“Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever…” – Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
It’s been a highly productive year for emerging Trinity Laban composer John Sturt. His ‘Pulsar’ (for cello and percussion) premiered at the college back in February, several vocal works were also premiered the same month up at the Old Royal Naval College chapel in Greenwich, and his string quartet ‘Volatilis’ will getting its continental European premiere in Switzerland in July.
This month he’s premiering his largest work to date, at the college’s Laban Building in Deptford. Responding to the concept of the colonisation of space, ‘Beyond The Cradle of Humanity’ is a larger scale work for orchestra, chorus and narrator. I can’t tell you much more about it beyond that, or providing the video clip above. There are some five-year-old pre-Laban synthesized symphony demos over on John’s Soundcloud page (along with his cute and deceptively clever experimental faux-muzak effort ‘Space-Lift Waiting Room‘). However, this summer John is also releasing his first record – ‘The Cloths of Heaven: The Vocal Work of John Sturt’ – with a preliminary taster available below: and perhaps this, plus the Soundcloud clip of his church choral work ‘Breaking of the Bread’, are better pointers to what ‘…Cradle…’ might be like.
John Sturt: ‘Beyond the Cradle of Humanity’ World Premiere
Studio Theatre @ Laban Building (Trinity Laban University), Creekside, Deptford, London, SE8 3DZ, England
15 June 2018, 6.00pm – information here
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Sticking with Trinity Laban for a moment: three days later, a gang of composers and musicians from the college will be showcasing their own music at a free concert in Nunhead.
“Inspired by Easter eggs hidden in video games, twelve composers attempt to hide references, clues and secret messages within newly written pieces of music performed by three fantastic ensembles. These ensembles will also be performing music of their choice, in response to their newly written works. Come and celebrate the start of the summer and the end of exams!”
Event organiser Mikey Parsons explains “most Trinity Laban student events take place on campus at the student union bar. We were frustrated by this, because it meant that only other students or teachers generally saw our work. I also personally was frustrated by the formalities observed in a classical music setting. My background is in performing with rock bands in pubs: I prefer the laid-back atmosphere there and wanted to organise a concert of our work that was for all intents and purposes the same vibe as a rock gig in a pub. In the future I want to organise gigs that feature rock bands and classical groups on the same bill. I’d love to see a string quartet open for a punk band!
“The groups playing at the Ivy House are a brass quintet, a vocal sextet and a mixed group (flute, clarinet, baritone sax, percussion and guitar). We divided the twelve composers across the three groups. The brass and vocal groups are also going to choose some repertoire in response to their new pieces: it’s an opportunity to bring some of their music into a fresh context.
“The theme was inspired by video game easter eggs. My first easter egg was the one in ‘Grand Theft Auto 3’ where you find a hidden area and there’s a sign saying something like “You weren’t supposed to be able to find here”. The thing I enjoy about them the most is the looking for them. For example – when I wrote the brief and sent it to the composers, I told them that I had hidden an easter egg in the message. Some of them went crazy trying to find it and one in particular spent a whole weekend on it, re-reading the message! In the end none of them got it but they came up with some interesting theories. I found it fascinating that they would spend time on a simple piece of text like that, and that they would read all kinds of messages out of it that I hadn’t intended at all.
“So what I’m hoping to achieve with the audience at this concert is the same focused attention of trying to work out what the music is trying to say, feeling delighted when discovering a reference to something, and perhaps coming up with their own theories as to what the answer could be.”
Despite being forthcoming about motivations and inspirations, Mikey’s not sent me composer names and work titles yet. I’ll post some up in a later edit if I get the chance…
Porcine Moth Promotions presents:
‘Hidden Messages: Contemporary Music’
The Ivy House, 40 Stuart Road, Nunhead, London, SE15 3BE, England
Monday 18th June 2018, 7.30pm – information here
Update, 12th June – the following composers will be having their work performed: Mikey Parsons, Samuel Pradalie, Caitlin Harrison, Aurora Nishevci, James Layton, Theo Finkel, Markas Michmel, Sam Carr, Jess Ward, James Taylor, Haribaskar Ganesan and Marisa Munoz Lopez. Here are some of their past pieces…
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In between, there’s the second in the ongoing run of “composer portraits” at west London’s Print Room, presented by ritual-and-timbre-focussed chamber group The Octandre Ensemble.
Frank Denyer is an interesting contemporary classical contradiction (and marketer’s nightmare) – he’s a dedicated composer, musical thinker and ethnomusicologist who, in spite of having always written for “strange combinations of instruments” including non-Western ones, has declared a lack of interest in hybridization or crossover work. He’s specialised in a knack for acoustics and timbre, for interest in quietness or in “radical melody”, and – according to ‘The Strad’, music with a “semi-theatrical, almost ritualistic atmosphere”; but while he’s composed for non-Western instruments such as shakuhachis and ocarinas, it’s been primarily for their opportunities of tone-colour and readily-available microtonal pitches rather than for cultural histories, which he respects but makes no effort to ape.
Clarifying Frank’s position, the late fellow musicologist Bob Gilmore‘s introduction to the Denyer website asserts that his work “suggests that all instruments bear the imprint of the tradition of which they are a part, whether that tradition be nascent, mature or decaying, and that at the beginning of the twenty-first century we cannot afford to be complacent about which musical traditions we consider to be ‘ours.’…his concern with musical instruments can also be seen as a metaphor for the larger question of what can be salvaged, artistically, from the chaos of civilization as we begin our new century.”
In a 2007 interview with ‘Paris Transatlantic’, Frank himself stated that “many composers seem happy with the inherited traditional models of music making, albeit with the occasional minor modification, but for me, in the rapidly transforming social environment we find ourselves in, this seems woefully inadequate. We urgently need a fluidity that will allow a multiplicity of new models of musical collaboration to emerge.”
For this concert, Octandre and guests will perform an hour’s worth of Denyer music (plus interval) spanning from 1972 to 2017. ‘Screens’ (composed in 2017 and being performed by EXAUDI soprano Juliet Fraser plus violin, viola and two percussionists), requires four “visually arresting dressing screens to conceal performers” as well as elements of stage lighting; while 1983’s ‘After The Rain’ (for shakuhachi, three ocarina players, percussion and violin) is “a work of unique beauty… inspired by Denyer’s experience of the breathtaking regeneration of the Kenyan landscape after an extended drought.”
The other pieces in the programme includes some of Frank’s early ’70s pieces – the bass flute quartet ‘Quick, Quick the Tamberan is Coming’; ‘Unison 1’ (for female voice, two flutes, violin and viola) and ‘Hanged Fiddler’ (for violin, sustaining instrument – in this case, viola – and percussion), while his twenty-first century work is also represented by ‘Two Voices and Axe’ (for female voice, male voice, violin, viola, flute, double bass, and doubled percussion).
As with the other Way Out East sessions, the composer will be discussing his work in a pre-concert interview, and socialisation with the musicians afterwards is encouraged.
Way Out East: Composer Portraits presented by Octandre Ensemble – Frank Denyer
Print Room @ The Coronet, 103 Notting Hill Gate, London, W11 3LB, England
Sunday 17th June 2018, 5.00pm – information here and here
Some assorted Denyer work, for the curious…
Misfit City 