Friday 20 – Sunday 22 November 2020

hcmf.co.uk #hcmf2020 WELCOME 2

Welcome to the 43rd Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival! © Robbie van Zoggel © Robbie van

While this is not the programme we had intended to present, it is hcmf// and British music to the rest of the world, this year through a series nevertheless one that we are very proud and excited to bring to you. We of events – Unbound Listening – which gets underway as part of the festival are grateful to all the participating artists for their creativity, and for the programme here, and continues into 2021. And to SPARC, City University enthusiasm and energy they have brought to working with the platforms London, and CeReNeM, University of Huddersfield, for partnering with us in available to them. the Artist to Artist conversations which will continue beyond the festival to form an ongoing archive. In devising an online programme for hcmf// 2020, we wanted to produce events that not only used the digital space, but that were designed I should also give thanks to our numerous international partners who have specifically for it, and would respond to it, building for that world, rather committed to renewing conversations regarding support for future festival than just existing adjacent to it. editions, just as soon as it is possible to do so.

And it’s turned out to be bigger and busier than we initially imagined, with Our thanks also go to DCMS for their support through the Culture Recovery full days of music to be experienced as if you were moving around the Fund, administered by Arts Council England.. venues and hopping from genre to genre. I can’t pretend that we will not miss the buzz of welcoming old and new As we embrace the use of new technologies and online platforms, we are friends to Huddersfield, the anticipation of a packed St Paul’s Hall or Bates equally mindful that there is a long-standing and well tested means of Mill waiting for the premiere performance of a newly commissioned work – disseminating sound and music to listeners not able to be present in the but I am comforted by the thought of savouring such moments afresh as we physical space – and that is radio! Thanks to our enduring partnership with emerge, as we will, from the current situation. BBC Radio 3, we are excited to present three live concerts for broadcast, across the festival weekend, on special editions of The New Music Show, For the moment however, let’s focus on the positives and I say to those of dedicated to hcmf//. Two of those concerts, we are pleased to announce, you who for whatever reason have never made it to hcmf// before – we are will come to you from St Paul's Hall on the University of Huddersfield thrilled that you can finally join us! campus, undoubtedly long the spiritual home to the festival. Enjoy! Details of all of the above can be found as you read on.

Throughout 2020, hcmf// has been particularly mindful of all the freelance composers and artists whose world suddenly paused back in March, and has not yet restarted or returned to anywhere approaching previous levels of activity. We have tried therefore to utilise whatever resources are available us to support the sector, by commissioning new works – from Graham McKenzie large-scale to miniature – from established composers to new voices – and Artistic Director & Chief Executive to provide an ongoing platform for the presentation of new music. To date this year hcmf// has awarded over 30 commissions, some of which can be experienced as part of this festival edition, with others following in 2021 and beyond.

My thanks go to our core partners and funders for their continued support in these most challenging of times – Arts Council England, Kirklees Council, and the University of Huddersfield. To the British Council who continue to support our international and overseas activities, connecting FESTIVAL DIARY 3

UK UK PREMIERE W WORLD PREMIERE

Date Event Time Venue

All Weekend Matthew Grouse W Anytime Online

Heloise Tunstall-Behrens W Anytime Online

Auclair W Anytime Online

Tonia Ko W Anytime Online

Anna Appleby W Anytime Online

Hannah Kendall W Anytime Online

Fri 20 Nov Artist to Artist// In Conversation: 5.30pm Online Annea Lockwood + Auclair

Thin Air 7.30pm Online

Sarah Cahill UK 7.45pm Online

Space Afrika + Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh W 9pm Online

Kelly Jayne Jones W 9.30pm Online

Explore Ensemble W 10pm BBC Radio 3 New Music Show

Sat 21 Nov Music At Play: Session 1 10am Online

Podcast: The Riot Ensemble 1pm Online

Speak Percussion + Lamine Sonko UK 3pm Online

Artist to Artist// In Conversation: 5.30pm Online George E. Lewis + Mariam Rezaei

Anna Koch + Claudia Molitor W 7.30pm Online

Matt Wright W 9pm Online

Heather Roche + Eva Zöllner W UK / 10pm BBC Radio 3 New Music Show GBSR Duo W

Sun 22 Nov Music At Play: Session 2 10.30am Online

Darragh Morgan W UK 1pm Online

Hayley Suviste W 3pm Online

Artist to Artist// In Conversation: 5.30pm Online Cassandra Miller + Clara Iannotta

Raymond MacDonald + Rachel Joy Weiss W 7.30pm Online

Podcast: Ziad Nawfal 8.30pm Online

Dillon @ 70 W 10pm BBC Radio 3 New Music Show FESTIVAL SUPPORT 4

hcmf// would like to thank the following Members Funders for their support:

Benefactors Roz Brown & Colin Rose Dr Peter Bamfield Mr & Mrs Mervyn & Karen Dawe Professor Mick Peake OBE Project Funders Mr Martin Staniforth Professor Emeritus Richard Steintiz Allan & Mo Tennant

Patrons Martin Archer Mrs Shirley Bostock Sir Alan Bowness Mr Alex Bozman Susan Burdell Dr E Anna Claydon Mr C W Dryburgh Dr Colin G Johnson Ms Rosemary Johnson Joe Kerrigan & Christine Stead Graham Hayter & Kevin Leeman Mr John Moffat Laurence Rose

Trusts and Foundations Dr M R Spiers Terrence Thorpe Peter John Viggers Barnaby & Maria Woodham

Friends Mr Derrick Archer Miss Mary Black In partnership with Media Partner Broadcast Partner John Bryan Mr Richard Chalmers Marie Charnley Ms Rona Courtney Mrs Mavis Green Dr John Habron Andy Hamilton Festival Partners David Hanson Mr Bryn Harrison Mr David A Lingwood Dr Anthony Littlewood Nikki & James McGavin Mr Nicholas Meredith Mr Graham Moon Mr Philip Bradley & Ms Geraldine Kelly Dr Roger M W Musson Miss Harriet Richardson James Saunders Judith Serota OBE Mr & Mrs David & Phillida Shipp Mr & Mrs Vic & Alison Slade Colin Stoneman Gregory & Norma Summers Mr Gordon Sykes John Truss The Festival also gratefully acknowledges support from Rob Vincent hcmf// members James Weeks Professor Mick Peake OBE Cover image: Jamie Hudson

FESTIVAL SUPPORT 5

Arts Council England foremost contemporary music festival as the high point in the cultural year of the University and the region, against all odds. I’m looking forward to this year's edition of hcmf//, which will be in a very different format than in other years. I’m sure that hcmf//'s loyal and Professor Thomas Schmidt growing audience of contemporary new music fans will miss attending the Dean of the School of Music, Humanities and Media, University of festival in its physical form, but this year's alternative programme will still Huddersfield provide a wide range of performances, films, podcasts and talks which will be enjoyed by many people far and wide. British Council

The festival has responded creatively to the challenges of the current I’ve just looked again at the programme for this year’s Huddersfield circumstances, while taking the opportunity to share some new audio- Contemporary Music Festival, and am delighted to report that I feel visual works, live broadcasts and a range of premieres which will interest exactly the same sense of excitement and anticipation that I normally do and delight its audience. For those based in Huddersfield, the new sound at this time of year, in spite of our changed circumstances. What makes it and audio-visual installations will offer a more interactive experience for a particularly exciting is the festival’s and the artists’ creative response to very lucky, but limited, and socially-distanced audience. our new digital reality which sits alongside a rich offer of films, talks, and streamed and live-streamed performances (thank you, again, BBC Radio 3, I commend the team at hcmf// for its ingenuity and inspiring artistic for all you are doing during this our period of Covid-restricted freedom). programme during these difficult times, and look forward to joining in digitally this November. With best wishes for a successful hcmf// 2020. Once again, the British Council and hcmf// are working in partnership to bring together UK and international voices in a creative act of sharing Claire Mera-Nelson experiences, collective thinking, and of looking for new ways for cross- Director, Music, Arts Council England border artist-to-artist collaboration. This will start during the festival, and continue through two further initiatives, next February and March, giving Kirklees Council this year’s partnership a new and welcome longevity. In many ways, our inability to travel physically has unleashed new possibilities for much wider These are strange and difficult times, and music in Kirklees like many global participation. I’m moved that we will be joined by colleagues and places has been impacted by Covid-19 and the restrictions put in place to artists from countries facing massive challenges quite apart from those protect the health and well-being of our residents, communities and to ease caused by Covid 19, and also by many alumni of the British Council/hcmf// pressures on the NHS and other public services. partnership from all around the world. There’s nothing left to do but hook up the computer to the speakers, settle back and enjoy, be stimulated, be It has been a time of challenge and of innovation, of lockdowns and of challenged – and share, nourish the soul, and help to build towards a better reaching new audiences through new ways of presenting works. hcmf//, as future. one of our key festivals in the district, is no different and it gives me great pleasure to see how the team have adapted their programme and activity to Cathy Graham OBE keep music alive. The lessons we learn from our current situation will help Director Music, British Council us develop new strategies as we move forward to our Year of Music 2023. The strategies hcmf// has developed are lessons to be shared, and we are BBC Radio 3 proud of their commitment to showcasing the very best of contemporary music. hcmf// is part of the fabric of Huddersfield’s cultural life and it is The partnership between BBC Radio 3 and hcmf// brings new and experimental with great pleasure that I welcome you to this year’s festival and hope that in music to listeners across the UK and around the world. It’s one of the better times we get to meet in person and share a live music performance cornerstones of the station’s year, giving our listeners an intensive survey of next year. today’s finest international performers and composers of new work.

Councillor Rob Walker In this particularly challenging year we are pleased to be able to bring that very Portfolio Holder for Culture & Environment, Kirklees Council special hcmf// atmosphere to our audiences at home in new ways, through a weekend of exclusive live broadcasts on the New Music Show. University of Huddersfield Radio 3 at hcmf// 2020 begins with a live relay of Explore Ensemble’s performance on Friday 20 November, continuing on Saturday 21 with Heather Along with the rest of the Performing Arts sector, higher education, and Roche + Eva Zöllner, and GBSR Duo, and culminating on Sunday 22 with the the country as a whole, hcmf// is facing unprecedented challenges as a London Sinfonietta giving the World Premiere of Pharmakeia, as part of a result of the Covid pandemic. It gives me immense pleasure to see the programme celebrating James Dillon’s 70th birthday which will also feature festival alive and kicking in the face of adversity; most of the festival will be a specially recorded session of unheard piano work written for Noriko Kawai. online, but it is testament to symbiotic relationship between hcmf// and the Alongside the live broadcasts, the New Music Show will also reflect some of the university that we are able to welcome a number of artists and the BBC to St events from the festival’s online programme. Paul's Hall for two events on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 November – the first time live performance will return to the university since the beginning of the Our coverage of hcmf// is an important part of Radio 3’s ongoing commitment to pandemic. live music making around the UK. A key element of Radio 3’s mission is to make available the most interesting contemporary music there is to as many people as Arts Council England and Kirklees Council remain crucial partners, possible, and reflecting live music making is an important component of this. Our underscoring our commitment to the sustained excellence of the festival partnership with hcmf// is part of the life blood of the future of music and I am and to the Arts in the region more generally. pleased we are able to bring this work to a wide audience.

The School of Music, Humanities and Media, with its Performing Arts You can find BBC Radio 3’s coverage fromhcmf// on BBC Sounds. Have a good department ranked 27th globally by the QS World University Rankings festival. in 2020, is proud of its world-leading Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM) which attracts some of the best academics and students Alan Davey Controller, BBC Radio 3 worldwide. As Dean of the School, I greatly look forward to the UK's ZEITGEIST COMMISSIONS 6 Hannah Kendall © Kiran Ridley Hannah Kendall © Kiran

The Zeitgeist Commissions

You simply cannot keep the Riot Ensemble down. Since their inception almost a decade ago, this British group has worked tirelessly to create new opportunities in music. It goes beyond just looking for new pieces they can play; built into their ethos is a sense that they can bring artists up with them. Talent emerges during a Riot Ensemble concert, the group time and time again showcasing the best in young and upcoming composers. It was frankly foolish to think that Covid-19 could get in the way of this firecracker of an ensemble.

Earlier this year, the Riot Ensemble launched Zeitgeist, a new series of commissions responding to the worldwide lockdown that hit the UK in March. In an attempt to keep music flowing and work for composers circulating, the group teamed up with the eponymous Zeitgeist, an online gallery that presents contemporary work through a digital lens. Through this project, they commissioned seven young composers across the globe, committing to performances of their work presented in Zeitgeist’s online space, and also via YouTube.

As the pandemic continues to roll on, bringing with it major complications for working musicians, hcmf// is proud to have joinned forces with the Riot Ensemble to deliver a second edition of Zeitgeist Commissions. The six pieces, selected by the festival together with Riot, were written for solo performances by members of the group, and will receive their video premiere at hcmf// 2020. As ever, we’re excited to be working alongside the Riot Ensemble to find a practical way to give musicians a hint of reality by bringing about new paid opportunities, as well as unique showcases for their work.

The Zeitgeist Commissions are available throughout hcmf// 2020. To view them please visit the Riot Ensemble's YouTube page: http://www.youtube. com/user/RiotEnsemble

ZEITGEIST COMMISSIONS 7 © Heloise Tunstall-Behrens © Heloise

Heloise Tunstall-Behrens

with bombastic resolutions. With the same penchant for reference and Adam Swayne piano reach, her new work Tuxedo: ‘Hot Summer No Water’ is all over the place, Heloise Tunstall–Behrens (UK, 1985) rearranging a text by Jean-Michel Basquiat to get its title while working Picea 433 WORLD PREMIERE (2020) 5’30” a micro-performance of Handel’s Messiah into the piece on a music box. For the piece, Kendall opted to work with new, ‘auxiliary’ instruments, experimenting with police whistles that augment Louise McMonagle’s cello Heloise Tunstall-Behrens has made sound art, played in indie bands and playing. written experimental operas. She’s interested in the sounds of community, across all sorts of existences. Her new work Picea 433 pays respect to the Co-commissioned by the Riot Ensemble and hcmf// in partnership with Zeitgeist Spruce tree, which is the source of pianos’ resonating soundboards. On one Online Gallery of her side quests as an anthropologist, Tunstall-Behrens studied these trees in their native Norway, looking at scientific analysis that pays attention Tonia Ko to ‘age and growth patterns’, and the reasons that the wood makes for a good piano. The piece goes into forensic detail on the piano’s life source, thinking about what was given to animate it. As is typical of Tunstall- Stephen Upshaw viola Behrens, Picea 433 gets up close and personal with its ideas, taking WORLD PREMIERE natural recordings of the subject; it’s accompanied by ‘media drawn from a Tonia Ko (USA/Hong Kong, 1988) Soothe a Tooth (2020) 5’ recording of Spruce roots, which is played through the piano strings’. With a playful and questioning approach, Tonia Ko’s music challenges Co-commissioned by the Riot Ensemble and hcmf// in partnership with Zeitgeist ideas of momentum and memory, manipulating sounds, stages and Online Gallery performers into new shapes. Pieces such as Simple Fuel and Flock ask their performers to interact in strange, ambiguous ways that speak to the Hannah Kendall emotions and sensations we go through, often unknowingly, every day. Her new piece, Soothe a Tooth, takes Stephen Upshaw’s viola playing to stressful new places, imagining a soundtrack for ‘clenched jaws, cracked Louise McMonagle cello teeth and dry tongues’. The strings of the viola become teeth, hands, feet, anything that we use as a crutch every day; through repetitive melodic Hannah Kendall (UK, 1984) patterns, Ko’s piece suggests both the physical motions that manifest our WORLD PREMIERE Tuxedo: ‘Hot Summer No Water’ (2020) 5’ stress, and the ‘techniques we might try in order to sooth them’. Pressure and relaxation run through Soothe a Tooth, with acceptance at the centre, as Hannah Kendall’s work exists at intersections. Connecting with poets, Ko invites her performer to ‘attempt to tolerate his own distress’. choreographers and art galleries, she finds new experiences to drive her compositions forward. Her music is guided by communal culture and Co-commissioned by the Riot Ensemble and hcmf// in partnership with Zeitgeist calls to action; it teems with detail, wrapping up subtle arrangements Online Gallery ZEITGEIST COMMISSIONS 8 Jake Haggarty Jake © Matthew Grouse Grouse Matthew

Matthew Grouse ‘Ma’s heartbeat is the first rhythm I heard. Ma’s voice is the first music I Sam Wilson percussion have known. Munganyinka is a Transformer is a retelling of a memory. It is also a homage to my Ma’s voice. It is the early 1960s, she is 14 or 15 years Matthew Grouse (UK, 1996) old, a refugee from the genocide that has recently started in Rwanda. She Left Right, Left Right WORLD PREMIERE (2020) 6’ is trying to return to DRC by road after one of many attempts to get back to Rwanda to find her family. Her only way out of the country is a bridge on Using traditional instrumentation, brash electronics and a variety of the border, over the Rusizi river. When she gets there, bullets rain down as digital media, Matthew Grouse’s work blows up the disquieting nature of different factions shoot each other from the other side of the bridge. It’s just augmented daily life. His concert music, which has been performed by a as dangerous to go back, so she decides to pretend to be a dog, in the belief wide range of renowned ensembles, plays with dynamic tension, pairing that they won’t shoot at her. She drops down on all fours, walks the length of off tense murmurations with unapologetic bangs of sound. A striking the bridge under constant gunfire, and makes it across to safety unharmed. meditation on the mental health crisis that’s opened up in lockdown, Left Her power to transform amazes me.’ Auclair Right, Left Right was written in observation of the obsessive behaviours and routines that Grouse believes have been magnified during this Please note: this performance includes references to violence and period. As ever, Grouse’s music draws directly from the source, making genocide use of ‘recorded conversations’ to ask questions about ‘identity and self-reflexivity’. Co-commissioned by the Riot Ensemble and hcmf// in partnership with Zeitgeist Online Gallery Co-commissioned by the Riot Ensemble and hcmf// in partnership with Zeitgeist Online Gallery Anna Appleby

Auclair Amy Green soprano saxophone

Ausiàs Garrigós Morant bass clarinet Anna Appleby (UK, 1993) 13.8 Billion Years WORLD PREMIERE (2020) 5’ Auclair (UK/Rwanda, 1978) Munganyinka is a Transformer WORLD PREMIERE (2020) 6’ Anna Appleby’s music has its own shape. Inspired by choreography, the Manchester-based composer’s work moves in its own peculiar way, rising Auclair has appeared across a staggering range of projects. Alongside and falling with movements of the stage. She has swung through musical making abstract electro-pop records, she has taken part in the bee-themed styles, writing fluid, spontaneous pieces for chamber groups and dance opera The Swarm, contributed to Beck’s Song Reader project, and has been troupes. In 13.8 Billion Years, she has created an expansive solo piece, part of a live rework of the Afro-Brazilian classic Black Orpheus. She has imagining ‘the formation of the universe, through clouds of matter to also explored sound art, drawing it into her composition with works such galaxies, to stars, planets and, eventually, life’. Yes, it’s a bit ambitious to as Four Points Talk, a piece built from recordings of buildings, and Dawn cover all of this with five minutes of saxophone, but if anyone can do it, Chorus Live, an exploration of birdsong with Marcus Coates. Appleby can. And she’s realistic about her chances, too: ‘the universe is estimated to have begun 13.8 billion years ago’, she says, ‘a length of time which is a bit longer than this piece’. Fair play.

Co-commissioned by the Riot Ensemble and hcmf// in partnership with Zeitgeist Online Gallery hcmf// YOUNG CURATORS’ PROGRAMME 9 Charlotte Roe Human Touch Charlotte

hcmf// Young Curators’ Programme: Charlotte Roe

Charlotte Roe (UK) Human Touch WORLD PREMIERE (2020) up her work. She is determined to keep things hand-held, to remind us of art’s haptic essence. With Human Touch, she’s created a web space where The hcmf// Young Curators’ Programme was set up in 2019 to help five her sculptures have been rebuilt online. For the project, Roe coded ‘avatar’ Kirklees-based artists take the next step in their careers, and to develop stand-ins of her artworks for audiences to interact with. These point-and- talent and leadership amongst these music programmers, promoters and click replacements maintain the tactile feel that they were intended to have, curators of the future. As well as receiving training and mentoring from still existing in the hands of their audience. the hcmf// team, our Young Curators also have the chance to develop new works that can be tested within the region, and presented to audiences at In a way, this challenge fits the brief Roe has imposed on herself, providing an edition of hcmf//. As part of this year’s festival, we’re proud to present a her with the chance to make a project as ‘conceptual’ as anything she’s new online installation by Charlotte Roe, an illustrator, object builder and previously worked on. ‘My website will allow visitors to manipulate gig promoter. representations of the objects to create their own sound sculptures’, she says, inviting people to form personal relationships with the sculptures Whether making comics, sculptures or music, Huddersfield-based artist represented. Human Touch serves as both a reminder of our sense-based Charlotte Roe has never seen any difference in the types of things she lives – our need to have what she calls a ‘tactile experience of the world makes. ‘I don’t like to see the distinction between fine art and applied art, where we can hug, kiss and be near our loved ones’ – and a stand-in for it. It high art and low art, and things like that’. Instead, her art is guided by the will take those dreary repetitive actions we’ve been making – all the mouse- ways it gets picked up and interacted with, and is united by how people tapping and screen-scrolling – and turn them into objects that look, and engage with it; ‘if there’s one thing that ties it all together, it’s an interest sound, new to us. in technology, and how humans interact with objects’. In her new digital installation, Human Touch, she investigates the connections between sound To experience Human Touch, visit Charlotte Roe’s website: and touch, striving to maintain a connection between the two at a time when http://humantouch.space/ so many of our interactions are forced to be virtual. hcmf//’s Young Curators’ Programme is funded by the Leeds City Region Business Recently, Roe has been doing what she describes as ‘collecting sound’, Rates Pool, through a bid secured by Kirklees Council playing with contact mics to get feedback out of self-made objects. These structures range from simple, football-shaped cardboard to amplified sonic sculptures that can fit in your hand, looking something like a remote control hollowed out and filled in with guitar amp wires. With these objects, Roe wants to put sound in our hands, exploring noise at its most tactile, giving us sculptures and asking us to treat them like instruments. Faced with the interruption of Covid-19, Roe’s had to rethink the physical nature of her practice, drawing back from the ‘material culture’ that makes ARTIST TO ARTIST// IN CONVERSATION 10 Annea Lockwood (C) Nicole Tavenner + Auclair (C) Sophia Schorr-Kon. Tavenner (C) Nicole Annea Lockwood

Artist to Artist// In Conversation Artist to Artist// In Conversation: George E. Lewis + Mariam Rezaei This year’s series of artist talks are a curational collaboration between SPARC, CeReNeM and hcmf//. For these talks, we have taken a hands- Saturday 21 November off approach: we did not ask interview-like questions, nor set a particular 5.30pm / Online theme for them, instead improvising a little, encouraging the conversation to develop organically along the lines of the artists’ interests. During each One of the world’s most prominent trombonists, composers and talk, two artists will share their thoughts about their practice with each improvisers, George E. Lewis has been releasing records since the late other, finding commonalities and differences in their approach to working 1970s, gracing Chicago and the broader American jazz and experimental with sound, and allowing us a window into the music they create. scenes with his combination of brass and electronics. He’s collaborated with legends such as Anthony Braxton and Muhal Richard Abrams, and Artist to Artist// In Conversation: continually renewed his style in the process, working with labels such as John Zorn’s Tzadik. He is the author of A Power Stronger Than Itself – Annea Lockwood + Auclair The AACM and American Experimental Music. In this talk, he’s joined by turntablist and composer Mariam Rezaei, whose musical output draws Friday 20 November on noise, sampling and glitch. Rezaei’s work plays club culture off of the 5.30pm / Online experimental underground. As a composer and curator, her work extends to TOPH, a mixed-use arts space she runs for DIY artists in Newcastle. This talk features two musical iconoclasts working in vastly different realms. Renowned composer Annea Lockwood has been making pivotal strides in experimental music since the 1960s, challenging the ways we Artist to Artist// In Conversation: present and receive sound. She is known best for the striking performance pieces she made for Fluxus – which included burning and drowning pianos Clara Iannotta + Cassandra Miller in a pond. Throughout the 1970s, Lockwood’s work questioned musical objects and environments, asking questions about what gets to be the host Sunday 22 November body of sound. Through the years, her work has continued to evolve, while 5.30pm / Online also retaining its conceptual spirit: recent pieces include Ear-Walking Woman, a revision of the ‘prepared piano’ that will be performed at hcmf// London-based composer Cassandra Miller builds on the history of notated 2020 by Sarah Cahill. music to create pieces that feel like they’ve been metamorphosed. Her pieces invite you to hear the raw material already out there, on her Through treated vocals, glitched melodies and looping rhythmic pulses, terms, ‘magnified and transfigured’. Outside of this rigorous approach to Auclair makes a firm break with reality, installing surrealism into everyday composing, Miller takes part in long-standing collaborations with a variety life. Having made abstract electro-pop for labels such as Kit Records, of musicians, including recently working with soprano Juliet Fraser and her music has found a space between density and sparsity, playing noisy percussionist Charlemagne Palestine. In this discussion, she’s joined by textures and hushed minimalism off of one another. Works such as In Waves Clara Iannotta, whose work reimagines ensemble performance through sum up Auclair’s sound: moments of clarity are woven through an otherwise heavy use of digital music and found sound. Her work embraces flux, with surreal tapestry of day dreaming electronics and percussive cascades, her recent pieces including Dead Wasp In a Jam Jar III, an intense, constantly voice still in an ever-changing world. Her newest work includes a physical moving piece performed at hcmf// 2018. release of The Swarm, an opera about bees she made with Heloise Tunstall- Behrens, and Munganyinka is a Transformer, a solo piece for bass clarinet that appears at hcmf// 2020 as part of the Zeitgeist Commissions.

Friday 20 // November UNBOUND LISTENING 12 Aya Metwalli © Jo Elias Aya

Unbound Listening Unbound Listening #1

In a new online series, hcmf// and the British Council join forces to present Friday 20 November three events telling stories from across the world of new music. 3.15pm / Online

Focusing on the global challenges currently facing cultural communities This is a free event but you must book a ticket to attend. Booking and organisations, you will hear examples of how artists and cultural will close 24 hours before the event. leaders are responding positively to the situation through their work. https://hcmf.co.uk/programme/unbound-listening-1/ The emphasis will be on sharing experiences, collective thinking, and how we may work together collaboratively across borders to create new Building on hcmf//’s relationship with Irtijal, Beirut’s foremost opportunities for the cultural sector. experimental music festival, this discussion has been curated by festival founder Sharif Sehnaoui, and brings together a range of musicians working Our speakers will be drawn from new music communities across the globe. in the region’s iconic underground. A musician and engineer, Fadi Tabbal They will share perspectives from their local musical scene as we look recently founded the Beirut Musician's Fund, responding to the urgent towards the future, in an opportunity to get to know new artists and music. need for support amongst the Lebanese artistic community in the wake Each event will combine listening, learning and conversation, culminating in of the recent Beirut explosion. A concert organizer at Frequent Defect, a performance, commissioned audio-visual piece or podcast. Renata Sabella was recently forced to stop their activity due to recent events, becoming ‘the last to stop and the first to start back up’, drawing Unbound Listening is the latest partnership between the British Council and both criticism and praise in the process. Alongside his experimental music, hcmf//. It builds on a long-term relationship that has enabled international Rabih Beaini manages Morphine Records, and has thrown himself behind new music producers and programmers to attend the annual festival and several fundraising efforts in support of Lebanon. forge connections with the UK contemporary music sector. Responding to the challenges of the ongoing pandemic, this year we continue the spirit of This roundtable is followed by a showcase of the Lebanese experimental connection building by welcoming international voices digitally. Unbound scene, with performances from two local pioneers. Egyptian genre-hopper Listening offers a window onto new music in different parts of the world, Aya Metwalli’s recent work has embodied her interest in marrying noise opening up conversations and complementing the festival’s showcase of and melody into a new wave of avant-pop, celebrating both the tradition of new UK music. popular music and a rebellion against it. A composer and improviser known throughout the Lebanese underground scene, Anthony Sahyoun’s recent At hcmf// 2020, we’re thrilled to be presenting the first event in the work includes First Seconds Last Forever, a collaboration with sound artist Unbound Listening series. Look out for two more events in early 2021. Jawad Nawfal that echoes the ‘lively and evolving’ Beirut neighbourhood of Gemmayze through recorded and constructed noise.

Unbound Listening is curated by hcmf// in partnership with the British Council

Unbound Listening #1 is curated and produced by hcmf// and Irtijal, in partnership with the British Council Friday 20 // November ONLINE EVENT 13 Calliope Tsoupaki © Michiel van Nieuwkerk (18) Nieuwkerk © Michiel van Calliope Tsoupaki

Thin Air

7.30pm / Online

Mandhira de Saram violin Matt Calvert electronics Ed Massey video production

Calliope Tsoupaki (Greece/Netherlands, 1963) Thin Air (2020) 5’30”

With physical performances of music largely off the table, and a sense of place traded in for the overfamiliar environments of our everyday, Thin Air has imagined new ways to link us together. Conceived as a composition of ‘solidarity’, Calliope Tsoupaki was asked to write the solo piece Thin Air by Festivals for Compassion, a consortium of organisations working together to keep music flowing through the world. The piece has become a message in a bottle, performed by different artists across the globe, and making for the road at a time when most of us can’t.

Thin Air’s journey started in June, with guitarist Wiek Hijmans interpreting the piece at an alternative version of Holland Festival. It has since been taken through the virtual versions of events in the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy, and is making due course for performances ‘around the world’. Each performance has become its own spectacle; the notes of Thin Air have been passed on, but the settings, the inflections, and the timbres have changed. Each performer, with their own instrument, discovers what it’s like to play a concert from their newly remote corner of the world.

At hcmf// 2020, Mandhira de Saram will continue the timeline, performing Thin Air in its latest iteration as a violin piece. A renowned interpreter, Saram is also a founding member of the Ligeti Quartet, a group which has subtly expanded the scope of contemporary music, extending it across cultures and genres. Her performance is another link in the Thin Air daisy chain, unique but tied together with the pieces that have been before and those that will come after.

Profile: Calliope Tsoupaki https://hcmf.co.uk/calliope-tsoupaki/

Thin Air is presented as part of Festivals for Compassion https://festivalsforcompassion.com/ Friday 20 // November ONLINE EVENT 14 Sarah Cahill © Miranda Sanborn) Cahill © Miranda Sarah

Sarah Cahill

7.45pm / Online

Deirdre Gribbin’s lamenting Unseen is written as a cry for help in the fight Sarah Cahill piano against homelessness, honouring the large number of impoverished people Deirdre Gribbin (Northern Ireland, 1967) living on the streets of London. The piece rushes by in a flurry of uncertain Unseen (2018) 6' chords, Cahill scattering notes across the piano like an overcast fog.

Annea Lockwood (New Zealand/USA, 1939) Writing She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees, Theresa Wong was inspired Ear-Walking Woman UK PREMIERE (1996) 8' by Nina Simone’s song Images, in which the legendary pianist and singer recited a poem by Harlem renaissance poet William Waring Cuney. A poem Theresa Wong (USA, 1976) that signals the oppression of black women in the way they are ignored, She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees UK PREMIERE (2019) 7' downplayed and underrepresented, Wong’s piece creates a musical figure out of Cuney’s No Images, using striking piano motifs but suppressing Maria de Alvear (Spain/Germany, 1960) them, with ‘dampened pitches’ to echo his ‘depiction of oppression’. Intenso UK PREMIERE (1995) 5’

Aida Shirazi (Iran/USA, 1987) Cahill’s songbook contains overlooked innovations to piano music, Albumblatt UK PREMIERE (2017) 6' with works such as Annea Lockwood’s Ear-Walking Woman exploring adjustments to traditional prepared-piano compositions. In the piece, Gabriela Ortiz (Mexico, 1964) Lockwood makes use of the instrument’s extreme sensitivity, making tiny Preludio y Estudio No. 3 UK PREMIERE (2011) 9’ changes to the typical ways people use objects to detune and distort the piano’s sound. Due to the myriad discoveries made in making the piece, This 45-minute concert from American pianist Sarah Cahill comes from her Lockwood decided to compose it ‘open-ended’, giving the performer the ever-expanding project The Future is Female. A songbook celebrating and chance to play their own way as they notice the ‘variants in sonic detail’ Lockwood’s object placements have created. uplifting women composers around the world, it includes over 60 pieces that can be sequenced together as a ‘ritual installation’, lasting up to seven With her unique approach to space, Maria de Alver offers smaller, but no hours. Through the project, Cahill draws from a diverse pool of pieces for less formative, changes to piano music, using Intenso to build a metered, the piano, tracing a lineage of work that spans from the 1700s to now. distanced sound that is wholly her own. Intenso sounds both assertive and unsettled. It pairs effortlessly with Aida Shirazi’s Albumblatt, a work of Motivated by a lack of representation in the classical canon, Cahill wanted stop-start contradiction in which the Iranian composer attempts to ramp to redress our agreed upon history of music, finding music from female up intensity while sustaining tension. On Shirazi’s Soundcloud page, an composers who worked around the world without gaining historical image accompanies the piece with plain text that reads “Hi! Have a great recognition, while also emphasising the importance of work being made by day pretending everything is normal!”. The piano is practically playing those musicians today. Usually performing the work as a ‘marathon’, intending words, revelling in the chaos. for listeners to absorb the concert the way they would an exhibition, this Completing Cahill’s programme is Preludio y Estudio, an impassioned lockdown-ready version highlights six of the artists found in Cahill’s work from Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, written in tribute to Jesua repertoire. Palancares, a fictional Mexican revolutionary who serves as the iconic main character of Elena Poniatowska’s novel Hasta no verte Jesu. 60 pieces is a huge undertaking, but Cahill has gotten close and personal with each composition she’s chosen to perform. She has chosen these Profile: Sarah Cahill works for a number of reasons, bringing together pieces teeming with https://hcmf.co.uk/programme/sarah-cahill/ historical significance, political action and groundbreaking musicality. She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees is commissioned by Sarah Cahill Friday 20 // November ONLINE EVENT 15 Space Afrika + Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh Afrika + Tibyan Space

Space Afrika + Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh 9pm / Online Space Afrika’s music, the duo building people up above their collection of Space Afrika music / direction abstracted field recordings. Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh production / direction

Joshua Inyang (UK, 1991), Joshua Reid (UK, 1992), Tibyan Mahawah This has, in actuality, always been the way Space Afrika do things, at Sanoh (UK, 1995) least on the radio. Their NTS broadcasts mix music from an international Untitled (To Describe You) WORLD PREMIERE (2020) 12’ community of artists, people who have their own corners of the world to share. The duo sign their signature next to them, submerging what they find into their own sound world. On their hybtwibt? broadcast, they built on their On their records, Space Afrika respond to where they’re from, translating a own collection of found sound, opening up new spaces for voices to filter lifelong relationship with Manchester into music. They turn familiarity, the through, starting with Vivian Sessoms’ impassioned eulogy for Erica Garner. dependency found in belonging somewhere, into a kind of ambient sound. Further into the mix, there’s a moment where they collaged snippets of the On Primrose Avenue, their 2015 album for Where To Now? they traded in poem that cycles through Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, splicing his a bright, perpetual strand of techno, insulating the listener as they follow words together with field recordings of glass shards. Connecting cities and a trail of city sound. They followed it with Somewhere Decent to Live, a countries where black people are fighting against the same state violence, stranger, more aloof record that was ultimately a little further away from the the duo’s sound editing bridged their side of the world to Lamar’s. dancefloor. Characterised by icy chords, crackling percussion and wobbling vocals – the kind that meet the surface and shimmer on it – the record At hcmf// 2020, Space Afrika continue to expand their sound world, pairing carried a different kind of warmth. With the density of city sprawl, it exuded their music with visuals from Tibyan Mahawah Sanoh. A Manchester-born photographer and filmmaker who provided the artwork forhybtwibt? , the comfort that comes from knowing your hometown, communing with it at Sanoh is interested in creating art that documents personal histories and night when there’s no one else around. Both records could be read as being ‘individual identities’. Her imagery works in tandem with Space Afrika’s about Space Afrika’s Manchester; both, in their way, sound local and lived in. mixtape, half-illuminating the voices that emerge throughout it. Building on their work together in this piece, Space Afrika follow the same trajectories, Initially pulled together for an NTS broadcast, Space Afrika’s mixtape reflecting nationally on black British culture in modern Britain. ‘We aim to hybtwibt? expands on their records by broadening the map. Instead of the capture the energy vibrating through the world at this moment’, they say, comforting hum of home, there’s movement, upheaval, and loss, shared ‘translating and channelling the grief, pain, frustration and desperation across global collectives. Made in response to ‘the grief, pain, frustration caused as a result of worldwide events’. and desperation’ caused by police brutality and violent, state-authorised racism, the mix expands Space Afrika’s map, pulling together the voices of a Commissioned by hcmf// worldwide community of black people. Voices and words are made so much more prevalent on the mix; messages of protest, eulogy, history and anguish rise up out of the chiming and hissing dub techno palette that defines Friday 20 // November ONLINE EVENT 16 Kelly Jayne Jones Kelly

Kelly Jayne Jones

9.30pm / Online

Kelly Jayne Jones sound / voice Blackhaine dancer K Craig film IMPATV camera / location Guilluame Dujat mixing / additional processing Oli Barrett mastering

Kelly Jayne Jones (UK, 1980) A Fire That Had To Burn Forever WORLD PREMIERE (2020) 10’

Permanently busy but never settled, Kelly Jayne Jones has spent the last five years counterpointing herself, developing new things that are always vastly different from what they’re following. In recent times alone, she’s released a new tape of hauntology tunes on Bloxham Tapes, soundtracked installations, taken part in experimental operas and stapled contact mics to rocks. She’s gone from the improvised psychedelic experiments of her duo, part wild horses mane on both sides, as seen at hcmf// 2016, to developing solo work across both audio and film. Her 2019 performance was one of the strangest things the festival has ever seen, with Jones conjuring up astral images and deep-diving drones.

A new collaboration with filmmaker K Craig and dancer Blackhaine, A Fire That Had To Burn Forever offers a demonic vision of a new age complete with with robotized vocals, contorted dance movements and warped geological environments. Combining with Jones’ own spoken word poetry, the film pieces together fragments of nature, placing Blackhaine’s movements across rural woodlands and dimension-travelling portals. Both bleak and playful, A Fire That Had To Burn Forever is a sensory overload packed with seismic events – like, say, the sun collapsing – made small and personal by Jones’ music. The film comes from a larger audiovisual project the trio will be releasing on Café Oto’s new digital label TakuRoku.

Friday 20 // November BROADCAST EVENT 17 Explore Ensemble Explore

Explore Ensemble

10pm / BBC Radio 3 New Music Show

Taylor MacLennan flute Interested in what he’s called ‘bad taste’, Lawrence Dunn is good at Alex Roberts flute following his heart. His music embraces melody and celebrates emotional Sarah Park piano expression, playing around with the radical idea of good communication. David Lopez violin His music can be beautiful, utilising heart-tugging strings and foggy chords, Morag Robertson viola and also delightfully playful, as per the frolicking stray notes of For Piano Deni Teo cello (Dancing). His 2016 work Sentimental Drifting Music fits into the former Nicholas Moroz artistic director / electronics category, floating freely through the ether with next to nothing in the way of interruption. As a programme note, Dunn simply says ‘for Martin Arnold’, Joanna Bailie (UK, 1973) honouring the warmth and togetherness of the Canadian composer’s Dissolve (Radio Version) WORLD PREMIERE (2020) 24’ music, the joyful way he approaches chaos and displacement.

Lawrence Dunn (UK, 1991) With a body of work that investigates memory, nostalgia and transition, Sentimental Drifting Music (2016, rev. 2018) 12’ Joanna Baillie’s music plays on our warped understanding of history. Working with acoustic instrumentation, field recordings and panoramic Oliver Leith (UK, 1991) visuals, she renders environments that feel just out of focus, not quite as Me Hollywood WORLD PREMIERE (2020) 15’ they were. In her hands, the past becomes a kind of science fiction. Her new work Dissolve continues to expand on the audio-visual language she’s Explore Ensemble’s performance at hcmf// 2016 was so good it developed in pieces such as Roll Call, taking a unique way of presenting immediately earned them a sequel. They returned in 2017 with stunning material – in this case, the ‘dissolve’ edit that used to dominate film media new works for ensemble and electronics, as well as in 2018 for a – and using it to recreate moments in our memory. This radio version of collaboration with EXAUDI. With their ninth year as an ensemble around the the piece makes use of field recordings made on the street, as well as an corner, Explore have become a festival favourite, proven masters of taking ensemble of musicians playing a heavily fragmented piece of music. With the most radical, ‘rarely heard’ music out there and making a home for it. Dissolve, Bailie continues to run with the wicked conflict that exists in her In a broadcast of new music for hcmf// 2020, they continue to embrace new compositions: something ‘concrete’ in the found sound meets something ideas from new artists, performing work by three dramatically different ‘abstract’ in music, resulting in what she describes as a ‘dream-like, composers. alienating version of an ordinary activity’. It’s another uncanny fake reality to go with the other ones she’s made up. Earlier this year, London-based composer Oliver Leith released good day good day bad day bad day, a jaw-droppingly gorgeous album for piano Profile: Joanna Bailie and percussion that compassionately looked at the ‘obsessions and https://hcmf.co.uk/joanna-bailie/ compulsions’ that surface in our lives. A heady mix of tender melodies and doomy noise, the piece demonstrated Leith’s pluralistic approach to Produced by hcmf// in partnership with BBC Radio 3 material, his way of embracing the contradictions that we go through as people, serving up both the ‘debilitating’ and ‘beautiful’ feelings that come Explore Ensemble is supported by Arts Council England's Emergency Response into play in our every day lives. In what has been a very busy year for Leith, Fund, The Hinrichsen Foundation, PRS Foundation's Open Fund and The RVW Trust his new piece Me Hollywood now receives its UK Premiere. Me Hollywood is co-commissioned by Explore Ensemble and hcmf//

Dissolve is co-commissioned by Explore Ensemble, November Music and hcmf// New Signings

... the fury of punk rock, the nervous brilliance of free jazz and the intransigence of classical modernism. “—Alex Ross, The New Yorker

Clouded Yellow (2010) for amplified string quartet

Listen View score

Natural History (2016) for orchestra, Native American drummers and spatial instruments

Michael Gordon Listen View score

David Lang has achieved what few composers do ... a definitive sound that is popular, versatile, simple and “instantly recognisable.—Kate Molleson, Gramophone

mountain (2014) for orchestra

Listen View score

the little match girl passion (2008) for chamber choir, plus 4 voices (SATB) each playing simple percussion Listen View score David Lang

Wolfe’s commitment to a pluralist populism—in both musical style and political content—may make her the most relevant“ Bang [on a Can] composer to the current moment. —William Robin, The New Yorker

Fire in my mouth (2019) for choir and orchestra

Listen View score

Cruel Sister (2004) for string orchestra

Julia Wolfe Listen View score Saturday 21 // November ONLINE EVENT 19 Jess Baker Jess

Music At Play: Session 1

10am / Online

Zoom workshop for newborns and children up to 3 years old

Places are free, but must be booked in advance. To book your place, please contact hcmf// Learning & Participation Officer Sophie Cooper at [email protected]

Join songwriter and musician Jess Baker for a beautiful lullaby singing session for you and your child.

Jess will guide the session, singing songs in lots of different languages that are easy for you to learn and sing along with at home. Your microphone will be off so no one else will hear you sing apart from you and your family.

Singing to your baby is proven to have lots of benefits, including helping to develop their communication skills – through song, babies learn how to combine words to form a sentence. Don’t worry if you don’t think you’re a good singer – your child will love your voice no matter how in tune you are.

Jess Baker is a singer, songwriter and community musician who believes that music should be accessible to all. She specialises in harmony group singing and runs workshops in mental health settings, prisons and schools.

Find out more about Jess and her practice at https://www.jess-sings.co.uk/

Produced by hcmf// Saturday 21 // November ONLINE EVENT 20 The riot Ensemble © Graham Hardy © Graham The riot Ensemble

Podcast: The Riot Ensemble

1pm / Online

It’s been five years since the Riot Ensemble gave their debuthcmf// performance. It was obvious, even back then, how large their impact on contemporary music would be. Performing works by three emerging composers, all of which they had workshopped together closely, their 2015 performance carried all the hallmarks we now know them by; passionate not only about the music, they were invested in the journey of the composers, and in bringing to life their ‘wild and bizarre worlds’. Someone’s got to be there for the weirder side of things. It’s in the name.

Since then, Riot have become a mainstay at hcmf//, bringing about massive new works, often commissions, from Laurence Osborn, Nikolet Bursynsyka, Evan Johnson, Ann Cleare and many others. They have morphed and mutated, adapting to the free-thinking experiments of their collaborating composers. They have happily encouraged artists who subvert tropes and traditions, finding a way to carry this radical work into existence, and proving to young artists that nothing’s off the table when you’re writing up your next piece.

Like the Riot Ensemble, hcmf// has spent the last decade upping the ante when it comes to supporting and developing the work of emerging artists. Our work with Riot doesn’t just exist in the concert hall: this year, we joined with them to put together six new Zeitgeist commissions, a means of contributing new opportunities for artists wading through the current crisis. Riot have put the work in when it’s been needed most, braving new ideas through all storms.

In this illuminating podcast, Riot Artistic Director and conductor Aaron Holloway-Nahum looks back on half a decade of hcmf// happenings, tracing his ensemble’s journey from 2015 to now. With insights on what it’s like to put together music programmes and feed into your music community, he provides a fascinating look at the modern role of a music group, and the responsibility of handling a new artist’s work.

Saturday 21 // November ONLINE EVENT 21 Speak Percussion © Bryony Jackson © Bryony Speak Percussion

Speak Percussion + Lamine Sonko

3pm / Online

Released in 1992, Hyenas was directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty, a director Eugene Ughetti zither / bass drum (muted and open) / tom toms / bongos who had a brief but emphatic impact on Senegalese cinema. Based on congas (muted and open) / kalimba / waldteufel / melodica / train whistle the stage play The Visitor, Mambéty’s film is built on an eerie premise: a kick bass drum / japanese temple bowls / marimba / foley sounds / woman returns to her hometown, a commune in Dakar, having amassed maracas great wealth, and promises to make the residents rich if they commit an Kaylie Melville marimba / snare drum / bass drum / kalimba / djembe / act of revenge for her. The film carries disturbing irony and a wry sense floor tom / temple bowls / cymbals / quartz bowl / shakers / glass bottles / of humour, Sonko pointing to it as an allegory of ‘wealth, corruption, and river stones / finger cymbals consumerism’. It also carries cultural elements Sonko recognises in Lamine Sonko cow bell / balla drum / thiole drum / kalimba / djembe / Senegal: ‘One thing I really like about the film is that the narrative is rare. dun-dun bass drum / chinese cymbal / clap sticks / coconut shakers / It’s very different to the usual narrative we hear or see about African culture, shekeres / balafon, log drum / woure / acoustic guitar / calabash (gourd) / and it’s important that work like this can be highlighted for people to see’. groove tubes / png pipes / talking drum / kora (harp) Based in Melbourne, Sonko has been an artist his whole life, and credits Tilman Robinson audio editing / mixing his Gewel heritage as a driving force behind his practice. He comes from Eugene Ughetti (Australia, 1980), Lamine Sonko (Senegal, 1984), Kaylie a family of artists. His parents both worked in the National Theatre of Melville (Australia, 1986), Tilman Robinson (Germany, 1985) Senegal, also touring their work internationally; from a young age, his Before Nightfall #12 Hyenas UK PREMIERE (2020) 43’ siblings got into poetry and dance, finding their own outlet. As for Sonko, he was keen to develop as a musician. He was part of the Swiss-based Compagnie des Cries, fronted the afro-beat band the African Intelligence Escapologists at heart, Speak Percussion like to put themselves under and has released a wide range of albums, eschewing any one particular intense conditions and see how they come out on the other side. The genre. In his work, he is keen to uphold the Griot practice: ‘Griots are known Australian ensemble seeks out ambitious, conceptualised projects that as historians of West African oral history. They hold a secret language ‘redefine the potential of percussion’. Their newest project, Before Nightfall, of rhythm that has been around for centuries.’ Through this medium, he is about chance collaboration and quick turnaround, each edition of the strives to unite the ancient and modern elements of his culture’s history. project seeing the group working with a new guest artist over the course of a day. After getting to know each other, rehearsing together, and establishing Sonko keeps his culture at the core of what he does, both in and outside of potential ideas, they produce a live performance that becomes the next Senegal. ‘In Australia, I want to make sure I stay connected with my roots Before Nightfall. by incorporating the Gewel knowledge in all of my work’. Using Hyenas as a visual representation, the music he contributes to Before Nightall #12 is an They like surprises, Speak Percussion, and 2020 is as good a curveball as attempt at musically unfolding the motifs you see on screen. ‘In the Hyena any: under Covid-19 conditions, the ‘live’ element of Before Nightfall has film there are lots of cultural symbols and rhythms that inform the way I been thrown out of the window. They’ve spent this year making new editions approach my composition. I dig deep into the meaning of those cultural of the project that respond to film, rescoring old visuals with new music. In symbols and rhythms –I incorporate that in my composition in this film’. Before Nightfall #12, they worked with Senegalese percussionist Lamine Sonko, who suggested they adapt the soundtrack of Hyenas. The piece Supported by City of Melbourne and City of Darebin; Hyenas is produced by Thelma retains the same intensity as previous editions of the project; what you hear Film and Pierre-Alain Meier; directed and written by Djibril Diop Mambèty with as you watch the film is a real-time response to the images on screen, the cinematography by Mathias Kälin; edited for adaptation by Bernadette Murray and intuition of a group of artists who have just met and are instinctively learning Loredana Cristelli; audio recording by Michael Hewes from one another. Saturday 21 // November ONLINE EVENT 22 Claudia Molitor and Anna Koch Claudia Molitor

Anna Koch + Claudia Molitor

7.30pm / Online

Anna Koch film Claudia Molitor film / music

Anna Koch (Sweden) & Claudia Molitor (UK/Germany, 1974) handle with care versamt WORLD PREMIERE (2020) '30

Claudia Molitor’s music tells us stories about nature’s course. Her work starts with listening, paying close attention to the music being provided to us by our surroundings. She's written several pieces that reveal to us the sound of objects: Sonorama, a train-journey soundtrack, as well as The Singing Bridge, which gave a voice to London’s Waterloo Bridge. At hcmf// 2019, she performed the final edition of her collaborative workDecay , an open-ended improvisation in which performers acted as a conduit for a continuing piece of music that lived its own life. She also premiered new audiovisual works she’d made for a sound installation which slowed down time, inviting audiences to experience focused, absorbed listening.

A dancer, choreographer and director, Anna Koch’s work attempts to drive the world of dance forward. As the founder of Weld, she has tried to push against the perceived limitations of the genre, ‘developing the idea of what a dance company can be today’. Through new and experimental approaches to rhythm and repetition, she also likes to challenge what can be choreographed, examining the physical arrangement of ‘voices, hands and objects’. Used to applying her style to spaces, and to finding the choreography in places and things, her work shares subtle linkages with Molitor’s, looking beyond the tradition of dance to a new, all-encompassing version of it.

Molitor and Koch have used their digital downtime to work on a collaboration that explores ‘separation and connection’, thinking not only about the two spaces they’re living in, but the ‘movement’ between the two that happens when they communicate. The resulting film piece focuses in on the small, unnoticed things around them, the duo moving and choreographing objects and combining them with sounds that have been ‘foraged’ for, collected from the suppressed local environments still breathing around them.

Commissioned by hcmf// Saturday 21 // November ONLINE EVENT 23 Matt Wright

Matt Wright

9pm / Online

Matt Wright laptop / samples

Matt Wright (UK, 1977) Locked Hybrids WORLD PREMEIRE (2020) 30’

A producer, improviser, composer and several other things too, Matt Wright knows how to pay attention. A renowned turntablist, he has brought sample culture to contemporary music, taking his obsession with small snippets of sound and applying it to what he writes for ensembles. Electronic music has taught him to extract and expand, to take something small and make it significant. He has also spent years sharing and collaborating, working with an endless list of horn players, drummers, solo artists and music groups.

Locked Hybrids is another chapter in Wright’s ever-expanding collaborative relationship with saxophonist Evan Parker. The artists have been improvising together for years, building on Trance Map, a recorded document of their time matching up Wright’s fractured electronics with Parker’s unique free jazz dialect. They were seen together last year closing hcmf// 2019 in Parker’s explosive ensemble improvisation, going all out with as many instruments and laptops as they could fit on stage. This time, though, Wright works alone. Having trawled through hours of improvised material recorded from jam sessions with Parker, he has organized the saxophonist’s signature sound into new shapes, creating Locked Hybrids.

It’s an edit – an Evan Parker edit. ‘I’m making mirrors’, Wright says of the project. Through his lens, we experience an entire new side of the saxophonist, Wright approaching the project with the respect of a producer and the freedom of a DJ. He’s keen to point out that this is Parker’s music, but that we might notice something new in it by taking this sideways glance. Locked Hybrids is what it’s like to listen to listening.

Profile: Matt Wright https://hcmf.co.uk/matt-wright/

Commissioned by hcmf//

This performance is a special remix of Locked Hybrids, an album released on Relative Pitch Records on Friday November 20

Matt Wright would like to thank Filipe Gomes at Arco Barco for his support Saturday 21 // November BROADCAST EVENT 24 Heather Roche and Eva Zollner © Inga Geiser Heather Roche and Eva

Heather Roche + Eva Zöllner / GBSR Duo

10pm / BBC Radio 3 New Music Show Swedish composer Jonatan Sersam is interested in how contemporary Heather Roche clarinets music matches up to the ‘flow’ of sound – how we attempt to give ‘dramatic’ Eva Zöllner accordion structure to something that is, left to its own devices, abstract. He gives effusive descriptions of his piece passing lodestones, describing the ways it Rachel Beja (Israel, 1984) ‘proposes a melody’, and how parts of the music ‘aspire to become linear’. Petrichor UK PREMIERE (2020) 11‘ The piece sees him contemplate music’s shape, and the way it may move Jonatan Sersam (Sweden, 1986) in and out of form, the material ‘attracting and repelling’ on its way to passing lodestones WORLD PREMEIRE (2020) 8‘ synthesis.

Lina Järnegard (Sweden, 1983) Lina Järnegard was on residency in Chile when she wrote In wind, water In wind, waiting and water UK PREMIERE (2020) 9’ and waiting. She wanted to write something that represented the long, Johan Svensson (Sweden, 1983) now indefinite wait for justice the country is going through in the wake of a double dubbing (firefly song) UK PREMIERE (2020) 10’ delay to crucial votes to amend the country’s constitution. In her time there, she witnessed a wave of mass demonstrations, before seeing the despair brought by Covid-related delays. Titled after a series of Sylvia Plath poems, As a duo, Heather Roche and Eva Zöllner put together two musical the piece is the sound of waiting, its use of clarinet and accordion echoing superpowers, combining their extremely versatile approaches to the sound of a wind. ‘The effect is an organic sound that resembles the contemporary performance. A clarinetist who has explored her instrument wind, or maybe a distant ocean’, writes Järnegard, with words from Plath on a microscopic level, Roche has been called ‘the queen of multiphonics’, ‘whispered into the clarinet, not heard as distinct words but to shape the using extended techniques to extract new layers and tones. One of the most airy sound’. Wind is supposed to carry change: In wind, water and waiting is prolific accordion players of her generation, Zöllner works closely with a hymn for those holding on to hope. collaborators and composers to discover, through their lens, new ways of playing the instrument. Johan Svensson’s work interrogates the relationship between human and machine, and what dynamics emerge when both play music simultaneously. Since their appearance at hcmf// 2018, Roche and Zöllner have been His new work double dubbing (firefly song) locates Roche and Zöllner on a working extensively, responding to a spate of Covid-cancelled concerts floor of wires with speakers attached to them, all of them connected to one by recording their recent Mechanics of Breath repertoire, celebrating of his signature ‘custom-made devices’. The work sees the performers and composers from Sweden and elsewhere in Europe, into an album. In their the electronic objects racing to replicate one another, Svensson ‘exploring hcmf// 2020 broadcast, Roche and Zöllner continue their business of being situations in which certain aspects of the behavior of an agent are instantly groundbreaking in a dozen different ways, inviting work from composers imitated by the other ones’. In his piece, Roche and Zöllner become one with vastly different focuses – all of them united in a radical approach. of Svensson’s sound sources, combining and multiplying the sounds generated by his machines. In Petrichor, Rachel Beja thinks about the relationship that exists between the instruments she’s writing for, identifying the ways in which Roche’s Profile: Johan Svensson clarinet and Zöllner’s accordion can synthesize into one, singular sound– https://hcmf.co.uk/programme/heather-roche-eva-zollner/ and also how they can spiral out of contact. Describing it as ‘sometimes stable’, she’s created a piece that ultimately strays from its roots, echoing Produced by hcmf// in partnership with BBC Radio 3 the way that her performers have trespassed on tradition and dabbled in extended techniques. Though it starts at what she calls ‘the center’, Beja wrote Petrichor to ‘spread to the edges’, becoming anything but a straight- forward journey. Saturday 21 // November BROADCAST EVENT 25 GBSR Duo © Dejan Mrdja

create a tangled web of music for them to put into place. In the children’s George Barton percussion game spillikins, ‘players have to remove sticks from a pile without moving Siwan Rhys piano the others’. So imagine that, but for music: lots of patterns, seemingly Angharad Davies violin unrelated, thrown out without instruction. Rhys and Barton follow the trail of musical snippets created by Gieshoff and work out ways to read and order Arne Gieshoff (Germany, 1988) them, ‘never fully deciphering’ the twisted medley of percussion, piano and Spillikins WORLD PREMIERE (2018) 16’ electronics he’s kickstarted for them.

Angharad Davies (UK) Without a purpose or plan, GBSR Duo have used these spare months of Rydal Mount (2012) 15’ lockdown to try out making improvisations, surprising themselves with the artistic abandon they got from not having to brainstorm in advance, or work Piano-percussion duo George Barton and Siwan Rhys wowed hcmf// towards a deadline. Recording music separately, they came together to audiences last year with a performance of Nicholas Moroz’s new piece combine their recordings, creating a daisy chain of improvisations that have Intralatent. It was a sign of how far they’ve come: while GBSR Duo been built on top of each other one by one. This free-playing spirit comes have only been active since 2013, those seven years have seen seismic in handy for their performance of Angharad Davies’ Rydal Mount. Joined by transformations in what they do. The duo have staked out an interest in the violinist, they work their way through a collection of 50 photos Davies working with modern composers in unique environments, expanding their and her partner took while clearing out her grandmother’s house after her repertoire dramatically. With a history of performing on their own and in passing. Davies decided to collage them as a ‘stimulus for a performance’, different groups, the duo pool together years of experience as interpreters, with her, Rhys and Barton responding to them as a kind of graphic score. alchemising faithful listening and inventive translation. Long admirers of Davies’ work, GBSR Duo recently struck up a working relationship with her – Rydal Mount is an early taste of them getting to know GBSR Duo have had an absolutely ridiculous year. They’ve navigated a one another, live in the process. fatalistic reign of chaos that’s seen them cancel concerts, finish new albums and turn their living room into a makeshift practice space. They Read our catch up with GBSR Duo at finished work on Oliver Leith’sgood day good day bad day bad day, a https://hcmf.co.uk/catching-up-with-gbsr-duo/ stunning new work released on Another Timbre, hours before the UK went into six months of lockdown. They’ve since been working on all sorts of Produced by hcmf// in partnership with BBC Radio 3 smaller, more spontaneous projects, contributing music to Strange and Unprecedented Times, a new compilation on Nonclassical, as well as Spillikins is commissioned by hcmf// digitising a lot of their planned performances for the year.

A founding member of Explore Ensemble, Arne Gieshoff’s new work Spillikins puts Rhys and Barton in amongst the weeds. Written specifically for the duo, it has been in the pipeline for a while, and sees Gieshoff Sound and Music Podcast a place where extraordinary new music and ideas are brought to life

Join our CEO Susanna Eastburn MBE and composer Des Oliver as they explore conversations and music with some of the most original and captivating composers of today.

New episodes just out, including a GBSR duo appearance.

Featuring Jem Finer, Elaine Mitchener, Chaya Czernowin Richard Rijnvos, Cassandra Miller, Supriya Nagarajan Gerald Barry, Matthew Shlomowitz, Joanna Ward Nathan Riki Thomson, Amble Skuse, Anthony R Green Shabaka Hutchings, Alwynne Pritchard, Oliver Leith Errollyn Wallen, Richard Ayres, Hannah Catherine Jones

soundandmusic.org/discover/podcast Sunday 22 // November ONLINE EVENT 27

Music At Play: Session 2

10.30am / Online Before the session, you’ll need to collect the following items:

Zoom workshop for 3 - 5 year olds. For the Kazoo: Toilet or kitchen paper cardboard roll Workshop price: £7.50 (includes your instrument building kit Paper to cover the roll and postage costs) Glue or sellotape Baking paper Places are free, but are limited and must be booked in Elastic band advance. To book your place, please contact hcmf// Learning & Decorations: paint, colouring pens, stickers, anything you like! Participation Officer Sophie Cooper [email protected] For the Cardboard box guitar: Join our Learning & Participation Officer, Sophie Cooper, for a fun, Shoebox (or similar sized box) make-a-long musical instrument building session and jam. Scissors Long elastic bands x 3/4 Sophie is a music for early years specialist and will guide your little Decorations: as above one through the process of making a kazoo and a cardboard box guitar. The session will end with a singing and playing session, using the new Produced by hcmf// instruments to introduce some basic music theory.

Created especially for 3 – 5 year olds, this fun-filled session has been designed to encourage children’s listening, attention and imagination skills, as well as supporting fine motor skills development.

Sunday 22 // November ONLINE EVENT 28 Darragh Morgan © Steve Stills © Steve Morgan Darragh

Darragh Morgan

1pm / Online

researching, collecting and documenting traditional Iranian folk music, Darragh Morgan violin taking these roots and applying them to her chamber compositions. Born in Deirdre Cooper cello (in Farãghi) the late 1930s and active as a musician since the revolution in 1979, she was Shiva Feshareki (Britain/Iran, 1987) one of the country’s first composers to study contemporary music in the Zohra (2018) 5’ West, and has become one of the world’s leading ethnomusicologists.

Fozié Majd (Iran, 1938) Joining these artists in Morgan’s hcmf// performance are two composers Farãghi (In Absentia) UK PREMIERE (2017) 2’ from Iran’s new wave. Arshia Samsaminia and Shiva Feshareki both augment their violin compositions with electronics. Feshareki’s Zohra Yannis Kyriakides (Cyprus, 1969) makes use of her live turntable manipulations, her stuttering drumwork Snake Music (Extract) (1993) 2’ interlocking with a constant stream of strings, as if pining for a breakbeat amidst a stubborn violin drone. Arshia Samsaminia’s music has been Amir Mahyar Tafreshipour (Iran, 1974) performed by some of the world’s most experimental ensembles; he Pendar (2017) 7’ creates stunning annotated scores that emphasise gesture and set up. At hcmf// 2020, Morgan gives the world premiere of his new work Beyond The Arshia Samsaminia (Iran, 1989) Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. Beyond The Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response WORLD PREMIERE (2020) 3’ With an excerpt from Yannis Kyriakides’ Snake Music completing his performance, Morgan has conceived a programme that takes us outside of Renowned for his nuanced approach to the violin, Darragh Morgan has had our homes, immersing us in the Iranian culture that informs these pieces a prolific career performing and recording new music, while also stretching of music. Supported by ‘video footage of iconic salt lakes, mountains and the genre’s definition across international borders. He has played pretty desert landscapes of Iran’, his performance emphasises the life that goes much everything, pretty much everywhere, touring tirelessly as a member with the music. Morgan has used his choice of repertoire to create a fully of the Smith Quartet as well as the Fidelio Trio. Throughout his career, he transportive experience, filling out the space between pieces with field has built long-lasting collaborations, including working with artists such as recordings from Baluchistan and interviews with the composers about their Iranian composer Amir Mahyar Tarfeshipour over years of music. The result work. is an artist who interprets music thoughtfully and carefully, offering lyrical and vulnerable interpretations of the pieces he has built a relationship with. With thanks to The Hinrichsen Foundation and The RVW Trust for their support in the recording of Pendar at The Picture Gallery, Royal Holloway, University Morgan recorded Amir Mahyar Tafreshipour’s Pendar and Fozié Majd’s of London, as well as the Austrian Cultural Forum London for filming the Farãghi (In Absentia) last year as part of an album showcasing modern performances of Farãghi (In Absentia), Beyond The Autonomous Sensory Meridian Iranian composers. Both artists are known for their innovative approaches Response, Zohra and Snake Music and for their cultivation of an ‘Iranian avant-garde’. Previously appearing as the conductor of Tafreshipour’s opera The Doll Behind the Curtain, Morgan has a long history with his work. He takes the instrumentalist’s seat for Pendar, a gorgeous work of fluttering notes that are taken through a cycle of instruments. Here, Morgan takes a version for solo violin. In Majd’s Farãghi (In Absentia), he honours a composer known for her work Sunday 22 // November ONLINE EVENT 29 Hayley Suviste Hayley

Hayley Suviste

3pm / Online

Hayley Suviste electronics 'As Manchester’s streets and skyline are warped by the ever-accelerating process of urban renewal, the city’s edgelands and green spaces are at risk Hayley Suviste (UK, 1996) Edgeland WORLD PREMIERE 25' of being swallowed by waves of property development. Not only does this raise questions about the ecology of the city, as carbon sinks are flattened Working across archival sound, electronic hardware and live and wildlife is displaced, but it speaks to broader trends pushing urban instrumentation, Hayley Suviste uses her music to explore community and residents away from shared space, community and local identity. culture. Her work celebrates specific identities and traditions of the world, drawing on first-hand oral histories and working closely with those who This project shines a light on these spaces and the activists, academics, can provide the most accurate document of their environment. Recent and local people who have taken up the daunting fight against corporate work from Suviste has included In Those Days, an arrangement of field interests in the city in the name of biodiversity, urban ecology and recordings made to interpret the urban landscape photography of Shirley community wellbeing. As we are faced with crises of both environment Baker, and Lōka, a spatialised composition written alongside Bengali folk and mental health, the role of public green spaces has become ever more musicians, historians and archivists that immerses the listener in the crucial in the eyes of those who enjoy, nurture, and maintain them. experiences of Bengali workers who migrated to the UK in the 1950s. As the tide of urban growth edges closer to the open boundaries of Evident in all of Suviste’s work is the social trail of history, the impact an our shared spaces, the trees, wildlife and insects continue their gentle environment has on the community it looks after – as well as the impact movement, unaware that these spaces are likely reaching the end of their we have on it. Recent works such as Unfrozen Neva consider the transition rich lineage. If nothing else, this project documents these final days.' we’re going through with our world, documenting the impact of global warming on the usually frozen solid, but now free-flowing River Neva in - Hayley Suviste St. Petersburg. Through her work, she looks outward, relating technical innovations – including multichannel, ambisonic and binaural formats – to Commissioned by hcmf// the traditional ways we share community stories. Along with her work as a composer, she runs The Manchester Ear, a sound walk group aiming to ‘get communities involved with listening to the environment on excursions in and around Manchester’. Sunday 22 // November ONLINE EVENT 30 Raymond MacDonald and Rachel Joy Weiss Raymond MacDonald and Rachel Joy

Raymond MacDonald + Rachel Joy Weiss

7.30pm / Online

MacDonald and Weiss have had vastly different careers, but they share a fair Raymond MacDonald saxophones / voice / percussion / objects few experiences in common. Both have traversed a wide range of genres: Rachel Joy Weiss piano / voice / percussion / electronics / objects MacDonald has worked with artists as versatile as post-punk legend Raymond MacDonald (UK, 1967), Rachel Joy Weiss (USA/Israel, 1985) David Byrne and experimental artist Jim O’Rourke, while Weiss has flitted Duet for 2 people who have never met: Episodes 1-5 WORLD PREMIERE between contemporary composition and the pop world, while also drawing (2020) 30’ on her history as an opera singer. Both are keen to explore the tipping point that exists just beyond composition – the moment where organised sound is manipulated and riffed upon. And both artists are capable of making work Raymond MacDonald and Rachel Joy Weiss have never met, but they have that combines and expands on their palette, drawing as much from melodic collaborated. In an effort to go headfirst into the ‘shifting tectonic plates of music as abstract sound. Duet for 2 people who have never met sees them communication’ brought about by the Covid-19 lockdown, the duo decided share duties, exploring object-made sound alongside their instruments in a to explore the possibilities of online improvisation, not only wrestling with way that is ‘mutually supportive’. Because right now, it’s good to branch out hearing each other play for the first time, but also wading through the together. muddy waters of limited perception and spotty internet connection. Initiated by a series of improvisation sessions with Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, the duo’s online collaboration is in no way intended as a consolation prize; to make it worthwhile, MacDonald and Weiss shot for a performance that would be wholly its own, ‘facilitating new ways of working, seeing and hearing’.

Implementing instrumentation and found objects, Duet for 2 people who have never met serves as a musical representation of ‘nature’s unremitting power to change our lives’, the music playing out as a humble act of resistance against our new enforced environments. The duo refer to it as ‘an innovative strategy to overcome adversity’; consummate improvisers in their own right, they are more than capable of chancing it, framing their free-playing skills as a built-up method of survival. With both artists used to creating new scenarios and inventing projects on the fly, it seems natural that they’d respond to lockdown by making a new connection. Sunday 22 // November ONLINE EVENT 31 Ziad Nawfal © Nour Raad Ziad Nawfal

Podcast: Ziad Nawfal

8.30pm / Online

Ziad Nawfal has been making himself busy in the Beirut underground for nearly three decades now. He got his start in a legit role, playing music on Beirut’s government station Radio Liban. Always existing on the periphery of the station, and proudly flouting its rules, Nawfal programmed a show with a DIY ethos, playing lesser-known tunes from indie, psychedelic and experimental circles. He later became a DJ and promoter around the city, continuing to discover the hidden alternative scenes of Lebanon and the wider Middle East. He’s been active ever since, using his radio shows, as well as his record label Ruptured, to join up the eclectic range of sounds going on in the region.

In 2013, Nawfal took over as the Managing Director of Irtijal – a music festival that has brought together experimental and free jazz sounds to Beirut since the start of the millennium. Under his direction, the festival has expanded its reach, programming ‘electronic, post-rock and modern Arabic music’. Now, Irtijal defines itself not by genre, but by innovation, choosing to celebrate radical communities who make whatever they want. Always expanding, Irtijal connects Beirut’s scenes to one another, while also hosting experimental artists from around the world.

Through the years, Nawfal has become increasingly interested in documenting Beirut’s scenes. In 2010 he published Untitled Tracks, a history of the city’s experimental music told through gig photography and artist testimonial. Ten years on, he’s still curating, releasing and broadcasting the music emerging from the country. In this hour-long missive, he highlights unreleased and rare music from prominent Lebanese musicians, bringing together ‘realms of experimental and electronic music’ as featured at his time at Irtijal, in his work with Ruptured or on his long-running shows on Radio Lebanon. Nawfal’s podcast will include conversations with these artists, providing an oral history of Beirut’s legendary underground.

Sunday 22 // November BROADCAST EVENT 32 James Dillon © Simon Jay Price James Dillon

Dillon @ 70

10pm / BBC Radio 3 New Music Show edition of a cycle in four parts (including Temenos, strophe a, Circe and London Sinfonietta strophe b), and emerges from the speculative world-building Dillon likes Geoffrey Paterson conductor to do. It takes what he calls ‘the form of an interlocking ritual, the ritual of James Dillon (UK, 1950) music itself: its performance, and its sorcery’. Pharmakeia WORLD PREMIERE (2020) 60’ Joining Pharmakeia is something completely different: a piece of solo Noriko Kawai piano piano music from four years ago that has only now found its way to the stage. An artist whose piano work has been described by Tom Service as James Dillon (UK, 1950) ‘the most significant contribution to the pianist’s repertoire since Ligeti’s echo the angelus WORLD PREMIERE (2016) 30' Etudes’, Dillon’s Book of Elements series used the instrument to build an insurmountable tension. In this concert, renowned Japanese pianist Noriko James Dillon’s journey as a musician is synonymous with hcmf//. He Kawai will premiere echo the angelus, traversing the piece’s ‘eerie silences’ achieved one of his earliest milestones, the festival’s historic Young and ‘unsettling mood’. Composer’s Award, at its first ever edition. He has gone on to enjoy numerous commissions, premieres and performances over the last four Throughout her career Kawai has built an encyclopaedic repertoire of music decades, his music featuring in many landmark moments in hcmf// history both traditional and experimental, but Dillon has been a constant. Kawai – including 2017, when his new piece tanz/haus opened the festival’s 40th has maintained close contact with the composer’s work since 2006, when edition. Though it has changed and evolved over the years, his sound has she performed his piano piece Andromeda. She has had a long time to sit always belonged at hcmf//. with echo the angelus, but for her, it’s fate that it should reach the world in 2020. She says it echoes a world in lockdown: ‘it takes me to somewhere One of the world’s most acclaimed composers, Dillon’s route was unknown, a deadly silence, where fragile, transient memories leave unexpected: he initially played in bands, teaching himself how to play and poignant, bittersweet afterimages’. One of Dillon’s most evocative pieces compose music. In the past 40 years, he has gone on to make music that ever, Kawai characterises it as ‘heart-wrenching’, a piece that emphasises many consider the genre’s most daunting and complex. Really, though, the composer’s love of fragile, breaking sound. it is just that it is his, work that only an artist this restless could envision and execute. His music twists through modes of expression. At times it is Profile:James Dillon bombastic, employing striking phrases and intense bursts of energy; at https://hcmf.co.uk/programme/dillon-70/ others, it is enchantingly mysterious, referencing historic poetic tomes and ancient painters. Tangled up in Dillon’s web is a confounding kind of Pharmakeia is produced by London Sinfonietta in association with hcmf// and music: it pulls listeners in before having them pull it apart, all in search of Southbank Centre and co-commissioned by the London Sinfonietta and the an answer. Ensemble Intercontemporain

With Dillon @ 70, hcmf// 2020 celebrates not only the relationship the echo the angelus is produced in partnership with BBC Radio 3 festival has shared with the composer over the years, but also the twists and turns Dillon has taken with his music, The programme is marked by friendly Dillon @ 70 is supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation contrasts: commissioned by the London Sinfonietta and the Paris-based Ensemble InterContemporain, Pharmakeia for 16 players is the complete FIELDING TALENT 33 Jake Burdass © Sophie Cooper Burdass Jake

Fielding Talent @ hcmf// Sound Pioneers

Nurturing artistic talent has been at the heart of hcmf// since its inception In 2019, a partnership with the Centre for Research in New Music more than four decades ago. Ever since James Dillon was awarded the (CeReNeM) at the University of Huddersfield sawhcmf// provide five Young Composers’ Award at the inaugural festival in 1978, we’ve been participants with the opportunity to workshop and then compose a investing in the future of emerging composers and performers. new piece of electronic music using the University’s Huddersfield Immersive Sound System (HISS), an incredible 48-channel channel, Fielding Talent brings together all of the festival’s strands of talent 66-loudspeaker system. The works were then presented in a development activity to create a clear focus on this crucial aspect of our memorable day of concerts at hcmf// 2019. work – which has never been more important than in the challenging times that we’re currently living through. One of the 2019 participants, Georgia Rodgers will be presenting a new sound installation at Temporary Contemporary, an art gallery located in Through a number of different projects, we are addressing the specific Huddersfield’s Queensgate Market, throughout this year’s festival. needs of participating artists, offering opportunities that are relevant to the https://hcmf.co.uk/programme/georgia-rodgers-2/ stage of their career that they’re at and encouraging them to explore and develop their artistic vision and practice. For 2020, the project has been further developed by Yorkshire Sound Women Network (YSWN) and is running as Sound Pioneers – providing Talent development involves many different things; along with offering six residencies to create a new piece of music, three at the University of our artists an international platform from which to present their works, Huddersfield and three at the University of Hull. The artists undertaking we deliver a mentoring programme tailored for each artist, with the entire residencies at the University of Huddersfield are Lottie Sadd, Rachael hcmf// team made available to offer professional advice and support. Gibson and Nwando Ebizie.

Through its large-scale concerts and international audiences, hcmf// is Meet the Sound Pioneers: https://hcmf.co.uk/sound-pioneers/ able to provide artists with formative career moments. We can introduce a composer to new networks, raise the profile of an ensemble, and open Sound Pioneers is being delivered by YSWN in partnership with the up new creative avenues for young music creators. Fielding Talent aims University of Huddersfield, University of Hull,hcmf// and Brighter to be an essential part of an artist’s journey, opening up new pathways, Sound’s Both Sides Now programme. It is supported by the PRS opportunities and destinations. Foundation’s Open Fund for Organisations. hcmf// Young Curators’ Programme hcmf// is a PRS Foundation Talent Development Partner

Launched in 2019, hcmf// Young Curators’ Programme is enabling five PRS Foundation is the UK’s leading charitable funder of new music Kirklees-based curators to be supported to take the next steps in their and talent development. Launched in 2016 and expanding each year, careers – providing them with a framework in which to produce events and a the PRSF’s pioneering network of Talent Development Partners brings stage on which to realise them. together organisations working at the frontline of talent development in the UK, supporting a broad range of artists across different music The programme aims to develop talent and leadership amongst the music genres, career levels and UK regions. programmers, promoters and curators of the future, with each participant following a route tailored to their individual needs. In addition to training and In recognition of the significant efforts the festival makes to support and mentoring, the participants also have the chance to develop new works that advocate for music creators throughout their careers, hcmf// is proud to can be tested within the region, and presented to audiences at hcmf//. One be one of the 49 organisations around the country supported to be a PRS of the Young Curators, Charlotte Roe, is presenting a new online installation Foundation Talent Development Partner for 2020/2021. as part of this year’s festival (see p.9). https://hcmf.co.uk/ Meet the Young Curators: https://hcmf.co.uk/meet-the-young-curators/ hcmf-is-a-prs-foundation-talent-development-partner-for-2020/ hcmf//'s Young Curators’ Programme is funded by the Leeds City Region Business Rates Pool, through a bid secured by Kirklees Council Hudderseld Contemporary Records are fast becoming guilty of releasing more excellent discs than one can possibly keep up with. Tim Rutherford-Johnson, The Rambler

Perhaps the most consistently and fearlessly challenging of UK new music labels ... releasing some of the most unforgettable stuff I’ve heard this year. Simon Cummings, 5:4

LATEST RELEASES Visit the HCR store at www.nmcrec.co.uk/hcr

Smoke, Airs spilled out from tangles world-line Wet Ink Ensemble Juliet Fraser ELISION Ensemble Lisa Illean, Charmaine Lee, Sivan Eldar, Richard Barrett, Bryn Harrison, Nomi Epstein, Liza Lim, Kristina Wolfe, Lawrence Dunn Timothy McCormack PA Tremblay Four delicate Eclectic and soundworlds that Pushing the boundaries innovative approaches explore the intimacy of instruments in search to texture, gesture and physicality of of visceral, expressive and musical time the human voice musical experiences

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Wet Ink at hcmf// 2019 Juliet Fraser discusses 'spilled out from tangles' ELISION Ensemble CeReNeM Residency

HCR is a project of CeReNeM, the Centre for Research in New Music at the University of Huddersfield in association with hcmf// and distributed by NMC Recordings. NMC’s mission is to connect listeners across the world with the best contemporary music from the British Isles. Enquiries: [email protected]

WORDS FROM ABROAD A DUST IN TIME Sunday 22 November, 4pm Sunday 13 December, 1pm and 4pm Live streamed from CBSO Centre The live world premiere of Voices and words, past and present, Huang Ruo’s A Dust in Time create new powerful landscapes

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PATRONS FESTIVAL TEAM Sir Ernest Hall OBE DL Graham McKenzie Sir Simon Rattle CBE Artistic Director and Chief Executive Roisin Hughes BOARD OF MANAGEMENT Fundraising & Strategic Development Manager Professor Mick Peake OBE (Chair) Tamsyn Webley Professor Michael Clarke Festival Operations Manager Andrew Kurowski Sophie Cooper Martel Ollerenshaw Learning & Participation Officer Baroness Kath Pinnock Robin Smith Professor Thomas Schmidt Marketing & Development Officer Sheralyn Bonner HUDDERSFIELD CONTEMPORARY Marketing Director & Regional PR Manager (Bonner & Hindley) MUSIC FESTIVAL Janette Schofield Room RS1/10 Website Manager (Bonner & Hindley) University of Huddersfield Kerry Edwards West Yorkshire HD1 3DH UK Digital & Social Media Manager (Bonner & Hindley) Tel: +44 (0) 1484 472900 Tracy Milnes Email: [email protected] Regional PR Manager (Bonner & Hindley) www.hcmf.co.uk Faith Wilson Charity registration number 514614 National PR Manager Adam Long Technical & Production Manager (Tim Garbutt Events)

PROGRAMME BOOK PRODUCTION Jamie Hudson Cover design Robin Smith Copywriter Peter Davin Designer Marcus Netherwood Advertising Sales Muso Communications Ltd Tel: + 44 [0] 161 638 5615 www.musocommunications.com