Joe Bates
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Ceasing (2019)

Details
​Description:
 Choir and electronics

Duration: 16'

Instrumentation: SSAATTBB (amplified) – electronics(1): laptop, audio interface, Ableton software, 8 microphones, six PAs

​Commission: Commissioned by SANSARA Choir

First performance: 18 April 2020, The Barbican Centre's Sound Unbound Festival, St. Bartholomew-the-Great. Performed by SANSARA Choir, conducted by Tom Herring.

Score link

Recording: Premiere recording, premiere film

Programme Note
Ceasing considers how we deal with death. To write it, I interviewed the singers of SANSARA about their experiences of death. This was a strange and moving process; I’m immensely grateful to the singers for their openness. Their stories have been integrated into the text of the piece, which I have written myself. The piece starts in the specificities of my grandmother's death and opens up to a broader understanding of how we cease. The electronics blur and magnify the choir, suggesting the mass of similar stories behind them.

Joe Bates – Ceasing by Joe Bates on Scribd

All photographs by Ilme Vysniauskaite
  • News
  • Music
    • Full List
    • Large Ensemble >
      • Muted The Night
      • London's Other Bones
    • Small Ensemble >
      • Two Animals
      • Nocturne
      • Lain Lines
      • Us Alone
      • A Noise So Loud
    • Solo >
      • Suite for Guitar
      • Sparrow
      • Street Through A Window
      • Two Animals
      • Flim Flam
      • Slow Hills
    • Vocal >
      • The Hazelnut
      • Some Parts of Us
      • Now Is A Long Time
      • Cataracts
      • Ceasing
      • Hildegard
  • Recordings
  • About
  • Teaching
  • Filthy Lucre
  • Upcoming Dates