Tag Archives: Roderick Chadwick

December 2015 – last gigs before Christmas, London & elsewhere – Phantom Chips and Matt Loveridge’s MXLX play More News From Nowhere; mix’n’match improvising at The Hat Speaks; and the rest of the London Contemporary Music Festival 2015.

13 Dec

Well, actually this is the first of the next-to-last gigs post of the year (I’ve still got to do the second round of Christmas parties). Apologies for terseness and excessive recycling of press-release blurb, but there’s a lot to pack in both here and elsewhere this month.

About half of these gigs are seriously avant-garde concerts for the London Contemporary Music Festival, with even more of a blizzard of links and odd video clips than usual. I’m also starting with a couple of full-on jazz or electronic improvising gigs.

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More News From Nowhere #2

MXLX/Phantom Chips (More News From Nowhere @ The Victoria, 188 Hoe Street, Walthamstow, London, E17 4QH, UK, Wednesday 16th December 2015, 8.00pm) – £5.50-£7.00 – informationtickets

Walthamstow’s newest (and only?) regular night of experimental/noisy/generally interesting music, returns with sets of bracing electronic experimentation from Phantom Chips and MXLX(the amazingly prolific Matt Loveridge, aka Fairhorns, Team Brick, and one third of BEAK>, among others), as well as the MNFN DJs playing ’til late.



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The Hat Speaks, 17th December 2015

The Hat Speaks (LUME @ Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, Hoxton, London, E2 8JD, England, Thursday 17th December 2015, 7.30pm) – pay-what-you-want (£5.00 minimum) – information – tickets on the door

For our last gig of 2015 we return to Hundred Years Gallery in Hoxton, for the second edition of our dice-and-hat improvised music night. We held the first one in July to celebrate our second birthday, and it was so much fun we decided to do it again. As before, a nebulous ensemble of UK improvisers will gather to make spontaneous music together. This time the list looks like this:

Alison Blunt (violin, voice, assorted instruments) – Alex Bonney (trumpet) – Dee Byrne (saxophone) – Tim Fairhall (double bass) – Tom Greenhalgh (guitar, voice) – Anton Hunter (guitar) – Andrew Lisle (drums) – Percy Pursglove (trumpet, double bass) – Martin Pyne (percussion) – Tullis Rennie (trombone and possibly field recordings) – Ed Riches (guitar) – Cath Roberts (saxophone) – Tom Ward (saxophone, bass clarinet) – Colin Webster (saxophone) plus a couple more to be confirmed.

Taking inspiration from long-running Manchester night The Noise Upstairs (founded by Anton Hunter and Tullis Rennie, no less), we will put all the players’ names into a hat, throw the dice to determine how many musicians will play, and then draw out the names. The result is lots of mini- sets from often completely new combinations of people! (Some groups from last time have decided to carry on playing together too: Tom Ward and Adam Fairhall are now collaborating on a new quartet for 2016 after their hat encounter in the summer).

Do join us for this last gig of the year – it’s been a blast, so let’s see it off in style! Entry, as usual, is one Bank of England note of your choice.

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And to close, here’s that run-down through the remaining London Contemporary Music Festival concerts.

LCMF 2015 - Chris Watson's ‘Okeanos’

LCMF 2015: Chris Watson premiere (London Contemporary Music Festival 2015 @ Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS, England, Monday 14th December 2015, 7.30pm) – (probably) £11.75 – information – advance tickets sold out: limited tickets available on the door.

We present the world premiere of a monumental new work by sound artist and recordist Chris Watson. Drawing on extensive underwater recordings gathered by the artist from oceans around the world, ‘Okeanos’ – a multi-channel sound installation that will play in complete darkness – celebrates the songs, rhythms and music of the oceanic depths.

LCMF 2015 - To A New Definition Of Opera II

LCMF 2015: ‘To A New Definition Of Opera II ‘ (London Contemporary Music Festival 2015 @ Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS, England, Tuesday 15th December 2015, 6.30pm) – £11.75 – informationtickets

In an attempt to shift our perception of what opera can do and be, we present a second instalment of ‘To A New Definition of Opera’, in which performance, video art and neglected modernist opera rub shoulders. Alongside a new commission from British performance artist Sue Tompkins, the night will include composer Tim Parkinson’s apocalyptic anti-opera ‘Time With People’ (performed by the University of Huddersfield’s edges ensemble) and Los Angeles-based artist Ryan Trecartin‘s dystopian film ‘CENTER JENNY’.

The centrepiece of the evening will be the UK premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s celebrated ‘Pieta’ from ‘Dienstag aus Licht’, with the voice of Lore Lixenberg and flugelhorn of Marco Blaauw. Interlaced throughout the evening will be an extremely rare performance of excerpts from Ezra Pound’s troubadour opera about medieval ne’er-do-wells, ‘Le Testament de Villon‘, which critic Richard Taruskin called “a modernist triumph.”

Programme:

Ezra Pound – excerpts from ‘Le Testament de Villon’ 1926 version (UK premiere) – performed by Lore Lixenberg (voice), Aisha Orazbayeva (violin), Lucy Railton (cello), Ian Sankey (trombone), Serge Vuille (percussion) Christopher Stark (conductor)
Karlheinz Stockhausen – Pieta from ‘Dienstag aus Licht'(UK premiere) – performed by Marco Blaauw (flugelhorn) and Lore Lixenberg (voice)
Ryan Trecartin – CENTER JENNY
Tim Parkinson – Opus 1, 2, 3 and 4 from ‘Time With People’ – performed by edges ensemble: John Aulich, Mira Benjamin, Jorge Boehringer, Eleanor Cully, Beavan Flanagan, Stephen Harvey, Dorothy Lee, Asher Leverton, David Pocknee and James Woods
Sue Tompkins – Like Sake (world premiere, LCMF commission) – performed by Sue Tompkins

LCMF 2015 - A Martian Sends A Postcard Home

LCMF 2015: ‘A Martian Sends A Postcard Home’ (London Contemporary Music Festival 2015 @ Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS, England, Wednesday 16th December 2015, 6.30pm) – £11.75 – informationtickets

‘A Martian Sends A Postcard Home’ takes its name from a poem by Craig Raine that sought to re-see the world through bold acts of defamiliarisation. This night celebrates the Martianist turn in music, with an exploration of composers who have made the familiar fresh.

The night will include the European premiere of Norwegian composer Øyvind Torvund‘s lawless chamber work ‘Untitled School/Mud Jam/Campfire Tunes’, performed by the Plus Minus Ensemble, and Andrew Hamilton‘s electrifying ‘music for people who like art’. In ‘Mezcal No. 8’ Swedish composer/performer Hanna Hartman transforms a copse of steel rods and washers into a sounding presence.

We honour two standard bearers of “making strange” in composition: Helmut Lachenmann and Dieter Schnebel. Aisha Orazbayeva performs Lachenmann’s ‘Toccatina’ alongside a recital of Russian poems by Mayakovsky and Yesenin that live and breathe the idea of estrangement or ostranenie. Meanwhile, composer and musician Christian Kesten‎ presents Schnebel’s celebrated ‘Maulwerke’ where vocal technique is pulled apart into its constituent parts, alongside his own ‘Zunge Lösen’ that seeks to stage the tongues of three performers.

Artist Tino Sehgal takes on the body, intellectual property and materiality itself. ‘Instead of allowing some thing to rise up to your face dancing bruce and dan and other things’ is his earliest “livework”. It sees performer Louise Höjer transformed into, in the words of ‘Frieze Magazine’, a “hydraulic android”.

The night ends with a visit from Cairo’s E.E.K. Under the fingers of Islam Chipsy (accompanied by drummers Khaled Mando and Islam Tata), a digital keyboard is wrenched into explosive new sonic territory, articulating the sound of post-Tahrir electro-chaabi.

Programme:

Tino Sehgal – Instead of allowing some thing to rise up to your face dancing bruce and dan and other things – performed by Louise Höjer
Selected poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei Yesenin – performed by Aisha Orazbayeva (voice)
Helmut Lachenmann – Toccatina – performed by Aisha Orazbayeva (violin)
Christian Kesten – Zunge Lösen (Releasing the Tongue) – performed by Christian Kesten (voice)
Andrew Hamilton – music for people who like art – performed by Becca Carson (piccolo), Ausiàs Garrigos Mórant (bass clarinet), Ian Sankey (trombone), Sam Wilson (percussion), Jack Ross (electric guitar), Siwan Rhys (piano), Joanne Evans (voice), Eloisa Fleur-Thom (violin), Valerie Albrecht (viola), Oliver Coates (cello), Martin Ludenbach (bass guitar), James Weeks (conductor)
Dieter Schnebel – Maulwerke (2015 solo version) – performed by Christian Kesten
Hanna Hartman – Mezcal No. 8 (UK premiere) – performed by Hanna Hartman
Øyvind Torvund – Untitled School/Mud Jam/Campfire Tunes (European premiere) – performed by Plus Minus Ensemble: Mark Knoop (piano), Roderick Chadwick (piano), Serge Vuille (percussion), Elsa Bradley (percussion
Islam Chipsy & EEK – live set

LCMF 2015 - Requiem for Reality

LCMF 2015: ‘Requiem for Reality’ (London Contemporary Music Festival 2015 @ Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS, England, Thursday 17th December 2015, 6.30pm) – £11.75 – informationtickets

Some call it post-internet art: others “the New Aesthetic”. Whatever the name, there’s no doubt that the internet has scrambled the way we think, see and listen. Yet if art has placed this new paradigm at its heart, we are only now beginning to distil what it means for musical composition.

One pioneer of musical attempts to understand how things are changing in the digital shadow is Jennifer Walshe. The final night of LCMF 2015 will see the UK premiere of her latest, major one-woman work ‘Total Mountain’. Two further UK premieres arrive from Germany. Berlin-based Neele Hülcker investigates (as does Claire Tolan) the online phenomenon of autonomous sensory meridian response – or ASMR – in her work ‘Copy!’, while Brigitta Muntendorf explores the YouTubed bedroom in ‘Public Privacy No 2’.


https://vimeo.com/140623887

The flight from reality captured by this post-internet music is not new. Serialist trailblazers like Milton Babbitt got there first with works such as ‘Reflections for piano & synthesized tape’. The hyperactive, networked aesthetic of Walshe and others, meanwhile, was foreshadowed by Jacob TV in ‘Grab It! Both are performed tonight.

As an occasional collaborator with London-based collective PC Music, Felicita‘s music is one in which the tropes of pop’s most commercial statements are accelerated, amplified and brought riotously together into a language that, if satirical, is also wildly inventive in its own right.

We conclude and project into the future with the long-awaited UK return of James Ferraro, whose 2011 album ‘Far Side Virtual’ is an essential post-internet text. For his forthcoming release ‘Skid Row’, Ferraro turns his attention to contemporary Los Angeles, a kind of “hyper-America” where violent realities are obsessively mediated and reproduced.

Programme:
Milton Babbitt – Reflections – performed by Mark Knoop (piano) with original tape recording
Jacob TV – Grab It! – performed by Nick Goodwin (electric guitar)
Brigitta Muntendorf – Public Privacy #2 (UK premiere) – performed by Brigitta Muntendorf with Mark Knoop (piano)
Neele Hülcker – Copy! (UK premiere) – performed by Neele Hülcker
Jennifer Walshe – Total Mountain (UK premiere) – performed by Jennifer Walshe
Felicita – live set
James Ferraro – new work

November 2015 – upcoming gigs – Julia Holter’s experimental pop tours the UK; chamber music at the Forge (Ensemble Perpetuo’s galactic tour, CHROMA’s British Music Collection show with Martin Scheuregger & David Gorton premieres)

6 Nov

Since when did November become so generous? There’s plenty to see and hear this coming week, including the continuing Jenny Hval/Briana Marela tour (with Bristol and London dates), Laura Moody following up recent shows in Cardiff and Sheffield with a house concert in Edinburgh on the 12th (email her directly in case tickets are still available) and, in London, the opening dates of the London Jazz Festival and the End Festival. Plus the following:

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With Briana Marela, Jenny Hval and Holly Herndon all touring or playing in Britain this month – and with Joanna Newsom having already sold out her lone British date at the Eventim Apollo on Monday – it’s a good month for seeing art-pop with a distinctly female hue or ethos (although to be honest there’s always a wealth of such things around, if you look hard enough and dip under the radar).

To the above, add  Julia Holter, who’s working a short British tour over the course of the week. It’s an opportunity to see how rapidly Julia’s exploratory, highly literary work has evolved and altered over a decade of recording time: from the Debussy-an glistenings of 2006’s ‘Eating the Stars’ to the oblique sonic and textual puzzles of 2011’s ‘Tragedy’ (mixing transfigured Greek drama, disorientating found sound and transparent barely-there parings of songcraft) and the impressionistic jazz-novel assemblage of ‘Loud City Song’ in 2013 (which drew on Collette, MGM musicals and belle-epoque).

Julia’s newest album, this year’s ‘Have You in My Wilderness’, is something of a step into the known. Her once-baffling minimal musical stylings – which, on ‘Tragedy’ in particular, hung precariously on the edge of what might be described as “song” – have by now transformed themselves into what sounds like dreamy, distracted takes on late-‘60s/early-‘70s Brill Building songwriter pop. That said, the album’s meditations on solitude and companionship (real, imagined, rejected or deconstructed) retain Julia’s distinctive tone of lateral thinking and musing, and if the songs seem more conservative on the outside they soon reveal themselves as different, more fluid creations, if Carole King had been enticed into French surrealism (note the nods to Dali, Bunuel, Germaine Dulac and Gérard de Nerval in the video for ‘The Sea Calls Me Home’, above). It’s also clear that if ‘Have You In My Wilderness’ does invite a broader audience by way of its more comfortable textures, it’s not a sell-out: keeping firmly in touch with her earlier impulses and schemas, Julia has included a re-recording of Betsy On The Roof (a pre-‘Tragedy’ song best known from her rare 2010 live tapes).

Julia Holter:

Note that the Leeds gig at the Brudenell is part of their High & Lonesome Festival in which Julia will be sharing a stage with Josh T. Pearson, Neil Halstead and many others.

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There are two chamber music concerts coming up at The Forge in London:

Ensemble Perpetuo

Ensemble Perpetuo presents: Heavenly Sights (The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, UK, Monday 9th November 2015, 7.30pm) – £10.00 to £12.00 – information & tickets – more information

Founded in 2013 by English oboist James Turnbull, Ensemble Perpetuo is a dynamic and versatile collective of musicians who perform a wide variety of traditional and contemporary chamber music in new settings; bringing it to new audiences through exciting collaborations and innovative repertoire choices; and seeking new pathways in which to experiment and augment the concert experience through multi-art form collaborations. Perpetuo has embarked on a number of exciting mini-residences throughout the UK and is taking music to new venues including concerts in theatres, museums, cafes, found spaces and other unexpected locations.

Join Perpetuo for the final event in their groundbreaking series of chamber music concerts for 2015 – an evening of incredible music that takes you on a journey to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. ‘Heavenly Sights’ is an evening of music inspired by space, flight and motion. Featuring music from Beethoven and Piazzolla to Weir and Muhly, experience over two hundred years of chamber music in one evening.

Programme:

Robert Schumann – Mondnacht (arr. Colin Matthews)
George Benjamin – Flight
Nico Muhly – Motion
Judith Weir – Airs From Another Planet
Anthony Powers – In Sunlight
Charlotte Bray – Trail Of Light
Astor Piazzolla – Milonga del Angel
Ludwig van Beethoven – Moonlight Sonata
Cheryl Frances-Hoad – My Fleeting Angel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed-m9-f4ejE

CHROMA: Gorton, Scheuregger and British Music (The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, UK,Wednesday 11th November 2015, 7.30pm) – £10.00-£12.00 – information & tickets – more information

CHROMA ensemble

Founded in 1997, the critically acclaimed CHROMA is an acclaimed, London-based, flexible chamber ensemble dedicated both to new music and to revisiting classic repertoire in fresh and exciting contexts; mentoring the next generation of composers, and involving audiences in compelling, inspirational experiences.

Closely associated with the performance of contemporary music the ensemble has forged close links with many prominent British composers through many commissioned premières and collaborations (including work with Luke Bedford, Michael Nyman, David Bruce,  Tarik O’Regan,  Michael Zev Gordon, Raymond Yiu, Claudia Molitor, Julian Grant, Arlene Sierra, and Marcus Barcham-Stevens) .

CHROMA has a lively strand of intimate chamber concerts combining music and storytelling, which has resulted both in its first own-label album ‘Folk Tales’ and in various opera stagings in association with the opera festival  Tête à Tête,  the Linbury Studio Theatre and others.  The ensemble’s mentoring programme includes ongoing work with student composers at the Royal Academy of Music, Royal Holloway University of London and Oxford University.

This concert (featuring Roderick Chadwick on piano) is the culmination of composer Martin Scheuregger’s residency at the British Music Collection. Martin’s new work, ‘Harlequin’, and ‘Burgh Castle’ by David Gorton form the centre of the programme. Harlequin engages with and reflects on the themes and ideas Martin has been exploring through the music of The Collection, whilst ‘Burgh Castle’ – a CHROMA aural-visual commission for piano and ensemble – is inspired by the landscape of the East Anglian Fens. Pieces from the BMC – from both lesser-known and established composers – place these new works in the context of Martin’s residency and the music with which he has surrounded himself for the last 18 months.

Programme:

Philip Cashian – Horn Trio
Helen Grime – Snow and Snow
Martin Scheuregger – Harlequin (world premiere)
David Gorton – Burgh Castle (world premiere)
Anthony Powers – In Sunlight
Sadie Harrison – The Bride’s Journey in Three Songs and a Memory

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