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In the Silent Void

We have a new archival recording out on the EMC Bandcamp page: Chris Hobbs’ In the Silent Void. Written in November 1981, and recorded in a live concert performance at Royal Holloway College, Egham, Surrey, this is an amazing recording of Chinese texts in translation by Arthur Waley, from his collection Chinese Poems (George Allen & Sons, 1946). This performance is by three composer/performers at the top of their game: the late Brian Dennis, whose vocal performance has not been bettered; Andrew Jones, with a great viola performance; and Christopher Hobbs, playing piano, keyboards, and percussion.

It’s here: http://bandcamp.experimentalmusic.co.uk/album/in-the-silent-void

This is well worth a listen. It’s certainly not minimalism, nor is it your daddy’s experimental music. But it is a lovely, reflective, and gorgeous performance of a piece from Chris Hobbs’ eclectic period. One of our favourites.

Michael Parsons concert!

Michael Parsons, one of our favourite experimental composers, has written to tell us about a concert that is coming up:

I’ve been visiting Finland and working with Fiori since 2007. I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to work closely with these singers and I find them very inspiring. I’ve written and arranged more than 12 pieces for them so far, including settings of early Greek lyrics from 6th & 7th centuries BC. I originally studied classics at Oxford University in the 60s before deciding to concentrate on music, and for many years I regarded myself as a ‘lapsed classicist’, until I thought I should try to revive my earlier interest in ancient Greek literature before it’s too late!
When I asked Fiori if they would be happy to sing in ancient Greek, they said “fine, as long as you tell us what it means and how to pronounce it!” So I set some lyrics of Sappho for them in 2007. They performed these in a concert in London in 2010, and since then everyone who heard them has been asking, when are they coming again? So this is their long-awaited return visit.
As well as Greek lyrics, I’ve arranged traditional songs from Macedonia, Dalmatia and Romania, and their programme also includes pieces by Finnish composers.
As special guest we’ve asked Michael Ormiston, an amazing performer who has studied overtone singing and instruments in Mongolia, and is the leading exponent of this style in UK. This concert should be a very special and memorable occasion!

Here’s the information. Michael Parsons’ concerts are always wonderful — and they’re especially wonderful when he either is working out new ideas or is exploring the music of other nations. And in this concert, he does both. Here’s the information.

Concert 14 June leaf

Michael Parsons on Bandcamp

One of the central figures in British experimental music, Michael Parsons has donated some music for the EMC Bandcamp page. First up, is his computer piece from 1995, Tenebrio, written at the request of the BBC for a programme of Nocturnes for a late-night show on Radio 3. Michael Parsons explains:

It was made with two CX5M Yamaha music computers using frequency-modulation (FM synthesis). The ‘voice’ programme of the CX5M computer was used first to introduce noise-like sounds of indefinite pitch, which are then progressively transformed by gradually expanding the frequency range to reveal unfamiliar pitch sequences in the form of a ‘random walk’. These are joined in the middle of the piece by pure sustained sounds with very slow glissandi.

Michael Parsons was one of the founders, with Cornelius Cardew and Howard Skempton, of the Scratch Orchestra in 1969. His music is consistently rigorous, and almost always beautiful. Tenebrio will be followed soon by a short album of acoustic instrumental music, and more tracks will follow as we receive them.

When asked for recordings for the EMC Bandcamp page, Michael declined to set a price on these recordings. There is, however, a facility on the Bandcamp page which allows the listener to set a gift price which will help to pay for the EMC’s Bandcamp page and for further tracks. You can find it here: https://experimentalmusiccatalogue.bandcamp.com/music .

Slie in March

Last night’s South Leicestershire Improvisors Ensemble monthly residency at Quad Studios, Leicester, featured special guest, the innovative percussionist Walt Shaw. Virginia Anderson laid out for part of a set to snap this candid film before returning to her bass clarinet. Lee Allatson, the drummer on the left of the picture, made some more formal films, which we shall share as soon as possible. Completing hte line-up is Bruce Coates, on sax, Chris Hobbs, piano, and some guy walking through the stage area for no apparent reason (actually, there is a reason: there’s an entrance behind the curtain).

Cage/Feldman Radio Chats

James Pritchett has made an entry point for his recent series of blogs about Radio Happenings, a show of of over four hours of conversations between John Cage and Morton Feldman, on WBAI Radio, New York City, in 1966 and 1967: On the Cage/Feldman Radio Happenings. You can find them on Pritchett’s blog, The Piano in My Life, 7–29 December 2015.

And if you’re interested in other articles about experimental music, drop in on the Journal of Experimental Music Studies, the EMC’s own house journal, containing original work, reprints of classic writings from Contact magazine and elsewhere, and  links to related writings on the web.

Anderson on the Scratch Orchestra and the ‘Leicester School’

Thanks to the nice people at the University of Michigan Press, we are able to make available an uncorrected draft of the chapter by Virginia Anderson, ‘Experimental Music after Nyman’.* This chapter was published in the book Tomorrow is the Question: New Directions in Experimental Music Studies, edited by Benjamin Piekut (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014), and has been uploaded onto Virginia Anderson’s Academia.edu page. This might make a nice taster for the book as a whole, which is available here. For now, here is the draft chapter: https://www.academia.edu/…/British_Experimental_Music_After… .

Here’s Virginia’s abstract:

Tomorrow is the Question presents an approach to experimental music designed to be different from that of the ‘first wave’ authors (David Nicholls, David Patterson, Christopher Shultis), by exploring a global, multi-ethnic, and postgenre scene beyond strictly Cagean music. The chapter itself begins by noting a radical difference in subject matter between Gavin Bryars’ foreword to the Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental Music (2009) and the book itself. This begs the question of what ‘experimental’ music actually is: the process and the resulting sound? Or is it cultural: the shared ethics and activity that tie musicians together as a group, regardless of the music they make? I compare the ethos and activity of the Scratch Orchestra, who appear in Michael Nyman’s Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (1974) with the Leicester School of composers (which Bryars founded). The Leicester School music can sound classical, almost opposite to the ‘textbook’ definition of experimental music, yet its subject matter and presentation exemplify traits that are fully as experimental as Cage.

And Virginia also says, ‘Hope you enjoy it!’

* ‘After Nyman’ means after the 1974 publication of the book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond by Michael Nyman. Michael Nyman is, of course, very active as a composer today, so there’s no question of ‘after’ Nyman the composer!

South Leicestershire’s finest

There will be another meeting of Slie, the South Leicestershire Improvisors Orchestra) onn Thursday night, 4 February, at Quad Studios, Downtown Leicester, 78  Friday Street, from 8.30 pm.

This is what Slie says:

We’re having January off (well, we did run right up into December!) but return in February for the first blast of 2016: our regular core of players featuring Virginia Anderson (reeds), Lee Allatson (drums), Bruce Coates (saxes), Christopher Hobbs (piano and percussion) and Trevor Lines (bass), but this year we plan to augment the line up with different guest players each month… Spicy! Hope to see you there.

The guest player this month is Rick Nance.

The s.l.i.e are delighted to announce that our guest player for February’s event is Rick Nance (guitar). Rick Nance is a performer and musical researcher who plays trumpet and classical/electric guitar and is a composer of electro-acoustic music, primarily acousmatic. He has a PhD from DeMontfort University in Leicester, UK and is presently featured as a guest composer in the studios of Birmingham-Southern College. He has participated in free improvisation ensembles with surrealists TransMuseq, free music trio PhantomLimb, and the noise/improv collective Liquid Brick. His compositions have been performed in Paris, Pisa, New York, Liverpool, Mexico City, New Orleans, San Francisco, Birmingham, Alabama and other locales. His compositions and research focus on sound as plastic, and music as plastic art, akin to sculpture, painting or film. As listening is his main focus, over the years, deeper listening led from his interest in improvisation to acousmatic composition.

So, a whole lot of improv goodness. Hope to see you there. For more info, see their Facebook page.

Fizzle for a fiver

News from Birmingham: Free improv— well, not actually free, it’s £5 at the door. But good improv, with our favourite sax guru, Bruce Coates, and always, always, good real ale.

Tuesday 26th January,
7:30PM

The Lamp Tavern, Barford St, B5 6AH

Bruce Coates – Saxophone
Chris Mapp – Double Bass
Mark Sanders – Drums
+
David Sugden – Drums
Olly Chalk – Piano
Lee Griffiths – Saxophone

£5 OTD

Science and the experimental method

Virginia Anderson’s chapter for the book Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic Research (ed. Michael Schwab) is available as a version of record on her Academia.edu page. This chapter details some ways in which British experimental composers have used real scientific methods in their work, often with fictive materials or impossible conclusions. Composers include Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra, Gavin Bryars, and Christopher Hobbs.

You can find it here: https://www.academia.edu/4903150/Whatever_remains_however_improbable_British_experimental_music_and_experimental_systems_

Pritchett on Cage and Feldman, addendum

Further to our last post, on James Pritchett’s series of posts on his blog, The piano in my life, about the Cage-Feldman Radio Happenings chats…. Pritchett has just posted the final instalment, dealing with how he received the tapes of these conversations, how the gap appeared, and what happened afterward. We won’t say any more: Pritchett’s narrative is such good historiography — just a really fine story, actually — that we’ll leave it for you to read, here: http://rosewhitemusic.com/…/how-i-happened-upon-the-happen…/