PARALLAX05 Trinity Laban Composers at the Institute of Contemporary Arts
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PARALLAX05 Trinity Laban composers at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Curator: Sam Hayden Trinity Laban Contemporary Music Group Conductor: Gregory Rose Fri 6 Feb, 19.30h Installations from 18.00 ICA PARALLAX05 Trinity Laban Composers at the ICA This project is the 5th in a series of performances whose theme renders the idea of the "parallax" — the separation of two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible — in musical form. The idea of the event was to juxtapose compositions where no common ground is possible. Yet it is precisely via the dialectical tension of such work that new syntheses become possible. Trinity Laban research student and staff composers were invited to submit pieces according to radically different traditions characterised by either a deconstruction of instruments or ensembles into timbre and noise, or a more harmonic approach in which the ensemble is treated as a more sonorous whole, perhaps following concepts often associated with minimalism or neo-classicism. The evening will consist of a live concert in the Theatre (from 7.30pm) featuring performances of compositions for acoustic instruments performed by the Trinity Laban Contemporary Music Group (CMG), including diverse combinations of improvisational, electroacoustic and theatrical approaches. In addition, sound installation pieces, including fixed-media electroacoustic works and live electronic performances, will run continuously from 6.00pm in the café area outside the auditorium. Parallax05 is part of an important ongoing partnership between Trinity Laban and the ICA, positioning contemporary music in the wider context of the contemporary arts. Sam Hayden (Reader in Composition, Trinity Laban) PROGRAMME 18.00h PRE-CONCERT EVENT In the bar Aldwych sound installation Paul Newland 19.30h Selections from Peaks for ensemble Jonathan Firth Tide for solo piano Gwyn Pritchard Jenna Sung Piano Parallax for ensemble Ailie Robertson Francesca Gao Harp Ucluelet (Landscape IV) for solo piano Douglas Finch Aleksander Szram Piano Abstraction for piano and ensemble Sam Hayden Aleksander Szram Piano 20.30h INTERVAL INSTALLATIONS / PERFORMANCES In the theatre Bird:Cage sound installation Nye Parry In the bar (upper level) Extremophiles live set for electronics, voice, Guy Harries processed flute 20.50h In the bar (lower level) Pinhead improvisation Paul Newland / Dominic Murcott 21.10h Rood Positions for amplified string quartet, theatrical Edward Jessen figure (soprano) and auxiliary audio Amy Worsfold Soprano The Garden Of Listening for ensemble Andreas Papapetrou 21.55h POST-CONCERT EVENT In the bar DJ Set Will Dutta PROGRAMME NOTES Pre-concert Aldwych sound installation Paul Newland Aldwych is part of a larger work infrathin written for performance at the disused underground station at Aldwych. The section Aldwych consists of seven very precisely tuned sine tones. The materials which form the piece are derived from aspects of the site and these are used to generate the frequencies and durations of the sine tones. Each sine tone emanates from one of seven speakers placed throughout the space. The careful tuning of each sine tone continues my ongoing interest in justly intoned intervals and harmonic structures. The audience moves freely through the space. The resulting sonority is determined by where the listeners locate themselves within the space (closer to or more distant from each speaker (and sine tone)), the interference patterns generated between sine tones and by the acoustic and architectural qualities of the space itself. The work was commissioned by Ensemble Aporia and Kings College’s Arts and Humanities Research Institute for the arts festival Underground. Performance Selections from Peaks for ensemble Jonathan Firth These six miniatures are taken from my larger work, Peaks. In this piece I set out to create a musical map of the Peak District, an area where I spent much of my youth. The numbers in the subtitles indicate the position of each selection within the larger work: Big Moor (Peak 8); Black Chew Head (Peak 14); Mam Tor (Peak 19); Hartcliff Hill (Peak 24); Gun (Peak 31); Shining Tor (Peak 33) If the selections are performed in numerical order then the performance will progress through the peaks depicted in order of ascending height. However, the order of the performance is at the discretion of the ensemble. Other orders could be based in geographical position from north to south or west to east, by ascending or descending order of geological prominence, or in order of distance from Manchester. The selections can either be played as a single group, as they are in this performance, or interspersed throughout a larger programme. Tide for solo piano Gwyn Pritchard Jenna Sung Piano Despite the title, this piece is definitely not a programmatic description in sound of the sea and its tides. It explores, in purely musical terms, the idea of gradual exposure, of one idea receding to reveal another hidden beneath it, and which is ultimately resubmerged. Tide is therefore an apt metaphor, which perhaps gains further relevance through the fluid nature of the initial material, and the angular, 'rocky' character of the exposed sounds. Tide was composed at the invitation of Jenna Sung who gave the première in the Wigmore Hall, London on November 16th, 2014. Parallax for ensemble Ailie Robertson Francesca Gao Harp "French impressionism has left us with a rather limited version of the harp, as if its most obvious characteristic were that of lending itself to the attention of loosely robed girls with long blond tresses, capable of drawing from it nothing more than seductive glissandi." (Berio) In this piece, the harp, long framed as an icon of romanticism, gentility and femininity, is redrawn into something dynamic, powerful and assertive, in direct opposition to the sweeter, textural chamber ensemble. The piece thrives on the ‘counterpoint of rough and romantic elements, lyrical voices throwing their more violent counterparts into starker relief’. Whilst this piece is entirely idiomatic for the instrument, it doesn't require the harpist to play in a ‘traditional style’ but rather only in chords and other different gestures for most of the piece. The chords start off very consonant and resonant until they become very dissonant, dirty & distorted! In this part of the piece, they lose their resonance. This is the drama of the piece: the musician has to play with more and more effort and the whole experience is more dramatic but the resulting chords are less and less resonant. After the climax of the piece, a sweeter resonance creeps in. The writing is no longer made of chords but of trills and tremolos, a horizontal writing that derives from the previous gestures. They have the same material but they are presented in a different way. The piece ends with a quote from Berio's Sequenza that we hear in the last 20 seconds. Ultimately the piece aims not so much to deny the harp’s familiar face as to transform and combine it with others, enunciating a broad polyphony of both expressive musical voices and extra-musical visions of instrument identity. Ucluelet (Landscape IV) for solo piano Douglas Finch Aleksander Szram Piano Ucluelet (Landscape IV) is one in a series of pieces giving expression to the numinous quality found in natural landscapes. The structure is based on loosely symmetrical recurrences, somewhat like reflections in water which become distorted and diffused. The mood is one of isolation and reverie; this is something I find in Emily Carr’s lonely, monolithic landscape paintings of the rainforest on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Ucluelet, once a small Haida village depicted by Emily Carr in her book Klee Wyck, is now a logging town. Abstraction for piano and ensemble Sam Hayden Aleksander Szram Piano Parallax05 has provided a wonderful opportunity to present an early work that is important to me yet has somehow never seen the light of day until now. I decided to revise and rescore the piece extensively, especially for this event, although was careful to maintain its original character. The piece is ostensibly serial in nature, although that is a fairly loose principle and often superseded by more spatial and timbral concerns. The opening flute solo provides the basic material (a clear homage to Varèse), a recurring linear idea, which at once proliferates around the ensemble while being gradually absorbed into increasingly tutti vertical sonorities. The piano in many ways acts as the musical ‘chassis’ from which different ideas are projected. However, it becomes increasingly in opposition to the rest of the ensemble as the piece progresses, as it attempts to become more autonomous — a dialectic that remains unresolved. Interval: In the theatre Bird:Cage sound installation Nye Parry Originally created for the Out of the Cage festival at Trinity Laban in 2012, Bird:Cage belongs to a series of installations exploring the disintegration of sound into individual partials. Other works in the series (Significant Birds and the Exploded Sound) explore the simultaneous perception of a whole and its parts when partials are presented in individual locations in space. Bird:Cage simply extracts takes a single sine wave from the voice of John Cage (reading his Lecture on Nothing) and presents it as if it were bird song in an ornamental cage. Those familiar with the text may still recognise the nuance and phrasing of his voice. Interval: In the bar (upper level) Extremophiles live set for electronics, voice, Guy Harries processed flute Extremophiles are organisms that thrive in extreme environments where other creatures would never survive. I am indebted to my brother for this metaphor — which was his response to a live performance of the piece. Interval: In the bar (lower level) Pinhead improvisation Paul Newland / Dominic Murcott How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Performance Rood Positions for amplified string quartet, theatrical Edward Jessen figure (soprano) and auxiliary audio Amy Worsfold Soprano This small scene was the result of a commission to write a work in celebration of the painter Ffiona Lewis’s fiftieth year.