By Chris |
Posted: Friday, 16 November 2012
In September, I attended the ‘Voix nouvelles’ residency programme at Fondation Royaumont (as evidenced by this splendid photograph) and in the process wrote All the time that you have what we have. / All the time that you have. for soprano Marie Picaut of Les Cris de Paris and Quatuor Diotima’s violinists YunPeng Zhao and Guillaume Latour. You can now listen to the recording of their performance given during the closing concert by clicking on the player above.
It is a somewhat unusual work for me in that its primary approach could be said to be one of drawing more on a performance art context. Though it remains music, the work gathers a dramatic aspect (that is possibly lost in the recording, I can’t tell) in being built around the exhaustion of breath and bow. The performers’ struggle to maintain presence and expression against natural physical limits shapes the sonic material, arriving at sound qualities that would probably otherwise be avoided, and — I think/hope — lends it a new meaning.
By Chris |
Posted: Sunday, 11 November 2012
At the end of October, sparked by a post by Ian Pace, a heated debate took place on Facebook around the protest action of Johannes Kreidler against the fusion of the radio orchestras at Baden-Baden/Freiburg and Stuttgart, which Kreidler performed at this year’s Donaueschingen Festival. Having consulted the contributors, Pace subsequently posted the full discussion on his blog, a positive move, which reinforces the idea that social media may be becoming a valid arena for public debate.
I found both clicking through the posts on Facebook and reading through the discussion on Ian’s blog somewhat tiring and visually confusing, so put together a formatted PDF of the discussion to ease my reading. I thought this may prove useful to others, so here it is to distribute as anyone sees fit.
Download the PDF
Update, 30/11: The Gesellschaft für Neue Musik, the organisation which commissioned Johannes Kreidler’s performance, have released a statement regarding this discussion, which you can read over on Ian Pace’s blog.
By Chris |
Posted: Wednesday, 10 October 2012
In August, Talea Ensemble gave the first performance of The Incredulity of St Thomas, for bass clarinettist, cellist and percussionist, as part of the Harvard Summer Composition Institute. You can now stream or download their performance above. Many thanks to Rane, Chris, Alex and conductor Eduardo Leandro for their work on the piece, and to everyone else involved in those fantastic two weeks.
By Chris |
Posted: Friday, 5 October 2012
You can hear a short interview with me and some extracts of my music this Monday evening on France Musique’s Les lundis de la contemporaine broadcast. The interview took place a couple of weeks ago during my stay at Fondation Royaumont and for those of you who speak French, you can enjoy me stumbling into linguistic traps of accidental irreverence such as addressing interviewer Pierre Rigaudière with ‘tu’ rather than ‘vous’.
The magazine programme begins at 21:30 CET, following a broadcast of music by Philippe Manoury, Jonathan Harvey and Arnold Schönberg performed by the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, and will be available to hear online until 7 November.
By Chris |
Posted: Friday, 14 September 2012
A new work for female voice and two violins, All the time that you have what we have. / All the time that you have., will be premièred on Saturday 22 September in a concert concluding the three-week ‘Voix nouvelles’ programme at Fondation Royaumont, an ex-abbey, which forms the idyllic setting for a cultural centre in the French countryside. Soprano Marie Picaut will perform alongside violinists YunPeng Zhao and Guillaume Latour of Quatuor Diotima.
During my time here I have been participating in classes with Raphaël Cendo, Brian Ferneyhough and Alberto Posadas while completing the score for this trio. The concerts will also include music by fellow composers Francisco Alvarado, Samantha Fernando, Piaras Hoban, Wei-Chieh Lin, Eric Maestri, Joan Magrane Figuera, Julien Malaussena, Efstratios Minakakis, Sukju Na, Chun Ting Pang, Josep Planells Schiaffino, Naoki Sakata, Benjamin Scheuer and Adi Snir.
