions with young and amateur musicians, pop-up performances, late-night and cross-art-form events, tea dances, ceilidhs, and more. This new model is ambitious and has already delivered significant results. It has brought about a considerable increase in audience numbers, strengthened key relationships with community stakeholders and is bringing high-quality music-making to previously unreached groups.
2013/14

The Scottish Ensemble’s season takes audiences on a number of exciting musical journeys around Scotland and Europe; each programme is inspired by place and musical identity. 2013/14 includes four major tours in Scotland, four city residencies, concerts at London’s Wigmore Hall, lunchtime concerts, and chamber music performances. It also includes late-night gigs and a whole range of activities in surprising and unusual locations as part of the city residencies.

Season highlights include:

·         A season of work rooted in the idea of musical place and identify.

·         Performances of Martin Suckling’s full set of Musical Postcards written for the Ensemble.

·         A new commission from Danish composer Christian Winther Christensen in a programme to include classic Scandinavian string repertoire alongside contemporary voices.

·         A major tour of Scotland with rising star mezzo soprano Sophie Harmsen, which will culminate in a performance at London’s Wigmore Hall.

·         Concerts with Chris Stout and Catriona McKay, to include Sally Beamish’s Seavaigers, plus new material from Stout and McKay.

·         A new commission to some of Scotland’s most exciting composers, each writing a variation on a traditional Scottish melody.

·         The continuation of SE’s relationship with key broadcast partner BBC Radio 3.

Nordic Nights
Concerts by Candlelight
 6 December Aberdeen / 7 December Inverness / 8 December Dundee / 9 December Perth / 10 December Glasgow / 11 December Edinburgh

The Scottish Ensemble’s popular December ‘Concerts by Candlelight’ series has a Nordic twist in 2013. The programme includes a new arrangement for the Ensemble of Grieg’s string quartet and an usual journey through ‘Holberg’s Time’ with fascinating detours via exciting contemporary Scandinavian voices. 

Grieg                               From Holberg’s Time (Holberg Suite)
                                      with interludes from contemporary     
                                      Scandinavian composers including
Christian Winther
Christensen                       New Work (SE Commission)

Sibelius                            Andante Festivo
Grieg                               String Quartet No. 1

Love and War in Bohemia
21 February Inverness / 22 February Dundee / 23 February Glasgow / 24 February Edinburgh / 26 February London 
Following her successful UK debut with the Scottish Ensemble in 2012, the thrilling mezzo soprano Sophie Harmsen returns to perform with the Scottish Ensemble in February 2014. She performs Dvořák’s magical love songs alongside virtuosic baroque arias in a concert centring on musical treasures from Bohemia. The concert concludes with a Suk’s beautifully romantic Serenade for Strings.

Pavel Haas              Study for String Orchestra
Dvořák                    Love Songs (arr. Matthews)
Handel                    Selected Arias
Biber                      Battalia
Suk                        Serenade for Strings in E Flat Major

Mezzo soprano         Sophie Harmsen 

Seavaigers
Aberdeen 24 April; residency 21-24 April / 29 April Perth; residency 26-29 April /30 April Glasgow / 1 May Edinburgh 
In April, the Scottish Ensemble team up with folk super duo Chris Stout and Catriona McKay for the final musical journey of the season, one SE will take to Aberdeen and Perth as part of the city residencies. Sally Beamish’s Seavaigers was composed especially for the Ensemble and these two soloists; it describes a sea journey from Dundee to Shetland. The programme also includes Bach’s Double Violin concerto in a performance that explores the work’s folk roots. There is also a composite new commission from some of Scotland’s most exciting musical voices, all writing a variation on a traditional Scottish melody.

Stout/McKay            Sunstone (new material)
Sally Beamish           Seavaigers
Bach                      Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor
Various Composers   Scottish Variations (SE new commission)

Violin                     Jonathan Morton
Scottish harp           Catriona McKay
Fiddle                     Chris Stout

Scottish Ensemble Artistic Director Jonathan Morton said:

Presenting exciting concerts of the highest quality throughout Scotland and in London remains our main objective, but in 2012 our activities broadened significantly in two areas. Firstly, we launched our first annual city residencies, and secondly we raised our profile internationally through two major touring projects in the USA and in China and Taiwan. In quite different ways these experiences have enriched our purpose, and encouraged us to keep striving for deeper and more meaningful engagement with our audiences.

The 2013/14 season is rooted in the idea of musical place and identify. Highlights include a genre-crossing programme with folk musicians Chris Stout and Catriona Mackay, featuring an evocative score by Sally Beamish; our Christmas programme, including new and familiar Scandinavian music transporting you to a Nordic winter landscape; and in February, a musical collaboration with a star of opera stages and concert halls, mezzo soprano Sophie Harmsen.

Vaulted Dramaturgy: Marty Ross @ Edfringe 2015

Vampires in the VaultA dramatic storytelling show by MARTY ROSS
Paradise In The Vault (venue 29)
11 Merchant St. EH1 2QD
8 – 15 August 17.55
Tickets £8 / £6 (2for1 on 10th. & 11th.)

After his acclaimed 21st. Century Poe shows at 2013 & 2014's Edfringe, live storyteller and playwright Marty Ross (BBC Radio drama; Doctor Who & Dark Shadows audio) descends once again into the Vault with a themed show alternating two vampire tales – dare you see them both?

His radically updated Poe shows saw him acclaimed as “a compelling onstage presence”, “a master craftsman who never turns down the pressure” with a gift for “insanely good storytelling” and “a great aptitude for suspense & terror”. Now he descends deeper into the dark with stories of vampirism, historic and modern, supernatural and disturbingly real.

In THE GORBALS VAMPIRE, Glasgow's very own urban legend of an
iron-toothed vampire in the city's Southern Necropolis inspires a
disturbing tale of innocence lost. Twenty years ago, Timmy disappeared in the graveyard, victim of a schoolkid prank. Now he's back, to tell the tale of where he's been... and how close he came to being trapped there forever.

In BLOOD & STONE: Lullaby For A Vampire Countess, Ross again draws on a true tale, in this case that of the Hungarian Bloody Countess Elizabeth Bathory, aka “Countess Dracula”, who in the early 1600s was imprisoned in her castle for bathing in the blood of her victims. This fictional sequel to the historical story imagines a servant listening to the Countess' protestations of innocence and being tempted to set her free.... (Marty Ross' audio drama version of this story was nominated for a 2012 Rondo Award – the horror world's Oscars)
*The Fringe*What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?Marty Ross: My Poe shows at the previous two Fringes had been well received, so
I wanted to do another show, but wanted to take a break from Poe, so
vampire stories seemed a natural progression and very suitable for a
setting in a church vault, plus I wanted to revisit the format I'd had
in 2013, of not just doing the same show every night but alternating
different stories, in this case two stories, The Gorbals Vampire and
Blood And Stone. Blood And Stone was already a well established piece
in my repertoire (and my audio drama version had been nominated for a
Rondo - the horror world's Oscars!) and it was inevitable I'd bring it
to Edinburgh - I just needed another story to go alongside it. And I'd
been obsessed by the urban legend of the Gorbals Vampire for a long
time - the Southern Necropolis, where the belief that an iron toothed
vampire was devouring children prompted an honest to goodness outburst
of mass hysteria in the early 50s, was just round the corner from the
tenement where I used to live with my Grandmother, the person who
inspired me to tell stories in the first place, so it just seemed a
perfect opportunity.

Why bring your work to Edinburgh?As a Scot, Edinburgh is close to home - I can go home to my own
family at nights and don't have to pay an extortionate rent - and
though far more brilliant performers than myself have lost their
shirts there, I did pretty well the last two fringes, broke even and
got a bit of recognition, and was established at a supportive venue,
so I thought 'why not?' And I'm haunted by the vague possibility that
there might be folk in the vicinity who enjoyed the last two shows and
might actually be in the mood for more.

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
What I'm hoping for, as with all my storytelling shows, is that
there in the darkened theatre there'll be a kind of imaginative,
intimate compact between myself and each individual audience member --
that I'll put on a vivid show that's worth watching and listening to
as a spectacle in itself, but also that there'll also be another show
simultaneously created in every viewer and listener's mind's eye, a
private visualisation of the story unique to each audience member,
that they can carry home and dream about afterwards. I think
theatrical storytelling can carry to an ultimate point of finesse that
game with the audience's imagination that's so crucial in theatre
generally (and so lacking in media like movies or TV where, as it
were, all the imagining is done for you). I'm not out for overt
screams or folk jumping out of their seats (in that respect
storytelling theatre can hardly compete with the quick-edit visual
shocks and "Vwhwoom" soundtrack noises of cinema), but I think I can
play an intimate game with people's imaginations in a manner genuinely
'haunting'. The two stories themselves combine Gothic horror with what
I hope is real, resonant complex human drama - 'pure' horror just
isn't enough, I'm interested in the points where horror intersects
with a kind of terrible, tragic beauty. I think I'm evoking some
complex, troubled, troubling characters here to help me do that.

*The Dramaturgy Questions*
How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?Dramaturgy is a big question for me. Some storytellers are keen to
distance their storytelling from being seen as any kind of theatre or
drama, but for me storytelling is attractive as a medium precisely to
the point where I can make drama, and theatrical drama at that, out of
it. Which raises the whole question: at what point does a 'story'
cross over into being a 'drama' - where does the borderline lie? Like
a lot of practitioners, I suppose, I work my way through the process
by blind instinct and theorize about it afterwards, but I think of
'drama' as 'story' with a kind of gas mark 6 gathering heat under it:
a lot of traditional storytellers are very light hearted and laid back
and anecdotal in the way they tell even the most macabre stories,
keeping to the persona of 'your mate down the pub casually spinning a
yarn between sips of real ale', but I'm instinctively drawn to a
certain full tilt emotional intensity, and an expressionist way of
conveying it. And as part and parcel of that I often abandon the
traditional objective third-person perspective of traditional
storytelling for telling the story 'first person' through a character
in the story, and then directly portraying the other characters with
similar intensity. I did that with the Poe shows, taking my cue from
the fact that Poe's stories tend to be told first person - and by the
craziest character in the story: they're almost dramatic monologues.
And "The Gorbals Vampire" here is done first person, from the point of
view of its most traumatized character. On the other hand Blood &
Stone begins third person (it even starts with "Once upon a time"),
but even there, as the storytelling 'heats up', more and more of the
narrative is communicated through me speaking directly as the
characters: that third person voice discreetly shrinks back to a very
minimalist connecting tissue. So the real borderline between 'story'
and 'drama' might lie at the point that story allows itself to be told
by the characters within it. How can that be achieved? - that's where
'dramaturgy' lies in the storytelling medium.

What particular traditions and influences would you acknowledge on your work - have any particular artists, or genres inspired you and do you see yourself within their tradition?
Even though I can only know it at one remove (at least), German
Expressionist theatre is a big reference point. Of course, I can only
know it indirectly, through play scripts, manifestos and critical
texts... and of course through things like the German silent cinema
and the later, somewhat watered down, version of that aesthetic in the
30s horror cinema: the work of people like Conrad Veidt and Peter
Lorre, films like 'Caligari', 'Orlacs Hande', 'The Black Cat' & 'Mad
Love': I love the extreme stylisation of things like that, a
stylisation that makes those productions belong to theatre as much as
to cinema. I'm a sucker for a good Hammer Horror and the best of the
more modernist horror films, but they're relentlessly moving towards a
more 'realistic' style (with the startling exception of Nicholson's
Kabuki performance in The Shining), and that aesthetic isn't as
applicable to the kind of thing I'm trying to do: so Veidt and Lorre
(who would do one man Poe shows - and said he found it more fulfilling
than virtually anything else he did in Hollywood!) are my heroes,
certainly by way of my fantasy of what they were like in those 20s
theatre shows I'll never actually be able to see.

More broadly, I suppose any form of theatre in which big, grand-scale
fantastical narratives are communicated by what in practical terms are
very simple resources is an influence, as for example Yeats' Celtic
reinventions of Noh drama: I know the dominant realist aesthetic
condemns Yeats' plays as a disastrous dead end, but that basic idea -
that you go into some draughty community hall in County Sligo, unroll
a rug on the floor and that rug becomes a whole fantastical world of
mortal and supernatural forces clashing is obviously more relevant to
what I'm doing than anything in the realist tradition.

Likewise, Greek tragedy is a big guiding light. I know that sounds
pretentious coming from a guy doing little penny ante horror shows,
but in simple pragmatic nuts and bolts terms the way Greek tragedy
uses a very small cast (certainly if you accept the Greek distinction
that chorus and actors are two different things), very simple ABC
narrative lines (as opposed to the baroque structures and subplots of
Elizabethan drama) and very elementary staging to convey narratives
that are grand scale in their passions and their clash of the human
and supernatural. And of course the Greek convention of having the
most violent action take place off-stage means that at its most crucial
hinge-points Greek drama becomes quite a straightforward storytelling
theatre. We don't literally see the King and his daughter being burned
to death by the poisoned dress in 'Medea', we don't see Pentheus being
caught and ripped apart by the Maenads, we don't see Jocasta hanging
herself or Oedipus gouging his eyes out: rather, some horror-struck
intermediary runs on-stage, says 'you'll never guess what happened' and
for the next five minutes the play becomes a piece of purest
storytelling as the off-stage scene is simply, powerfully, described
to us... and those are among the towering moments of western drama.

Another influence - and I keep this to last, because I have to be
careful about my terminology - is the theatre of melodrama. Careful,
of course, because in modern usage 'melodrama' is used as a synonym
for bad drama, fake drama, hokey drama. But if you do any research
into melodrama as a genuine theatre tradition, it's much more
interesting than that: whether embodied by the plays of Gothic writers
like Lewis and Maturin, or by the 19th century 'fit up' companies who
would perform what must have been largely improvised reenactments of
contemporary crimes in spaces 'fitted up' in market stalls etc., or
Dickens performing the murder of Nancy so vividly he took years of his
own life and (probably) the lives of his audiences, or Henry Irving
performing Eugene Aram so vividly he sent Bram Stoker (of all people)
into a fainting fit, or of course the French Grand Guignol.... --
you're talking about a genuinely popular, immediately communicative
form of theatre, stylised of course but valid in its stylisations...
and the theatre genuinely lost something when the academic
haute-bourgoisie, all those Court Theatre Granville Barker types,
kicked it out of the theatre so the realist aesthetic could reign
unopposed.

Do you have a particular process of making that you could describe - where it begins, how you develop it, and whether there is any collaboration in the process?
People tend to assume, because I'm also a playwright, that I write
a script, memorize it, and then that's what I perform: people often
compliment me on the 'writing' in, or the 'text' of, my shows. But the
way in which I'm closest to the oral storytelling tradition is that
there's no script - what I do is work out in my head the broad outline
of the story and then I get up on my feet and start improvising, day
after day after day, and when the improvisations start to slowly
cohere, I repeat and repeat and repeat until the improvisations are
memorised (I think of it as being like sculpture, wheras writing is
like painting: the hard work of being on your feet, battering away at
something very physically present in the room, rather than the
restfulness of looking at a blank canvas / page and filling it up at a
fairly relaxed pace)... but even then, in actual performance, the
words and gestures are never 'fixed', they never come out exactly the
same way two shows running, every show remains improvised to an
extent. In the latter stages, I'll work with a technician for the
final realisation, but this is the one place I can work in a very
uncompromised fashion - in radio drama, it's very collaborative - an
idea that's 'mine' will go through all kinds of reshaping in
collaboration with my director before it even gets commissioned and if
it is, then the actual writing involves a lot of give and take between
myself and the director, and then when it's produced I have to take a
back seat while the director and actors make it theirs. That can be a
rich and fruitful process, but it does mean that the finished play is
'by Marty Ross' only to a limited extent. Storytelling, on the other
hand, is my 'fuck you' medium, where I can realise what I have to say
and express it in a very uncompromised fashion: for better or worse,
you're getting what I have to say as a dramatist in a very undiluted
form - and the crucial collaboration becomes that aforementioned
collaboration with the individual imaginations of the punters who've
shown up.

What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?

I've covered the essence of this above, but essentially the show is
nothing if the audience doesn't bring their own imaginations and help
me create the story. The story is not just my words and gestures...
the other half of the equation is the way their imaginations seize on
these as prompts for a show that's taking place in their own heads as
much as on the stage. A subtler, more complex interaction, maybe, than
straightforwardly making people laugh or scream... but that's the real
'collaboration' in this form of theatre.


Are there any questions that you feel I have missed out that would help?

Your relating of dramaturgy to comics is interesting to me. For one
thing, the real life Gorbals Vampire mass hysteria was blamed at the
time on the gory US horror comics of the 50s (and helped get them
banned for a time in this country) and my play starts with the main
character reading one of the great horror comics of my youth, House Of
Hammer, but more broadly I was a great comics reader in my youth and
have found my way back to certainly the ones in the horror genre in
recent years: the very tight-focused way the short stories in
something like the old DC House Of Mystery are told, and through a
sequence of vivid images, is an example to a storyteller.

I was actually chatting with a friend who's a professional comics
artist a couple of months back. I was talking about how 19th century
researchers into the old school Scots storytellers marveled at how
these crofters and fishermen could hold in their heads a repertoire of
maybe 60 or more stories, some of them saga-length... when in fact
they were often illiterate. And what the researchers worked out was
that the storytellers didn't memorize words - they memorized a string
of images, almost like a silent film before silent films existed and
essentially just improvised the words to describe those images in the
act of performance... although of course words that worked well would
inevitably stick in their memories over several 'tellings'.

And as a storyteller, I instinctively work in exactly the same way. In
the initial formative stages, I don't worry about words at all - I
work the story out in my mind's eye as a sequence of images, memorize
those, and then in at least the initial stages of rehearsal just use
whatever words pop into my head to evoke those images, although if you
rehearse it often enough the words stick too. But a story for me is,
first and foremost, a sequence of images. If you have those, you've
got a story.

And my comics drawing friend related that to the way good comics are
produced....

Viola D'Amore Meet Electronics

Matthew Whiteside has been composing electro-acoustic music in Glasgow for several years, first of all as part of the Said Ensemble and now Edit Point. His current project, however, maintains his use of modern technology, but also looks back to the baroque period.

In collaboration with Emma Lloyd, more usually known as a violin and viola player, Whiteside is writing a piece for the viola d'amore. This instrument, as Lloyd admits 'is not often used nowadays, and it is hard to find out what music has been composed for it!' First made during the baroque era, Lloyd adds that 'it is a peculiar instrument - it's interesting sounding. It has seven bowed strings and seven sympathetic ones. The non-fretted string instruments that you meet nowadays - violins, cellos and so on - usually have four strings.'

Given Whiteside's enthusiasm for a wide range of music (previous compositions have drawn on glitch electronica as well as contemporary classical styles), his composition is not purely about this obscure instrument.

'The new piece is for viola d'amore and motion sensors – of some sort,' he explains. Aware of the danger that electro-acoustic music can lose any sense of liveness in performance, Whiteside suggests that introducing this baroque curiosity can provide a further dimension to the composition.

'The instrument is already extended by the fact that it has sympathetic strings,' he says. 'The electronics are another thing to

play with. I'm toying with the ideas of cybernetics, and the relationship between the performer and the audience.'

In the early stages of the project, Whiteside and Lloyd have been experimenting with 'incredibly delicate sensors, which are usually used for testing movement in bridges.' Attaching these sensors to the musician, which then respond to her movements, brings a more improvisational, even random, element into the composition.

'In much performance of electronic music, the audience just ends

up looking at the back of a laptop, wondering whether the performer is just checking his emails,' Whiteside continues. By working with a stringed instrument, and applying sensors to Lloyd's fingers, Whiteside's composition uses both the traditional performance activity of the classical concert, and integrates contemporary technology. And while the project will see a CD release, the fullness of the piece will be revealed in the act of performance.

At the same time, the process of composition is an adventure, challenging Whiteside and Lloyd to find a compromise between the demands of a baroque instrument and electro-acoustic complexity: while there are limited scores for the viola d'amore (despite a recent fashion for rediscovering similar idiosyncratic baroque instrumentation), this is a unique fusion of the old and the new.

No, I'm going to see Macbeth: Vile and Karoulla face over over Black Sun Drum Corp

Black Sun Drum Korps: Macbeth
as part of Arches LIVE 2012
Fri 21 - Sat 22 Sep 2012 | Fri: 6.30pm, 9pm | Sat: 6.30pm (30 mins) |£8/£6

SEX, MAGICK AND BLOOD. Warpaint masks and animal skins. Light the fires.

Led by Drum Major Russell MacEwan (Ron Athey & Company, US) and Glaswegian industrial trioBlack Sun, witness Shakespeare’s Macbeth as you’ve never seen it before – cut up and reworked to black metal standards.

Inspired by the automatic writing/cut up technique made famous by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, highlander rhythms, dark magick and industrial witchcraft combine to create a primal, visceral and very loud experience only for the strong of heart.

Today

So... we both want to see and review Black Sun Drum Korp's version of Macbeth. I think that there is only one way to settle this, in the spirit of both critical discourse and Black Sun's brutal re-imagining of that hoary old myth...

The live battle of the critics. Who can come up with the best argument for being the chosen one to go tonight...

I'll start, since you seem frightened by the challenge. I deserve to go to see the show because I interviewed the drum major, and we share an enthusiasm for the loud, aggressive music of the 1980s. Although you have a taste for fiddly heavy metal, Black Sun, and the Vile Arts, approve the violent, measured savagery of No Wave music... and this Macbeth has its roots in that ferocity.

Well, yes, but I'm interested in the theatrical aspect of it - not only the music. I'm curious to see how they compressed the play's plot into what sounds like a half-hour metal manic's dream. Besides, you did say you thought you'd seen enough of Macbeth during the Fringe.

That's a fair point, but the drum major said that he aimed to annihilate the text. My complaint against Macbeth was the over-familiarity with the script, and Black Sun Drum Korp won't be pausing to give us some speech about "is this a dagger." They'll be hitting the shit out of their drums.

Surely for them to call it Macbeth, they are looking to follow the storyline? I'm intrigued by this annihilation of the text - there are plenty of modern warfare adaptations of the Scottish play as well as other Shakespearean plays. An adaptation of a story without the original text, but with that same, ferocious, dog eat dog message sounds exciting!

Macbeth is a historical figure: why do we need Shakespeare at all? But I think that the play does provide a starting point... however, there are plenty of other influences in there. All of which I have a stated track record of liking. I have referenced William Burroughs as an influence in my critical writing - especially the cut up technique, which Black Sun are using to deconstruct Shakespeare's text. There's only one person here who will really understand this version, and he doesn't have a wolf as his profile image...

Yes but if you already like them, how are you to review them critically? Perhaps a more honest response to their work would be from someone who doesn't know what the cut up technique is and who has only vaguely heard of No Wave music?

I am sure we would both be honest... and the point of Arches Live is to enter into its overall spirit. Black Sun are experimenting with forms - they are better known as a very heavy Glasgow band - and "critically" is this case does not mean "without liking them." It means bringing to bear the writer's knowledge. So I win.

oh- and the cut up technique? Try this, sunshine...

"without liking this,
of Arches writer's are known as a very heavy Glasgow Black Sun are mean with forms - bringing to bear critically the knowledge. sunshine... So I technique? win It means and the cut try bans Live is to enter up into its overall spirit. they - and "" is this case better does not experimenting

How does knowledge of that technique enhance the experience of the audience though? Your knowledge of it could inhibit your understanding in some ways, as well as increase your expectations for it, hence disappointing you personally (especially cause you met the drum major). My lack of knowledge in this case might allow me to go in uninhibited and without expectations. Besides, liking them would lead to bias, and i think we've established that we both like the idea of this version already.

You are still going on about bias. But the Radical Subjectivist Critic not only acknowledges bias, but embraces it. However, I take your point... and ultimately, neither of us has the "best" critical voice. We have different voices. You would see it from one position, I another. So, I guess, either one of us would be an interesting critic to write about it.

However, I would like to remind you that this Facebook argument is supposed to be an imaginative way to preview Black Sun - an example of the Radical Subjective approach to criticism that privileges the entertainment value of writing over some notional "right way" of writing about theatre... and we are supposed to be saying why we want to go and see it, not arguing about who the best critic is...

And since you got into that course and I didn't, we know that is you, anyway.

You didn't apply for it though. It would certainly make a change from dance performances (or physical theatre) you've been throwing me into since Last Orders. Black Sun are interesting to me because they are not a theatre troupe, but originally started out as a 'subterranean metal' band. How does one interpret Macbeth as a non-play and something that is hopefully not a musical?

Okay. We need to wrap this up and get the tickets. I'll tell you what. We'll both go to Alien War at half five, and if you don't shit your pants in fear, you can cover Macbeth. But you have to edit the interview I did with the drum major for the soundcloud in exchange.

16:43

Ok, sure.