Sound Unbound this weekend was excellent, I had a wonderful time as both an audience member and as a performer.
SANSARA’s performance of my piece was a wonderful experience. It’s a tricky work, but it had really clicked by the final rehearsal. I was overwhelmed with the response from the audience, who were incredibly generous in sharing many of their own stories of death with us after the show. I look forward to working through them and thinking about how they’ll affect the project. Please do sign up to my mailing list there on the right if you want to stay up to date with the Vox Machina project, and to hear the recording when we put it out! You should also sign up to SANSARA's to see all their future concerts.
0 Comments
I’m massively excited about our gig at Sound Unbound this weekend. I’ve never been to the festival before, but I’m very impressed with the programme, which has a huge range and some really excellent new music. The fact that it’s all free and almost all unticketed is quite something.
That said, it’s all rather overwhelming, so I thought I’d put together a pick of the festival for those who want to really make a weekend of it. Please do come to see us on Sunday: there’s very little choral and electronic music around, so it’s a really unique chance to hear a sound that is like little else. Elsewhere in the programme, I think I’m most interested in Amir Konjani’s new piece, Mira Calix’s set and the 12ensemble’s performance. But that’s because I’ve already heard Liam Byrne, Bartosz Glowacki and James McVinnie. If you haven’t, I’d make sure you take the chance! So here, at some length, are my picks for the weekend:
I’m delighted to be able to announce a major ongoing project with SANSARA choir. We’ll be giving its first performing at the Barbican’s Sound Unbound festival at St. Bartholemew the Great on Sunday 19th May.
The project is called ‘Vox Machina’. It “joins together vocal and electronic music in a project that investigates the relationships between humanity and technology. It presents the human voice as both autonomous and automated: natural vocal resonances are processed, manipulated and deconstructed to produce new musical textures and striking sound effects.” I get tied in knots whenever I sit down to write myself a composer biography. I dislike most biographies I read, yet when it is my turn, I’m just as stumped as anyone else. The difficulty is that “composer biographies” are used for a number of purposes, each with a distinct audience. Crafting one biography to fill every role is a bad idea, yet seems to be the prevalent model.
To my eyes, there are three key roles for composer biographies: a public-facing biography, used for programmes, a biography aimed at other creatives, used for commissioners, academics and fellow composers, and a biography aimed at industry professionals, such as funders. Broadly speaking, I’d say that most biographies are public-facing, yet written as if they are for industry insiders. I've had a go at thinking about each of these examples, and writing some examples. If you can come up with better or funnier examples, please post them below!
I’m very lucky to have been selected to take part in the London Symphony Orchestra’s Panufnik scheme next year. I’ll be writing a three-minute work for full orchestra early next year, leading up to a public workshop and performance in March.
Writing for orchestra is a wonderful opportunity. My current musical voice was shaped by writing an extended orchestral piece, London’s Other Bones. I wrote it independently, for no specific purpose, alongside a Masters, running Filthy Lucre and teaching in 2015. I was knackered, sad and receiving essentially no performances of my work. Writing it was a middle finger up to practicality: if my work wasn’t getting played, I might as well write the piece I wanted to, even if it was very difficult to ever put on.
I’ve written an EP. It took me some time: I had to develop a lot of new skills and the work was competing for my time with other commissions and with Filthy Lucre. But I’m pleased with what I’ve produced.
I’m just back from a wonderful trip to Modulus Festival in Vancouver. Hosted by the Music On Main and put together by David Pay, it was a festival full of exciting new music.
Thank you so much to everybody who made it down to Filthy Lucre’s Fundraiser on Saturday! We had a great time, and appreciate enormously all the support offered. I was glad to have the chance to perform with Lucy Cox of Sansara Choir and to give the first performances of two tracks from my EP.
Lucy and I will be performing those again as part of a concert with Sansara at Romsey Abbey this Saturday, do come along if you’re based nearby. This is the beginning of a longer collaboration with Sansara on some very interesting work for choir and electronics – I can't wait to let you all know about the next steps!
|
NewsYou can find out about recent and upcoming projects here, and stay up-to-date with email or RSS below.
Archives
October 2023
|
All photographs by Ilme Vysniauskaite
|