In Cahoots as Play...

Goffman liked to look at everyday life like it was a big show. He read a book by Bateson which described otters at the zoo having a laugh. From this, Goffman describes a number of qualities that describe 'play'. It is the way that Bateson knew that the otters he was watching weren't getting nasty, but actually having a bit of fun.


The playful act is so performed that its ordinary function is not realized. The stronger and more competent participant restrains himself (sic) to be a match for the weaker and less competent.

Already, the conference is identified as a site not of play but aiming towards its ordinary function. However, Goffman's description of the power relationship here (apart from re-enforcing an already present hierarchy) does describe a possible teaching scenario: the 'stronger' participant being the teacher, the weaker being the student.

The stronger participants at In Cahoots - that is, those selected by the organisers as experts and given time to address the audience - have their power emphasised by the format. For example, Nele Hertling's conclusion talk (a fairly predictable selection of platitudes about the advantages of collaboration) was given authority not by the content of her speech but the situation. She was at the front of the room, she had a microphone. The audience was seated in a theatre space, facing her.

There is an exaggeration of the expansiveness of some acts.

Anyone who has been lucky enough to see Brian Blessed do Shakespeare knows that this certainly describes theatre: equally, the choreography of a stripper expands suggestive movement, drawing attention to the erotic potential of the body. Perhaps the panel format, such as in the conclusion talk or Errollyn Wallen's keynote speech, is an expansion of the act of conversation.

Wallen's keynote, which excerpted from her various work (including the spectacular opening ceremony of the UK Paralympics), was an expanded description of her process. Equally, some of the performances - for example the Ensemble Thing's You Can't Get There From Here expanded the process of performance.

(In You Can't Get There..., the ensemble played a selection of pieces that had been composed through the collaboration of several composers. Before each piece, a recorded version of an early draft of the collaboration was played, highlighting the process, and possibly exaggerating the expansiveness of composition to reveal how the process operated.)

The sequence of activity that serves as a pattern is neither followed faithfully nor completed fully, but is subject to starting and stopping,to redoing, to discontinuation... to mixing with sequences from other routines.

The Bateson/Goffman model, once again, does not appear to completely fit the conference format. It does describe a process that is optimised for learning, however. It's pretty clear that Bateman, when he was watching otters, could have equally defined their activity as education. 

In Cahoots was clearly well-structured, jumping from lectures to workshops to performances, offering a variety of experiences. Although this implies discontinuity, and plenty of starting and stopping, the overall structure integrated the event into a whole. 

For example, the workshop on Dance and Music was complemented by an evening performance of Sandglass, a collaboration between choreographer Lucy Boyes and musician Thomas Butler. The interaction between the soundscape and the performers went beyond choreographing to the music, with the dancers making some of the sounds on stage. 
  

The Dressing of the Tongue (Sound Festival)

I am at the Sound Festival in Aberdeen. I am using the internet service at ACT. 

Sound is all about 'New Music'. This translates as 'music within a broadly classical framework (acoustic instruments, composition, no teenage girls singing about sex in their scants) that recognises the role of electronics but doesn't have a large audience'. 

My facile definition is not exactly challenged by the sector's self-descriptions.

I have had a great many ideas at Sound this weekend, inspired by the programme of In Cahoots, the conference organised by New Music Scotland. Some of those ideas were inspired by the speakers.

(Rob Kennedy made a cool point about how artists often use the word 'collaboration' when they really mean 'working with a community, taking their participation and not crediting them as co-creators', making it an analogue to the business practice of internships... or the festival practice of relying on volunteers to staff events).

One question that bothered me all the way through a solo clarinet recital was the problem of naming. The previous night, a dismal set of programme notes - rich on anecdotal detail, but poor at describing the actual structure of the performance - had sent me into a dreamless sleep... listening to a piece entitled Weird Machine, I pondered whether the actual composition would be any different had it been named Alien Landscape. Or Odd Animal. Or, since this is what it conjured for me, Masturbating on Citalapram.

Calling it Weird Machines - and justifying this by describing it as an attempt to compose a piece that captured the sound of a machine that runs according to unknown mechanical rules - seemed an imposition. Masturbating on Citalapram is far more descriptive. There was plenty of heavy breathing and fingering: it fragmented into a series of irregular rhythmic attacks, took way to long and ended with a triumphant squeak. Besides, the issue of libidinal discomfort caused by anti-depression medication is not covered enough in the arts. I bet SMHAFF would book it for 2016.

Although In Cahoots has a theme of collaboration (with an incidental obsession in the Sound Festival for stuff about astronomy), the debate for me has become words and their meanings. Is the exclusion of pop from the New Music rubric a sensible attempt to protect a niche enthusiasm, or an act of cultural snobbery that mystifies certain genres as high art? What is collaboration? Is using the metaphor of a critic trying to achieve orgasm an appropriate critical response to a clarinet solo? 

Dramatury, the craft of intention: John Moran @ Stereo

And that all of these are interesting questions, yet I fear my most truthful answers are likely to be too lengthy. Therefore, I would take this chance to shamelessly promote a book which I wrote last year in Bangkok, just before attempting suicide and while trapped there penniless and under martial-law without a means of exit. 

 I was finally happy, in other words. I wrote the book because at that moment my computer had broken, and without a means to fix it the only aspect of it which still functioned was its text-edit program. And so a book. It goes on at length on these subjects, actually; and I'll rationalize my promotion of it here by pointing out that the book is offered free, and will probably never be read otherwise in my lifetime. 

The link is here (on dropbox): https://www.dropbox.com/s/t5pw6mwv6igov86/John%20Moran.pdf

How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?

John Moran: This questions pulls me back to the moment I experienced an abrupt shift in both subject matter and my approach to theater in general; namely, the moment in 2004 when I decided to create works which were autobiographical in nature. There came a point - after a 20 year career as a composer / theater-artist in New York - when fact became more interesting than fiction, and I felt the story as it was unfolding the most relevant observation I could offer regarding our world.

People have asked me sometimes, if I 'make up' stories, but I never would. Why would one conclude a delicious meal such as life, with the bitter taste of castor oil; such is the effect of fantasy on the tongue, I've found.

The first work of pure autobiography, I think then would be John Moran..and his neighbor, Saori - which featured Japanese performer Saori Tsukada and myself (and which was the vehicle for my first meeting The Arches in Glasgow some years ago, thankfully) - and which is both factual and theatrical; this blending I aspire to now.

Before that time, I'd created many large-scale theatrical works in New York, as a young art-star and living with Philip Glass - works fantastical in nature and often relying on stage-craft illusions - which had received a great deal of attention, but have since (materially) disappeared. This was a devastating experience for me at the time; 20 years of work being actively erased from public consciousness (despite having featured well known celebrities such as Iggy Pop, Uma Thurman or Allen Ginsberg, and my having first been mantled with absurd titles such as the 'wunderkind', and 'a modern-day Mozart') at the hands of politicized money interests in America - like Harvard University and Brooklyn Academy of Music - in order to cover up the financial misdeeds of said institutions which I became public bulldog to uncovering; they didn't find it 'appropriate', and in essence, a blacklisting of my work was to follow. 

And has held. And eventuated in my being homeless for a period - living on the street in the city I had once thought of as my love; powers that be then purposely cold and unreasonable. These are the qualities of money, after all, and so I shouldn't have been surprised except naive. And so I turned my back on that currency, despite the praise beginning to return eventually. I didn't want it any more. I'll leave the rest to the elaborations of the link I began with, I think.

This politicized 'disappearance' of my work in America, though, and the period of homelessness which followed had a profound effect on me as an artist; I came to not only detest the notion of money (and it's BFF hypocrisy), but of large-scale productions. I've come to feel that where production values enter, honesty is asked to vacate in order to give the hands of polity more room to puppeteer.

first cd I ever bought

But politics are famously ham-handed, aren't they? So no thank you. My question became, what value are tears if wrenched over force fed illusions? This month I'm living across the street from Kantor's childhood home, in what was the Jewish ghetto of Krakow. The holocaust was real. The military takeover of the government in Thailand last year, and its citizens losing their right to free-speech was real. My financial destitution and homelessness are real. The permanence of status in small ponds, is not.

So in response, I devoted myself to creating works which - apart from autobiographical - strive for an absolute simplicity of presentation; no costume, no beauty. Complex compositional ideas and deep ruminations on life, some say. But presented bare to encourage examination. No more deceptions. 

The work I'll come to Stereo with this month - Etude: Amsterdam - requires myself, an iPod and small box. And for an artist to need more I consider a weakness. My post-apocalyptic decade of statelessness now - a state of never-ending international tour, to be specific; changing continents on a monthly basis, no safety of home to return to anywhere - have forged an artist who is 'road tough'. Survival. What I have done, in that sense, is trade grand illusion for slight-of-hand in close up; you encounter me helpless at roadside, and stopping to gawk are beguiled into the numbness of superiority; a penniless loser got stoned and crashed his life here, you'll say.

And there I can see to stripping you. The message? That the currency of 'success' and 'status' are cheap. That your preconceptions are cheap. That safety reduces ones integrity to the level of greasy coin, covered in dirt and bacteria in a parade of grabbing hands. All of the corruption of things which one once valued dearly in themselves, can be averted by simply embracing failure. Embracing anonymity. Corruption relies on your fear of being outsider.

This, to me, is what I think you're defining as 'dramaturgy'. The craft of intention. Maybe you'll disagree.

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?
When I was a child, growing up in Nebraska (the farm-land center of America) - having never gone to school and later living with members of a Jungian doomsday cult - I desperately wanted to be a Disney animator, as well as a creator of rides (see Disneyland). Instead of school then, I devoted myself to these studies. I was in a type of communication of sorts - by post - with staff at that theme-park, and it's department of 'imagineers', as they were called. They were very encouraging, and in this way I felt myself to be anointed somehow; one of the advantages of a childhood before the internet - all the world as private as parent.

My education having been the lengthy descriptions of early animation, it was painfully obvious that I wasn't capable of producing the googolplex of drawings required to replicate what I had learned to do there. And so, in that absence, I asked humans to fill that role, with their bodies. I long knew that recorded voices came first, whereupon the sound-wave would be transferred to the edge of a film-strip, in visual form; and from there be marked up as to where vowels landed in terms of frame number. 

And how immediate it seemed to ask real people to assume the role of drawings, while observing the same principles. Having no image to correspond then to soundtracks I'd created from recorded voices and sound effects - and desiring to see one - I simply wrote it all down in detailed stage directions, and asked that actors fill the role of those drawings on stage, and in detailed synch.

Having little or nothing to do with the notion of Disney going forward, this became a principle I've adhered to, as it inadvertently opened a door to more compositional ideas than I care to mention at this moment.

It always begged a different definition, my work, because it combined a number of elements in ways which one hadn't seen before. Its words on the page didn't read like a play, as their stage-notes were so voluminous. One was told it was a musical composition, but there were no singers, or musicians. 

It called for performers to lip synch, but that was misleading, as it also encompassed ankle synch, and neck synch. Stand up exactly here synch, and that's a wooden chair (which is audible but invisible) so I want to see its resistance show in your arm as you attempt to slide it on carpet, which is its timbre. And then - wait wait wait - your line! And waaaaaaait...NOW you start section B!' These would be phrases typical of rehearsal, if you threw in a few 'why don't you love me?'s, for flavor.

Later on and thereafter I was known as 'the protege of Philip Glass', having been somewhat adopted and (very much) supported by Glass at a young age, but in honesty I was far more influenced by the early works of Steve Reich, who today I can say I feel was superior composer. 

 Whereas I've come to think of Glass in his later years as the Rupert Murdoch of composers; which I don't admire. Allen Ginsberg had a deep effect on my life, personally, although I never felt a kinship with his actual work. I didn't need to.

What I do hear most often from audiences, is that they've never seen work like mine, and I'll admit I haven't either - this echoes my theme in life as outsider, I don't even know who my parents were; and this is no tame construct. For me it has meant of life of always being reminded that there is no place for me. Apart from the adventure of mythos, I am told my rewards are reserved for a time when I am no longer here to receive them. 

 This realization is brought about in me upon questions of 'influence'. I am alone. And I'm grateful for that as in adventure I receive the best of the bargain, I believe. As truly, who among us can forgive themselves, inside, for having become complacent or off-track. I am not allowed that avenue.

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?
I'll quote the book I've referenced, if that's alright: "...the moment my work became subject, authority could go fuck itself. Whether that be parent or guardian, counsellor or judge, cult-leader, professor, lender or landlord: At first, I'm goofy and sheepish, sorry that I'm late. Then maybe I forgot something, or didn't know you'd meant 'today'. Then I'm heard to say 'I'll be right back.' and disappear. Finally fortressed, get out my way at the threat of emotional weaponry: the work. And every time I've been afforded space, since, it has become fortress where social event is forbidden as if a sombre gateway. Impractical when having been granted only temporarily. But thinking of you from that furthest distance, a changeling son now exiled; this is my theme presenting." 

Again, I could go on at length about what I'm actually 'doing' in that fortress of solitude, but I don't feel like it. Art...blah blah.

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

Book of The Dead

Reaching an audience is the purpose of theater; period. Without audience I would be forever content as ghost. Audiences matter more than safety. More than success. It makes no difference be it five or 5,000 individuals; to feel otherwise would be hypocrisy for artist. And if you approach an audience with that attitude, you'll find you will win them over. If reader is not inclined to agree with me, though, they may find Paris or Berlin appealing, where there are no shortage of performers who feel that privately investigating themselves, for themselves without skill-set in front of others, to have great value, from what I've observed. 

Just use the word 'improvisation' a lot and you'll do fine.

GEORGE CLINTON BRINGS THE FUNK TO GLASGOW: MATTHEW WHITESIDE BRINGS THE ELECTRIC TO THE VIOLA D@AMORE

www.matthewwhiteside.co.uk

www.emmajanelloyd.com

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.

Liquid Composition (Red Note @ Summerhall)

Classical composition is a funny old game. While there are no easy scores at this level, Red Note's Elbow Room attempts to show that the ensemble can give it 110% on a muggy night in Edinburgh. A concert of two halves, with composer in residence Thomas Butler working his socks off for two compositions, Elbow Room is a great advert for the medium.

Thanks, Gary. Now we have our panel of experts putting in a few hours before the World Cup begins. Alan, what did you make of the first piece, My Life in Ventriloquism?

Not the strongest of starts, Ron: a bit like watching one of those Brazilian flair players doing keepy-uppies for eleven minutes. Just one man (Yann Ghiro) and his clarinet: for a big lad, he's good with his fingers. But, at the end of the day, Butler's score never looked like putting one in the onion bag. But I think Gary might disagree...

Ghiro's got a cultured set of lips and this is deliberately composed to show him off at his best - or any other clarinet player. Butler out a good shift in, testing the range of the instrument. The clarinet has all the possession and I'd say Butler's score has a good engine.

Not so much squeaky bum time as squeaky instrument time. 

Well, thank you Ron, and I am glad you managed not to say anything racist there. But moving onto the Elbow Room, Butler's new work...

second piece,

He really sets out his stall early doors for this: if Philip Glass had composed it, we'd be raving about it for days. It's right out of the top drawer, a mash-up of intriguing visuals and a steady, consistent style.

On paper, it's a more interesting piece, but you don't play classical music on paper. Now, it tells the story of Glasgow's redevelopment through archive film and a steady, minimalist pulse...

I think we need to take it one movement at a time. It's a potential banana skin, that minimalist comparison. It reminded me more of Kraftwerk or the German 'motorik' bands, like Neu, filtered through a classical ensemble.

Robert Irvine's cello was crucial: he's a top top player.But all we want from composers is consistency, and it ended up being a real concert of two halves.

You've already said that one. There or thereabouts. It is schoolboy illustration of the video, really, giving a romantic, if you will, reflection on these dodgy propaganda numbers from Glasgow Corporations past. This composition needs a goal, a bit of focus. I felt the ensemble parked the bus early and turned in a solid performance.

The real winner tonight was the clarinet, Ron.

The Cumnock Tryst

John Oswald (I'd Love To Turn) @Grand Hall, City Halls

Red Note Schedule

I love me some Red Note Ensemble. Since they are constantly coming up with premières, theatrical concerts, or revivals of contemporary classics, it's not surprising that I get mildly excited when their latest press release arrives in my inbox. 

I can forgive them being based in Edinburgh, even forgive them for touring work outside of the central belt. When RNE come to town, the only thing that doesn't surprise me is the quality.

Their first gig on this tour is one, sadly, not aimed at me. Who says contemporary classical can't be for all of the family?

PRESS RELEASE BEGINS.


Saturday 28 September 2.30pm: Noisy Nights Jnr @ UNESCO Family Day, City Halls, Glasgow 
Following on from the success of their informal Noisy Nights new music series, Scotland’s Red Note Contemporary Music Ensemble perform new music about Creatures and Fairy Tales written by students from King’s Park Secondary School. Come and hear the first works by tomorrow’s composers … and maybe get the chance to write some of your own.
Ticket Price: Free
Venue Candleriggs, Glasgow.

Monday 30 September 8pm: Noisy Nights at Traverse

Monday 9 December 8pm: Noisy Nights at TraverseNoisy Nights is fun, free and your chance to listen to (and compose for) the musicians of Red Note. Noisy Nights is a place to meet music-lovers, curious minds, musicians, composers and artists in an informal space and hear some of the best examples of brand new music. All sorts of music are welcomed here - as are all sorts of listeners. And, with the established 10 Minute Composer’s Challenge, the audience also get the chance to write their own pieces to be played by the ensemble after the interval. Students from King’s Park Secondary School will have their compositions performed from the UNESCO Family Day. If you’re a composer, visitto find out the instrumental line-up each time, and how to submit your scores.
Ticket: Price Free
Location Traverse Theatre, 10 Cambridge Street, Edinburgh,

Wednesday 23 October 6pm: Sound Festival - Framed Against The SkyOver the past few months Red Note Ensemble, Irish composer Brian Irvine and Scottish poet Billy Letford have been touring Aberdeen-Shire & City introducing people to new music and holding workshops in schools and open workshops during events. Participants have been helping Brian and Billy create a new piece of music which is being premièred tonight with their involvement alongside Red Note Ensemble.
Ticket Price: £8 / £6 / £3
Location Woodend Barn Banchory

Wednesday 23 October 8pm: Sound Festival - Go Compose! New pieces created by participants of the Go Compose! composition course. Young composers aged 13-18 who are still at school have work with professional composer Brian Irvine and musicians from Red Note Ensemble to create original pieces performed at Go Compose!
Ticket Price £5 (free to ticket holders of Framed Against The Sky)
Location Woodend Barn Banchory AB31 5QA


Monday 7 November - Saturday 9 November 7.30pm: Enough Already (Lachez Tout) Tramway, Glasgow (World Première)LOD|muziektheater / Red Note Ensemble / François Sarhan
Enough Already (Lachez Tout) is a music-theatre performance created by French composer-artist François Sarhan for actor, musicians, live sound effect artists, stop-frame animation and film. It is a funny secular parable in which meanings and relations between people, objects and events become increasingly absurd.
Ticket Price: £12/8 Early bird offer book by 28 October
Venue Tramway 1, 25 Albert Drive, Glasgow, G41 2PE



Monday 11 November 8pm: Torsten Lauschmann - Inconsistent Whisper & Matter in the Wrong 

Glasgow-based German artist Torsten Lauschmann explores the limits and possibilities of technology in an experimental performance-installation at Woodend Barn with Red Note Ensemble and local musicians. Taking inspiration from a variety of phenomena, from talking drums and Morse code to the game of Chinese Whispers, this absorbing work looks at the problems and the beauty of misinterpretations, misinformation and misunderstanding. Torsten will also present the results of his open visual lab residency at the Barn with Charlie Hammond. This work will use projections and objects, static and animated to explore play, failure and mistakes as creative potential.
Ticket Price: £12, £10 (conc), £7
Location Woodend Barn Banchory AB31 5QA



Tuesday 12 - Wednesday 13 Nov: (Enough Already) Lachez Tout performanceLOD|muziektheater / Red Note Ensemble / François Sarhan
Enough Already (Lachez Tout) is a music-theatre performance created by French composer-artist François Sarhan for actor, musicians, live sound effect artists, stop-frame animation and film. It is a funny secular parable in which meanings and relations between people, objects and events become increasingly absurd.
Ticket Price: £12/£8
Venue Summerhall, 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL

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:

LONDON CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FESTIVAL 2013 BOLD TENDENCIES, PECKHAM CAR PARK 25 JULY – 4 AUGUST

This month's caption competition

I have been a bit cheeky about the UNESCO City of Music project in the recent past: it gets a pass because Sven Brown is involved, and he doesn't have to prove himself after his curation of the Minimal festivals (over the past two years, they've taken me from wishing I could see the great names of contemporary classical to being blase about them doing a gig in the City Halls).

The last UNESCO project, despite being conceptually brilliant (a live feed to the Finnieston Crane) was ruined because no-one thought to check whether there would be a massive demolition across the road from GOMA, effectively drowning the symphony of creaks and cracks. However, I received a press release in my inbox today that ought to be seen as a direct challenge to programmers who want to be down with the new music.

Cut'n'paste begins here.

Sound Four is excited to announce the first ever London Contemporary Music Festival (LCMF 2013). Adventurous and all-embracing, LCMF 2013 will take place in partnership with the capital’s most talked about new arts venue, Bold Tendencies, situated on the top four floors of Peckham multi-storey car park, and will be the only music festival in Britain dedicated to commissioning and staging the best new music the world has to offer regardless of genre – and all for FREE. 

Free? In a car park? A good start: and the line-up includes plenty of work that Arika would have presented back in the day, before they started throwing shapes in the ballroom. 

UK PREMIERE and the FIRST VISIT by Glenn Branca and the Glenn Branca Ensemble to the UK for nearly a decade

LIVE SETS from SND, Raime, Russell Haswell, Jem Finer, Steve Noble and Anthony Pateras

Charlemagne Palestine performing his SEMINAL work for solo piano Strumming Music

A performance of the near-complete solo piano works by Germany’s greatest living composer, HELMUT LACHENMANN, alongside an unlikely companion, Lachenmann’s favourite composer and Hollywood favourite, ENNIO MORRICONE

8 HOURS OF CONTINUOUS PERFOMANCES charting the evolution of drone music from its minimalist beginnings to its sound art and dance music present

A rare outing for Philip Corner’s INFAMOUS Piano Activities, in which the pianist will destroy a grand piano

The suggestion that the festival has been started 'in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the riot at the Rite,' doesn't convince me - I can't see anything that is especially inspired by The Rite of Spring, even the electronic recomposition of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. That said. here's some more action.

• the RETURN of Kate Whitley and Chris Stark’s The Orchestra Project, whose car park performance of The Rite of Spring two years ago was described as “the most exciting development in classical music in decades, if not centuries” (The Times)
• acclaimed soprano Allison Bell takes the central role in the WORLD PREMIERE staging of Gerald Barry’s opera La Plus Forte
• performances by Allison Bell, SND, Steve Noble, Ed Atkins, Jennifer Walshe, Glenn Branca, Raime, Russell Haswell, Tony Conrad, Jem Finer, Mark Knoop, Lore Lixenberg, Aisha Orazbayeva, Lucy Railton, Max Baillie, David Massey, Roderick Chadwick, Anthony Pateras, Leon Michener and Jane Chapman
• a mixture of classic and rare work by Helmut Lachenmann, Bernard Parmegiani, Ennio Morricone, Michael Finnissy, Philip Corner, Brian Ferneyhough, Laurie Anderson, Eliane Radigue, Philip Glass, Gyorgy Kurtag, Brian Eno, Jennifer Walshe, Aaron Cassidy, Frederic Rzewski, Kurt Schwitters, Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis, Alvin Lucier, Terry Riley, Gyorgy Ligeti, Louis Andriessen and La Monte Young.
• several new or recently created works by young composers, artists, choreographers and theatre-makers from Britain and abroad, including Kate Whitley, Ed Atkins, Alexander Zeldin, Lauren Redhead, Aisha Orazbayeva, Sam Underwood, Ambrose Seddon and Melanie Lomoff

Over 50 works - over half of them premieres or pieces created since 2000 - by over 40 different composers and artists.

The gauntlet has been thrown down. Can UNESCO rise to the challenge? Does Glasgow have a car park that can serve as a venue? How badly will eight hours of drone impact on the consciousness of the listeners? Game on. 

Come On You Kay

I loves me some sport and art: I am currently trying to promote a performance rematch of the Watford Vs Crystal Palace Championship play-off, in which Richard Dedominici, me and Elton John challenge Palace supporters Eddie Izzard and Mark Thomas to a dance showdown at the Traverse. And I love The Scottish Ensemble: they do that mix and match programming that has the old and the new side by side, making sure that at least half of the tunes have melodies before the other half shoots off into the abstract.

But I am not sure about this...

Britain vs. Germany21 October Aberdeen / 22 October Edinburgh / 23 October Glasgow / 24 October Perth / 26 October London

In October, SE is staging the classic musical football match of Britain vs. Germany. British string music has always formed an important part of the Ensemble’s work and here it is contrasted against German compositional forces in a concert of two halves. A string classic and a new work by both British and German composers, SE invites its audience to root for its team and come along to decide who wins this particular match. 

Walton: Sonata for Strings
Leopold Hurt : Dead Reckoning
Martin Suckling: Musical Postcards 1-4
Brahms: String Quintet No. 2 in G Major (arr. Morton)

It's not the music - Brahms is always a grand finale, and the Postcards have been part of the SE's repertoire for the past year, although this will be the first time they are performed in one go. I just don't think that Britain has ever competed against Germany as a united body in football. In fact, the one time I remember it being a big deal (and that didn't involve the UK team crashing out in the quarter final on penalties), it was West Germany Vs England in 1966. 

I am sure that there is some other thing that the two nations, united, competed against each other... 

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

Usui gets a new gig

Although my usual beat is Glasgow when it comes to New Composition (and I know there are exciting times ahead for composers in Scotland, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group are one of the few reasons that I might want to live further south. However, their latest appointment, of Edinburgh-based Shiori Usui as its Apprentice Composer-in-Residence for 2013, suggests that BCMG are trying to get my attention by supporting artists in Caledonia.

During her time in residence, Usui will compose two new works - one on a small scale (promising the original line up of oboe, trombone, percussion, piano and cello) and one on for a  chamber sized ensemble.

The press release mentions that The Times described Usui  as a composer with “individual ears.” I am  trying to resist a joke about how the press ought to stop concentrating on the way composers look and talk about the music. 

Over to the press release for more information....

More about Shiori Usui

Originally from Japan, Shiori Usui moved to UK at the age of seventeen and studied composition at the University of Edinburgh with Nigel Osborne and Peter Nelson. Her works have been performed in Japan, Europe and USA by diverse range of soloists, ensembles and orchestras, including performances by Rolf Hind and the Duke Quartet at the Wigmore Hall, London; by A Far Cry at Jordan Hall, Boston, USA and by Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Naoto Totsuka at Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall in Japan.

In May 2012, her orchestra piece Warai was awarded the 3rd prize at Toru Takemitsu Composition Award (judge: Toshio Hosokawa) in Tokyo, Japan with highest acclaim.

Ms. Usui is also a recipient of the prestigious Civitella Ranieri Music Fellowship in conjunction with UNESCO-Aschberg Bursaries for Artists Programme, and has worked as a composer in residence for BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Cove Park from October 2010 until February 2011.

Ms. Usui has produced works in both radical instrumental music and with motion capturing sensors; many of her compositions are inspired by the theme ‘using the body as a musical instrument’. She enjoys playing in the improvisation groups in Edinburgh and Lisbon as a “noise” vocalist and pianist. Ms. Ushui is a co-founder and a secretary of Edinburgh Contemporary Music Ensemble.

More about Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group celebrates its 25th anniversary season in 2012/13. Emerging from within the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 1987, the Group quickly established a reputation for brilliant performances, ambitious commissions, innovative collaborations, and a vibrant learning programme. With a central commitment to composers and the presentation of new work, BCMG’s open and inclusive approach takes people of all ages through the rich and fascinating world of contemporary music.

BCMG has premiered over 150 new works, many commissioned through its pioneering Sound Investment scheme. In addition to a busy schedule of concerts in the UK and abroad, BCMG runs an extensive learning and participation programme, working with young people in and out of school and with adults in a range of community settings, as well as presenting ground-breaking Family and Schools’ Concerts.

The Group has two Artists-in-Association, Oliver Knussen and John Woolrich, and Sir Simon Rattle is Founding Patron. BCMG has received a host of national and international awards, has an extensive catalogue of CD recordings and broadcasts regularly on BBC radio.

Red Note Intoxicated (again)

Steaming Scots staring at symbolic thistles, Bollywood beats banged out on bongos, singing shits serenading scared chefs: Red Note rudely reject the respectable confines of contemporary classical compositions and seem intent on proving that if it has a score, they can play it. There's no surprise that they are touring Sally Beamish's settings of four Persian love songs in collaboration with Michael Popper's choreography.

Although their name hints at a political determination - and their version of Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle presages the proliferation of performances provoking pondering on national identity - Red Note are joyously eclectic. As happy translating Eno's ambient recordings into orchestral wanderings as they are jolting shards of synthesisers through Glass' 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, Red Note are helping classical music escape from both academic formalism and the confines of the concert hall. In the past three years, they have become key players in the fusion of actors and orchestra, while reaching out to unexpected musicians, like Bollywood's Kuljit Bhamra.

When it arrives in Edinburgh, for the last night of the Traverse's autumn dance festival, The Intoxicating Rose Garden highlights how Red Note are picking up on some of the themes within contemporary choreography. Michael Popper, dancer and singer, was last in Edinburgh as part of Dance Base's Fringe programme: fascinated by the merging of different forms of art, he has a reputation for choreography thoughtful pieces that are interested in ideas and poetry. While his style is his own, his integration of sophisticated, intelligent concepts mirrors similar intentions in the creations of Andy Howitt (Deliberance dances justice) or Janis Claxton, who uses her academic research on primates as a foundation for her studies of power and hierarchy.

Red Note's presence on stage follows the trend for theatrical performances featuring live music (from Iona Kewney's actions with Joe Quimby through to The Hebrides Ensemble staging 8 Songs for a Mad King) where the musicians are more than an afterthought or mere accompaniment. Fitting into the larger fashion for cross-platform work - it is no accident that to of the past year's most well received plays were supported by Vital Sparks, a funding stream dedicated to original collaborations.

And although no Red Note show can be seen as typical - or even representative, making it very hard to pin them down as a particular sort of ensemble - The Intoxicating Garden at least continues several of Red Note's abiding enthusiasms: a Scottish composer (Sally Beamish), a high concept collaboration and a fascination with the connection between western and eastern cultures - not to forget the theme of inebriation, whether on the drink with MacDiarmid or on through love with Hafez.

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh 7:30pm 22 November

Classical, Our Contemporary

Perhaps it is my age - and the damage caused to my ears by Japanese free-form rock - but I am increasingly attracted to classical music these days. It all started when I saw a rehearsal at Scottish Opera - sitting so close to the singers, I suddenly realised that musical muscle isn't a simple question of volume.

That said, Ben Frost is going to be very loud and very intense, and I am enthusing about the return of Swans... 

Thanks to the wise advice of my sometime co-host on the Radio Hour, Matthew Whiteside, I have a slightly deeper appreciation of contemporary composition than I used to - but I can't help being thrilled by the appearance of the minimalists on a programme. Arvo Part at the weekend - Minimal 2012 getting off to a populist start - makes good my occasional claim that religion has been responsible for much of the most emotive art and a glance across to Edinburgh, where the Calton Consort are performing at Canongate Kirk, reveals a programme that includes a Hymn to Cecilia (Benjamin Britten), Arnold Bax's tribute to the Blessed Virgin Mary and James MacMillan's Strathclyde Motets. These Motets both uphold my opinion on religious music and demonstrate how even the East Coast needs a bit more Glasgow in their lives. 

Closer to home, next Tuesday sees the premier performance of Chris Hutchings' Requiem for All Souls. It's taking place at 9pm in Glasgow University's Memorial Chapel, just across from the Subcity Office on University Avenue. Since many of my friends would, in fact, explode if they crossed the threshold of a church, I am delighted to note that Hutchings has arranged for the performance to be streamed online. 

For all my sophistication, I can't resist making a joke about how part of the score includes a cover version of a Stone Roses number. 

Following that up, I am interested to revisit Arvo Part this weekend: the two evenings tell the same story from different perspectives, an appropriate response to the Gospel's habit of examining events from diverse angles. I've always enjoyed the irony of a supposedly monolithic religion - from the way Christianity is described by both atheists and fundamentalists, you'd think it only had about three chapters, and lacked the vigorous intellectual engagement with ideas and narratives that made it so influential in the first place - having a multiplicity of versions describing key events. 

This probably isn't the place to start on my rant about the Book of Genesis having two versions of creation...


Calton Consort 
7.30pm Saturday 17 November 2012
Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh 

Chris Hutchings
9pm Tuesday 30 October 2012
Glasgow University Memorial Chapel

Arvo Part
27- 28 October
City Hall, Glasgow

Taraf de Haidouks

Svend Brown is shaping up as something of a visionary programmer. Not content with pushing the Minimal Extreme Festival, he invited Johnathan Morton - the fiend witha violin who fronts the Scottish Ensemble - to curate another minimal festival. And while there were a few moments of disappointment - Icebreaker's ponderous yet loose reading of Glassworks, The Hilliard's strangulated modern choral take on Paradise Lost - the line up was diverse and provocative. And in Taraf de Haidouks, he selected a strong argument for the importance of the violin as a boundary busting, hard-rocking instrument to shame the rebellious hegemony of the guitar.

Morton's no slouch on the four stringn himself - last year he demonstrated that Vivaldi's Four Seasons has more edge than any popular global commodity deserves. Yet in Taraf, and the supporting electronic/ violin maestro mash-up from Pekkar Kuusisto, Morton selected artists from the wilder parts of the musical world. Taraf de Haidouks look disreputable, with one member lurking like a gangster until called upon to throw out some argumentative lyrics, and the whistle player disappearing during the encore for a cheeky cigarette: yet when the  dual violin frontline, a couple of wheezing accordions and a jazzy clarinet are driven along by a frenzy of double bass and hammered dulcimer, they cross beyond their gypsy sound and land squarely in punk energy territory.

Not that Taraf have anything in common with the brain-dead punk revivalists, who mistook thuggish monotony for rebellion (a few members of Taraf appear to remember the 1920s, both musically and physically): it's the reckless abandon that informs their precise playing. Melting down Eastern European melodies, a touch of Hot Jazz, fragmentrs of Klezmer, they are so fast, so abrupt, so assured.

Of course, Morton has now set Brown a challenge: can he curate a programme that has the same eclectic energy as this combination? Kuusisto did the experimental modernity - tinged with a few adventures into Finnish folk romance - while Taraf just shock the Fruitmarket. Brown has admittted that he is influenced by the lamented Triptych Festival: can he go one louder?