Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival

hcmf: Piano Phasing

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:14:18 +0000

Piano Dances with Hugh Nankivell

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:53:01 +0000

Video made by Bob Lockwood as part of the Piano Dances project, 23 - 26 Feb 2010.

4th day: the end of the project?

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:00:06 +0000

I stayed up late on Thursday evening sorting out the programme and the collation of all the new techniques and approaches and questions and Bob stayed up much later editing the first draft of the film of the children.

I was really pleased that on editing the material I discovered that every child had directly invented at least one new technique or approach. Thirteen new inventors, composers, choreographers and creative people who hopefully won't have their playful creativity squashed or repressed as they age into primary school and beyond.

Friday morning - we went to the nursery. We re-arranged the room, and Bob set up the projector and the AO white plastic projector screen on the piano. We welcomed in the children, their staff, some friends from the LBT, some other children from the school, the head-teacher, some of the adult group and lots of parents all on the floor or very small yellow chairs. In fact we had a parent/relative or carer for every child apart from one.

Later we chatted to the parents who really enjoyed it and though, in many cases, their offspiring did not directly talk to them about the project, there was enough energy or buzz about what was going on to inspire the mums and dads in. Emma and Isobelle (nursery staff) were really pleased and surprised by the turn-out.

Pat and I played a tune on melodica and recorder, we watched the film Bob had made (about 9 minutes) and then uncovered the piano. There was much playing at this point, which we curtailed after about maybe seven minutes. Very interesting to observe two girls who had not been in during the week, but came to school on the Friday. One, named Pearl, was clearly in need of having time to play the piano on her own as all the other children had, but in this context it was not quite possible. She looked very disappointed as every time she played others accompanied her.

The room got very hot and there was a real buzz. We ended with 'If You're Happy and You Know It', Five Little Monkeys and the Piano Bedtime Lullaby.

During the afternoon after we had watched Liz reverse ever so slowly and slightly into a taxi, we had a quartet rehearsal (Jac, Pat, Bob and I), trying out ideas from the new techniques for the evening. Some we tried and rejected, others we tried and felt that they would be great without further 'rehearsal', others we knew would work without even rehearsing.

The duet of Pat and Jac with elbows on piano was very wonderful to observe. Also nice to have a time to play, especially for Bob who had been so tied up in his filming, documenting and observing that he had not really had time to 'play'.

At 6.30 we gave a performance of Piano Dances in St Paul's Hall. I prefaced it by playing simultaneously two-pianos in a new phasing piece. We then watched the newly edited film which Bob had worked on in the afternoon. Finally a series of new pieces in solos, small groups and full group (22 performers).

NEW PIECES

1.   A Spell for the Piano - Based on Question 21
2.   Solos Together - Everyone chose one new technique or approach from the list, but especially Approach 15
3.   Playing Other People's Hands - Developing Technique 6
4.   The Piano Fairy - Inspired by Question 13 and also Approach 27
5.   Full-Group Bob - Starting from Approach 31 and going elsewhere...
6.   Graceful Elephant Teapots - Using Technique 4 as a starting point
7.   Kneading - A small group performance of Technique 7
8.   A Line Around The Piano - From Approach 4 and Questions 3, 9, 10 and 11
9.   Putting The Piano To Bed - Approach 40 and Question 15?

My favourites sonically were 'Kneading' - a kind of mix of Messiaen and Ligeti - and 'The Piano Fairy' - a wonderful original conceit. I also loved the choreography of 'Solos Together' and performing in 'Putting The Piano To Bed'.

We ended by bestowing a professorship of Keyboard Choreography upon Jac Gaile (prof KCC), only the second such position in the world.

Most of the performers went to a nearby Thai restaurant for a meal afterwards. Very lovely to be together socially. I instigated a Japanese tradition which is at the after-performance party to share round and read the evaluation forms together. They were all (all the ones that Heidi had collected) very positive and effusively generous. We shifted tables and managed to talk with most people, and then home late and tired, but with a very warm and harmonious feeling.

The day after Piano Dances Pat and I travelled south together, leaving Huddersfield and its sleet for the sunshine of South Devon. We were performing at the Plymouth Contemporary Music Festival, a programme of live music to a selection of silent films. We were chatting with Eduardo Miranda, the festival director, and explaining Piano Dances and he was very intrigued and enthusiastic. 'Maybe you should come and do it here next year?' So maybe we will. Roll on volume 4 of Keyboard Choreography wherever it may be.

Now I need to find some time to sleep.

Hugh Nankivell

Thursday 3rd day

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:43:42 +0000

Now finished all the workshop sessions at the nursery and with the adults. A real contrary emotion of a day.

In the evening the group made beautiful keyboard choreography and there was a clear feeling of a group and a shared energy. There was much laughter, thought and some tears.

As Hilary left she asked 'what am I going to do next week without you'? She played a beautiful piano solo while looking at her self-portrait, but prefaced it by saying that she couldn't play the piano. Of course she could.

In the morning, Jac led the session and we drew happy pictures of ourselves and Jac asked us whether the piano was happy or sad and what its name was and whether it was a girl or a boy?

Everyone did portraits and most then put the portrait onto the piano and played from it. There was some energetic and delicate solo playing and also a mix of group playing, but a lot less playing of the piano than on the previous days. It really felt like the piano was becoming part of the furniture of the nursery.

Serenna was obviously not well (she kept holding her ear and looked very sad) and her playing was without bunny-hops and was very doleful. Sophie again played and squeaked and was FULL of joy and Gael played with great confidence. There was quite a long stretch of time today without much attention paid to the piano and there were far fewer new techniques and approaches that we discovered, but by contrast there was lots of repeat-playing of earlier material.

Today there was a picnic at the piano and phone calls using cheese and calculators.
We ended with singing together and I led a lullaby story-song for the piano which had the following lyrics before we put the piano to bed and covered it up.

Bed time
Twinkle twinkle
Night night
Night night.

When we analysed the video in the afternoon we had a very good discussion about what age it is that a child loses the un-self-conscious-playful-exploration? This came about because one girl (and only one) seemed to play the piano mainly to attract adults attention or to be noticed and she was very clear about what we could or could not do at the piano (no picnics for instance!) whereas the others played it without reserve.

The new things we discovered were:

Techniques

1.    Play a note and hold it down, then add other adjacent notes and hold them down. Then take the hand off and do the same again. use thumb sparingly. Smudging. Serenna.
2.    Play with both hands. Only using index fingers. Contrary motion at all times, firmly. Contrary Index. Gael.
3.    Sit under the piano and play with the pedals with your hands. Pedal Hands. Lautrelle and Chloe.

Approaches

1.    Draw a picture of how you feel. Put the picture on the piano. Play.
2.    Place your score on the keyboard, covering some of the keys. Play.
3.    Phone someone up and ask them to play the piano with you. See what happens.
4.    Play your own hand, (from day one).
5.    Play while jumping at the keyboard, synchronised or unsynchronised. Morgan.

Questions

1.    Is the piano a boy or a girl?
2.    Does the piano have a name?
3.    Is the piano happy or sad?
4.    When you put the score on the piano music stand how do you know which way up it should be?
5.    Is the piano in good working order?

We have now made a set list for tomorrow evening of new pieces all of which are generated from the playing we observed in the morning. Our set-list will include

A Spell for the Piano
Solos altogether
The Piano Fairy
Full-group Bob
Playing other people's hands
Graceful Elephant teapots
Kneading
A Line Around The Piano
Putting The Piano To Bed.

We will have a sharing at 11am in the nursery and show them a compilation video with parents and friends and then a 6.30pm concert in St Paul's.

We ended the session this evening talking about how tomorrow we will be playing a different piano from the one we have developed a relationship with during the last three evenings and whether this is adulterous behaviour. The piano has been developing a character in a way that I have not experienced before, but perhaps I have been careless and fickle in my past piano dealings as, although I love the acoustic piano very much, I have in my time lost both a grand piano and a player piano.

Hugh Nankivell

Grand ambitions for Sebastian Berweck

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:51:00 +0000

Experimental pianist Sebastian Berweck is the star of the first CD release from Huddersfield Contemporary Records, a new label with links to hcmf//.

Extended Piano sees Berweck tackle compositions by James Saunders, Benjamin Lang, Michael Maierhof, Thomas Wenk and Johannes Kriedler. As the album title suggests, the instrument is augmented by preparations and analogue electronics to reveal ‘shadow aspects’ of the sound.

Sebastian Berweck has appeared as a soloist at numerous festivals and events, including ISCM World Music days, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Damstadt Summer Courses. He is co-founder of the composing/performing collective stock11.de and has commissioned and premiered more than 100 works.

Berweck is currently researching questions of performance in piano and electronics at CeReNeM, the University of Huddersfield’s Centre for Research in New Music. CeReNeM has teamed up with Huddersfield University Press to form Huddersfield Contemporary Records, which will release CDs and DVDs by the staff and postgraduates of the department and by visiting artists.

Wednesday - 2nd Day

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:43:03 +0000

Just back to Meltham, after another long day.

We left in thick slushy snow that melted during the day and came back to bare potholes.

Bob led the hour at Christchurch Woodhouse nursery. We had three new children with us today and lost three from yesterday.

Everyone again played the piano, in groups and solos. There was only about 90 seconds of time when no-one was playing the piano.

We are blessed with having a very quiet piano, such that when three or four children are playing it loud with fists and elbows and the sustain pedal pushed down, it doesn't seem to dominate the room in the way that pianos sometimes can. It will be really interesting to see what the nursery does with the piano when the project finishes. Will it become another toy in the room? Will they move it? How quickly will it disintegrate? How will the piano feel?

Great to see some players play a similar solo to the one they did yesterday (Chloe, Serenna and Lautrelle for instance, and it was great in the afternoon comparing the video of the solos from day one to day two) and then also to see how some of them developed and changed and extended their playing (Sophie and Serenna) and to have the new players who came in and had to just get their heads down and play (Kaden, Brody and Doris).

We found 6 more new techniques, 20 new approaches and 7 extra questions to add to the list from yesterday. Here are the new list of techniques discovered today, we gave each one a title and then the name of the inventor(s).

Techniques from day 2

1.    Play the keyboard and lower your head below the keyboard to look underneath while still playing, then bring the head back up, still playing. Peek-a-boo. Lautrelle initially copying Brody.
2.    Both hands close together on the keyboard, use all the fingers (not thumbs) to make wave patterns. Waves. Sophie.
3.    Play the piano with nose on the keys and using both hands. Piano Close-up. Serenna.
4.    Raise both hands left then right, above your head, fingers pointing out, spiky hands, then bring them down crashing to the piano, right hand just before left hand. Witches Flam. Georgia.
5.    Press the end-blocks (and other parts of the piano that are not keys) to see if they move and what sound they make. End blocks. Serenna.
6.    Play deliberately with one hand - only using the index finger, but approaching from high above the keyboard. Crane. Chloe.

In the evening session we made many more new pieces, using the work of the nursery children as the starting point. We also had much great discussion and laughter.

To begin with we shared personal stories about pianos. We tried a meditation 'Don't play the piano and put it from your mind' (I found it almost impossible), and we cast spells on the piano and talked about pianists as a breed.

Bob drew a line around the piano and we had to play it from behind that line.
The session ended with Chris completely covering four prone piano players and the piano with chairs as they played.

Hugh Nankivell

John Cage on show

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:47:00 +0000

A different side to one of the giants of 20th-century music will go on show this November, thanks to hcmf// and Huddersfield Art Gallery. Every Day Is A Good Day: An Exhibition of John Cage’s Artworks is the first major retrospective in this country of visual art by Cage, who died in 1992. The touring exhibition from London’s Hayward Gallery opens at the BALTIC centre in June and will run at Huddersfield Art Gallery from 20 November until 9 January 2011.

Conceived by artist Jeremy Millar, Every Day Is A Good Day features around 200 works by Cage, who took up painting whilst staying in Europe after dropping out of college, but abandoned it in favour of dedicating himself to composition. He returned to art later in life, producing drawings, watercolours and prints, many of which were inspired by the same chance-based techniques for which his music became renowned.

In keeping with this philosophy, the display positions and groupings of the pictures in the exhibition will be determined using a computer programme based upon the Chinese I-Ching system of chance-based divination which Cage used as a composition aid from the 1950s onwards. John Cage was a guest at hcmf// in 1989 and the festival has long recognised his contribution to contemporary music, most recently at hcmf// 2008 with John Cage Reclaimed, a retrospective of his controversial 1958 New York Town Hall concert.

Named after the translation of a Japanese Zen Buddhist proverb favoured by Cage, Every Day Is A Good Day runs alongside hcmf// 2010 (Friday 19 November to Sunday 28 November) and will be complemented by several performances of Cage works, details of which will be announced soon.

Tuesday - first day

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:32:54 +0000

We had a great morning with the nursery group - 10 children one aged 2, one aged 4 and the others aged 3. We were a big group of adults in their small space.

Barry had done wonders with the tuning of the piano and in retrospect it was quite a quiet piano and even when lots of people were playing at the same time it was not too noisy.

There were many wonderful moments; when Chloe played her solo and everyone listened rapt, also when Morgan went to the piano and played without making any sound. A real '4.33' performance with silence from the audience.

Afternoon analysing the video and loving the upside-down seasickness of Jac's flip videoing.

We came up with 11 new techniques, 20 approaches and 15 questions.

Here are the questions.

QUESTIONS

1) What is a piano?
2) How near do you have to be to be enraptured by a piano?
3) How far from the piano can you be and still be a piano player?
4) Is the piano a road or a garage?
5) When someone plays the piano for the first time, can you tell what they are going to play?
6) How do you open a piano?
7) What is it about leaving the piano that makes you cry?
8) Are you aware of the audience when you are playing and does it affect your playing?
9) Is the piano a height chart and a reach chart?
10) How territorial can the piano be?
11) What does it mean to share the piano?
12) What does the piano stool represent?
13) Is there such a thing as a piano fairy?
14) Why might you need to wear a hard hat at the piano?
15) How do you say goodbye to the piano?

In the evening we explored many of the ideas discovered in the morning with a lovely group of open-minded adults, including trying out question number 5. The answer was (generally) no!

Roll-on tomorrow.

Hugh Nankivell

Sage celebrates Varese

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:36:00 +0000

The Sage Gateshead is paying tribute to the work of Edgard Varèse, the French-born composer who played a key role in the development of electronic music. Running from 5–16 April, Brave New Worlds: the music of Debussy and Varèse features Varèse performances by the National Youth Orchestra alongside music by the composer’s contemporary Debussy, and by more recent artists who were influenced by his radical concept of ‘organised sound’.

On 16 April, visitors to the Sage can hear an installation of Varèse’s tape piece Poème électronique, which was originally presented using 400 speakers in the Le Corbusier-designed Philips pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair. That same evening, the NYO, conducted by Paul Daniel, will perform Tuning Up, Arcana and the epic Amériques, as well as Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, Nuages and Fêtes. With 175 musicians aged between 13 and 19 performing, the ensemble will be the largest to have ever appeared at the Sage.

Other events include a study day introducing Varèse’s work on 10 April and a concert uniting NYO, Northern Sinfonia and the Young Sinfonia on 5 April.

Monday

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:56:38 +0000

Cold Monday in Huddersfield, but warm people. Visited the nursery school and met Emma and Isobel and visited the space, which will be warm and cosy, and saw the 'new' piano that has been donated. Barry later was tuning it and was very glad when we said that it didn't need to be raised to concert pitch. It is very flat and battered.

Planning the project at Huddersfield Uni. The team is me - composer and musician, piano player and melodica. Bob - actor, director, improvisor, film-maker and much more. Jac - speech therapist and educational interest in early years and playful. Pat - composer and musician, guitar, bass.... We all have different interests and expertise, but a real desire to see what happens when we explore creativity with three year olds and then analyse this and take the upcoming ideas and work on them with adults.

We spent some time discussing how we might notate and describe the new techniques. if we are too detailed will this give enough scope to the adults in their creativity and will it reduce the possibility of mutations, which is of course one of the main ways in which we evolve and change.

Hugh Nankivell

KCC

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:54:14 +0000

Tomorrow we start the Huddersfield leg of the world tour that is Keyboard Choreography Collection. I'm coming back to my old home and really looking forward to it. The warmth of the people and the cold of the snow!

A year ago, in January 2009, I began a new project with Japanese composer Makoto Nomura in the north of Japan. A wonderful theatre called Ezuko Hall just south of Sendai invited us both to come and lead a new project, and so Nomura asked what ideas I was interested in. I said that, since moving to Devon I had been working with pre-school children, searching for pianos and exploring ideas with dance companies, and perhaps a project that incorporated all three would be good. And from that Keyboard Choreography Collection (aka Piano Dances) was born.

Nomura and I, working with a dancer Shin Sakuma, spent each morning with a nursery (The Elephant House) encouraging the children to play the piano, in whatever way they wanted. We filmed the sessions and spent the afternoon analysing the video - discovering many new techniques and approaches which in turn raised a whole series of questions. We then worked with adults each evening using these techniques to create and develop new pieces of music/dance/theatre.

In July of 2009 we then brought the project to England and ran similar programme at The Sage Gateshead and The Baltic Gallery, again playing with a nursery (and a piano from freecycle) and a group of older adults from The Silvers.

Now we are coming to Huddersfield and tomorrow meet the nursery and see the spaces and plan the sessions. I can't wait. This time I am working with Bob Lockwood, Jac Gaile and Pat Allison, none reknowned (yet) for their dancing skills.

Hugh Nankivell

Untitled Photo

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:14:30 +0000

No description

Piano Dances Performance

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:01:00 +0000

Public performance from the Piano Dances project - all welcome!

Throughout the previous week, adult participants have been working with musician Hugh Nankivell and actor Bob Lockwood on a series of newly-devised pieces, all inspired by techniques of playing the piano invented by early years children. The results will be showcased in this short outcome performance.

For more information about the Piano Dances project, see: http://www.hcmf.co.uk/SignupnowforPianoDances

Piano Dances Workshop

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:40:00 +0000

Hugh Nankivell and Bob Lockwood will work with a group of open-minded adults of any age and experience who are interested to creatively explore. Using the starting points of the new techniques, approaches and questions that have been generated by early years children earlier in the day, a whole series of new pieces will be created by adults. These will use the piano as the starting point, but may veer off in directions far from traditional piano playing. The sessions will be led by the KCC team and there will be discussion, laughter, big group improvisations, small group creative work and much more.

The workshops are open to anyone who is interested in creativity and exploration including piano players, non-piano-players, anyone interested in dance acting and improvising, teachers, musicians, non-musicians, students, people with disabilities - in fact everyone.

All workshops are free of charge. For more information about the Piano Dances project, see: http://www.hcmf.co.uk/SignupnowforPianoDances

If you'd like to book a place on the workshops, please contact Heidi Johnson, Learning and Participation Officer on h.johnson@hud.ac.uk or call 01484 471116

Piano Dances Workshop

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:38:00 +0000

All workshops are free of charge. For more information about the Piano Dances project, see: http://www.hcmf.co.uk/SignupnowforPianoDances

If you'd like to book a place on the workshops, please contact Heidi Johnson, Learning and Participation Officer on h.johnson@hud.ac.uk or call 01484 471116

Piano Dances Workshop

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:30:00 +0000

All workshops are free of charge. For more information about the Piano Dances project, see: http://www.hcmf.co.uk/SignupnowforPianoDances

If you'd like to book a place on the workshops, please contact Heidi Johnson, Learning and Participation Officer on h.johnson@hud.ac.uk or call 01484 471116

Piano Surgery

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:23:00 +0000

If you've played piano in the past and are wondering how to get back into the swing of things, you can book an appointment at a monthly surgery with the University of Huddersfield's Pianist-in-Residence, Jonathan Fisher.

Participants are invited to make a 30-minute appointment, during which Jonathan will be offering advice and guidance on technique, repertoire and further learning opportunities. You don't have to be of a particular standard to book an appointment, just interesting in starting to play again!

Appointments currently available:

5.00pm - 5.30pm

5.30pm - 6.00pm

6.00pm - 6.30pm

6.30pm - 7.00pm

7.00pm - 7.30pm

7.30pm - 8.00pm

To book an appointment, contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116 or email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk

Piano Surgery

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:20:00 +0000

Appointments currently available:

5.30pm - 6.00pm

6.00pm - 6.30pm

6.30pm - 7.00pm

7.00pm - 7.30pm

7.30pm - 8.00pm

To book an appointment, contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116 or email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk

Piano Surgery

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:08:00 +0000

To apply for a Piano Surgery appointment, contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116; email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk

Thoughts from the first weekend

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:19:53 +0000

Things learnt:

1) Never be late when people are being paid to be there
2) Always come prepared with sketches and ideas - stay up late doing them if needs be!
3) Plan ahead
4) If unsure of something, ask
5) When dealing with players, good communication is key!
6) Make sure your recording equipment is working, and on! (we lost the first session)

Notable people in the ensemble:

Joël Bons, Artistic Director

Joël's comments are incisive, penetrating and above all extremely helpful! He's very concerned with the minutia of performance and will point out the tiniest thing that you didn't even notice was a problem. Joël is also your translater for the musicians, both in language terms (although they all speak excellent English) and in terms of getting the best out of them. The other thing I was impressed with is that Joël is sceptical of the performers as he is of the composers - He will always be your advocate if you're struggling to communicate your ideas and the performers are getting uncomfortable with what you're asking. This is essential if you are being experimental, and so helpful!

Ernest Rombout, Oboe

Ernest, apart from being one of the best oboe players I've yet met, has the air of a charming and helpful academic, always patient and willing to discuss technique in great detail. As I was dealing with multiphonics, a touchy subject in the best of cases, Ernest very patiently explained that I was unlikely to get the clarity of multiphonic I was after and that I should specify types. i had basically specified just a couple of pitches. When I thought the session was over I thought I had finished - I turned away then heard a cry - it was Ernest having found a good multiphonic for what I was after - in the next minutes he'd found a range of fantastic sounds and offered to write down the fingerings. Wonderful!

Helenus de Rijke, Guitar

A Paul McCartney lookalike in his youth, Helenus was again charming and helpful, and very patient with my (deliberately basic) questions.

Rob Dirksen, Bass

Morton Feldman lookalike Rob was inestimably cool and came up with some great sounds over the course of the workshops. Most notable was playing the bottom of the tailpiece with the lowest string - it made the room vibrate!

General Thoughts

It was so nice to just compose for a weekend, away from my crowded life. When I wasn't workshopping my stuff, I was sat at the side sketching, typesetting, reading technique books and more importantly listening to other people's workshops, from which I learnt a lot. Doing this, and working hard before and during the weekend, I really felt I got everything I could have got from it!

It is tiring though - I got barely any sleep the week before, and very little sleep while I was there. I'm now having a lazy day to make up for it though. It was totally worth it!

Amsterdam is beautiful.

Ernest came up with a fantastic technique, which I choose to call the "Rombout Tongue Trill". Or maybe the "Rombout Roll"?

Quotes

"It was interesting 50 years ago" (Me, about Cage)

A good name for a band, and album: "Personal Hugbear: A Fluffy Grudge" (Stef and Me)

Edward Caine

Lazy Day Monday

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:28:49 +0000

Well, I'm back from Amsterdam and completely wiped out! I've had a really fantastic weekend with the Nieuw Ensemble - they're all really helpful, and I had a great time working with them.

Friday

We met at Leeds Bradford Airport, me and Stef having travelled there together, then meeting Johnny and Pat in the airport. We then got on our plane and were met in Amsterdam by Neils, who was a student of Joël's. It was very nice to meet someone off the plane as Amsterdam was at first a little daunting!

Once we'd got to our guesthouse (an extremely friendly little house run by a seafairers mission charity with very comfortable rooms and a nice atmosphere) we went out to find a pub to get to know one another. Ironically the first one we went to was an English themed pub!

One of the nicest things about this weekend was just spending two straight days jawing with composers about all things musical! Debate was intense with Pat and Johnny coming from a more experimental angle and me and Stef coming from more of a traditional angle, but all was good fun and there's nothing like a good musical debate!

Saturday

Getting slightly lost on the way to meet Jasper (our contact with the NE) at the station we nevertheless got there for 10am, having crossed the river in the free ferries you get in Amsterdam. There was some startling architecture on the way! The Nieuw ensemble themselves have a nice little den in a commercial lot in the back end of an industrial estate. Not much to look at from the outside, but a nice large square room inside with a mezzanine office. The large rehearsal space was littered with stands, instruments and exciting boxes full of percussion. It was a veritable musicians playground and 'lair' if you can imagine that.

We had introductions. I took scores with me because I was told I needed to give a talk about my work but actually all it amounted to was a "say your name and a sentence about yourself" type of thing.

Then it was straight into the workshops. We started with my material because the parts were ready. The string material worked really well and with some constructive comments, particularly from the double bassist (about reach). I did my material in sections - Strings, Winds and Plucked (apparently very common for composers to do that). The two sections I was less confident about - winds and pluckeds - went as badly as I thought, but I found it very constructive and later had a session with just those instruments in an effort to get my ear in and understand them a little better.

Session format was completely open - it was amazing having a whole ensemble there to do your bidding - if you felt you needed something, just ask. Planning was a must though - the whole ensemble was there Saturday morning, but nobody had any tutti material!

That night me, Stef and Joël went to the Chinese opera in the amazing Musiekgebouw - it was bonkers and virtuosic and altogether awesome. Johnny and Pat, after eating with us in a nice Thai Restaurant, went home to sketch stuff for Sunday.

When we got back that night I stayed up until 3am sketching a tutti arrangement of my source material for the next day, and finishing some sketches for Oboe, Percussion and Double Bass.

Sunday

Having requested a special percussion session (Johnny and Stef were particularly interested in the Chinese percussion) we needed to get there for 9am as the percussionist had to leave early. unfortunately we misjudged timing and were 25 mins late - got a rounded reprimand from Joël, quite rightly, and felt heartily ashamed. Lesson learnt.

Then we launched into a tutti session - we all by then had tutti material. On Saturday, we tried to plan ahead and thought we wouldn't need a conductor so he was sent home on Sunday, however, we then realised we did but it was too late. The upshot was - I got to conduct! Amazing! This was a real boon to me as I do conduct a fair bit, but I never get to conduct such amazing musicians! That gave me a real buzz.

My tutti arrangement of "Qu'est devenu ce bel oeil" went down really well and sounded fantastic. It was rather hurried and had some mistakes in the score but it was a real blast hearing something come out well. We didn't have time or resources to try out my Ob. Perc. Dbl Bs material but that's not a problem - more for next time! Stef, Pat and Johnny's material all sounded interesting and it was in general a very good day.

We then had an evaluation, where we discussed how we felt our sessions and material went with Joël, who seemed in general very positive, and then details about organisation with Heidi. The organisation feedback was a little awkward because there were a couple of points for improvement in the run up to the weekend and a couple of fine details, but the consensus was that the weekend itself could not have been organised more thoroughly and positively, and that the helpfulness of the astute Joël Bons and the organisational skills of the indomitable Heidi Johnson were very much appreciated!

Then we headed back to the station and airport, stopping off briefly for a wonder round Amsterdam. Heidi had arrived early morning and was with us all day and so accompanied us back, which again we might have had trouble with on our own!

Edward Caine

Creative Keyboard Workshop

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:13:00 +0000

Weekly keyboard workshops for beginners led by Julian Coburn-Hough from Hoot. Working in an organic, evolutionary and fun way, Julian uses modern workshop techniques to draw out a group’s creativity, often using games.

Whilst always maintaining an open and inclusive atmosphere these workshops seek to challenge, push and experiment. The focus on technique is on a ‘need to know’ basis!

No previous experience is needed and participants are welcome to join the workshops at any point in the project.

For more information, contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116 or email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk

Creative Keyboard Workshop

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:11:00 +0000

For more information, contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116 or email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk

Creative Keyboard Workshop

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:10:00 +0000

Weekly keyboard workshops for beginners led by Julian Coburn-Hough from Hoot. Working in an organic, evolutionary and fun way, Julian uses modern workshop techniques to draw out a group’s creativity, often using games.

Whilst always maintaining an open and inclusive atmosphere these workshops seek to challenge, push and experiment. The focus on technique is on a ‘need to know’ basis.

No previous experience is needed and participants are welcome to join the workshops at any point in the project.

For more information, contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116 or email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk

Creative Keyboard Workshop

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:08:00 +0000

Whilst always maintaining an open and inclusive atmosphere these workshops seek to challenge, push and experiment. The focus on technique is on a ‘need to know’ basis.

No previous experience is needed and participants are welcome to join the workshops at any point in the project.

For more information, contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116 or email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk

Creative Keyboard Workshop

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:05:00 +0000

Whilst always maintaining an open and inclusive atmosphere these workshops seek to challenge, push and experiment. The focus on technique is on a ‘need to know' basis!

No previous experience is needed and participants are welcome to join the workshops at any point in the project.

For more information, contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116 or email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk

Creative Keyboard Workshop

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 12:47:00 +0000

Weekly participatory keyboard workshops for beginners led by Julian Coburn-Hough from Hoot. Working in an organic, evolutionary and fun way, Julian uses modern workshop techniques to draw out a group's creativity, often using games.

Whilst always maintaining an open and inclusive atmosphere these workshops seek to challenge, push and experiment. The focus on technique is on a ‘need to know' basis!

No previous experience is needed and participants are welcome to join the workshops at any point in the project.

For more information contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116 or email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk

Half-term fun with accessible workshops

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:29:00 +0000

Thanks to hcmf//, young people with disabilities can now spend the February half-term holiday exploring and creating a range of different styles of music. Kirklees College in Huddersfield is hosting a series of daily workshops between Monday 15 and Friday 19 February: sessions include a taste of Scottish folk, jazz and funk improvisation and a chance to experiment with the innovative SoundBeam ‘invisible keyboard’.

The free workshops are aimed at young people aged from 13-25 with either physical or learning disabilities. Participants can sign up for as many days as they wish, but places must be booked in advance.

The workshops take place on the following days:
15 February: Singing and Signing with Accessible Arts
16 February: SoundBeam technology with Unit Six
17 February: Scottish Folk Music with Michael Haywood and Laura Grime
18 February: Jazz and funk improvisation with Three Jazz
19 February: Composing with the Fell Clarinet Quartet

Sessions run from 10.30am to 3.30pm at the college’s Huddersfield centre on New North Road, Huddersfield, HD1 5NN. The hcmf// workshops are funded by Kirklees Council as part of the Aiming High for Disabled Children programme.

Frantically Creating

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:25:23 +0000

OK, so Amsterdam is looming up (we go out on Friday) and I'm frantically trying to create what I deem as enough appropriate material for the first set of workshops. I thought it might be helpful to explain the type of material that I'm taking out there for any future participants - although I can't say for certain that I'm making the right kind of sketches -

The piece is to be based on a medieval chanson 'Qu'est devenu ce bel oeil' by Claude Le Jeune - you can listen it here:

I first came across it when listening to Salvatore Sciarrino's 'Lucie mi traditrici'. My first instinct is to fragment the chanson into instrinsic section and then to use the shape and harmonic 'field' to generate material.

The main thing I am interested in at this point is the nature of the instrumentation in the ensemble, so I am creating lots of fragmentary sketches for different combinations and different types of material. Something I noticed quite quickly is that, to my knowledge at least, the whispery legato string music I've been writing is not transferable over to the guitar, harp and mandolin. Those are three instruments that I really want to focus on when I'm over there - they're difficult to write for! Also their very presence dramatically changes the type of material you write

I'm thinking at this stage that I'll probably write a three movement/section piece - the material I'm using lends itself very well to slow moving, beatific chords, however the ensemble also dictates a leaning towards staccato material. At this point I'm finding the piano a little difficult to reconcile too - but then I'm a pianist, and find it very hard to write for my own instrument...

Also I have a nagging feeling that what I really want in the middle of it all is a trombone! I'll quash that one - I am excited to be writing for Double Bass though!

Back to it - sketches are needed yesterday!

Edward Caine

Piano Phasing

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:06:19 +0000

Coffee and Manuscript

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:09:48 +0000

Well, it's time I got on with sketching material for the first workshop in Amsterdam and, in keeping with the perennial rules of procrastination, write my first blog for the HCMF website at the same time. That's why I'm here in my office at 10pm, jug of coffee steaming away, pistachio nuts and dried apricots on standby to stave off even the suspicion of hunger (I have a tendency to binge eat while composing). Now also staving off the temptation to pop down to the bar for a drink.

A bit about myself - I'm a composer based in York - doing a PhD in composition. I am shortlisted with Sound And Music (formerly SPNM) and get performances of my work with various ensembles and festivals/concerts. Most commonly my work is performed at the Late Music Concert Series (http://www.latemusic.org/concerts), where I help organise the concerts and publicity.

I also have a number of different jobs to fund my PhD - I am "Music Tutor" for Vanbrugh College, a role which has expanded dramatically and I am now running 3 ensembles, organising workshops, teaching orchestration and privately mentoring ensemble leaders. I am also welfare tutor there, which involves looking after the undergrads. I also work for University of York Music Press (www.uymp.co.uk), accompany at a school, perform in a jazz restaurant and do graphic design and website programming. I do some typesetting on the side and also will be teaching adult daytime classes on contemporary music soon.

All of which has made it very difficult to get down to writing anything in advance of this weekend! Not to worry - I used to be known as "Two-minutes-to-midnight" at school because that's when I'd start my work. I have got better though!

I'm really excited about the weekend and looking forward to getting stuck into some composition and collaboration. The HCMF are being fantastic organising travel etc. and I anticipate a fun and instructive time!

Right - better get back to it!

Edward Caine

Sign up now for Piano Dances

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:34:00 +0000

Adults either with or without keyboard experience are invited to take part in Piano Dances, a free hcmf project taking place between Tuesday 23 and Friday 26 February 2010.

Musician and educator Hugh Nankivell, theatre director Wils Wilson and actor/improviser Bob Lockwood are hosting the evening workshops, which will combine the natural curiosity and inventiveness of children’s music-making with creative piano composition and performance for adults.

Piano Dances is part of the Piano Phasing strand of workshops and performances which ran before, during and after hcmf 2009. During the festival, a massed gathering of 50 volunteer pianists from all walks of life performed Kristoffer Zegers’ piece Piano Phasing on 25 pianos in Huddersfield Town Hall. Adult learners have also enjoyed the chance to refresh their piano skills or to get to grips with the instrument for the first time through a series of free keyboard workshops and surgeries.

Versions of Piano Dances have already been hosted in Gateshead and Sendai, Japan, under the name Keyboard Choreography Collection, by the project’s creators Hugh Nankivell and Japanese composer Makoto Nomura. The pair previously worked with residents of Sendai and with students, musicians and members of Full Body and the Voice theatre company in Huddersfield, to create the innovative community performance Whaletone Opera. They conceived Piano Dances as a project to appeal to both adults and early years-education children, and one that could combine the piano as a starting point with wider explorations of movement and dance.

During the project, Nankivell, Wilson and Lockwood will spend mornings working with children at the nursery of Christ Church Woodhouse School in Deighton, Huddersfield. The children will be encouraged to invent their own styles and methods for playing piano. The three will spend each afternoon studying film of the young pianists in order to gather a set of techniques, approaches and questions to bring to the adults’ evening sessions.

The adult workshops are open to anyone interested in creative musical exploration or dance acting and improvising, regardless of age, skills or previous experience. The pieces created will stem from piano composition, but may veer off in surprising and non-traditional directions. Two informal performances on the Friday will round off the workshops, which are all free of charge.

To book a place, please contact Heidi Johnson, Learning and Participation Officer through the contact page or call 01484 471116. For more information about the Piano Phasing programme of activities, visit: http://www.hcmf.co.uk/pianophasing

Composers team up with Nieuw Ensemble

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:42:00 +0000

Four Yorkshire-based composers are to collaborate with a leading contemporary music group to create work which will premiere at hcmf 2010. Now in its second year, the hcmf & Nieuw Ensemble Composers' Professional Development Programme offers rising talents from the region’s universities the chance to compose music for Amsterdam’s Nieuw Ensemble.

The selected composers are Patrick Allison and Johnny Herbert from the University of Huddersfield and Edward Caine and Stephanie Conner from the University of York. They will travel to Amsterdam in February to meet the 12-piece ensemble. Under the artistic direction of Joël Bons, who co-founded the group in 1980, Nieuw Ensemble features the combination of string, wind and percussion with plucked instruments such as mandolin and harp, presenting both a challenge and a distinctive opportunity for composers.

Having tested out and refined their ideas at a second weekend workshop in May, the composers will prepare their pieces over the coming months before seeing them performed by Nieuw Ensemble at hcmf 2010, which runs from 19 to 28 November.

Run as a partnership between hcmf, Nieuw Ensemble and Yorkshire Universities and supported by NFPK and the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund, last year’s programme featured composers Ben Isaacs, Lauren Redhead, Dimitris Maronidis and Jenny Jackson.

“The tuition and guidance has been invaluable and The Nieuw Ensemble provided an environment where I felt encouraged and enabled to try new things”, Jackson recalls. “It was amazing to have a piece performed to a packed hall and at the festival at an evening concert – very rewarding and a high-point of my composing career so far!"

Isaacs adds: “I have gained a tremendous amount from the programme. This was the largest ensemble I have written for and the longest-term project I have been involved with, and simply working in this context has really helped my development. I think that I would have learnt far less and developed much more slowly as a composer in 2009 if I hadn’t been involved in this scheme. Having the opportunity to present my work on such a prominent public platform was really valuable and has given me a basis to build on professionally.”

More about the hcmf & Nieuw Ensemble Composers' Professional Development Programme participants:

Edward Caine was brought up in the north of Scotland and is currently pursuing a PhD in composition at the University of York. He also works freelance as an organiser for contemporary music promoter Late Music and music publishers UYMP, and is resident music tutor for Vanbrugh College, where he runs three ensembles.

Stephanie Conner specializes in contemporary vocal music and jazz composition. Her work has been performed in York Minster, at York Spring Festival and on BBC Radio 2. She has written works for the Chimera Ensemble, Juice, Trydydd, Bright Cecilia, John Potter and the 24. She is working towards a PhD in composition at the University of York. She also played for two years in the folk band Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, touring Europe, the USA and Australia and appearing widely on television and radio.

Johnny Herbert graudated with a first class degree from the Royal College of Music in London, also receiving the highest award for composition. He spent a year studying privately with Rebecca Saunders and attending seminars led by Walter Zimmerman at the Berlin UdK. He is currently studying for his MMus in composition at the University of Huddersfield under the guidance of Dr Aaron Cassidy. His music has been performed in the UK and across Europe, by artists including Ian Pace, Richard Haynes, Kevin Bowyer and Neil Heyde.

Patrick Allison was born in Sheffield in 1985. His works have been performed by Christopher Redgate, Matthew Haynes, Philip Thomas and EXAUDI, as well as numerous non-professional performers. He studies with Bryn Harrison and is currently finishing a two-year Masters course in composition at the University of Huddersfield. He is also active as a performer of experimental, rock and community based music.

Free concerts at GEMdays

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:53:00 +0000

The University of Huddersfield’s Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM) is once again hosting GEMdays, its annual festival of sonic exploration. Running from Wednesday 27 January until Sunday 31 January, the five-day programme of concerts, talks and workshops brings together some of the leading strands of research in acousmatic and improvised music, software interfaces and video music.

Concerts take place daily at 8pm in Phipps Hall in the university’s Creative Arts Building, and admission is free. The performances include violinist and live electronics specialist Bennett Hogg (28 January) and the premiere of Jamie Fawcus’s Resonances for theremin and four-channel sound (31 Jan).

The daytime events include pre-concert talks from several of the artists, a circuit-bending workshop with Phil Archer and a PowerUsers’ Symposium dedicated to the advanced possibilities of the Max/MSP software package.

One of the partners of hcmf, CeReNeM’s areas of research include acoustics, sound spatialisation, digital interfaces, musical perception and cross cultural aesthetics. Work by its staff members, which include composers Liza Lim, Matthew Adkins and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, forms an important part of the hcmf programme.

The full programme can be viewed here on the GEMdays website.

Looking Back

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:25:01 +0000

It feels great to look back on a year working with and writing for the Nieuw Ensemble. Composing for the group posed many new challenges which were rewarding to overcome. The weekends in Amsterdam were very informative and the concert at HCMF was a fantastic event for all four of us. Special thanks are due to Heidi Johnson for all her hard work on the project. The recording and score of and darkness sweeps in like a hand can be heard and seen here.

Ben Isaacs

Learning and participation a hit at hcmf 2009

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:07:00 +0000

A host of new work was unveiled at hcmf 2009: its 13 world premiere events and 20 UK or European premieres included Richard Barrett’s Mesopotamia, Wolfgang Rihm’s –ET LUX– and Jonathan Harvey’s Sringara Chaconne. And thanks to the festival’s Learning and Participation strand, young and amateur musicians were able to take their place alongside world-class soloists and ensembles in presenting audiences with fresh contemporary music.

“There were loads of opportunities for local musicians to shine through our Learning and Participation events”, says hcmf’s Education and Outreach Officer, Heidi Johnson. “In particular the performance of Kristoffer Zegers' Piano Phasing was a great success, showcasing the talents of 50 pianists from the region, ranging from college students to retired people, including someone who had travelled all the way from Canada to perform. Over 300 people attended the performance in Huddersfield Town Hall to hear, and see, 25 pianos played simultaneously.”

This first UK performance of Piano Phasing drew some enthusiastic feedback from those taking part: “I liked meeting new people and playing and experiencing new music, plus the concert was really exciting,” said one player. “Taking part with others – not a normal experience for a pianist!” said another, whilst a third noted, “It opened my ears.”

The hcmf//vocalise project reached an equally spectacular conclusion during hcmf 2009, with the performance of Alvin Curran's Oh Man Oh Mankind Oh Yeah in Huddersfield Town Hall. Funded by Youth Music, vocalise gave young people aged between eight and 18 the chance to explore and develop singing techniques in weekly workshops. The ensemble teamed up with the University of Huddersfield choir and more than 100 members of Huddersfield Choral Society to give Curran’s piece its world premiere.

“The concert featured a huge range of unusual vocal techniques and improvisations as well as mini harmonicas, plastic tubes and four orchestral bass drums, before finishing with a sing-a-long mash-up of familiar tunes,” Johnson says.

One singer described the concert as “crazy but fun!”, whilst another said, “I enjoyed mumbling like gorillas the most!” A third chose “performing at Huddersfield Town Hall and the applause” as high points, whilst the workshops’ beneficial effect was pinpointed by one commenter: “I learnt how not to be scared performing in front of people.”

The 2009 festival may be over but hcmf’s Learning and Participation work continues into the new year, with ongoing Creative Keyboard Workshops and Piano Surgeries providing opportunities for people of all ages to learn the instrument or brush up rusty skills. February 2010 will also see the arrival of the Keyboard Choreography Collection, a music and dance project led by Hugh Nankivell.

On reflection...

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:00:14 +0000

The experience of working with the Nieuw Ensemble this year has been very positive for me. I feel I have developed as a composer through participating in the programme and I was pleased with the performance of my piece. I enjoyed the weekend workshops earlier in the year and relished the opportunity to write short sketches without the immediate pressure of creating a final piece. The final performance fulfilled a lifelong ambition - to have a piece performed in the festival - and I am happy to say that the guitar is still out of the cupboard...

Jenny Jackson

[60] Project up for Qwartz award

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:32:00 +0000

Matthew Adkins’ [60]Project, which was commissioned by hcmf in 2008, has been nominated for a Qwartz Electronic Music Award. Held annually in Paris, the Qwartz awards recognise the achievements of digital musicians from across the globe, in categories such as best album, best label and best artwork. The CD release of the [60]Project has been shortlisted in the experimentation/research category, competing against work by artists such as Per Samuelsson and José Miguel Candela.

Adkins has also been nominated in the album category for his record Five Panels. The shortlists were chosen by a jury headed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, and the final results are decided by public vote through the awards’ website. The prizes will be announced during a ceremony on Friday 2 April 2010 at the Palais Brongniart in Paris.

The [60]Project was devised to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the transmission of Pierre Schaeffer’s groundbreaking musique concrete work Etudes de Bruits on French national radio. More than 60 leading sound artists contributed clips based around a single sound of up to a minute’s length, which Adkins then compiled and arranged into a 60-minute piece.

Since its premiere at hcmf 2008, the [60]Project has been performed internationally at locations including the Espaço Cultural Sérgio Porto in Rio, the Institute of Sonology at the Hague Conservatoire and the Danish Institute of Electroacoustic Music. Adkins has also lectured on the background to the project and co-authored a paper, [60]Project: Conception, Composing and Archiving. Click below to read the document.

hcmf commission Extended Play features in new retrospective

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:57:00 +0000

Sound artist and musician Janek Schaefer, whose hcmf commission Extended Play won him the 2008 British Composer of the Year Award for Sonic Art and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for composition, is the subject of a major new exhibition at Liverpool’s Bluecoat gallery.

Janek Schaefer : Sound Art is the first retrospective of Schaefer’s career, ranging from work he produced as a student to a new installation completed just days before the show opened.

National Portrait [the last transmission] is an audio snapshot of British television on 2 December 2009, the last 24 hours of analogue broadcasts in the Liverpool region. Five flickering old television sets play an ever-changing collage from the terrestrial channels’ programmes, the randomly chosen sound clips overlapping before each fades poignantly to silence.

Other highlights of the exhibition include a new installation in memory of the author JG Ballard; the innovative three-armed turntable Schaefer built for live performances; his early Dictaphone piece Recorded Delivery and Vacant Space, an audiovisual collaboration with Chris Watson and David Tinapple.

A whole room is dedicated to hosting Extended Play, which was commissioned for hcmf 2007 and originally exhibited in Huddersfield Art Gallery. The work features nine identical record players set to different speeds, weaving together the parts of a piece for violin, cello and piano that was adapted from a Polish tune used to transmit secret resistance codes during World War II. You can read more about the work in hcmf’s interview with Janek Schaefer here.

Janek Schaefer : Sound Art runs until Sunday 17 January 2010 at the Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool.

Janek Schaefer’s website

Three decades of music innovation captured as hcmf archive launches

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 10:06:00 +0000

Records showing both the headline artistic triumphs and the day-to-day dedication that have made hcmf a success over the past 32 years have been saved for future study, thanks to a new archive at the University of Huddersfield.

An official hcmf collection is now housed in the newly refurbished University Archives, whose other collections include records of the Huddersfield Literary and Scientific Society and the Rugby Football League archive.

The archive was officially launched on Friday 20 November, the first day of hcmf 2009. As well as Professor Tim Thornton, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Teaching and Learning and Professor Andrew Ball, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, speakers at the opening included hcmf Artistic Director Graham McKenzie and Professor Richard Steinitz, founder of the first festival in 1978 and its director for more than two decades.

Professor Steinitz recalled arriving at the then Huddersfield Polytechnic in 1961 to discover that there was no music library. He took steps to establish one, and paid tribute to the present-day University collection as one of the finest in the UK. He also recalled the difficulties encountered by the organisers of the inaugural hcmf in 1978 when severe winter fog disrupted many musicians’ travel.

The links between hcmf and the University of Huddersfield were strengthened in 2008 with the announcement of the university as the festival’s headline sponsor. When the on-campus hcmf office moved locations, the resulting transfer of paperwork and other materials was the cue for establishing a formal archive.

Although the collection contains programmes, brochures and posters from every past festival, the main quantity is behind-the-scenes material. From commissioned scores to correspondence with artists and composers, these provide a revealing insight into the organisation of each hcmf event.

One highlight of the archive is a series of handwritten letters from Karlheinz Stockhausen, penned in the late composer’s idiosyncratic style: “I send you the Greeting. Cowbell: ok. Rooms at ‘George’ ok. I will bring ear plugs.” The collection also comprises recorded interviews with eight major composers, including Iannis Xenakis, George Benjamin and Pierre Boulez.

Under the care of the University Archivist Hilary Haigh, the hcmf archive is currently being catalogued by specialist staff, with some items, such as rapidly fading faxes, in need of conservation work. However, the collection is already available as a resource for academics and students, with a new home sufficiently spacious to house the records of many future festivals.

University of Huddersfield Archives page

Catch hcmf on Radio 3

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:11:00 +0000

As the official Broadcast Partner to hcmf, BBC Radio 3 will be including extensive highlights of this year’s festival on its contemporary music programme, ‘Hear and Now’. A live broadcast on Saturday 28 November features London Sinfonietta’s world premiere performance of Richard Barrett’s new work, Mesopotamia, as well as Jonathan Harvey’s masterpiece Bhakti.

The programme will also be available for online listening via the BBC Radio 3 website for a week afterwards.

Other events from hcmf 2009 are being recorded for future editions of ‘Hear and Now’, which runs from 10.30pm to midnight every Saturday and is presented by Sara Mohr-Pietsch and Robert Worby.

These can be heard in January 2010:

Saturday 2 January
Quatuor Diotima:
Thomas Simaku, Radius - String Quartet No 2

Noriko Kawai:
James Dillon, Charm (world premiere)
James Dillon, Dragon-fly (world premiere)

Musica Elettronica Viva (excerpts)

Geneviève Foccroulle:
Anthony Braxton, Composition no 10

Arditti Quartet:
James Clarke, Quartet (world premiere)

Saturday 9 January
Ictus Ensemble:
Brice Pauset, Theorie der Tränen: Atem (UK premiere)
James Dillon, The Leuven Triptych (BBC co-commission; UK premiere)

Quatuor Diotima:
Matthew Shlomowitz, Theme Street Parade (BBC commission; world premiere)

Saturday 16 January
Remix Ensemble/Rolf Gupta:
Antonio Augusto Aguiar, Pandora (UK premiere)
Luis Tinoco, O curso da águas
Rebecca Saunders, fury
Emmanuel Nunes, Versus II (UK premiere)
Emmanuel Nunes, Rubato, registres et résonances (UK premiere)

Saturday 23 January
Geneviève Foccroulle:
Anthony Braxton, Composition No1 (UK premiere)

ELISION:
Richard Barrett, Opening of the Mouth (UK premiere)

Tickets are still available for hcmf events over the final weekend: click here to view the festival programme and buy tickets.

BBC Radio 3 website

Louis Andriessen 70: Andriessen interviewed

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:16:00 +0000

Louis Andriessen admits to some ambivalence about the premise for the series of concerts – in his home city of Amsterdam and across Europe and North America – that have marked his 70th birthday since June this year. “I must, of course, say that the concerts, especially when they are very good performances of pieces, are simply a joy,” reflects the Netherlands’ most celebrated – and in some quarters, most controversial – living composer. “In the beginning, I had the feeling that it was ridiculous to start performing pieces because somebody has been alive a round amount of years. But I’m not too orthodox to enjoy it when it happens.”

If Andriessen has the slightly abashed air of someone ushered into a room to discover a birthday cake and a crowd of well-wishers, then he does, at least, approve wholeheartedly of the list of guests. The programme for hcmf’s two celebratory Louis Andriessen 70 concerts, Andriessen Peanuts and Andriessen in Black and White, features friends and collaborators from throughout his career. Each has played a role in helping the composer realise his vision, from Gerard Bouwhuis and Cees van Zeeland of Hoketus and The Piano Duo, to the musicians Andriessen describes as “my two muses, the violinist Monica Germino and the impeccable Cristina Zavalloni, the Italian singer.”

“A lot of my recent music is written for Cristina, both smaller chamber music and larger pieces. At the moment, I’m writing a mono-drama theatre work for her, based upon fragments of the journal of Anaïs Nin. So when I compose, I think of her first and of her personality. I’m very pleased to have her performing in Huddersfield.”

Featuring a range of smaller pieces from the last three decades, Andriessen Peanuts showcases the range of subject matter and influences incorporated by the composer, who has long looked to jazz, pop and global music as much as Western composition. One of the pieces performed by Zavalloni is Letter from Cathy, a musical adaptation of a 1964 letter sent to Andriessen by the late Cathy Berberian, the singer who was married to Luciano Berio at the time Andriessen was his student. Her interpretive abilities greatly inspired the earlier years of his career.

“I worked a lot with Cathy in the early Sixties and later, and that was, let’s say, my norm, my milestone for how it could be, the performance and intelligence of a singer, and specifically, the wide range of possibilities," he recalls. “What I don’t like in classically trained singers is that everything sounds the same: whether it’s Schubert or Bach or Wagner or The Beatles doesn’t make a difference. I think that’s a very limited approach to the sound of a voice.”

Andriessen in Black and White features several larger pieces which have come to be seen as signature Andriessen works. His mid-1970s piece De Staat has long been celebrated for its vigorous collision of minimalism and dissonance, and for its radical content. The sung text satirically lifts a passage from Plato’s Republic in which the philosopher argues for the suppression of certain morally damaging instruments and key signatures. However, the composer is keen that the work’s political aspects shouldn’t overshadow its musical advances.

“De Staat is a good example of how what I wrote for the voices should be different than for what would generally be heard from classical singers,” he notes. “So in the start I ask for a lot of different techniques. I needed a kind of Greek peasant women sound in the second part, and then, in the final part, Baroque singers. So I was very happy to have found Christina, who can sing in so many different ways and so full of expression.”

The concert also features 1977’s Hoketus, the work which gave rise to the ensemble of the same name featuring pianos and panpipes alongside amplified instruments. The group was not only distinctive due to its double set-up, with two of every instrument, but in how that was used to demonstrate a modern and arresting use of hocket. This rhythmic technique, where melodies are split and alternate rapidly between players, is an enduring favourite of Andriessen’s: it features once again in the new work The Hague Hacking Scrap, which is also included in the concert. What continues to draw him to such a distinctive musical form?

“I don’t really know,” he replies. “It started with a project to work with students in the Hague in the mid-70s, to do a project on repetitive music. We didn’t like minimal music, because it was too much like TV advertisements. My students found what had already happened in America – early Philip Glass and early Steve Reich – too much like entertainment music. I said, ‘You may say that, that’s fine with me, but you must know that it was revolutionary avant-garde music when it started, with La Monte Young and Terry Riley and John Cage, and you should study that to know what you are talking about.’ And then the group consisted of students on different instruments. There were a lot of composers who kept playing the keyboard, but there were, strangely enough, two panpipe players. So we could make two identical ensembles.”

“Then you continue with the fact that hocketing is a technique in different kinds of folk music: the Eskimos have vocal techniques with hocketing, and you have of course the panpipes in Peru and Bolivia, the playing on different percussion instruments in a lot of places in West Africa. So there I found something which is very typical of the development of the American avant-garde in the Sixties and Seventies, which is orientated towards non-Western music. Orientation towards other music than European classical music is a big step forward.”

It must be very demanding for musicians to do justice to his music. “Yes, that is a problem, and I don’t know how to solve it. What I do, of course, is write for people and work with them, and I seem to want things which they don’t learn at the conservatories. Of course, you have to count very well and things like that, and they learn a lot there. But the articulation and the way of holding your instrument and thinking about your instrument is in my case quite different, and that is a problem. Because you cannot write down the way I want it. So that’s why I’m doomed to work with my friends!”

He adds, “That’s what Bach did, too. He was together with his musicians all the time, so he didn’t bother writing down any articulation or dynamics. That kind of alienation of the composer from the musicians is something that I fight.”

Louis Andriessen events at hcmf
Louis Andriessen talk, Wed 25 November
Louis Andriessen 70: Andriessen Peanuts
Louis Andriessen 70: Andriessen in Black and White

Liza Lim performs at hcmf Friday 27 November 2009

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:14:25 +0000

Philip Thomas talks about his music and hcmf

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:28:10 +0000

Every day during hcmf 2009, pianist Philip Thomas will be performing a piece or pieces from Michael Pisaro's collection pi (1-2594). Here he discusses his belief in music as "experience"

hcmf 2009 launches with sell-out weekend - tickets still available for selected events

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:58:00 +0000

Audiences enjoyed breathtaking performances from Arditti Quartet, ELISION, New London Chamber Choir and many other artists at sold-out concerts over the first weekend of hcmf 2009. The festival opened on Friday 20 November with the UK premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s new piece –ET LUX– in St Paul’s Hall. Arditti Quartet and The Hilliard Ensemble joined forces to perform the requiem, a work of intimate beauty in which the soaring vocals of countertenor David James were a highlight.

Another hcmf first followed, with the debut British airing of Richard Barrett’s Opening of the Mouth. With the composer on hand as sound artist for the piece, ELISION ensemble presented the complex and emotionally intense song cycle, which included outstanding solos from woodwind player Richard Haynes and singers Deborah Kayser and Ute Wassermann.

Earlier in the day, Visual Kitchen’s audiovisual installation Mortuos Plango, based upon a tape piece by hcmf Composer in Residence Jonathan Harvey, was unveiled in St Thomas’s Church. The installation runs daily throughout the festival: click here for more details.

Saturday saw the first of many lunchtime concerts at hcmf. In another sold-out performance, pianist Sarah Nicolls showcased her innovative musicianship and use of technology with three pieces that expanded the instrument’s possibilities through film, electronics, motion sensors and dramatic synchronised lighting. Arditti Quartet returned in the evening with a programme including Jonathan Harvey’s String Quartet No. 4 and premieres of works by James Dillon and James Clarke.

Harvey’s work was celebrated again on Sunday 22 November, with a rare performance of The Summer Cloud’s Awakening, a piece written specially for New London Chamber Choir. Under the direction of James Weeks, the choir rose to the challenge of creating a multilayered soundscape, with voices chopped into fragments and flying dramatically between an array of speakers surrounding the audience.

Over in Bates Mill, David Sawer and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group’s Rumpelstiltskin reimagined the fairytale as a dark and grown-up music theatre piece, with haunting motifs and visuals reminiscent of expressionist silent film. And following on from Geneviève Foccroulle’s solo piano recitals of compositions by Anthony Braxton on 20 and 21 November, the weekend concluded with For Braxton, a large-scale homage to the pioneering and controversial giant of American music, featuring the combined powers of Apartment House, Frank Gratkowski, ELISION and John Butcher.

Tickets are still available for hcmf events over the coming week: click here to view the festival programme and buy tickets.

For Braxton

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:34:00 +0000

The American musician Anthony Braxton is known to many for the power and precision of his blistering saxophone solos. But Braxton’s expertise spans a much wider range than reed-based improvisation alone, and hcmf 2009 has gathered a cast of leading musicians to highlight a side beyond performance: Braxton the composer.

Two concerts on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 November feature the UK premieres of Braxton’s solo piano works Composition No.1, No.2 and No.3 and The Trip, performed by Geneviève Foccroulle. In contrast, For Braxton on Sunday 22 November branches out into larger-scale interpretations of his work. Apartment House and Frank Gratkowski team up for further Braxton compositions and for the world premiere of a new Gratkowski work, co-commissioned by hcmf and November Music.

In addition, the concert will see the first performance of The Braxton Project by ELISION ensemble and John Butcher, an innovative assemblage of Braxton music and inspiration that connects his compositions, musical language and improvisation with new music created by the performers. Timothy O’Dwyer, ELISION saxophonist and curator of The Braxton Project explains more about the unique work:

What qualities do ELISION have to tackle a work such as The Braxton Project?

ELISION has a history of playing large structured improvisations as an ensemble. The players bring highly developed skills in interpretation and extended techniques combined with being able to expand and extemporise on given conceptual frameworks. There has been a unique ensemble approach to improvisational material developed over the years whether it be self-devised, or directed by others like Richard Barrett, John Butcher or myself. The Braxton Project enables the players to interpret and improvise within the works of Braxton while pushing the music in unexpected ways that are informed by the collective history of the group.

What challenges did the compositions present, both as discrete pieces, and for integrating into this larger work?

The approach for the performance has been to take some older works in the Braxton oeuvre and arrange them, utilising some of the more modern performance techniques he has developed for large ensemble over the past decade. We are using a number of compositions from the 40 and 69 series that will be played end to end and also simultaneously with one another. The challenge is for all the members of the group to play the notation and to improvise within the discreet worlds of each of these pieces given the brevity of information, so when played they all have distinct identities that can be deduced clearly by the listener.

How have you used the pitch and rhythmic language of Braxton’s improvisations in the solo, duo and trio compositions?

In addition to Braxton, there are three other composers that have contributed works. Ben Marks (trombone) has contributed two structured improvisations for two trios that utilise information gleaned from 69M. Richard Haynes (clarinet) has also contributed a tutti piece that is indirectly inspired by both the 69 and 49 series and my own offering for this particular performance is in the form of a violin solo which will appear toward the middle of the set.

I initially transcribed Braxton's solo 8F from his For Alto record using a time line (down to tenths of a second); there was no way that I could put this into a metre or irrational rhythm! I then transformed the transcription into violin music using spacial rhythmic notation and literally using the pitch material. The second layer of the composition included me adding phrasing, dynamics and some extended techniques that were specific for the violin. My previous work at Huddersfield in 2006 involved a similar project in collaboration with John Butcher where he improvised within one of my notated works. Since that performance I have transcribed what he played and converted his solo into a clarinet/ bass clarinet part. This process is a part of my PhD candidature, so there is obviously a longer answer here for next time!

What is your favourite aspect of Braxton’s work in general? Is he underrated or misunderstood as a composer?

As an alto player, I have to say his solo improvisations are my favourite thing about his work followed closely by his small groups of the 1970s and his quartet of the 1980s. But he has written great music and had great recordings after this time as well, so it is hard to say! I don't think there is any doubt about Braxton the instrumentalist being at the forefront of the technical development of the alto saxophone, the bass saxophone and the contrabass clarinet over the past 30 years.

Braxton the composer is a trickier subject and this will only be my opinion here. I think in his compositions and writings he courageously brings together very disparate legacies from the last half of the 20th century. These influences come together unequivocally in his music and they include the free jazz of John Coltrane et al, the experimental music of Stockhausen and Cage with the strong sense of the connection between music and mysticism found in the work of Coltrane, Stockhausen and Sun Ra amongst others.

Braxton along with many of the other composers from the AACM, including George Lewis and Henry Threadgill, have stood heroically at the cross roads of Afrocentric and Eurocentric music pulling together the intrinsic ideas of both these worlds in their own music, which strangely seems to be still controversial... The problem of 'rating' him as a composer lies within these areas- people can't pin him down and rate him against composers in one particular camp: he defiantly sits between them all!

Other musicians on Anthony Braxton:

Anton Lukoszevieze
"Braxton's music reminds me of the paintings of Bradley Walker Tomlin, strangely. With their calligraphic whimsies and constructions, jostling the picture plane. His music is also fundamentally about communication and a post-free-experimental-jazz-ghost-trance sound world that is glorious and rumbustious."

Evan Parker
"Ever since he made the ground breaking solo saxophone recording For Alto in 1969, Anthony Braxton's music has been characterised by his vision and determination to innovate. The scale of his imagination is boundless, his courage limitless."

Frank Gratkowski
"Anthony Braxton has been a strong influence to my music for a long time. He is one of the very few composers who really found a way to blend all kinds of aspects of contemporary classical music, spiritual music, jazz, improvisation, determination and many others. He is a great spirit who is always looking for new directions. Also in person he's a beautiful and open minded character. I'm very thankful to have the opportunity to perform his music."

Anthony Braxton events at hcmf:

Braxton Solo Piano 1, Fri 20 November
Braxton Solo Piano 2, Sat 21 November
Pre-concert talk, Sun 22 November
For Braxton, Sun 22 November

James Weeks on The Summer Cloud’s Awakening

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:18:00 +0000

On Sunday 22 November at hcmf, New London Chamber Choir will give a rare performance of Jonathan Harvey’s The Summer Cloud’s Awakening. Originally composed for the group’s 20th anniversary in 2001, the 35-minute piece features choir, cello, flute, pre-recorded sounds and live electronic processing. NLCC’s Musical Director James Weeks reveals the challenges and rewards of preparing such a spectacular work:

“The Summer Cloud’s Awakening is a major work of Jonathan Harvey’s: certainly one of, if not his biggest choral works. It certainly comes off as a very effective piece and it’s not heard very much because it’s complex to put together. It’s a rare and very exciting opportunity to hear it.”

“All of his pieces can be very different from each other and this one is certainly different from anything that I’d done before. This was written in 2001, before I became musical director, to celebrate the NLCC’s 20th anniversary. It’s both unique and at the same time very typical of Jonathan‘s work. It’s a rather fascinating blend of Wagner and Buddhist doctrines.”

“Essentially there are some pre-recorded sounds which were made at the time of the original performance, and they’ve been subject to various electronic transformations. Then the sound coming from the choir is processed live, so you have these two layers of electronics.”

“Clive Williamson is playing what looks like an ordinary keyboard but actually it’s triggering all sorts of electronic noises according to my beat. Some of it’s synchronised with a stopwatch and the choir sings over the top. And then of course you have the cello and flute at the same time. It’s quite a spectacle.”

“I think what’s very effective about the piece is Jonathan’s sense of sound images. He has a gift for finding an image which is often quite simple, but very powerful, whether it’s a choir cascading up in clusters, or particular figurations or effects that he gets from just two instruments. At one point you have the cello and the flute almost doing a kind of Buddhist dance around the choir, who are chanting, and then in the next section the basses of the choir attempt some Tibetan subharmonic singing, which is again rather exotic, and very typical of the score in that he blends all these things together.”

“What I think is most impressive is that way that the Wagner excerpts – which he’s taken from Tristan und Isolde, including the famous Tristan chord [the first chord heard in Wagner’s opera] which appears like a leitmotif all the way through the piece – are blended in with all these other influences, from the use of percussion and bells typical of Buddhist practices, to more of Jonathan’s own style. It sounds like a stylistic mish-mash when described like that, but these things are very carefully interwoven.”

“There were a couple of challenges that we encountered when rehearsing. Firstly, there are two impressive passages of cluster glissandi which occur, and they are really like clouds. They sound like a thunderstorm approaching, if a thunderstorm approaching had a noise other than the rumble of thunder. There’s a sense that something rather awesome and grand is moving towards you and eventually it bursts over your head, which is exciting. But that’s difficult to achieve, because there are no reference points in the glissandi; you can’t get your tuning fork out and, over the course of a glissando that might last a minute, make sure you end up on the right note. So it’s very testing for the choir.”

“And then the end, which becomes frenzied and ecstatic, is full of these very fast scales in clusters. So the choir will be divided into 12 and there’ll be eight semi-chorus parts on top, so 20 different parts really, rushing up these rather unusual scales as fast as possible and a very small distance apart from each other. And that is exceptionally difficult, especially when the live electronics will be processing that sound and cutting it up and throwing it all over the hall around the speakers. It’s going to be sonically truly spectacular, that end, but it’s not very easy to be truly ecstatic when you’re desperately clinging to the beat.”

James Weeks’ website

Click here to buy tickets for New London Chamber Choir: Jonathan Harve

Richard Barrett: resistance is fertile

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:54:00 +0000

This year, hcmf celebrates the work of British composer and musician Richard Barrett in two concerts. As he reaches his 50th birthday, the festival features both the world premiere of his new work, Mesopotamia, and the first complete UK performance of his cycle Opening of the Mouth.

Encompassing a range of chamber, vocal, electronic and multimedia elements, Barrett’s work is ambitious, complex, abrasive and often harrowing. It demands both precision from its performers and active engagement from its audiences. Many of his pieces exist both as freestanding works and as part of larger series linked by overarching concepts: DARK MATTER, negatives, Opening of the Mouth and resistance & vision.

“Music is my way of exploring and questioning what it means, if anything, to be alive, in this time and place and situation, and attempting to bring something back from that contemplation which might resonate with others,” he explains when asked what drew him to the path of the composer.

Born in Swansea in 1959, Barrett studied with Peter Wiegold, and later attended summer courses at Darmstadt, eagerly exposing himself to as many aspects of composition as he could. “The most important ideas were serial thinking; randomness and statistical composition; improvisation; the possibilities of electronic music; questioning the nature of how music reflects or responds to its social conditions; and the impetus to learn from ‘non-Western’ musical traditions,” he says. “My reaction was to try and find a point where all these ideas become aspects of the same one.”

He also holds a degree in genetics and microbiology from UCL, an area of study he sees as complementary to his creative work. “My continuing interest in science as well as my obviously much deeper devotion to music spring from the same source. You could imagine the constellation of concepts in my previous answer to occupy mutually very distant positions in the musical universe, having little in common apart from all of them having arisen during the last century in Western music as innovations, or at least being taken into radically new areas which redefined their nature.”

“My perception of an overarching unity, in addition to or somehow within the diversity, is something which both music and fundamental science have the possibility to say something profound about, in different and complementary ways.” He adds, “The most beautiful results in science, I think, are those which are revelatory about that relation, as in Einstein’s work for example. And the same could be said about music.”

Opening of the Mouth is one of several works resulting from Barrett’s long relationship with ELISION, the Australia-founded, internationally peopled contemporary music ensemble. ELISION’s artistic director Daryl Buckley recalls how their collaboration started:

“I first become aware of Richard’s music in the late 80s, through a composer who had just returned from study at Darmstadt and who brought with him cassettes of works by a number of composers who had ether been at Darmstadt or who had been featured there,” Buckley says. “He handed me this cassette and said, ‘Look, have a listen to this. It’s a really interesting group of young composers, but the music’s totally unplayable. It’ll never be played in Australia; the musicians won’t like it and neither will audiences.’”

“So I had a listen, and the Barrett work on that was Coïgitum, performed by Ensemble Exposé. That just absolutely blew me away. It was one of those classic listening experiences where you hear something in your brain that’s a big ‘yes’ ringing out, saying, ‘I want to get involved with this music; let’s do something.’”

Barrett’s first commission for ELISION was 1990’s Another Heavenly Day in which gestures exchanged between a trio of clarinet, double bass and electric guitar degrade and collapse. “One of the very beautiful things about it was that it was really clear that it was a music that required commitment. That was clear not just to the players, but to the audience, who were really excited,” Buckley says.

The composer reflects upon his continuing relationship with ELISION. “I suppose that both Daryl and I have always been interested in pushing at the limits of what a group of collaborating musicians can achieve both individually and collectively, and our ideas mesh with one another in a way which has now been productive for many years and shows no sign of slowing down or becoming routine.”

Says Buckley, “When Richard writes for ELISION, he writes for the people. So it’s not a generic, depersonalized instrument. So the challenge then for the composer is to actually write for the capabilities of the people involved and in Richard’s case, that’s a beautiful challenge, because of his sense of how people can engage with instruments. ELISION commissioned an amazing work for contrabass clarinet called interference, written for Carl Rosman. And Richard, in writing for Carl, took into account his vocal abilities and just totally transformed what you might expect a contrabass clarinet solo to be.”

Barrett notes, “I think the sound-world of Opening of the Mouth is at least as rich and many-dimensional as anything I could do with an orchestra, even though it involves only a dozen or so performers. It’s a question of how one tries to encourage the listener’s attention: there’s an entire orchestra within a single cello sound if you’re listening into it in that way.”

Opening of the Mouth was first performed as part of 1997’s Festival of Perth in a disused railway workshop building, set among an installation by Richard Crow that featured discarded clothes, human hair, curdling milk and the smell of dead fish. The hcmf venue of Bates Mill is a little more welcoming, but the musical impact of the work remains. Drawing its title from the ancient Egyptian ceremony that aimed to ensure the soul in the afterlife could eat, drink and speak, the cycle was inspired by poet Paul Celan’s attempts to come to terms with the Holocaust.

“It’s a stunningly lyrical piece,” Buckley says. “It has an almost classic beauty which is in some ways terrifying, and I believe that comes from how Richard has handled the twin influences that shape his compositional thoughts on the piece.”

As the work progresses, instrumental solos change from overlapping each other to a more fragmented relationship, drawing parallels with Celan’s stark, fractured version of the German language. “Celan’s use of language was forged in atrocity”, Barrett says, “from a necessity to reinvent a language twisted and debased by fascism, and to give a voice to those who were silenced by it.”

“Obviously we aren’t now living under fascism, or within its shadow to the extent that Celan was; but we are in a situation where language and culture are indeed twisted and debased, in a more insidious way. ‘War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength,’ in Orwell’s words, formulated in response to mid-20th-century totalitarianism but if anything even more relevant to the propaganda of fear and the unquestioned primacy of profit at the centre of our so-called democracy. And every day, across the world, more mouths are being closed.”

The second hcmf concert featuring Barrett highlights another of his long-running collaborations. In 1986 he formed the electronic duo FURT with Paul Obermayer. In 2005, the pair expanded to create fORCH, adding a line-up of vocalists and live instruments that includes Phil Minton (vocals), John Butcher (saxophones) and Rhodri Davies (harp) for the hcmf concert. The group perform a mixture of free improvisation and music based around frameworks composed by Barrett, reflecting his belief that the division between composition and improvisation is a false one.

“Energy and uncertainty aren’t really the exclusive preserve of improvised music – in fact I’ve heard plenty of improvised music which is neither energetic nor unpredictable – and the issue is one of what’s the most intelligent and imaginative way one can think of to work with particular ideas and particular musicians,” he says.

“In the fORCH octet, for example, what I try to do with the compositional frameworks that we use is to provide something which enhances the freedom of improvisation, rather than enclosing and restricting it. I think that one of the most fascinating musical directions one can explore at present is that of the larger improvising ensemble, by which I mean involving more than five or six people. Although such groups have of course been around for several decades, this for me is the area with most untapped potential in contemporary music.”

The Saturday 28 November concert also includes the world premiere of Mesopotamia, performed by London Sinfonietta. Forming the fifth part of Barrett’s resistance & vision series, the piece draws musical parallels with the archeological practice of working down through layers to discover lost civilisations and revealing how the centres of power shifted over time. Composed at the time of the Iraq war, the title also references the modern-day country’s former position as a jewel of the ancient world.

As a composer whose works so often draw upon specific political ideas, does he feel it to be necessary for listeners to be aware of those same ideas when faced with his work, or can something similar be communicated through the form and delivery of the music itself?

“Any artistic statement which assumes and encourages intelligence and critical engagement on the part of its audience is a manifestation of resistance against the inherent drive towards stultification which is part of the ‘system’ we live under,” he answers. “Every musical experience exists within a network of personal, cultural and political associations and connections, memories and expectations and often assumptions.”

“On the other hand, I do believe in music as a way of going beyond any dichotomy between sensual and intellectual involvement, and for me the sensual element should have more in common with mutual attraction than with seduction, somehow encouraging a questioning of those expectations and assumptions. There ought to be many possible ways to engage with the music, some of which explicitly address the ‘ideas’ we’ve been discussing while others enter into a relationship with it in another way.”

And does he still believe that contemporary music can change minds and confront its audience, or does its traditional delivery as an event defined by certain expectations act to contain it? “It confronted me and changed my mind, quite fundamentally, so I would have to say yes, it certainly can.”

“It’s all too easy to snipe at contemporary music as elitist and irrelevant, but in doing so one is giving a weirdly exaggerated importance to such aspects as whether and where and how the audience is seated, which to my mind are a distraction from more general and pervasive political-social phenomena like those of economic class and education. Music of the kind I’m involved in may be a tiny and insignificant feature on the musical landscape, but it’s actually a portal through which an infinitely larger and richer landscape can be explored.”

Click here to buy tickets for Richard Barrett/ELISION on Friday 20 November

Click here to buy tickets for London Sinfonietta/fORCH on Saturday 28 November

The Saturday 28 November concert will be broadcast live by BBC Radio 3 as part of ‘Hear and Now’, 10.30pm to midnight.

Richard Barrett will also be in conversation with hcmf’s Graham McKenzie on Saturday 28 November at 11am. Click here for details.

Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:23:25 +0000

richard barrett: talk

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:44:00 +0000

In his 50th year, composer Richard Barrett discusses the dual aspects of his work - composition and improvisation - with hcmf Artistic Director Graham McKenzie.

musica elettronica viva: post-concert talk

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:38:00 +0000

Brian Morton leads an after-show discussion celebrating 40 years of legendary electronic ensemble Musica Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum.

liza lim: pre-concert talk

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:34:00 +0000

Professor Liza Lim discusses her first major work for solo piano, The Four Seasons (after Cy Twombly) with BBC Radio 3 presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch.

seung-ah oh: post-concert talk

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:30:00 +0000

Mirjam Zegers in conversation with composer Seung-Ah Oh about her ancient Korean-influenced art installation, Words and Beyond: Hwang Jin-Yi.

emmanuel nunes: pre-concert talk

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:28:00 +0000

Portuguese composer Emmanuel Nunes discusses his featured works at hcmf this year with Brian Morton, ranging from his new work Improvisation IV - l'électricité de la pensée humaine to Litanies du feu et de la mer 1 & II, written some 40 years ago.

louis andriessen: talk

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:23:00 +0000

Louis Andriessen in conversation with Robert Worby from 12 noon followed, at 1pm in the Atrium of the Creative Arts Building, by the launch of a new piano book in honour of the composer's 70th birthday. Image de Moreau is published by Muziek Centrum Nederland.

hcmf & cerenem: talk

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:20:00 +0000

hcmf Artistic Director Graham McKenzie and composers Liza Lim and Lefteris Papadimitriou, discuss hcmf's partnership with The Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM) at the University of Huddersfield.

Anthony Braxton: pre-concert talk

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:16:00 +0000

Brian Morton and guests discuss the work of American composer, saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist and philosopher Anthony Braxton.

James Dillon: talk

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:14:00 +0000

Composer James Dillon talks to Brian Morton about his new commission The Leuven Triptych, inspired by Flemish painter Rogier Van der Weyden and the music of his contemporaries.

Jonathan Harvey: film screening and talk

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:08:00 +0000

hcmf presents the screening of Barrie Gavin's new portrait film of Jonathan Harvey TOWARDS AND BEYOND (48'). Gavin seeks to explore Harvey's musical and philosophical world by means of a journey outward from his own thoughts and from his actual workroom. The portrait works through a series of metaphors and analogies - some derived from the landscape of southern England, others from far in time, space and history, including Christian and Buddhist imagery, electronic manipulation and views from the Hubble telescope in space.

The film will be preceded by a talk with Jonathan Harvey and followed by a discussion led by broadcaster and writer Brian Morton between Jonathan Harvey, filmmaker Barrie Gavin and Michael Downes, author of Jonathan Harvey: Song Offerings and White as Jasmine, to be published by Ashgate in December 2009.

Michel van der Aa - Passage (excerpt)

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:12:36 +0000

Michel van der Aa's short Passage, featuring actor Joe Bendavid, which forms the film element of his new work Transit

Transit: Sarah Nicolls and Michel van der Aa

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:50:00 +0000

For Sarah Nicolls, playing the piano has long been about much more than sitting at the keyboard. Her performances, both solo and in collaborations such as Alexander’s Annexe, explore the range of sounds and actions that can arise from delving into all parts of the instrument, whilst questioning and highlighting the physical interaction between pianist and piano.

The three pieces at her hcmf concert on Saturday 21 November each approach piano music in a different, inventive way. Her performance is transformed by electronic processing in Pierre Alexandre Tremblay’s Un clou, son marteau, et le béton, whilst the world premiere of Atau Tanaka’s a new work for pianist and sensors builds accompaniment out of Nicolls’ own arm movements.

Another hcmf first is Transit, a new piece for solo piano and film projection by Michel van der Aa, the Dutch composer and film-maker whose works such as the opera After Life incorporate both the theatrical and the cinematic. Transit brings together elements of his 2000 piano composition Just Before with Passage, a short film he made at the New York Film Academy.

hcmf: Michel, what made you decide to combine Just Before with your film Passage?
MvdA: When I composed Just Before, I always had in the back of my mind that I wanted to make a film with it some day. It’s a very physical and theatrical piece. When I was in New York that idea grew, and I decided to do my final film based upon the music. It was going to be about passing on but also about fighting getting older and the physical restrictions that come with that.

hcmf: Sarah, what is your take on the piece?
SN: It’s basically a window on to this old man’s struggle with old age, with weakness and loneliness, with fear. The way it’s set up is that there’s a big screen above the piano in black and white and I’m just below it. There’s a very direct and obvious relationship between what I’m doing and what’s happening on the film.

It’s quite black and white in itself as well. It’s very extreme; it’s quite tense and alternates between what I imagine might be a kind of resigned-ness and a kind of panic, swinging violently between the two. Michel has choreographed it so that sometimes I’m doing things which aren’t necessarily for sound, but which physically relate to the man.

hcmf: Michel, is that also how you would describe Transit?
MvdA: It is. It’s a very clear musical idea and also the relationship between the live material and the soundtrack is very direct. It’s certainly one of my more physical pieces. Not everything the pianist does is audible: there’s some very manic miming when she’s miming a low cluster, a very physical section of the piece. The focus shifts back and forth between the film and the live piano and each medium in its own way tries to deal with the topic of the piece.

hcmf: How did you start working together and what do you like about each other’s work?
MvdA: I met Sarah when I was teaching the New Music New Media course at Aldeburgh; she was one of the musicians there. We immediately clicked: I always love musicians who look further than their own instrument and further than just playing what’s written in the score. Sarah is not only a wonderful pianist, she’s someone who thinks about not only what you hear, but also what the audience looks at, and she thinks about how to present herself theatrically and how to extend the music with what happens around and onstage.

SN: Michel showed this film, and it was a quite affecting film and we spoke about it then. I suppose because we’d met and talked about it, that’s where the relationship started, because I responded positively to the film.

I like the blatant starkness of this piece, in that it totally wears its heart upon its sleeve. It’s quite literal and dramatic. I like the way that he’s captured a slightly awkward or unnerving insanity because of what the old man does. It’s of course not real and at the same time realistic. There’s that human element: you can imagine how you’d get to that state of being old and being a bit senile. For me, the challenge is to make the switches in the music very suddenly. That’s quite odd, although also effective because the performer ends up out of breath. And also with the choreography: at the end you have to mime some parts of the texture and play others and that’s quite odd.

Michel’s addressing the fact that there is a relationship when you have live performance and film. He’s pitting one against the other, rather than ignoring it.

hcmf: What was your experience of rehearsing a piece with choreographed movements? Did you find it awkward?
SN: I think it’s funny at first: if you’re a pianist and you’re asked to do something that makes no sound, then part of you is thinking, “well, what’s the point in that?” But the other part of me is becoming more and more aware of what performance is outside of sound. I’ve seen lots of experimental theatre over the past year, and other ways that performance happens; I think it’s good for us as musicians to be aware of the performative language that exists outside of the sound.

On the score there are silent notes where it says, “press keys no sound”. And normally as a pianist, you’d put the third pedal down at that point and then you would have an interesting resonance. So of course I initially thought, “oh, the score is missing the third pedal markings here”. And then you think, “actually, that’s not the case at all, it’s as if my hands are holding the kettle”, or whatever.

hcmf: Sarah, what drives your longstanding interest in the whole physical aspect of playing piano?
SN: I suppose I believe really wholeheartedly in live performance. I just think that arena can create a real intensity of experience. I would prefer to go to a concert than listen to a CD any day. And what is it about performance? It’s what’s happening in front of you; it’s what you experience through the performer, in a way.

hcmf: Tell us about the customised piano you created in 2008.
SN: The reason for building my piano was that it’s a different shape, basically, it’s getting the guts up vertically so that people can see what’s happening inside and not feel left out when the pianist goes inside as though they’re peering under the bonnet of their car to fix the engine. Or when there’s electronic sounds flying around above their heads, but they’ve got no idea how that relates to the piano.

hcmf: Do you feel that much of the piano’s potential as an instrument is yet to be realised?
SN: Yes, I think it needs a big shake-up, definitely. Lots of people are shaking it up at the moment, which is exciting. There seems to be a ‘let’s change the piano’ feeling in the air. I think people are fascinated by pianos because they’re everywhere, but they just need to be pushed on into the current century.

Increasingly in the interface world, people want to personalise, they want to go with their own way of dancing around and then find the interface to suit that. Which is, I think, why sensors are quite popular: people can wave your arms around in whatever way they want to. I think the immobility of pianos is something that will change in the next few years. To be able to personalise it and put whatever interfaces you want on it and to take your piano on tour in your flight case.

hcmf: Michel, do you share this aim of extending the possibilities of instruments in live performance?
MvdA: Yes. I mean, in my music I try and extend the musicians with electronic counterparts, a soundtrack or video or film projections onstage. I present them with alter-egos either in the electronics or the films. So that’s my way of dealing with extended techniques.

hcmf: Do you think this kind of meeting between music and visuals will become much more common in the future?
MvdA: Well, it’s been going on for a while, since the middle of the last century. It’s just that my generation and the younger composers all grew up in an image culture, with MTV. It’s much more part of our DNA to think further than just the audible and to think about what we can do visually with our concerts as well. It’s a tool for me to deal with certain subjects or librettos that I couldn’t have with just the music, especially with my operas: I use the staging and the film and the electronics to get the message across in a way I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.

Click here to buy tickets for Sarah Nicolls on Saturday 21 November

The Music of Electricity

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:54:00 +0000

Click here to play a new online installation designed as part of hcmf's The Music of Electricity project.

Over the course of the project, A-level students from Greenhead College and Year 6 pupils from Spring Grove Primary School have been devising a series of new pieces inspired by the work of digital artist Tim Head.

Working with sonic artist Duncan Chapman and swapping material between groups during six days of workshops, participants have been exploring the means by which sound is created through the following questions:

What is the sound of electricity?
What is the smallest unit of audio information?
Image or sound - can we use fragments of image to generate sound material?

The results will be presented at a public performance at Huddersfield Art Gallery, 11.30am on Thursday 26 November and can also be explored as the project progresses through this installation featuring sounds recorded by the participants, which has been designed specially for the project by University of Huddersfield PhD student, Sam Freeman. You can read Sam's PhD blog here.

Tim Head's Raw Material exhibition runs at Huddersfield Art Gallery from Saturday 21 November 2009 until Saturday 9 January 2010.

This exhibition brings together recent work by Tim Head exploring the nature of the digital medium, its elusive material substance and its unsettled relationship with both ourselves and with the physical world. The exhibition includes recent digital work, alongside a selection of drawings and an outdoor projection on the Library and Art Gallery building.

Open daily throughout hcmf; otherwise closed Sundays and Bank Holidays
Monday - Friday: 10am - 5pm
Saturday and Sunday: 10am - 4pm

Produced by hcmf// and Huddersfield Art Gallery, supported by the Michael Tippett Musical Foundation and the Patricia and Donald Shepherd Charitable Trust.

David Sawer's Rumpelstiltskin

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:22:00 +0000

“Lots of people know the name, but they don’t actually know what the story is about, or the fine details,” says David Sawer of Rumpelstiltskin. Like many of the traditional fairy tales collected and retold by the Brothers Grimm, the story that inspired the composer’s latest work is, as he puts it, “dark and violent and doesn’t have a happy ending.”

Performed by 13 musicians and six dancers, Rumpelstiltskin represents another step forward in terms of Sawer’s long-running exploration of the creative possibilities of mixing music, theatre and dance. Earlier this year, Leeds-based Opera North premiered Skin Deep, his operetta with a libretto by satirical mastermind Armando Iannucci. But the roots of Rumpelstiltskin reach back to the start of the decade, and a sequence in the work From Morning to Midnight.

“It was an opera,” Sawer recalls, “but there was no singing in the first scene for about five minutes. It described the boredom and repetition of working in a bank and the singers just moved around according to precise stage instructions which were written into the score and coordinated with the music.”

Keen to develop this idea further, Sawer conceived a narrative piece of music theatre, with musicians and dancers sharing both the stage and the storytelling. “I’ve called it a ballet; it is a ballet score, but there’s no conventional ballet steps. It’s more in the feel of a silent film.”

Commissioned by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and presented by BCMG, hcmf and Glasgow’s Tramway, Rumpelstiltskin premiered in Birmingham and receives its first Northern performance at hcmf on Sunday 22 November, conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

Sawer explains what attracted him to the tale, in which a miller’s daughter forced to spin straw into gold is helped by a mysterious little man, but for a heavy price: “The musical idea of straw turning into gold is very strong. Also things happening three times, the power relationships between the characters changing throughout, I thought that was very interesting. And Rumpelstiltskin’s dance of death at the end.”

“It’s quite open-ended: Rumpelstiltskin’s obviously perceived as outside of society and we’re not quite sure what he wants. But he’s the only honest character. All the others – the miller’s daughter, the king – they’re all after greed and wealth. I also liked how the whole thing is set off by the miller boasting. I thought that was an interesting idea, that an idle boast at the start of the story he makes to avoid being evicted by the king’s bailiffs then turns into this sequence of lies and puzzles and games, which culminate in Rumpelstiltskin’s death.”

In a time when the weird and unsettling elements of many folk tales have been airbrushed out in favour of a more merchandise-friendly sparkle, Rumpelstiltskin certainly throws into sharp relief the gulf between the familiar mechanics of fairytales – an obedient daughter, a prized royal marriage – and how dark such a story would be when played out as actual human morality. “I guess this is why Hollywood or Disney haven’t done a cartoon version of it,” Sawer agrees. “The characters are all selfish, and the goalposts change through the piece.”

Rumpelstiltskin reunites the composer with the Skin Deep team of director Richard Jones and designer Stewart Laing. “I wanted to work with Richard Jones again because he directed From Morning to Midnight and his work is very choreographic and sensitive to music. So what’s happened is that the whole thing is driven by the music, but we’ve decided, say, a sequence of 10 actions that the dancers will do, and that it will happen on the fourth beat of bar 45, or whatever, and then drill that into the dancers.”

“I think only dancers could do this, because they’re used to counting,” he says. “It’s marvellous to see them with the score, marking where they move. They just count for an hour. It’s like they make the music visible, they articulate it through their gestures and movements, because there’s nothing vocal.”

So how exactly does a wordless dance piece communicate a plot that hinges on the quest to discover Rumpelstiltskin’s name? “Yes, well that’s one of the problems to solve in the piece,” Sawer replies. “It’s a combination of music and action in the end: there are various musical motifs going around, subliminally. Also the gestures of characters are copied by other characters, so that’s how information gets transferred from one to the next. You should get the story by just looking and listening.”

Musically, Sawer defines Rumpelstiltskin as “absolutely a concert piece. The musicians are onstage, they will be in costume and they’re integrated into the set and the visual aspect of the piece.” Different themes and moods are formed through creative use of the BCMG’s 13-player ensemble. “Most of the time the players are divided into two: 12 on one side of the stage and a harpist on the right-hand side. Throughout the piece, three different players from the left-hand side of the ensemble move towards the harp to form a quartet,” he explains. “The first time it’s the strings, and that sound world, which is very primary-coloured, is used for the straw into gold section.”

Contrasting atmospheres come from combining the harp with flute, oboe and clarinet and with bassoon, tuba and double bass. The music accompanying Rumpelstiltskin’s house is played by bass clarinet, horn and trumpet, “so it’s quite mellow and Miles Davis-like”. He adds, “As the piece progresses, the instruments gradually mix up. There are three principal themes which are orchestrated by these groups throughout the piece. So the sound world is quite consistent; it’s not pointillistic.”

Sawer describes Laing’s costume design as having an “Eastern European” look, whilst the set uses a box made out of recycled wood with sliding doors to evoke interiors from a house to a dungeon. “It’s timeless and contemporary at the same time. It’s not set in 2009.” Considering the story’s themes of magically increasing wealth and destructive greed, was he never tempted to draw more explicit parallels with today’s world?

“Well, when I started the idea in 2004, I thought, ‘oh well, this is all about the Iraq war,’” he replies. “With these parables, you can hook them on to anything. They are mythical, in a way. These oral folk stories which have been written down, they’re based on some truth in the past, and therefore it is also some truth of today. We see these people – the miller, his daughter, the king, Rumpelstiltskin – almost every day.”

Click here to buy tickets for Rumpelstiltskin on Sunday 22 November

Philip Thomas discusses Piano Phasing

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:18:26 +0000

Pianist Philip Thomas discusses useful piano techniques for the 50 participants set to perform Kristoffer Zegers' Piano Phasing at hcmf 2009.

Graham McKenzie on hcmf 2009

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:17:00 +0000

What is hcmf all about?

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival is all about a broad spectrum of contemporary music practice and experimental music practice. If there’s one thing that defines what we present, it’s music that’s not in the mainstream. But within that, contemporary music today – for me – encompasses everything from noise at one end to orchestral works at the other.

People traditionally think of contemporary music festivals as being about 20th-century, modernist notated music. It is that, but it’s also about showing the links between that and the other forms of experimentation in contemporary music practice today. There’s a younger generation of artists who are equally as comfortable writing for a formal concert in a hall with an orchestra, working with a sound installation in a gallery or performing themselves in a small improvisatory group.

How does hcmf compare to other festivals?

Well we sit at the table as part of a network of the major European contemporary music festivals – Reseau Varese – with 23 festivals across 13 member states. But in terms of artistic programming and curation, we also have a lot of synergy with some of the younger, edgier festivals that are quite comfortable crossing between different genres of music – or working in the spaces between the genres. Perhaps we also have a greater emphasis on the new and emerging artist than some of our peers would tend to have.

I’ve worked a lot in contemporary visual arts as well, and one of the things about that world is that the contemporary galleries are generally dealing with the emerging artist. The established artist – or the previous generation are at a certain point more likely to be presented by the museums. In contemporary music it is almost the complete opposite with the larger contemporary music festivals frequently focussing on the major figures. If you consider therefore the contemporary music festivals as being the museums, then my question sometimes to the contemporary music world is, ‘Who are the galleries?’ I think the position in Huddersfield is that of a major contemporary gallery. It’s quite easy for us to move between the two worlds and bring them together.

What are the highlights of this year’s festival?

There are some things that I’m particularly pleased we’ve managed to pull off this year. Jonathan Harvey is someone I’ve admired for many years – in fact, his piece Bhakti was one of the first pieces of contemporary music to really draw me into that world. We’re performing Bhakti with London Sinfonietta at this year’s festival. I’m absolutely delighted that Jonathan will be composer in residence. We’ve also got a really beautiful installation of his seminal electronic work Mortuos Plango in St Thomas’s Church. It is a wonderful visualisation of the work by two artists based in Belgium called Visual Kitchen. In a sense, you can immerse yourself and become part of the work.

We have a big emphasis on Richard Barrett in his 50th year. We’re presenting two sides of Richard: the one that’s very much a major contemporary composer, with a big piece on the first day of the festival a new production of Opening of the Mouth, performed by ELISION from Brisbane. A world premiere of a new work written for London Sinfionetta. But also later on in the festival, Richard will be performing in a more improvisatory setting with his own ensemble, fORCH.

Emmanuel Nunes isn’t often heard in the UK, if at all. In the last few years, I’ve become enormously interested in the complexity of his work. His work really requires a platform in the UK and I’m glad that we’re able to provide that.

Musica Elettronica Viva are one of the very early, groundbreaking electronic ensembles, with Alvin Curran, Richard Teitalbaum and Fred Rzewski. They’ve been an ensemble, loosely speaking, for 40 years or so, and perform very rarely these days, so to bring three of them to Huddersfield this year is something I’m really looking forward to. And also, you’re never quite sure what they’re going to do. I like to have things in the programme where you’re not quite sure what’s going to happen.

I’m very pleased that our opening concert is a performance of a new requiem by Wolfgang Rihm, performed by the Arditti Quartet and the Hilliard Ensemble. There are two performances of the work in France before Huddersfield; the third performance was due to be at the Carnegie Hall in New York in early December. For a long time we tried to get permission for a performance in Huddersfield and I am very grateful to the Carnegie Hall in New York for making that possible.

Is one of the festival’s purposes to create links between artists that may not be immediately obvious?

Absolutely. I think in this country we’re very determined to split things into genres and label them, more so than in some other European countries. One thing we’ve tried to achieve in recent years is to show the diversity of the artist by working with them in different situations – highlighting their composition work for ensemble but then also presenting them in a performance setting – perhaps an improvisation or an installation, to show that those classifications are often not relevant to the artist. Contemporary music, experimental music, electronic music, sonic artworks: all those things are part of the same family.

Is it important to commission new work?

There’s always an enormous pressure on festivals to commission and present new work, and I think sometimes there’s too much emphasis on it. One of the real problems for contemporary music is that new works are written and really only have one or two performances. They don’t get the chance to develop as a live experience and become part of the repertoire. I really believe that festivals when we commission new work have a responsibility to ensure a second performance.

Interestingly, when we were talking to Jonathan Harvey, we said early on that there were so many of his works that hadn’t been heard in the UK, or not for a long time, that we didn’t want to ask for a new one. What we wanted to do was put the resources into making sure that we presented his existing works in the best way that we possibly could. So while it is important to commission new works, for me it’s particularly important to commission them from younger artists and give them a platform for their voices to be heard.

How do you start planning hcmf?

Well, planning sounds too organised and scientific a method for what I do! If you’re talking about planning, then you probably want to speak to Nikki Cassidy and the rest of the team, who do a wonderful job of the planning and organisation.

For me, really, it’s about music I’ve heard, music I’ve been listening to, something that triggers off a thought and makes me go and explore an area of art practice or music practice, which I then try to make sense of. I very much describe myself as a curator, not a programmer. Some festivals are about people going to other festivals and looking for work to buy in to that festival. For me, it’s about following a path from one thing at the beginning of the festival to the end. The great jazz pianist Cecil Taylor said that ‘the composition begins when you select the musicians’ – so for me the festival is kind of a composition.

What I feel is that we have a strong responsibility to try and draw from the artist what it is that they really want to realise – to help them articulate and facilitate their ideas. In a sense the way I programme or curate is very artist or dialogue led. If things are working quite well, I like to take them apart a bit, to say, ‘What would happen if we did this differently and introduced this?’ Again this is only possible if you have a strong relationship with the artist and that element of trust that can be built up over a period of time.

Which festival events would you recommend to someone who was new to contemporary music?

There are areas of the programme where it’s easy for people to dip in and out of it. There’s the installation-based work, where you can get a taste of Jonathan Harvey. Also, from last year, we established the first Monday of the festival as a free Monday – not an Orange Wednesday, but a free Monday – of music: there’s a number of short performances, and also other performances that day which are entirely free. You can move around the performance space and dip in and out of those. There’s also a piece by Kristoffer Zegers called Piano Phasing, with 25 pianos, so up to 50 piano players of different technical abilities will be involved with that performance.

Is there anything that you think may prove controversial or challenging to the audiences?

In a sense almost everything we do or present is in some respect challenging. Contemporary music is challenging – you really have to engage with it – to listen – but it is incredibly rewarding if you are prepared to make that commitment.

Although you know exactly who’s appearing at each festival, is there anything that feels like a surprise or a discovery when the actual performances occur?

When you commission and present the number of world premiere and UK premiere performances that we do, then in a sense there are always surprises and discoveries. Disappointments as well – things don’t always work out. But we need the failures in order to recognise the successes. That is what is really exciting about putting on this sort of festival. This year we close the festival with a new collaboration from composers Enno Poppe and Wolfgang Heiniger – a work for 100 instruments performed by musikFabrik. I have no idea how this concert will sound, but the possibilities are irresistible.

Watch the video of this interview

Emmanuel Nunes interviewed

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:04:00 +0000

Born in Lisbon in 1941, Emmanuel Nunes is perhaps less well known in the UK than on the continent, an oversight due in part to the fact that few recordings of his music are currently available on CD. At hcmf 2009, three concerts featuring pieces spanning his five-decade career provide both an introduction and a celebration of his work.

“My very early experiences were rather of sound than of music,” the composer recalls. “As far as I remember – I should be between four and seven years old – I used to construct a kind of percussion set with different kitchen utensils and kick it around for a long time. My mother and my maid did not interfere…”

The young Nunes later acquired a piano, on which he would pick out melodies he had heard. By the age of 17 he had decided to become a composer. “My decision was as strong as my ignorance in musical matters and craftsmanship,” he notes.

Such childhood freedom to explore music would not last, however. Nunes’s studies of harmony and counterpoint at Lisbon Music Academy between 1959 and 1963 were overshadowed by the country’s dictatorial Estado Novo regime. 1962 saw the government crack down on left-wing student organisations, leading to demonstrations, strikes and violence.

During this time, he took private composition lessons from Fernando Lopes-Graça, who was banned from lecturing due to his Communist Party membership. How did such a repressive climate affect his own burgeoning musical creativity?

“Any dictatorship does impose its brand upon the whole human activity,” he replies. “Trying to answer the question, I come to the following paradox: although painters and writers seem a priori to be more vulnerable – and they were! – to these kind of restrictions, they seem at that time to me much more irradiating and universal than the composers. The conservatory was of an incredibly low level, and the few ones that might have improved the teaching were forbidden to teach. I did not experience any restrictions upon my work, because I still did not have any…”

“But nobody could teach me anymore what I wanted to learn. So I left my country. My political status also made me unsure and I spent seven years without coming back.”

Nunes moved to Paris in 1964, then to Cologne the following year, undertaking studies with Henri Pousseur and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He also attended summer courses at Darmstadt between 1963 and 1965, eagerly purchasing scores by Schönberg, Berg and Webern, but remaining detached from some of the more fashionable approaches to composition of the time:

“I learned quite a lot from the courses by Pousseur, Ligeti, and Boulez. At that time Stockhausen did not come to Darmstadt, and among the crowd of composers having a subscription to Darmstadt, two extremes were in: either the so-called sérialisme intégral, or the graphic scores tendency proclaiming their illusion of liberty. Quite often the acoustical result was nearly the same,” he says.

“During those years I still did not compose really, my knowledge in terms of musical technique was more than incipient, but I did have a kind of internal compass, which detained me from stepping into such paths. As I used to say to my students: It is more important for me to know what I do not want, than to know what I want.”

Some impression of the process by which Nunes worked out what he did want can be found in the two solo piano pieces to be performed by Noriko Kawai at hcmf 2009, Litanies du fer et de la mer (Litanies of Fire and Sea) I and II. Dating from 1969 and 1971 respectively, the works arose from a time when the composer would improvise on the piano for long periods.

“I can never feel for myself a real state of having matured, not because I do not mature – I certainly do – but for the simple reason of a lifelong feeling of incompleteness, a sterile self-consciousness,” he reflects, when asked how he now views his earlier work.

He continues, “Listening back to my earlier pieces, either I consider them finished, and they are regularly performed independently of their composition year, or I would like to improve them, which sometimes I do, not only on my earlier pieces…But I never feel stranger to them; it is rather a certain involuntary, unintentional psychological distance.”

In the 1970s, Nunes started to incorporate electronic music into his composition. One example is the 1977-8 work Nachtmusik I (which will be performed at hcmf 2009 by Remix Ensemble), where pairs of pitches in the chamber instruments parallel the ring modulation effect in its electronic element.

António Jorge Pacheco is artistic director of Casa da Música, the modern concert venue in Porto, Portugal which is home to Remix Ensemble. “Emmanuel Nunes’s music succeeds in many areas, but one of the most notable has been his use of electronics,” he says. “The role of electronics has been sometimes criticised as superficial in other composers’ output, but Nunes creates works in which electronics are integrated and evidently necessary to the sound picture.”

Nunes himself relates his interest back to the influence of Stockhausen: “Following Stockhausen’s teaching in the early sixties, one could hardly ignore the strong impact of electronic music. Works like Gesang der Jünglinge, Kontakte, Telemusik or even Hymnen belong to the greatest electronic works I ever heard. Excepting Berio’s Omaggio a Joyce and Visages, Stockhausen was the only one able to bring electronic music composition up to the same musical requirement as instrumental one.”

Later pieces used technology to explore the possibilities of spatialisation, such as Wandlungen, for orchestra and live electronics, which Nunes created at the Experimental Studio Freiburg. He then harnessed the electroacoustic brainpower of Paris’s IRCAM researchers to develop further works in which sound would be free to fly around the concert space.

“I started working regularly at IRCAM in 1991. I wanted to develop my conception of spatialisation, which I had already begun and realised for orchestra. In short, the main difference is the possibility to design rhythmically (up to a very high speed) all kinds of sound trajectories and localisations, all kinds of output profiles having as a unique source the instrumental score. Even without any other electronic transformation, such movements do originate a different perception of the score orchestration.”

Pacheco pays tribute to the composer’s longstanding influence upon Casa da Música’s contemporary music residents: “Remix Ensemble has been performing the works of Emmanuel Nunes throughout its existence, for nearly ten years. Though it has performed pieces by countless Portuguese composers and of course many others from outside the country, Nunes’s music – its style and its great demands on interpreters – has been a constant form of stimulation to the Ensemble,” he says.

In September Remix Ensemble premiered Emmanuel Nunes’s latest work, the musical theatre piece La Douce. Based upon the tragic Dostoevsky short story A Gentle Creature, its score is closely related to five chamber ‘improvisations’ composed by Nunes, including Improvisation IV – L'électricité de la pensée humaine, which will receive its British premiere as part of Quatuor Diotima’s hcmf concert.

Although Nunes still lives in Paris, these days he is as welcome in his birth country as elsewhere, with his honours including the Portuguese Order of St James of the Sword in 1991 and the Prémio Pessoa in 2000 in addition to accolades won internationally.

According to Pacheco, however, acceptance by the establishment does not necessarily mean that Nunes has lost his hunger for innovation: “Although Nunes is unquestionably the doyen of Portuguese composers, he has not lost the capacity to surprise and even shock,” he says. “He is not afraid to be controversial or unconventional, and to see through his ideas to a logical end. Living outside the country means that his numerous visits for performances and other collaborations are especially savoured.”

Emmanuel Nunes events at hcmf
Noriko Kawai: Nunes, Thu 26 November
Quatuor Diotima, Sat 28 November
Remix Ensemble 1, Sat 28 November

Weekend 1 Saver

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:08:00 +0000

Covers admission to all ticketed events on Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 November

The full programme for HCMF 2009 will be announced in early September 2009

Please note: Weekend 1 Savers are no longer available to buy online. If you would like to purchase a Weekend 1 Saver, please contact the Box Office on 01484 430528

Full Festival Saver

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:57:00 +0000

Covers admission to all ticketed events during the Festival and a free Festival Programme Book

The full programme for HCMF 2009 will be announced in early September 2009

Please note: Full Festival Savers are no longer available to buy online. If you would like to purchase a Full Festival Saver, please contact the Box Office on 01484 430528

Special Discounted Subscription to The Wire

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:27:00 +0000

This year hcmf are once again proud to have The Wire as media partner to the festival. Founded in 1982, the independent monthly music magazine has featured many of the artists appearing at hcmf and will be supporting 2009’s events both online and in its pages.

Now is also the time to take advantage of The Wire’s subscription offer, with 12 issues available for the price of nine. As well as having the magazine delivered to their letterbox every month, subscribers regularly receive exclusive CD and MP3 compilations that are not available in the shops.

Visit the hcmf// hub at Lawrence Batley Theatre to browse recent issues of The Wire. Open daily from 10am throughout the festival, the hcmf// hub is also the place to find food and drink and event information.

National Youth Jazz Collective

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:40:00 +0000

National Youth Jazz Collective

with Les Chisnall (piano)
Iain Dixon (saxophone)
Percy Pursglove (bass) and
Andrew Bain (drums)

plus Hi-Notes Ensemble

HCMF presents performances showcasing talented young
musicians from the region. Firstly, Music and the Deaf's Hi-Notes Ensemble perform a new work composed by their members, followed by a set led by National Youth Jazz Collective tutors, devised during a day of intensive workshops with local young musicians.

Produced by hcmf// supported by the National Youth Jazz Collective and Marsden Jazz Festival.

http://www.nyjc.co.uk

http://www.myspace.com/nationalyouthjazzcollective

http://ww.marsdenjazzfestival.com

NYJC Jazz Workshops are back!

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:51:00 +0000

Marsden Jazz Festival and hcmf are hosting a National Youth Jazz Collective jazz workshop this November, followed by a fantastic opportunity for participants to perform for members of the public alongside leading jazz musicians at the international Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Sunday 22 November

10.30am – 3.30pm

Workshop day and informal performance, Colne Valley High School

Tuesday 24 November

Rehearsal 4pm – 5pm, Performance 6pm – 7pm (free event)

hcmf, Bates Mill, Colne Road, Huddersfield

Tutors:

Les Chisnall (piano)

Iain Dixon (saxophone)

Percy Pursglove (bass)

Andrew Bain (drums)

The workshop day includes educational activities for young musicians aged 18 and under led by expert jazz educators. This will include jazz workshops and rehearsals, instrument-specific master classes and jam sessions.

During the day participants will work on a series of pieces which they will then perform at two public performances, one an informal performance for friends and family at the end of the workshop day and the other at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on Tuesday 24 November.

The educational activities are open to all local young musicians aged 18 and under. There is a fee of £10 per participant. Each young musician will be placed in appropriate level groups and workshops. The final performances will be free of charge to attend.

Limited availability - to book a place please complete the attached booking form

National Youth Jazz Collective site and its MySpace page

Marsden Jazz Festival

Bill Thompson on Shifting Currents

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:38:00 +0000

“A few years ago I heard a story online of somebody’s friend who had just got a cochlear implant, and who was having some trouble because of interference from all these different electromagnetic fields,” Bill Thompson recalls. “I remember thinking it was amazing that here was someone struggling with hearing loss who was hearing a world that people with ‘normal’ hearing can’t. It had opened up another dimension of sound.”

As with the genesis of many of the Texan-born sound artist and musician’s other projects, what Thompson read stuck in his mind and buzzed around for some time. Eventually it found a route to the outside world in the form of a commission to create the work which would become Shifting Currents.

Armed not with a cochlear implant but with a humble stick-on microphone of the kind that can be used to record telephone conversations, he set about exploring the world of electromagnetism-turned-sound. Like fellow sound artist Christina Kubisch, whose Electrical Walks featured at hcmf 2007, Thompson found that the previously inaudible fields emitted by everyday computers, wiring, shop signs and street furniture were anything but silent, instead emitting a range of sinister hums, intriguing clicks and startling squeals.

It’s not the first time that Thompson has unveiled new aspects of sonic perception. Originally trained as a jazz guitarist – a pathway blocked when he developed tendonitis –he went on to teach electronic music and composition at Texas State University, performed and promoted new electroacoustic music and, for the past five years, has combined PhD study in Aberdeen with teaching, improvisatory performances and creating sound works. These include Of Aberdeen (2005), a field recording of an eight-hour walk around the city (“My feet were bleeding by the end”, he says) and resonare/in absentia (2005), the microscopic sounds captured inside display cases of precious artefacts in Aberdeen’s Marischal Museum.

He sees Shifting Currents as a step forward from his previous multi-channel sound experiments. “I’ve developed a certain way of using sound with multiple players so that the sounds are able to blend with each other. I treat the sounds in really specific but super-minimal ways that you wouldn’t be able to hear, but so that when a sound plays with another track, a certain effect will come out. But I’ve never played against that; this is the first time I’ve tried to bridge the gap between me as a solo performer and me as an installation artist,” he explains.

Commissioned by a partnership of hcmf, Stirling’s Le Weekend and Aberdeen’s sound festival, Shifting Currents offered Thompson the opportunity to explore the varying electromagnetic landscapes of each festival’s location. In Huddersfield, he found the university to be a rich source of material.

“The elevators in Huddersfield University are absolutely stunning to record,” he says. “In the engineering department they were quite accommodating. They let me crawl behind a lot of machines.” As might be expected from the nerve centre of a leading contemporary music festival, hcmf’s own office didn’t disappoint: “There’s a printer there which is incredible. I think the staff were pretty impressed that there was so much weird sound going on next to them. Or maybe they were just smiling to humour me.”

In Aberdeen, Thompson recorded electromagnetism in both the university and around the city centre. “Sometimes I would just carry the mic and go for a walk and not even listen, just capture all the fields as I was walking up and down the street.”

Stirling’s historic Church of the Holy Rude received the Thompson investigation, as did the Tolbooth arts centre. “I explored the Tolbooth from top to bottom, everything from flashlights to the sprinkler system, computer screens…”

“They have a room which has all the breakers and circuits for the whole building, which was absolutely stunning. The thing about the mics is that where you position your hand and how it shifts as you’re breathing in totally affects the sound. As you turn it you get higher frequencies; if you get close you tend to get the darker, lower frequencies.”

He adds, “There was one sound I found that I just want to release as a field recording track. It’s just six minutes of this red box fire alarm which is just lovely by itself. It evolves naturally and has its own structure and is just really beautiful to listen to.” He later paid an additional recording visit to the Dutch city of ’s-Hertogenbosch, home to the November Music festival, where Shifting Currents is also being performed.

The recordings are only half the story, however. As a performance, Shifting Currents is a collaboration between the captured sound material on one hand and Thompson and celebrated improvising musicians Keith Rowe and Rick Reed on the other. “I really like those guys and it’s a pleasure to work with them,” says Thompson. “We could have just done an improv gig, and that would have been fine, but with this installation moving around us it’s almost like a fourth player that has its own will.”

Randomly selected extracts from the recordings will play through six loudspeakers that are shared by the musicians. “Rick won’t know if it’s the installation playing, or Keith, or me. It’s not so much about responding to another player, as working with these delicate sounds, reacting to the space and the sound and not a gesture-based jazz approach.”

Reed and Rowe are longstanding friends of Thompson and he believes they have the required approach. “They’re so tasteful, that’s the thing. When you have a lot of electronics, you don’t often find people who will play less, rather than more. They’re so restrained and delicate: they know when to put on the gas and they know when to pull back.”

With around 100 tracks available, the recorded component can have an entirely different character for each performance: “The one at Le Weekend was a really minimal set because the players threw up lots of quiet tracks. Huddersfield might pull out a much more dominant soundworld. You would never browbeat another musician by telling them they’re playing too loudly, and you definitely can’t do that with the installation.”

The audience will be sat in the round between the speakers, leading to a subtly different experience for every listener. “A lot of the sounds make use of standing waves. These set up narrow beams, so that if you turn your head one way you’ll hear it, and if you shift position you won’t hear that frequency. There can be some quite unique spaces in it. I’m going to be nerdy here, but it’s bringing people’s attention to their own subjectivity.”

To Rowe’s kit of pared-down guitar and tabletop electronics and Reed’s synthesiser and effects pedals, Thompson brings his laptop “with a year’s worth of sound files” and what he describes as “some weird, eccentric synthesisers. One is called a Dave Smith Evolver, it has a genetic algorithm in there that can produce completely random patches that sound like broken electronics. I’ll often generate 120 of those before a gig and pick a few to use.” A dab hand at circuit bending – creating customised instruments out of scrap electronics and old toys – he also has a further method for finding new sounds: “I built a device that’s an old keyboard with just one big red button, and every time you press it, you get a new sound. You can never predict it and you can never recreate it.”

Thompson’s view of such an untameable instrument as more opportunity than annoyance echoes his infectious enthusiasm for the intangible, every-changing realms of the electromagnetic. “What I love about it is that you wouldn’t hear all those sounds without this little device, the telephone mic, but then a whole universe of sounds opens up,” he reflects. “We’re surrounded by this stuff, all the time. The world has changed. You can’t find these sounds in a forest or the desert. It’s just a sign of what we’re become. I like that.”

Bill Thompson’s website

Click here for details of the hcmf 2009 performance of Shifting Currents

Matthew Shlomowitz on Theme Street Parade

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:52:00 +0000

Born in Adelaide, composer Matthew Shlomowitz currently lectures at the Royal College of Music and Syracuse University London Programme, is co-director of Plus-Minus ensemble and was a co-founder of arts organisation Rational Rec. His newest work, Theme Street Parade, was commissioned by the BBC for French string quartet Quatuor Diotima and receives its world premiere at hcmf on Saturday 28 November.

Shlomowitz prefers not to write programme notes for his works; instead he spoke to hcmf, revealing his thoughts about the creation of Theme Street Parade:

“I have to say that I don’t give programme notes, because I’m not very good at writing them, and I generally don’t enjoy reading other people’s either. It’s a very modernist, 20th-century thing to write programme notes. People didn’t do it before, and they don’t do it in other forms of music. I definitely want the piece to live by the music, that’s for sure.

“Theme Street Parade is a continuation of the pieces I’ve been writing for the last couple of years. The basic premise is a formalistic treatment of vernacular materials. In other words, taking very familiar musical themes and doing unexpected things with them. The piece doesn’t have this in it, but imagine hearing calypso music, and you think you understood what this music was and the stylistic place that you were in, the kind of things that were going to happen, but then very different things happened to it. It’s that pulling-the-rug-out thing that I’m interested in.

“There’s also the idea of putting things in patterns and sequences: taking something very humanistic, that has very clear cultural or personal associations, that might even be emotive, but putting it in an alien context, where it’s about a bunch of things in a pattern.

“If you take a lot of repetitive music, like Philip Glass, it’s quite neutral, with arpeggios and stuff. I’m much more interested in taking a gesture from Brian Ferneyhough [who supervised Shlomowitz’s PhD at Stanford University], whose music is never ever repetitive, and making it repeat in the way Philip Glass would treat it. It’s almost the way that Brian would analyse musical material, but I apply it to the wrong things.

“Quatuor Diotima have this going-for-it quality, a super energy that suits me really well. They were superb to work with. Some musicians, if the composer doesn’t know exactly what they want, they think the composer’s unprofessional. But I think performers should have a bit more respect for their own creativity. They were really open to discussing things that I hadn’t finished, and had many ideas. After we had worked through the quartet one day, the next was a really fun, creative day where we experimented and made changes. For me, that was the nicest thing about the whole experience, that they were open to that kind of relationship.”

Matthew Shlomowitz’s website

Buy tickets for Theme Street Parade performed by Quatuor Diotima

Interview with Graham McKenzie

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:48:52 +0000

hcmf Festival Director Graham McKenzie reflects upon this year’s diverse programme, packed with events both celebrating leading figures and highlighting emerging talents in contemporary music.

Key funding for pianists old and new

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:42:00 +0000

Funding has been secured by hcmf to launch a new adult learning project based around playing piano. With money from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Transformation Fund, a multi-strand programme of workshops, music-making and online resources has been created to tie in with the hcmf 2009 performance of Kristoffer Zegers’ Piano Phasing. Partners for the project are Kirklees Council Adult Learning and Skills Team, Hoot and the University of Huddersfield.

The project is aimed at both adults who have learnt a musical instrument in the past but have stopped playing, and those who would like to learn but have not had the opportunity, particularly those in areas of social and economic deprivation. The first two strands launch this month and are weekly beginners’ piano workshops and monthly keyboard surgeries for lapsed players.

The beginners’ workshops will focus on both piano technique and the creation of original music, culminating in a public performance in March 2010. At the evening keyboard surgeries, University of Huddersfield staff will provide tailored teaching to each player. It is hoped that the sessions will be a starting point for participants to form their own informal groups of piano learners.

In addition, learners from both groups will be invited to become some of the 50 pianists who will perform Piano Phasing on 25 massed pianos at hcmf 2009.

The project’s online element will feature a series of learning resources that will not only support people taking part in the workshops and surgeries, but also remote learners wishing to play in the Piano Phasing performance. The web material will include multimedia demonstrations by both tutors and learners; podcast interviews with composers and pianists; exercises and games; downloadable parts for Piano Phasing and information and links about new music for piano. These resources will available online from the hcmf website at the start of November.

The final part of the project will be the Keyboard Choreography Collection, a week-long music and dance project for both adults and children, led by Hugh Nankivell and scheduled for February 2010.

For more information about the project or if you would like to take part in the performance of Piano Phasing, please contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116 or click here to email.

Curriculum guidance document available

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:20:00 +0000

The hcmf 2009 curriculum guidance document is now available, containing information about relevant and accessible performances at the UK's largest international festival of new and experimental music.

Once again hcmf brings you some of the most exciting international performers and composers in contemporary music today. This year’s composer in residence is Jonathan Harvey - one of the most successful and enduring composers to come out of the UK.

Other highlights include performances in honour of Louis Andriessen’s 70th Birthday, a major new vocal work by Alvin Curran for young people and Huddersfield Choral Society and a re-working of the thrilling Brothers Grimm tale Rumpelstiltskin by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

Many of this year's performances feature music relevant to GCSE, AS / A2 Level and BTEC syllabi, and the curriculum guidance document highlights links to specific areas of study. School and college groups can benefit from our discounted ticket offers: Groups of 5 or more receive 10% discount and groups of 10 or more receive 20% discount.

This year we are also offering several free events, as well as a packed programme of talks and films with composers featured at this year’s festival. If you’d like a free copy of the hcmf curriculum guidance document or would like to discuss bringing a group to the Festival, please contact Heidi Johnson or call 01484 471116. Tickets can be ordered from the Box Office by calling 01484 430528.

Download free Vocalise resource pack

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:00:00 +0000

The hcmf Vocalise resource pack is now available for music leaders to download free of charge. The pack, written by Kate Pearson, explores the enormous range of possibilities offered by working with the voices and contains a wealth of ideas to try. Aimed at music leaders working with Year groups 6 - 13, the pack is divided into three sections:

• word play – the musical treatment of spoken narratives and words

• sound play – using the voice to make a variety of wordless sounds

• song play – concentrating on sounds which are traditionally sung

Each section is further divided into a series of ‘explorations’ that build skills, imagination, and awareness of the enormous possibilities offered by working with the voice. The pack also contains listening suggestions of details of performances at hcmf 2009 which feature the voice.

Supported by Youth Music

Learn piano with HCMF

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:31:00 +0000

This autumn hcmf launches a range of piano-related activities aimed at any adult who would like to learn to play keyboards. First-time learners can take part in weekly workshops, with monthly piano surgeries on offer to revive the ivory-tinkling skills of lapsed players. The sessions are free of charge and help with transport costs is available to people of limited means, so if you have ever wanted to learn piano but didn’t think you could afford lessons, then now’s your chance.

The activities are linked to the hcmf 2009 performance of Piano Phasing, a piece by Dutch composer Kristoffer Zegers which will see 50 pianists and 25 pianos take the stage simultaneously in November. Some learners at the weekly and monthly sessions will also have the opportunity to take part in the festival performance

Heidi Johnson, Education and Outreach Officer for hcmf, says, “This is a fantastic opportunity for adults to gain new skills in playing an instrument, whether they've never had the opportunity before, are looking for ways to get back into playing, or are simply seeking new and exciting performance opportunities.”

Running as part of hcmf’s Learning & Participation programme, the project has been made possible by the Transformation Fund, launched by the Government to offer funding for innovative informal adult learning projects in England. This brings to life The Learning Revolution, a White Paper presented to Parliament in March 2009. The partners are Kirklees Council Adult Learning and Skills Team, Hoot and the University of Huddersfield.

In addition, November will see the launch of online learning resources that can be used either to complement the workshops or for independent study. The final strand to be introduced will be the Keyboard Choreography Collection, a week-long music and dance project for adults and children led by Hugh Nankivell, which is scheduled for February 2010.

The weekly Creative Keyboard Workshops start on Thursday 29 October and will be led by Julian Coburn-Hough. They run from 6pm to 8pm at the Out of the Blue Creative Space, Hoot, Bates Mill, Milford Street, Huddersfield, HD1 3DX. Learners are welcome to join at any time.

The monthly Piano Surgeries take place in the Creative Arts Building, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, HD1 3DH and are led by the University of Huddersfield’s Pianist-in-Residence, Jonathan Fisher. If you’re interested in attending, then make a 30-minute appointment for between 5pm and 8pm on one of the following dates:

Monday 26 October
Monday 16 November
Monday 14 December
Monday 18 January
Monday 15 February
Thursday 11 March

To sign up for the workshops or if you would like to take part in the performance of Piano Phasing, please contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116 or by email.

Are you a Laptop Revolutionary?

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:39:00 +0000

Are you the next Four Tet, Mira Calix or Flying Lotus? Or maybe you use a laptop to create a completely different kind of music? If so, then don’t miss the chance to become part of Laptop Revolutionaries, hcmf’s showcase for new work, new talent and new thinking.

Working in partnership with The Media Centre, Huddersfield, hcmf is looking for laptop-based musicians aged 16-25 and living in Kirklees who can perform short sets at this year’s festival. The Laptop Revolutions showcase takes place at 8pm on Wednesday 18 November at Café Ollo, The Media Centre, Northumberland Street, Huddersfield. Entry is £2 on the door.

To apply, just send a proposal for a 10-minute set, some original audio material and a photo of you performing to:

Laptop Revolutions
HCMF
Room TC/09
University of Huddersfield
Huddersfield
HD1 3DH

The deadline for proposals is Monday 19 October. Please include your name, address, telephone number and email. For further information contact HCMF on 01484 471116 or email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk

Listen to our Laptop Revolutionaries Spotify playlist

2009 Programme Brochure Out Now!

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:57:00 +0000

text here

12. Rumpelstiltskin

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:35:00 +0000

David Sawer Rumpelstiltskin: A grotesque fable for our times

Birming ham Contemporary Music Group
Martyn Brabbins conductor

The thrilling Brothers Grimm tale of greed and come-uppance, with its age-old themes of transformation, ritual and revelation, told as you've never heard it before through dance, action and music alone.

This world premiere tour of Rumpelstiltskin is created by the internationally renowned David Sawer (composer), Richard Jones (director) and Stewart Laing (designer) and performed by 6 dancers and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

Produced by hcmf// in association with BCMG and Tramway Glasgow; commissioned through BCMG's Sound Investment Scheme; supported by The National Lottery through Arts Council England, Britten-Pears Foundation, John Feeney Charitable Trust, The Garrick Charitable Trust, PRS Foundation - Scottish Arts Council - Esmée Fairbairn Foundation Joint Commissioning Scheme, RVW Trust and Ernst Von Siemens Musikstiftung; also supported by British Council

Sally Marie has sadly had to withdraw from the role of Rumpelstiltskin at short notice. We are very grateful to Sarah Fahie for taking over the role for the Birmingham performances, and to Lucy Burge for the performances in Glasgow and Huddersfield.

Please note: Tickets for this performance have now sold out

14. Genevieve Lacey

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Liza Lim weaver-of-fictions (UK Premiere)
Brett Dean & Bob Scott Miss Genevieve's Nocturne (European Premiere)
John Rodgers The Grey Thrush (European Premiere)
Damian Barbeler Confession 2 (European Premiere)
John Rodgers The Magpie (European Premiere)
Steve 'Stelios' Adam et dogn (European Premiere)
John Surman In the Distance (European Premiere)
Fausto Romitelli Seascape
John Rodgers Jackie Winter and friends (European Premiere)
John Rodgers Little Brown Honeyeater (European Premiere)
Liza Lim the long forgetting (UK Premiere)

Genevieve Lacey recorder

This programme is born of a recording project, which was half a decade in the making. Titled weaver-of-fictions, it takes its name from a haunting solo by Liza Lim, prelude to her opera The Navigator. We finish with another solo from the same opera, and in between the journey takes us via Australian bird miniatures from John Rodgers, to electro-acoustic works by Brett Dean, Bob Scott, Steve Adam and Damian Barbeler, and another solo for the beautifully expressive Ganassi recorder, by UK jazz cult figure, John Surman. The programme also includes a single contemporary recorder classic, Romitelli's Seascape (1994), for amplified contrabass. Apart from this, all the works were written for Genevieve Lacey.

Produced by hcmf//

10. le grain de la voix

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Sam Hayden Actio (UK Premiere)
blablabor Hirsch hirn hornisse (UK Premiere)

canto battuto
Christoph Brunner percussion
Eva Nievergelt voice

At the core of le grain de la voix there are immediate physical expressions. It is not the distinctiveness of the message that is the aim, but the conjuction of body and language in a ‘stereophony of sensuousness' (Roland Barthes).
In Sam Hayden's Actio this is achieved not only by repeatedly scanning the underlying text but also by intensifying the vocal and instrumental sounds that are being recorded from close-by. The term ‘sounding material' is hence taken quite literally.
Questions and statements in four languages serve as a starting point in the performance-like work of the explorative radio duo blablabor.
The singer and percussionist distil melodies and rhythms from spoken language. Semantics is temporarily interrupted in order to achieve a topography of language with canyons, plains, mountains and valleys.

Produced by hcmf// commissioned by canto battuto; supported by British Council

Please note: tickets for this performance have now sold out

8. Braxton Piano Solo 2

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Anthony Braxton The Trip (UK Premiere)

Geneviève Foccroulle piano

"The composition Trip is a composite interpretation of all of the notated piano music compositions. This is a ‘Trip' into the notated domain of the music system..."Anthony Braxton

"The process of creativity is so interesting for the pianist - having to choose extracts from pieces, make decisions about form, the order of the different parts, and realise a new interpretation - changing for each concert. As a pianist-performer-improviser, playing precise notated scores with creative perspective at the same time is maybe the most exciting thing in Anthony's piano music!" Geneviève Foccroulle

Produced by hcmf//

Please note: only a few tickets are left for this performance - please book now to avoid disappointment

5. Ensemble Expose

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Roger Redgate Concerto for Improvising Soloist and 2 Ensembles (hcmf commission) (World Premiere)
David Gorton Schmetterlingsspiel (World Premiere)
Paul Archbold new work (World Premiere)

Ensemble Exposé
Christopher Redgate oboe
Roger Redgate artistic director

Writing at the cutting edge of the performable, the composers Roger Redgate, Paul Archbold and David Gorton have created works that explore instrumental techniques, challenge traditional chamber music boundaries and rethink relationships between soloist and ensemble, improvisation and notation, and the relationships between electronics and acoustic instruments.
Redgate's work is for improvising soloist and two ensembles (one instrumental and the other laptops, turntables and VJ). Gorton's Schmetterlingsspiel describes a chaotic relationship between the solo oboe and the ensemble. Archbold's work for oboe, ensemble and electronics (laptop and keyboard) will explore the oboe's multi-phonic potential which is, in turn, developed by the ensemble.

Co-produced by hcmf// and sound and music; Concerto for Improvising Soloist and 2 Ensembles is commissioned by hcmf// with funds from the Britten-Pears Foundation; supported by British Council; part of sound and music's Cutting Edge Tour

13. For Braxton

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Anthony Braxton Composition No 50 (UK Premiere)
Frank Gratkowski new work (hcmf commission) (World Premiere)
Christian Wolff Exercises
Anthony Braxton Composition No 322 (+139) (UK Premiere)

Apartment House + Frank Gratkowski

The Braxton Project (World Premiere)

ELISON + John Butcher

Apartment House restructure their inner- (sub)conscious hypothetical space, with a new sounding through
the work of Anthony Braxton, Christian Wolff and sax/clarinet musicomposer-(re)performer Frank Gratkowski.
Presenting highly structured, yet liberated, sub-contexualised musings and sonica, through the quatro-voicings of guitar, piano, cello, sax/bass clarinet including a newly commissioned work by Gratkowski.

ELISION performs interpretations and composed responses to the work of Anthony Braxton. Curated by saxophonist and composer Timothy O'Dwyer, this extended piece explores scores for small and large ensembles from the past 4 decades of the Braxton canon, interspersed with compositions and improvisations by the Elision Ensemble, inspired by the organisational concepts of Braxton's recent large group compositions - particularly that of 9 Compositions (Iridium).

Produced by hcmf// Frank Gratkowski's new work is co-commissioned by hcmf and November Music; supported by British Council

4. Sarah Nicolls

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Michel van der Aa Transit (World Premiere)
Atau Tanaka new work for pianist and sensors (World Premiere)
Pierre Alexandre Tremblay Un clou, son marteau, et le béton

Sarah Nicolls piano

Sarah Nicolls aims to embed instinctive performance into technology.
Her most recent collaboration with Atau Tanaka sees the hands and arms in a fluid relationship with the piano, teasing out sound from the space around - as well as inside - the instrument.
Tremblay brings the sonic focus right to the instrument by using a tight-knit array of speakers, creating drama in both improvised and vocal passages and Michael van der Aa's Transit sets the pianist as live component in a poignant film about loneliness.

Please note: seated capacity for this performance is limited, up to 30 spaces may be standing

Please note: strobe lighting will be used in this performance

Produced by hcmf// supported by Muziek Centrum Nederland and NFPK+; also supported by British Council

Please note: tickets for this performance have now sold out

3. Braxton Solo Piano 1

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Anthony Braxton Composition No 1 (UK Premiere)
Anthony Braxton Composition No 2 (UK Premiere)
Anthony Braxton Composition No 3 (UK Premiere)

Geneviève Foccroulle piano

Geneviève Foccroulle performs three contrasting works for solo piano by Anthony Braxton. Composition No 1 is inspired by the post-Schoenberg European avant-garde. Composition No 10 is a graphically scored piece consisting of 68 pictures that allow the performer to make improvised decisions not only about which pictures they will play, but also about key, rhythm, harmony and duration. Composition No 32 creates chords that are sustained throughout the piece.

Produced by hcmf//

Jonathan Harvey: Mortuos Plango

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Launch Event
St Thomas' Church
4pm

Open daily throughout the Festival 2pm-6pm

Nearly thirty years after its realisation, Jonathan Harvey's electronic tape piece Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco remains one of the most fascinating adventures in electro-acoustics and one of the composer's best pieces. At the invitation of the 2008 Gaida Festival (Vilnius), guest curator Lieven Bertels and the video collective Visual Kitchen (Brussels) devised a video installation to complement this piece and to invite listeners to engage with the ‘surround sound' nature of the piece more actively. The audience is invited to become part of an enchanting sequence of abstract video tableaus projected on a square surface on the floor.

Produced by hcmf// commissioned by Gaida Festival; supported by Réseau Varèse; also supported by British Council

Philip Thomas: Michael Pisaro

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Michael Pisaro pi (1-2594)

Philip Thomas piano

Michael Pisaro's pi (1-2594), composed in 1998, is a collection of pieces for one piano, each setting a certain number of decimal places of the constant pi (π, or Archimedes constant). Each day a piece or pieces will be chosen for performance using chance methods, resulting in a performance which will last anywhere between five minutes and one hour.

Produced by hcmf//

Tim Head: Raw Material

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Launch Event
Huddersfield Art Gallery
2.30pm

Runs until Saturday 9 January 2010

Open daily throughout the Festival; otherwise closed Sundays and Bank Holidays

Monday - Friday
10am - 5pm
Saturday and Sunday
10am - 4pm

This exhibition brings together recent work by Tim Head exploring the contrary nature of the digital medium, its elusive material substance and its unsettled relationship with both ourselves and with the physical world.

The exhibition includes recent digital work alongside a selection of drawings and an outside projection on the Library and Art Gallery building.

The exhibition is curated by Sotiris Kyriacou with the support of Sarah Brown and Robert Hall, Huddersfield Art Gallery, in collaboration with Kettles Yard, Cambridge and funded by Arts Council, England and the Henry Moore Foundation.

32. musikFabrik 2: Poppe / Heiniger

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Enno Poppe / Wolfgang Heiniger Tiere sitzen nicht (UK Premiere)

musikFabrik

Developed over almost a year, Tiere sitzen nicht (animals don't sit) is a co-production of the work of composers Enno Poppe and Wolfgang Heiniger and the ensemble musikFabrik.

Both the musicians and the composers were led by the idea of creating an artistic process which lacks a single directing authority and is instead influenced by the sounds and movements of the musicians themselves, using a computer program developed especially for this work to enable the participants to bring forth their own ideas.

Produced by hcmf// Enno Poppe's attendance is supported by Goethe-Institut Manchester// musikFabrik supported by The German Federal Foreign Office

hcmf// vocalise

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Alvin Curran OH MAN OH MANKIND OH YEAH
A Community Sing (hcmf commission) (World Premiere)

hcmf// vocalise
Huddersfield Choral Society
Instrumentalists from The University of Huddersfield

OH MAN OH MANKIND OH YEAH is a contemporary community-sing for over one hundred voices of the Huddersfield Choral Society, hcmf// vocalise, a singing ram's horn and an instrumental ensemble of six players and four bass drums.

This work is about singing, transforming ponderous mass into weightless matter, singing invisibly together, singing in reckless conflict and sweet harmony, singing with you...so join in at the end if you like!

hcmf// vocalise was formed earlier in 2009 as part of an initiative for young people in North Kirklees to create and explore new vocal music.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Youth Music

26. Frederic Rzewski

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Frederic Rzewski Nanosonatas Books III - VI

Frederic Rzewski piano

American composer and virtuoso pianist Frederic Rzewski performs his own music in a rare and special performance at HCMF.

'The basic idea of a nanosonata is a form in which different elements come together as they do in a sonata, but do not develop. Instead of developing, they are left hanging, something like the characters that frequently appear in Tolstoy, who are described in a few words in a way that makes it clear that a whole book could be written about them, but isn't. A nanosonata should seem too short.'
Frederic Rzewski

25. Musica Elettronica Viva

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Alvin Curran
Fredric Rzewski
Richard Teitelbaum

Spanning continents, styles, high and low technologies and around for four decades, Musica Elettronica Viva occupies a unique place in contemporary music.

Founded in Rome in 1966 to play avant-garde composition, the group evolved into an improvising ensemble deploying sophisticated synthesiser technology alongside tin cans and panes of glass, leaving no potential sound-source unexplored.

Recent collaborations with veteran British improvisers AMM and festival appearances by members Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum attest to the durability of MEV's generous aesthetic.

Produced by hcmf//

Piano Phasing

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Kristoffer Zegers Piano Phasing (UK Premiere)

Piano Phasing is based on a vision of the work's composer, Kristoffer Zegers.
As a child, Zegers was fascinated by the rhythmic phases of church-bells, which never ring in time. When he began to compose, he noticed that even pieces of music with minimal rhythmical differences are sometimes subject to these phases. It is this ‘weakness' (which often appears just by playing) that is the strongest element of Piano Phasing, making rhythmical variations possible despite the piece being fully composed and notated.
50 pianists and 25 pianos come together in this exciting large-scale performance.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Muziek Centrum Nederland, NFPK+ and Besbrode Pianos

23. Rolf Hind: Liza Lim

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Rolf Hind A jasmine petal, a single hair, seven mattresses, a pea (UK Premiere)
Hans Thomalla Piano counterpart (UK Premiere)
Mauro Lanza Predellino
Liza Lim The Four Seasons (after Cy Twombly), 2009 (UK Premiere)

Rolf Hind piano

‘New pieces from Italy, Germany, Australia and the UK, all trying to make sense of the piano's place in the repertoire. Liza Lim's first piece for piano is a major work, typically thoughtful, energetic and beautiful. My own piece is a kind of fairytale and the first overtly virtuosic thing I've ever written for the piano. In Thomalla's piece the piano and its repertoire is deconstructed and the instrument becomes, literally and figuratively, an echo chamber, while Mauro Lanza's piece is fast, funny and hurtles relentlessly to a brutal conclusion.'
Rolf Hind

Produced by hcmf//

22. Words and Beyond

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Seung-Ah Oh Words and Beyond: Hwang Jin-Yi (UK Premiere)

Slagwerkgroep Den Haag
Magriet van Riesen voice
Kenzo Kusuda dancer

Words and Beyond: Hwang Jin-Yi is inspired by the life and poems of a very notable courtesan from ancient Korea.
A lower class woman, Hwang Jin-Yi worked her way into the world of aristocracy, literature and politics, developing into an enlightened thinker whose fame still appeals in 21st-century.
A singer, a dancer and four percussionists express Hwang Jin-Yi's transition, her inner conflict and feelings of despair. The performers act as slowly moving sculptures in a set that is designed as an art installation, with the audience surrounding them.

‘Intriguing Asian atmosphere and emotions very much in control'
Volkskrant

Produced by hcmf// supported by Music Centre the Netherlands and NFPK+

20. ELISION 2

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Timothy McCormack Disfix (UK Premiere)
Bryn Harrison new work (World Premiere)
Liza Lim Invisibility (World Premiere)
Einar Torfi Einarsson new work (World Premiere)
Aaron Cassidy Because they mark the zone where the force is in the process of striking (or Second Study for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (World Premiere)
Aaron Cassidy What then renders these forces visible is a strange smile (or First Study for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion) (UK Premiere)

ELISION

A programme of premieres conducted by Manuel Nawri exploring the physicality of sound: the choreography of action and timbre pushing the limits of instrumental possibility, sometimes violently, sometimes gently, but often with unpredictable or unstable sonic outcomes. New works from Liza Lim, Aaron Cassidy, Bryn Harrison, Timothy McCormack and Einar Torfi Einarsson.

Produced by hcmf// in association with The University of Huddersfield

The Music of Electricty

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

A-level students and primary school pupils perform a series of pieces inspired by digital artist Tim Head's work, following a series of workshops with sonic artists Duncan Chapman, including explorations of twitching speakers and tiny fragments of sound!

19. Louis Andriessen 70: Andriessen in black and white

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Igor Stravinsky Fanfare for a New Theatre
Igor Stravinsky (arr. Igor Stravinsky) Agon
Louis Andriessen A very sharp trumpet sonata
Louis Andriessen A very sad trumpet sonata
Louis Andriessen (arr. The Piano Duo) De Staat
Louis Andriessen Hoketus
Louis Andriessen (arr. James Poke) Velocity (De Snelheid)
Louis Andriessen The Hague Hacking Scrap

The Piano Duo
Gerard Bouwhuis piano
Cees van Zeeland piano

Icebreaker

The evening Andriessen event brings in his old friend Stravinsky followed by some groundbreaking pieces from the 70s and 80s. De Staat will be performed in the exciting two-piano version by two former members of the group Hoketus, Gerard Bouwhuis and Cees van Zeeland, who will also join Icebreaker in a performance of the piece Hoketus. Icebreaker will return to the origins of the group with James Poke's arrangement of Velocity.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Muziek Centrum Nederland and NFPK+

18. Louis Andriessen 70: Andriessen Peanuts

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Louis Andriessen Passeggiata (trio version) (UK Premiere)
Louis Andriessen Trepidus
Louis Andriessen Image de Moreau
Louis Andriessen Bells for Haarlem
Louis Andriessen XENIA
Louis Andriessen Double Track
Louis Andriessen Letter from Cathy
Louis Andriessen Le voile du bonheur
Louis Andriessen Y Despues
Jay Allan Yim Driving School (World Premiere)
Johann Sebastian Bach trio sonata ‘Hadewijch' slow part
Martijn Padding Mordants
Julia Wolfe Hope and Trust (UK Premiere)

Louis Andriessen
Cristina Zavalloni voice
Monica Germino violin
Gerard Bouwhuis piano
Heleen Hulst violin
Ernestine Stoop harp
members of Icebreaker

In June 2009, Louis Andriessen had his 70th birthday. hcmf has invited some of his best friends to present his work in two concerts, with some birthday presents included. The afternoon brings some diamonds from his lesser-known small-scale work, featuring Ensemble Nieuw Amsterdams Peil (NAP), pianist Gerard Bouwhuis, violinist Heleen Hulst and the two soloists for whom Andriessen has written many works in the last decade: singer Cristina Zavalloni and violinist Monica Germino. And, not to forget: Andriessen himself.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Muziek Centrum Nederland and NFPK+

17. Sebastian Berweck

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Thomas Wenk Taurus CT-600 (UK Premiere)
Benjamin Lang ABDucensparese (UK Premiere)
Johannes Kreidler Klavierstück 5 (UK Premiere)
Michael Maierhof splitting 28.1 (UK Premiere)
Enno Poppe Arbeit (UK Premiere)

Sebastian Berweck piano, cassette recorders, keyboards

How to escape the romantic piano? Five young composers from Germany give five radical and radically different answers by (mis)using the piano and other veritable instruments. So let's go inside the piano, turn the volume up and use a pianist's skills to extend the piano and its great heritage into our time. Because it's about time.

Produced by hcmf// in association with The University of Huddersfield

16. Nieuw Ensemble 2

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Luca Francesconi A fuoco (UK Premiere)
Gérard Pesson Récréations françaises (UK Premiere)
Stefano Bellon En roscas de cristal serpiente breve (UK Premiere)
Ercin Kaya Brackets - [], (), {}, <> (UK Premiere)
Natalia Dominguez Rangel Speech Perceptions (UK Premiere)
Seung-Ah Oh JungGa (UK Premiere)

Nieuw Ensemble
Bas Wiegers conductor
Joël Bons artistic director

l'Ecriture, the composers craftsmanship that is traditionally held in high esteem in France and Italy, is omnipresent in two breathtaking virtuoso works by Italians Bellon and Francesconi. With his poetic and original sound world Gérard Pesson sets an example to the younger French generation. The programme is completed by the masterly oboe concerto by Korean composer Seung-Ah Oh and two works of young composers from Turkey and Colombia.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Muziek Centrum Nederland and NFPK+

15. Small Preludes, Aytoods and other new music from America

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Joseph Kudirka fidelity (World Premiere)
Christian Wolff Small Preludes 1-5 (World Premiere)
Larry Polansky tooaytoods 1-4 (UK Premiere)
Douglas Barrett Derivation IIIa (UK Premiere)
Larry Polansky tooaytoods 5-8 (UK Premiere)
Christian Wolff Small Preludes 6-10 (World Premiere)
Craig Shephard Weehawken (World Premiere)
Travis Just and I am not being frivlous now, either. (World Premiere)
Douglas Barrett Derivation IIIb (UK Premiere)
Christian Wolff Small Preludes 11-15 (World Premiere)
Michael Winter A chance happening...(UK Premiere)
Douglas Barrett Derivation IIIc (UK Premiere)
Christian Wolff Small Preludes 16-20 (World Premiere)
Larry Polansky tooaytoods 9-11,14a, 14b (UK Premiere)
Michael Pisaro fields have ears (UK Premiere)

Philip Thomas piano
Monty Adkins electronics

This programme of American music introduces a number of emerging young experimentalists to the UK alongside recent pieces by three key figures whose influence upon experimental music in the USA is undisputed. Christian Wolff, Larry Polansky and Michael Pisaro, as well as being utterly original composers, are well known as teachers, performers, publishers (Polansky's Frog Peak Publications is a treasure-trove of American music) and advocates of the experimental tradition.

Produced by hcmf//

hcmf// shorts

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

These short performances provide up and coming musicians and ensembles with a valuable platform to perform at the UK's leading new music festival. The series takes place on one intensive day of activity, and is accompanied by a marketplace where emerging artists can meet industry representatives to find out about exciting opportunities available to them.

LBT 1pm

CR:ACC Ensemble

Christian Wolff Burdocks

Christian Wolff's seminal work, Burdocks, will be performed by a new and exciting improvising group from Glasgow. Burdocks was first performed in August 1971, and consists of ten sections. Whilst it is the most performed of his indeterminate scores, Wolff's output is rarely heard today.

Phipps Hall 1.40pm

Jonathan Sage clarinet

Richard Glover Bi-linear
Steve Reich New York Counterpoint

Mimimal and Minimalist
New York Counterpoint is written for 11 clarinet parts, with the performer pre-recording and multi-tracking the 10 accompanying parts and then playing the solo part over the top. Richard Glover's Bi-linear on the other hand, although not minimalist, is a piece with minimal pitch and rhythm content.

CAB Room CAA 2/01 2.30pm

G. Douglas Barrett A Few Silence

A Few Silence is a piece in which the very site of performance becomes the subject of documentation. In it performer create ‘live' written transcriptions of the sounds of their surroundings and then perform their respective scores using various instruments and objects. Whether it is performed in a gallery, concert hall or urban setting, I regard the piece as the following-through of an experimental process set up to observe the space of performance through sound.

Phipps Hall 3pm

Richard Uttley piano

Joe Cutler Clavinova Music
Thomas Adès Traced Overhead, op.15
Chris Willis Burning Up

Three recent British works centring on various manifestations of ecstasy.

Phipps Hall 3.40pm

Ignacio Agrimbau Anatomy of the Self

Anatomy of the Self is the name given to a performance / recording project based around the electronic elaboration and manipulation of originally acoustic material, which is usually half-improvised. The pieces presented here, Anatomy of the Self II and III, is based on Oud and Ma-Wu performances with added drums.

CAB Atrium 4.20pm

Workers Union Ensemble

David Ibbett new work

Our collaboration focuses on the enlargement, refinement, re-organisation and intensification of the ensemble's sound via electronics. Through juxtapositions and dialogues between the instruments and their recorded selves, an extended timbral palette is created with increased scope, technique and texture - creating a world which is rich yet unified.

Produced by hcmf//

Shifting Currents

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Bill Thompson Shifting Currents (hcmf commission)

Bill Thompson electronics
Rick Reed electronics
Keith Rowe guitar / electronics

Devised in collaboration with Le Weekend in Stirling and sound in Aberdeen, this new commission looks at the very idea of place as part of its starting concept. Bates Mill in Huddersfield, the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling and the Fraserborough Lighthouse share nothing in common except possibly their uniqueness. Bill Thompson has taken field recordings from each location and has built a sound world, which will create the backbone for the three musicians to explore the shifting sonic environment.

Produced my hcmf// co-commissioned by hcmf, Le Weekend and sound; supported by PRS Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Scottish Arts Council

Nieuw Ensemble 1

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Ben Isaacs new work (world premiere)
Jenny Jackson new work (world premiere)
Lauren Redhead the empiricist view (world premiere)
Dimitris Maronidis Anamorphosis (world premiere)

Nieuw Ensemble
Bas Wiegers conductor
Joël Bons artistic director

Four world premieres from the region's most exciting emerging composers mark the culmination of the first year of the hcmf & Nieuw Ensemble Composers' Professional Development Programme.

Earlier this year, Ben Isaacs, Jenny Jackson, Dimitris Maronidis and Lauren Redhead participated in a series of workshops in Amsterdam, where they had the opportunity to try out new ideas with the ensemble and receive advice and guidance from the tutors.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Muziek Centrum Nederland, NFPK+ and Musicians Benevolent Fund

Open rehearsal

You can drop in to hear the Nieuw Ensemble rehearsing the first works from the hcmf & Nieuw Ensemble Compsers' Professional Development Programme on Sunday 22 November, St Paul's Hall, 7pm-10pm

24. Jexper Holmen Portrait

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Jexper Holmen Lullabies (World Premiere)
Jexper Holmen Eris (World Premiere)
Jexper Holmen Oort Cloud (World Premiere)

Frode Haltli accordion
Frode Andersen accordion
Torben Snekkestad soprano saxophone
Jexper Holmen accordion
Ejnar Kanding sound engineer

Frode Haltli, Torben Snekkestad, Frode Andersen and Enjar Kanding perform the premieres of three pieces for accordions, saxophone and electronics by Danish composer Jexper Holmen.

‘Lullabies explores the unspoken ghastliness of the lullaby. Eris is named after the ancient Greek goddess of strife. Oort is a 40-minute sphere of sound, inspired by the cloud of comets believed to surround the solar system a light-year away. The music is extremely slow and relentless, not unlike a cosmic disaster'
Jexper Holmen

Produced by hcmf// supported by SNYK and the Danish Composers' Society

31. Remix Ensemble 2

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:54:00 +0000

Antonio Augusto Aguiar Pandora
Luis Tinoco O curso da águas
Rebecca Saunders Fury
Emmanuel Nunes Versus II
Emmanuel Nunes Rubato, registres et résonances

Remix Ensemble
Rolf Gupta musical director

A varied programme of chamber music from Portuguese composers starts with a musical game of cards by one of the performers and includes major works from the world renowned composer Emmanuel Nunes. The wind quartet The Drift of the Waters by Luís Tinoco provokes the imagination with strong references to visual imagery.

Produced by hcmf// part of the Emmanuel Nunes Portrait supported by Réseau Varèse

30. London Sinfonietta / fORCH

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:47:00 +0000

Jonathan Harvey Bhakti
Richard Barrett Mesopotamia (World Premiere) Broadcast Live by Radio3
Richard Barrett & fORCH fOKT 6

London Sinfonietta
fORCH
Richard Barrett electronics

A concert to celebrate Richard Barrett's versatility both as a composer and performer, in his 50th year.

Inspired by artefacts found on ancient archeological sites, Richard Barrett's Mesopotamia has a dense, multi-layered structure that imitates the successive destruction and re-building of communities throughout history. Scored for 17 instruments and electronics, the piece forms the fifth part of a series of compositions collectively entitled resistance & vision, and has been commissioned by the London Sinfonietta with generous support from the London Sinfonietta Commissioning Circle. Mesopotamia will be played alongside Jonathan Harvey's Bhakti - a reflective, spiritual exploration of Sanskrit hymns, some of the world's oldest religious texts.

fORCH was formed in 2005, based around the electro-acoustic duo FURT (Richard Barrett & Paul Obermayer). The duo is combined with two vocalists and four instrumentalists, all leading players in experimental music who have developed their own unprecedented sounds and techniques, so that the boundary between electronic and acoustic sound may be constantly crossed from either direction.

Produced by hcmf// Mesopotamia is commissioned by the London Sinfonietta with generous support from the London Sinfonietta Commissioning Circle; part of this concert will be broadcast live by BBC Radio 3.

28. Remix Ensemble 1

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:46:00 +0000

Jonathan Harvey Jubilus
Jonathan Harvey Moving Trees
Emmanuel Nunes Nachtmusik I
James Dillon Überschreiten

Remix Ensemble
Rolf Gupta musical director

The music of Jonathan Harvey performed by the portuguese Remix Ensemble takes you on a fantastic journey through distant and exotic landscapes. The isolation and awe-inspiring austerity of a Buddhist monastery is portrayed in Jubilus. Moving Trees was written to accompany a dance film by Anne Teresa de Keersmaker that showed three beautiful girls moving amongst trees and leaves. These two introspective works provide an effective contrast with the pieces by Nunes and Dillon.

Produced by hcmf// part of the Emmanuel Nunes Portrait supported by Réseau Varèse

29. musikFabrik 1: Sringara Chaconne

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:46:00 +0000

Jonathan Harvey Sringara Chaconne (UK Premiere)
Rebecca Saunders Disclosure (European Premiere)
Liza Lim Songs found in Dream
Richard Glover Gradual Music (World Premiere) (hcmf commission)

musikFabrik

musikFabrik perform pieces from some of the finest English-speaking composers of our time, spanning three generations and reflecting the variety in new music today. Most far-reaching and open to outer-European influences is Liza Lim; deeply rooted in European contemporary music is Jonathan Harvey; and from the younger generation is Rebecca Saunders. What the new voices have to offer can be heard in the world premiere of Richard Glover's new work.

Produced by hcmf// supported by The German Federal Foreign Office

27. Quatuor Diotima

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:45:00 +0000

Naaman Sluchin violin
Yun-Peng Zhao violin
Franck Chevalier viola
Pierre Morlet cello

Matthew Shlomowitz Theme Street Parade (World Premiere)
Alberto Posadas Arborescencias (UK Premiere)
Thomas Simaku String Quartet No. 2 Radius
Emmanuel Nunes Improvisation IV - l'électricité de la pensée humaine
(UK Premiere)

Quatuor Diotima's 21^st-century programme features a BBC-commissioned quartet by Matthew Shlomowitz, the fourth section of Alberto Posadas' Liturgia Fractal (full cycle now available on Kairos), Radius by York-based composer Thomas Simaku, and the UK première of Improvisation IV by Emmanuel Nunes, which was first performed at the Quincena Musical San Sebastián.

Produced by hcmf// part of the Emmanuel Nunes Portrait supported by Réseau Varèse

21. Noriko Kawai: Nunes

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Emmanuel Nunes Litanies du feu et de la mer I
Thomas Simaku Stepping Up (World Premiere)
Emmanuel Nunes Litanies du feu et de la mer II
James Dillon Charm (World Premiere)
James Dillon Dragon-fly (World Premiere)

Noriko Kawai piano

Noriko Kawai returns to the festival to give a solo recital featuring two large-scale works by Emmanuel Nunes, Litanies du feu et de la mer I and II, dating from 1969 and 1971. The programme also includes three world premieres: a new work by Thomas Simaku and two miniatures from James Dillon.

Produced by hcmf// part of the Emmanuel Nunes Portrait supported by Réseau Varèse

11. New London Chamber Choir: Jonathan Harvey

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:34:00 +0000

Kaija Saariaho Nuits, adieux
Kaija Saariaho Sept Papillons
Jonathan Harvey The Summer Cloud's Awakening

New London Chamber Choir
James Weeks director

Oliver Coates cello

New London Chamber Choir celebrates the 70^th birthday of its long-time collaborator Jonathan Harvey with a rare UK performance of his masterpiece The Summer Cloud's Awakening, for flute, cello, choir and electronics, setting Buddhist texts and a line from Richard Wagner. Saariaho's mystical Roubaud setting Nuits, adieux (a cappella version) and Sept Papillons for solo cello complete the programme.

Produced by hcmf// supported by British Council

2. Barrett / ELISION 1

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:19:00 +0000

Richard Barrett Opening of the Mouth (UK Premiere)

ELISION

Opening of the Mouth, commissioned by David Blenkinsop for the 1997 Perth Festival, fittingly receives its UK premiere at HCMF. Composed for an ensemble of two singers, nine musicians and live electronics, it is a major cycle and a landmark piece in the ongoing artistic relationship between composer Richard Barrett and the ELISION ensemble. The work takes its point of departure from an ancient Egyptian ritual performed during the process of mummification. The ritual restored the power of speech to the dead soul, enabling them to bear witness to their life before the judges of the Underworld. The texts are taken from the poet Paul Celan, whose own 'mouth was opened' by the holocaust: to those whose mouths were empty before being closed. Celan's language itself is a tongue from beyond the fascist destruction of the German language-in Celan's words the ‘thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech.'

Produced by hcmf// supported by British Council

1. Arditti Quartet & The Hilliard Ensemble

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:15:00 +0000

Wolfgang Rihm -ET LUX- (UK Premiere)

Arditti Quartet:
Irvine Arditti violin
Ashot Sarkissjan violin
Ralf Ehlers viola
Lucas Fels cello

Hilliard Ensemble:
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
Steven Harrold tenor
Gordon Jones baritone

The Hilliard Ensemble and the Arditti Quartet, two of the most distinguished ensembles in their respective fields, join together to perform the UK premiere of -ET LUX-, by one of the world's greatest composers, Wolfgang Rihm. The Ensemble's continuing collaboration with the Quartet has made it possible to add a number of new commissions to their core repertoire around which they can build a variety of new programmes.

Presented by hcmf// -ET LUX- is commissioned by KölnMusik, Festival d'Automne à Paris and Carnegie Hall; supported by British Council and Goethe Institut, London

Please note: only a few tickets are left for this performance - please book now to avoid disappointment

All tickets now on sale for hcmf 2009!

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Tickets are now on sale for all events at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the UK’s largest festival of new and experimental music, which takes place this year from Friday 20 November to Sunday 29 November. Click here to see the full programme and to buy tickets online.

In 2009, hcmf is once again at the forefront of international contemporary music and sound art. Many of the festival events are premieres, including the world premiere of Richard Barrett’s Mesopotamia and the first UK performances of Wolfgang Rihm’s –ET LUX– and of three solo piano pieces by Anthony Braxton.

This year’s programme also highlights the long and innovative careers of several leading composers, including hcmf Composer in Residence Jonathan Harvey, who celebrates his 70th birthday this year; the Netherlands’ Louis Andriessen, also turning 70; and Emmanuel Nunes, Portugal’s greatest living composer.

An international bill of performers includes London Sinfonietta, Arditti Quartet, Musica Elettronica Viva, ELISION, Sarah Nicolls, Frederic Rzewski and Remix Ensemble. They are joined at hcmf 2009 by a host of new and emerging talents from the world of contemporary music.

For the full festival line-up, the hcmf 2009 brochure can be viewed online here, or contact us to request a paper copy and to keep updated with the latest festival news.

Tickets can also be purchased by ringing 01484 430528 (Mon–Sat 10am–5pm) or by post from HCMF Box Office, Lawrence Batley Theatre, Queen’s Square, Queen Street, Huddersfield HD1 2SP. Tickets can be bought in person from the LBT box office between 10am and 5pm Monday to Saturday or from the Visitor Information Service, Huddersfield Library, Princess Alexandra Walk, Huddersfield between 9.15am and 5pm Monday to Saturday.

Concessions are available for students, under 17s, 17–25 year olds (limited numbers), senior citizens, claimants of unemployment or supplementary benefits and Kirklees Passport holders. Discounts are available for groups of ten or more, or for educational and community groups of five or more.

In addition, discounted tickets can still be purchased online for selected events until Friday 23 October, subject to availability.

Wired in to hcmf

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:30:00 +0000

For the 2nd year running The Wire is working with hcmf as a media partner, building on last year’s successful relationship and many previous years of close co-operation.

The partnership will see hcmf events presented as being supported by The Wire in the magazine and online, with reciprocal support and promotion in the lead up to and during this year’s Festival.

Welcoming the partnership, hcmf Artistic Director Graham McKenzie commented: “The Wire readership has long been a receptive audience for hcmf’s adventurous programming and we’re excited at the prospect of being able to develop an even stronger relationship with them through this partnership.”

Editor in Chief and Publisher of The Wire, Tony Herrington, adds: “ hcmf is the most radical music festival in the UK. The Wire is honoured to be associated with it.”

Trans-Europe Success

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:29:00 +0000

The programme for HCMF 2009 is as international in scope as ever, featuring performers and composers from Australia, Germany, Portugal, the USA, the Netherlands and many other countries. Such wide-ranging connections and collaborations are not always easy to achieve. But on a European level, the festival’s ambitions have been supported for several years through membership of Réseau Varèse , the cross-European network devoted to contemporary music.

Set up in 1999 with funding from the Culture 2000 programme of the European Commission and from the French ministry of culture and communication, Réseau Varèse brings together 21 partners from 17 European states: festivals such as HCMF, theatre companies, concert venues and artistic institutions. Varying in size, location and artistic focus, all of the organisations nevertheless share a commitment to producing works of contemporary music.

Réseau Varèse presents the opportunity for its members to pool their knowledge, talent and resources, and for a work to reach audiences far beyond its original setting. As of June this year, Réseau Varèse has supported 42 unique projects, resulting in to more than 360 public performances across the continent. Sixteen musical shows (dance, opera and musical theatre) and 26 concert programmes have showcased the work of 53 different composers, including the premieres of 46 new works.

HCMF has been a Réseau Varèse member since 2000, the other UK representative being the Southbank Centre in London. That year the festival played host to Ensemble Modern ’s Tribute to Wolfgang Rihm (whose requiem Et Lux receives its UK premiere at this year’s festival) following previous performances in Oslo and Strasbourg. On the other hand, next year sees an HCMF 2008 world premiere, John Butcher ’s Composition for eight musicians, travel to Vienna’s Wien Modern and Berlin’s MaerzMusik festivals.

Réseau Varèse provides practical support for bringing new productions to fruition. But it also has the wider artistic aim of matching the modern, unified Europe with a genuinely European contemporary repertoire, as Antoine Gindt, director of Paris-based music theatre company T&M and president of Réseau Varèse, explains:

“When we say that we want to make a European repertoire, it’s very important to us that we can share ideas and possibilities,” he says. “For example, a piece by a French composer, performed by a Portuguese orchestra, conducted by a German conductor and with a stage director from Great Britain. I think this can make a new idea about Europe, not based upon the idea of different countries but upon different possibilities of making connections.”

As a cross-border network, Réseau Varèse works to make its members “share the same mood of artistic invention or creativity, to lose what I call the national reflex,” Gindt says. “We are all supported by a city, a country or a geographical territory, but a European repertoire asks you to forget this nationality. It’s very interesting to see how different artistic influences have developed in different areas of Europe. Most of the members keep an element of this, and we have to work to encourage them not to think, ‘I can use a Spanish composer because I am Spanish’ and so on, but, ‘How can I share something that is different?’ In a way, that is more universal, whilst keeping some specificity.”

The network is run in a way that Gindt describes as “ultra-democratic”, with regular General Assemblies to discuss decisions and make plans, and public lectures held during members’ events (such as HCMF 2008) dedicated to exploring issues of cultural cooperation. Members have a free choice whether or not to join in with each new project, which only comes under the Réseau Varèse banner if other members are interested: “We have some internal rules: we decided that one programme should always be shared by at least three members, from two different countries. But the central point is to keep the independence of each member,” Gindt says.

Coordinating 21 members in 17 countries brings its own administrative challenges, the president acknowledges. “But I hope I can say that we’ve found how to make these difficulties less present.” However, a sole and shared focus upon contemporary music means that both large and small organisations can contribute appropriately without either dominating the agenda or being overlooked. “Most of the time, the big institutions are involved with Réseau Varèse for only a few projects, whereas the small institutions are involved with each one,” Gindt says. “If you take the Southbank Centre, 99 percent of its programme is not adapted for the Réseau Varèse, but what is important is the possibility of two or three other projects.”

“That’s why we decided, ten years ago, not to make a network with very similar institutions, but with institutions who want to be involved in contemporary music projects. So we have the big concert halls, but also smaller companies and very specific institutions such as IRCAM. What is important is the project and where it can be performed or produced, not all these institutions.”

Earlier this year, Réseau Varèse received €2.5 million funding from the European Commission's Culture Programme to support the next five years’ activities. As the first decade of both the network’s existence and a new millennium for Europeans draws to a close, does Gindt see his organisation’s successful cooperation as a role model for music audiences of how different nationalities can work together in other ways?

“Yes it should be, as a model of positive attitude regarding European institutions. As the president I can also say modestly whether I feel that European Union is in good health or not. That is to say, if a few of us are convinced by a common project, then everything is going fast, with exciting possibilities. If there is just discussion about what each member makes in his country that he would like to give to his neighbour, it just starts to be a very restrictive activity. It can be a metaphor for everyday life. It is a work in progress.”

Other Réseau Varèse members

Arena Festival , Latvia

Ars Musica , Belgium

Budapest Autumn Festival , Hungary

Casa da Música , Portugal

Gaida , Lithuania

Holland Festival , The Netherlands

IRCAM , France

MaerzMusik , Germany

Megaron Athens Concert Hall , Greece

Musica Nova , Finland

Musica , France

Musicadhoy , Spain

NYYD Festival , Estonia

Rai Trade , Italy

RomaEuropa , Italy

Schauspielfrankfurt , Germany

Southbank Centre , UK

T&M , France

Ultima , Norway

Wien Modern , Austria

Extended Playtime

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:04:00 +0000

Sound artist and musician Janek Schaefer, the creator of the award-winning HCMF 2007 installation Extended Play, will once again be bringing his work to West Yorkshire. Schaefer has designed Bradford SoundPool , an audio installation played through underground and elevated speakers set around the edge of an 80-metre wide mirror pool, the focal point of a new public space planned for the centre of Bradford.

“It’s a real culmination of my architectural training and desires, and it’s permanent, which is amazing,” he says of the park feature, which is scheduled to open in 2012. During the day, the speakers will play an audio collage of water birds from across the globe, whilst a soft drone will surround the pool as it drains each dusk and refills the following dawn. At other times, the installation will broadcast sounds collected by local residents as part of a project run by Schaefer; recordings of the seashore from Bradford’s Irish twin town Galway; and the Bradford Blowhole, a brass band piece timed to accompany spurting fountains.

Having studied architecture at the Royal College of Art, Schaefer’s work often hinges around the power of distorted and dissociated sounds to evoke memories of people and places. His first piece, 1995’s Recorded Delivery, involved the noises captured en route by a voice-activated dictaphone hidden inside a parcel posted to the exhibition venue. Other works include Vacant Space, an installation of sound and images from empty buildings, and Cold Storage, a site-specific composition for a brick warehouse cellar in Rome.

Commissioned for HCMF 2007, Extended Play is a poignant, but ultimately uplifting tribute to child survivors of conflict. It was inspired by Schaefer’s reflections upon the contrast between the circumstances surrounding the birth of his daughter in Surrey in 2005, and that of his mother, born in war-torn Warsaw in 1942.

Schaefer took a phrase from a Polish tango song that formed part of Jodoform, a system of coded messages transmitted to underground resistance fighters by the BBC World Service. This particular song was broadcast on the day his mother was born. Working with arranger Michael Jennings, he adapted it into a piece for violin, cello and piano. Each part was recorded separately and pressed onto a onto a 12” vinyl EP.

For the installation, nine identical record players in Huddersfield Art Gallery simultaneously played copies of the three recordings at 33, 45 and 78 rpm, creating a bittersweet blend of harmony and dissonance that echoed the uncertainties faced by children born into conflict. Additionally, motion sensors attached to each turntable caused the music to halt briefly when visitors passed, underlining the impact of each individual upon the lives of others.

Extended Play went on to win Schaefer both the 2008 British Composer of the Year Award for Sonic Art and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for composition. “It gave me a wonderful standing in the community,” he jokes, “I can walk into any shop or meet any tradesman, and they’ll know what British Composer of the Year means.”

As with many of his works, Schaefer also created a CD version of Extended Play, based upon recordings of the vinyl being played. “I wanted to make it quite visceral, so I didn’t want to just play back the recordings of the instruments,” he explains. “You can hear the record players clunking, clicking and scratching, and when their power is cut you can hear the record slowing down. I think character comes when you add and add, or take away and take away, rather than having a pure copy.”

After a two-year absence, the installation itself returns this autumn, when it will be hosted by the November Music festival in the Netherlands, before forming part of a career retrospective for Schaefer at Liverpool’s Bluecoat gallery in December.

Janek Schaefer website

Bradford city park plans

6. Ralph van Raat: Harvey / Boulez

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:22:00 +0000

Jonathan Harvey Four Images after Yeats
Jonathan Harvey Haiku
Jonathan Harvey Homage to Cage...À Chopin (und Ligeti ist auch dabei)
Jonathan Harvey Tombeau de Messiaen
Jonathan Harvey FF
Jonathan Harvey Vers
Pierre Boulez Second Sonata

Ralph van Raat piano

Sharing Schoenberg and Messiaen as two of their most important early influences, Harvey and Boulez both derive their musical language from serial and spectralist influences, both having been influenced by music and thought from the Orient. However, where Boulez is foremost concerned with breaking away from the role of the past and inducing a musical revolution, Harvey has always, in non-tonal colours, seeked for spiritual impulse and expression of the visionary. In this spectacular concert with an overview of Harvey's complete piano music, combined with Boulez's historical and monumental Second Sonata for piano, one conclusion certainly is evident: both composers demand the utmost virtuosity from their interpreters.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Muziek Centrum Nederland and NFPK+; also supported by British Council

Please note: only a few tickets are left for this performance - please book now to avoid disappointment

7. Arditti Quartet: Jonathan Harvey 4th String Quartet

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:58:00 +0000

Hilda Paredes In Memoriam Thomas Kakushka
James Clarke String Quartet No 2 (World Premiere) HCMF Commission
James Dillon String Quartet No 5 (World Premiere)
Jonathan Harvey String Quartet No 4

Irvine Arditti violin
Ashot Sarkissjan violin
Ralf Ehlers viola
Lucas Fels cello

IRCAM technical team
Jérémie Henrot sound engineer
Arshia Cont computer production
Gilbert Nouno computer music designer

The world renowned Arditti Quartet present a captivating programme including world premieres of James Clarke's String Quartet No 2, written for and dedicated to the Arditti Quartet, James Dillon's String Quartet No 5, written for and premiered here at the quartet's 35th anniversary, and Hilda Paredes' tribute to the late Thomas Kakushka of the Alban Berg Quartet. A performance of hcmf Composer in Residence Jonathan Harvey's spiritual String Quartet No 4 completes this exceptional programme.

Produced by hcmf// String Quartet No 2 is co-commissioned by hcmf and MaerzMusik Berliner Festspiele; String Quartet No 4 is commissioned by BBC Symphony Scottish Orchestra, Ircam-Centre Pompidou and Radio France; supported by British Council

Please note: tickets for this performance have now sold out

Wanted: 50 Pianists!

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:20:00 +0000

HCMF is looking for 50 pianists to take part in a performance of Dutch composer Kristoffer Zegers’ Piano Phasing at this year’s festival. Any player over 12 years old and of ABRSM Grade 5 or equivalent standard can volunteer for the event, which takes place on Monday 23 November at 6.30pm in Huddersfield Town Hall.

With 50 pianists playing 25 instruments simultaneously, Piano Phasing creates a powerful and imposing sound. According to Zegers, the music was inspired by his childhood.

“When I was a little kid I would walk to the local church,” he explains. “I heard the bells ringing along with those from other churches and they were always out of phase. Even when I was young I was fascinated by this music.”

Each player performs the same melody, but at a tempo of their choice, producing a canon effect

“If you have enough people, the differences will make the phasing appear without doing it on purpose.” The piece consists of a fast section, which Zegers describes as sounding “like fireworks”, and a slower one.

“The effect is like a cloud of sound. Sometimes music can be complex to make, but it sounds easy. It’s like looking at the sea’s surface, with all the little waves: they seem very beautiful, but in fact the theory of the wave motion is very difficult.”

It might be tempting to think that Piano Phasing is a response to Steve Reich’s 1967 work Piano Phase, but Zegers insists that the similar titles are a coincidence. “The funny thing, and people don’t believe it, is that I wrote Piano Phasing and then afterwards I heard Piano Phase. I wasn’t very happy that it existed, but then I heard it and I was a little less unhappy, because I think I made a completely different piece.” Whereas Reich’s composition relies upon two parts being played with absolute precision to move in and out of phase, Zegers’ piece uses the differences that arise naturally between a large group of non-professional musicians for its effect.

With the pianos all supplied by Leeds specialists Besbrode Pianos, taking part in Piano Phasing promises to be a unique and exciting experience for the collected pianists. “I think it’s an excellent way of making music, to experience the other players,” says Zegers. “When the piece has taken place in Holland, the people in the room all talk about what it was like.”

Participants will need to attend the following rehearsals and performance:

• Sunday 15 November, 1pm – 4pm, Besbrode Pianos Showroom, Unit A, Holbeck New Mills, Braithwaite Street, Leeds, LS11 9XE

• & Sunday 22 November, 1pm – 4pm at Besbrode Pianos Showroom

• Monday 23 November; 4.00pm – 6.00pm rehearsal at Huddersfield Town Hall; 6.30pm performance at Huddersfield Town Hall

Refreshments and a CD of the final performance will be provided.

To register your interest in performing at this event, please contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116; or email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk by Friday 6 November.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Besbrode Pianos

Besbrode Pianos

Kristoffer Zegers’ website (features sound clip of Piano Phasing)

9. Ictus Ensemble

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:56:00 +0000

Brice Pauset new work (UK Premiere)
James Dillon The Leuven Triptych (UK Premiere)

Ictus Ensemble

Two pioneering composers with a strong reputation in new music, James Dillon and Brice Pauset, will encounter the Flemish Primitive painter Roger Van der Weyden. For James Dillon, the job of resolutely working out the aesthetic principles characteristic of Van der Weyden in a modern musical language resulted in a monumental 46-minute work. He sought inspiration in the music of the Master's contemporaries (Guillaume Dufay, among others). The job couldn't have found a better fit than with Brice Pauset, who has been fascinated for a long time with the Last Judgement (Hospice de Dieu, Beaune) and canon techniques in 15^th-century music. The Ictus Ensemble is totally enthusiastic about these UK premieres, which they will perform with passion.

Produced by hcmf// The Passion of the Master is co-commissioned by BBC Radio 3, Transit and Ictus Ensemble// supported by British Council

The Last Phase

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:44:20 +0000

Work on my Nieuw Ensemble piece is in its last phase; roughly a quarter of the notation is complete. Pictured are two pages of an overall plan. Each box represents a single phrase, a small gestural compound characterised by a low dynamic and a slow but noticeable rate of change. This may be a soft tremolo beating on a muted glockenspiel, a focused strumming of an upper-register mandolin note, or a slowly sliding harmonic fingering on a bowed string. The highlighted boxes are those in which pitched material is present, with the uncoloured phrases contributing to the muffled darkness from which individual details emerge. The distribution of pitched material, in its gradual diffusion across the ensemble, mirrors the fragile unpredictability one finds within each phrase, the whole piece then becoming a slowly fluctuating, tense aggregate.

Inspired by:

James Saunders – #211007

Joanna Bailie – Five Famous Adagios

Evan Johnson – Colophons (“That other that ich not whenne”), reflecting pool / monument

Roland Barthes – The Pleasure of the Text

Mark Z. Danielewski – House of Leaves

Ben Isaacs

CPD Vocal Programme for Music Leaders

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:30:00 +0000

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Sing Up are presenting a series of Continuing Professional Development workshops, providing an introduction to different approaches to using the voice in creative music projects. Each session has a different focus designed to inspire and enthuse and will be delivered by a leading practitioner.

All sessions can be accessed by secondary school music teachers, primary school music co-ordinators, community musicians and music students working with children and young people. Participants do not need to be vocal specialists and can attend as many sessions as they choose. Plus all workshop participants will also receive a copy of the HCMF Vocalise Resource Pack written by Kate Pearson, which contains a wealth of imaginative ideas for running creative vocal projects with children and young people.

All sessions are held at the University of Huddersfield from 16:30 – 18:30
All sessions are free of charge. Refreshments are provided.

Wednesday 30 September
Kate Pearson: Paper Pieces
A participatory session focusing on using paper sculpting techniques to model textures and structures for vocal work. Paper provided!

Wednesday 14 October
Barry Russell: Aural Landscapes
Creating and running workshop sessions where imaginations are free to wander and voices free to experiment!

Thursday 12 November
Anna Myatt: Songs and Games
Learn songs and games for helping with in-tune singing, part-singing and composing. Particularly relevant for those working with Primary school children.

Thursday 26 November
Phil Minton: Phil Minton’s Feral Choir
Learn about Phil Minton’s Feral Choir project whereby non-professionals are encouraged to take a vocal leap and explore vocal possibilities through exercises and improvisations. As featured this year at FuseLeeds 09 and the Humber Mouth Festival!

To book a place on any of the workshops please contact Heidi Johnson

email: h.johnson@hud.ac.uk or call 01484 471116

[60] Project collaborations

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:19:00 +0000

You can now listen online to tracks produced by Mathew Adkins and students from Huddersfield’s Greenhead College as part of HCMF 2008 commission the [60] Project.

Huddersfield-based composer Adkins devised the [60] Project to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first public transmission of musique concrète. In October 1948, French national radio broadcast Pierre Schaeffer’s Etudes de Bruits , exposing listeners to a groundbreaking set of pieces based upon non-instrumental real-world sounds.

Adkins’ tribute involved contributions from more than 60 of the world’s leading sound artists, including Janek Schaefer, Christian Fennesz, Mira Calix and Rhodri Davies. Each provided a clip based upon a single sound, lasting up to one minute. Once collected, these were passed back to the artists for further treatment before being arranged by Adkins. The final 60-minute piece received its world premiere at HCMF 2008.

As well as the main commission, Adkins worked with students at Greenhead College, using the same sounds as raw material for students’ individual pieces. For some, this HCMF project was an inspiring first experience of musique concrete:

“Contemporary music came as a real shock at first,” says Ben Parker, who created a piece titled Unfinished Business. “As I became interested in this whole new genre, tone and rhythm became less of a priority, and that was when ideas began to flourish.”

Sue Roberts, composer of Les bulles musicales de concrète adds, “Experiencing the sounds available was like eating a box of the most delicious sonic chocolates.”

http://www.60project.com

National Youth Jazz Collective workshops

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:49:00 +0000

Weekend jazz workshops organised by HCMF and the University of Huddersfield have enabled one local young musician to hold his own against a choir, a steel pan orchestra and a group of taiko drummers at a concert in Birmingham.

Fourteen year-old drummer Joe Barstow, from Huddersfield, was selected to take part in the performance as part of the annual National Festival of Music for Youth on 11 July. Compered by drum ‘n' bass star and BBC Maestro finalist Goldie, the concert marked the 10th birthday of Music for Youth , an educational charity whose work includes providing opportunities for young musicians to play in concerts and festivals.

Players from the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, the National Youth Jazz Collective, the National Youth Orchestra, the South Asian Music Orchestra and chamber music school Pro Corda came together for the first time to form Encounters Ensemble. They had one day to rehearse a new piece, devised by Brian Irvine, at Birmingham Conservatoire before the evening concert at Birmingham Town Hall.

Joe has been playing drums for about six years and is a member of several groups. It was through one of these that he first heard about the National Youth Jazz Collective workshops, which took place earlier this year. Participants had the chance to work alongside jazz tutors David Hassell (drums), Mike Walker (guitar), Steve Berry (bass) and Iain Dixon (saxophone).

"I went along the first time and I really, really enjoyed it," he says. "It was mostly improvisation in small groups. It worked really nicely. Luckily for me, [musician and educator] Issie Barratt was there and she asked me to come along for Birmingham."

Despite being the only jazz drummer in Encounters Ensemble, Joe kept up his confidence through the rehearsal and performance. "There wasn't that much improvisation in the piece, but I had to improvise the drum part," he says, adding, "The concert went really well and I think most people enjoyed it."

He agrees that the chance to be a part of the NYJC workshops and the concert have benefited his developing musicianship. "It's made me appreciate a different side of jazz and big band music, and that it doesn't have to just have saxophones, trumpets, trombones and a rhythm section. It doesn't have to have a pronounced melody, it can be obscure."

Joe is hoping to eventually study at the Royal Northern College of Music before turning professional and joining bands in London or Germany - "Just broaden my musical horizons, really" - an ambition boosted by his HCMF workshop experience.

Sound advances

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:32:00 +0000

The shared commitment of HCMF and the University of Huddersfield to supporting cutting-edge music is about to make a real difference to one upcoming composer's work.

HCMF and the university's long-running association was strengthened last year by the signing of a three-year sponsorship deal. Now Greek composer Lefteris Papadimitriou is the first musician to benefit from a new joint PhD scholarship run by HCMF and the University of Huddersfield, starting this autumn. Papadimitriou will carry out studies within CeReNeM , the Centre for Research in New Music, and work closely with Graham McKenzie, Artistic Director of HCMF.

"I am very much looking forward to the opportunity to work with Lefteris on the development of his artistic practice, and in assisting him in finding the most appropriate context for his work," says McKenzie.

"I first became aware of his music in 2006 in Amsterdam when he won the Gaudeamus International Composers Award with his work for piano and orchestra, Black and White. It surprised a lot of people when it won, I think ... but in a good way. He is also an interesting performer - playing laptop - and I think we can help develop that side of his work while he is at Huddersfield."

Born in Volos, Greece, Lefteris Papadimitriou is a graduate of the music department at the University of Athens. Writing for both live instruments and electronics, his talent has previously been recognized by Amsterdam's Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, who awarded him a commission in 2008.

"I consider that my music can be perceived in the larger tradition of European art music, though it's not strongly tied to any particular movement," says Papadimitriou. "I think I have been influenced by American minimal music of the 70s, the European avant-garde like Stockhausen and Xenakis and also a lot of experimental electronic music of the 90s. Of course, like many composers of my generation, I have also been influenced by the computer as a new kind of instrument and as a music making tool."

He describes his work as "constructed by functional cycles of transformation of various musical parameters. These transformations are usually achieved by a predefined ‘engravement' of the musical space where the various parameters can move through a piece."

Papadimitriou will find himself among many like minds at CeReNeM. The centre's areas of specialist research span improvisation, composition, sound spatialisation, advances in sonic technology and the cultural position of new music. In addition, CeReNem's annual GEMdays festival showcases advances in electroacoustic music.

Professor Liza Lim, Director of CeReNem, explains what the PhD research will involve: "Lefteris' music works with the physical impact of sounds and the 'dramas': the sensory, emotional, historical, contextual elements that he perceives to be encoded by sounds. His doctoral research will examine the microstructure of sounds as a way of making a language of gesture explored through both instrumental and electronic means."

She adds, "The university has excellent studio facilities and a strong performance workshop programme to support this area of research which also connects with a number of CeReNeM staff projects. The scholarship also offers a fantastic opportunity for Lefteris' work to find a public platform through HCMF and for his development as an artist to be mentored by the festival director, Graham McKenzie."

Jonathan Harvey R3 Composer of the Week

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:04:00 +0000

Radio 3 have just featured HCMF Composer in Residence Jonathan Harvey as their Composer of the Week.

Harvey joined presenter Donald Macleod to discuss some of his key works. Listen to the podcast here .

HCMF on Spotify

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:35:00 +0000

To celebrate the release of online tickets for HCMF 2009, we've compiled a selection of tracks from some of this year's guest composers and artists. Click here to open a Spotify playlist featuring recordings of work by Jonathan Harvey, Anthony Braxton, Emmanuel Nunes and more.

Spotify is a free, legal streaming service offering access to music by a range of past and present HCMF artists. If you haven't used it before, you will need to create a username to listen to the playlist.

As ever, this year's festival (20 to 29 November) has a programme packed with new commissions and UK or world premieres. So if the playlist whets your appetite, be sure to take advantage of the early booking discounts available through this site. And watch out for more HCMF playlists in coming weeks.

HCMF Shorts 2009

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:22:00 +0000

Six artists have been selected for this year's HCMF Shorts, the festival's one-day showcase of emerging talent. The international line-up of composers and performers was chosen from a record number of applicants and includes instrumental soloists, electroacoustic musicians and two student ensembles. On 23 November each will perform either work of their own creation or a fresh interpretation of existing contemporary pieces. The concerts take place in Lawrence Batley Theatre and the atrium and Phipps Hall of the Creative Arts Building, University of Huddersfield, and admission is free.

Here are the six successful artists and their planned HCMF Shorts programmes:

Richard Uttley, piano

Joe Cutler, Clavinova Music
Thomas Adès, Traced Overhead, op.15
Chris Willis, Burning Up

Originally from Huddersfield, Richard Uttley graduated in music from Clare College, Cambridge in 2008 and now studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He won the 2006 British Contemporary Piano Competition and has released two CDs . His HCMF Shorts performance features three recent British pieces centering on various manifestations of ecstasy.

"Over the last few years I have dreamt of getting a chance to play at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. I grew up in Huddersfield, where I studied with Ian Buckle, and went to HCMF concerts during my time at Greenhead College."

G Douglas Barrett, A Few Silence

G Douglas Barrett is an American PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the University of New York, Buffalo. His music has been performed in settings ranging from festivals and concert halls to galleries and streets, by artists including The Barton Workshop , FLUX Quartet , Christine Tavolacci and Mark So .

"A Few Silence is a piece in which the very site of performance becomes the subject of documentation. In it performers create ‘live' written transcriptions of the sounds of their surroundings and then perform their respective scores using various instruments and objects."

Jonathan Sage, clarinet

Richard Glover, Bi-linear
Steve Reich, New York Counterpoint

With an MA in performance from the University of York, Jonathan Sage has toured Ireland with a solo programme of contemporary clarinet music and appeared at festivals throughout the UK and Europe, as well as acting as concert soloist for orchestras including the London Mozart Players .

"Minimal and minimalist are two similar words but with very different musical meanings. Steve Reich is a giant of 20th century minimalist composition, taking minimal musical ideas and manipulating them in a repetitive way. New York Counterpoint is written for 11 clarinet parts, with the performer pre-recording and multi-tracking 10 accompanying parts and then playing over the top. Richard Glover's Bi-linear, although not minimalist, is a piece with minimal pitch and rhythm content."

Ignacio Agrimbau, Anatomy of the Self II and III

Born in Buenos Aires in 1977, Ignacio Agrimbau studied composition with Manuel Juarez and Michael Finnissy . In 2005 he founded the experimental ensemble Hola, and is currently working on a commission for the choir EXAUDI.

"Anatomy of the Self is the name given to a performance/recording project based around the electronic elaboration and manipulation of originally acoustic material, which is usually half-improvised. The pieces presented here are based on Oud and Ma-Wu performances with added drums."

Workers Union Ensemble

David Ibbett, New Work

Contemporary music group The Workers Union Ensemble comprises current and ex-students of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. David Ibbett is currently completing his Masters in composition at Guildhall.

"Our collaboration focuses on the enlargement, refinement, reorganisation and intensification of the ensemble's sound via electronics. Through juxtapositions and dialogues between the instruments and their recorded selves, an extended timbral palette is created with increased scope and technique and texture, creating a world which is rich yet unified."

CR:ACC Ensemble

Christian Wolff, Burdocks

Formed by four music students at the University of Glasgow, the CR:ACC Ensemble perform contemporary compositions, free improvisations and works with indeterminate scores, often incorporating electroacoustic and multimedia elements.

"Christian Wolff 's seminal work Burdocks was first performed in August 1971, and consists of ten sections. Whilst it is the most performed of his indeterminate scores, Wolff's output is rarely heard today."

Weekend 2 Saver

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:35:16 +0000

Covers admission to all ticketed events on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 November

The full programme for HCMF 2009 will be announced in early September 2009

Selected 2009 events on sale with online discounts

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:52:00 +0000

For the first time, tickets have been released for some of the highlight events at this year's HCMF, ahead of the full programme being announced.

Another exciting first for HCMF is the introduction of discounted prices for tickets purchased online, offering exceptional value for money. By purchasing your tickets online you can make savings of up to £6 on individual tickets, or £10 on a Weekend Saver and a huge £60 on a full Festival Saver.

There is a limited number of online tickets available for all events and they will be up until Friday 23 October 2009 latest (or earlier if limits are reached before that date). Tickets can also be purchased by calling the Box Office on 01484 430528 or by visiting the Box Office in person, at Lawrence Batley Theatre, Queen Street, Huddersfield, HD1 2SP.

Ticket prices - with online savings

Full Festival Saver
Online price: £230.00
Usual price (purchased by phone or in person from Box Office): £290.00
Save: £60
Covers admission to all ticketed events and a Festival Programme Book

Weekend Savers 1 & 2
Online price: £70.00
Usual price (purchased by phone or in person from Box Office): £80.00
Save: £10
Covers admission to all eight ticketed events on Saturday 21 & Sunday 22 November , excluding Studio 2 concerts, or on Saturday 28 & Sunday 29 November )

Individual Events
Online prices from £9 - £12
Usual prices (purchased by phone or in person from Box Office): £14 - £18
Save: up to £6

Festival Highlights

This year's HCMF, which takes place from 21 - 29 November, will feature in-depth explorations of the work of two leading voices in contemporary music - the British composer Jonathan Harvey and Portugal's most celebrated living composer, Emmanuel Nunes.

Born in Warwickshire in 1939, Jonathan Harvey is one of the most successful and enduring composers to come out of the United Kingdom and is HCMF's Composer in Residence. In constant demand throughout the world, his music is extensively performed by all of the major ensembles of our time. He has worked closely with Artistic Director Graham McKenzie to curate a comprehensive profile of his work, which will include large-scale ensemble, chamber, choral, electronic and multi-media - presented by some of the foremost British and European ensembles and artists. Highlights will include performances by the Arditti Quartet, New London Chamber Choir, London Sinfonietta, Re-Mix Ensemble and musikFabrik (New Work 2009 - European Premiere). Jonathan will be a significant presence at the Festival, through a series of talks, open workshops and film related events, including the World Premiere of a new film about him by Barrie Gavin.

Emmanuel Nunes, born in 1941 in Lisbon, is one of Portugal's greatest living composers and yet his work has rarely been performed in the UK. Portugal's foremost contemporary chamber music group, Re-Mix Ensemble, will present two concerts during the Festival, placing Nunes' work in the context of works by other leading European and Portugese composers. Other performances will include a solo piano concert by Noriko Kawai and the Diotima Quartet.

Events available now - with discounted online prices

Arditti Quartet & The Hilliard Ensemble
20 November 2009 St Paul's Hall 6pm
Online £12; Full price £18; Concessions £16
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Barrett / ELISION 1
20 November 2009 Bates Mill 8pm
Online £12; Full price £18; Concessions £16
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Ralph van Raat: Jonathan Harvey Piano Solo
21 November 2009 Phipps Hall 6pm
Online £9; Full price £14; Concession £12
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Arditti Quartet: Jonathan Harvey 4th String Quartet
21 November 2009 St Paul's Hall 8pm
Online £12; Full price £18; Concessions £16
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Ictus Ensemble
22 November 2009 Lawrence Batley Theatre 12 noon
Online £9; Full price £14; Concessions £12
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New London Chamber Choir: Jonathan Harvey
22 November 2009 St Paul's Hall 5pm
Online £9; Full price £14; Concessions £12
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Noriko Kawai: Nunes
26 November 2009 St Paul's Hall 6pm
Online £9; Full price £14; Concessions £12
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Quatuor Diotima
28 November 2009 St Paul's Hall 2pm
Online £9; Full price £14; Concessions £12
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Remix Ensemble 1
28 November 2009 Town Hall 4pm
Online £12; Full price £18; Concessions £16
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musikFabrik 1: Sringara Chaconne
28 November 2009 St Paul's Hall 7pm
Online £12; Full price £18; Concessions £16
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London Sinfonietta / fORCH
28 November 2009 Bates Mill 9.15pm
Online £12; Full price £18; Concessions £16
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Remix Ensemble 2
29 November 2009 St Paul's Hall 1pm
Online £12; Full price £18; Concessions £16
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Time to get serious...

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:16:10 +0000

With the workshop weekends fading into the distance and the impending first performance looming dangerously in the not so distant future I am, officially, starting to write the piece for the Nieuw Ensemble. Soon...

I'm currently in the throes of pre PhD viva panic (preparation) and feel (hope) that the floodgates will open once this has happened (14th July - all goodwill messages gratefully received). At the moment I can't remember how you start... Eek.

Jenny Jackson

Spotify Playlists

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:02:00 +0000

Spotify Playlist #1

Featuring Anthony Braxton, Louis Andriessen and ELISION.

Spotify Playlist #2

'Laptop Revolutionaries', featuring Four Tet, Mira Calix and Flying Lotus.

Spotify Playlist #3

An hcmf alumni playlist, featuring works by John Cage, Brian Eno and Noriko Kawai.

Spotify Playlist #4

A John Cage retrospective.

IRCAM Inside and Out

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:11:00 +0000

With its network of pipes and cables crawling over the outside of the building, the Pompidou Centre is one of Paris's most memorable landmarks. Visitors confronted with it might be forgiven for overlooking the more understated building next door. Yet however taciturn it may appear on the outside, the inner workings of IRCAM have had as dramatic an effect upon the world of sound as the inside-out Pompidou Centre had on architecture.

Since opening in 1977, IRCAM - the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (Institute for Music/Acoustic Research and Coordination) - has been a place where contemporary composers can realise ideas beyond the reach of traditional instruments and vocalists. Housed in a building also designed by Pompidou Centre architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, it was founded when the French president, Georges Pompidou, invited the composer Pierre Boulez to oversee an institution dedicated to sound research.

In addition to his work in serialism and aleatory (chance-based) music, Boulez was interested in electronics and sound manipulation. In the years following its foundation, IRCAM made breakthroughs in areas such as real-time processing: instead of being limited to recording electronic pieces on tape, composers could create dynamic works in which computers reacted to a sound within microseconds of its production. Composers were invited to the institute, where technicians would assist them in realising new commissions using cutting-edge technology. They could make instruments sound like they never had before, or combine sources to create new ones. Over many years, HCMF has had a close association with IRCAM and two of this year's featured composers, Jonathan Harvey and Emmanuel Nunes, have produced several works in this environment, including Harvey's Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco; Bhakti; Ritual Melodies and Advaya; and Nunes' Lichtung I and Lichtung II.

IRCAM is more than a sandbox for technicians and composers, however. The institute's Ensemble InterContemporain is a chamber orchestra whose flexible size and configuration has proved influential. A concert season and annual festival, AGORA, provide an essential outlet for developments in contemporary music. And many of IRCAM's innovations are available to musicians working beyond its walls: their website currently offers software packages such as voice processor SuperVP, and Modalys, which enables users to create a virtual musical instrument out of everyday objects. In the wider world, IRCAM expertise allowed viewers of the 1994 film Farinelli to hear the lost voice of a castrato, recreated by merging the waveforms of male and female singers.

Today the kind of effects pioneered by IRCAM in the 1970s may be available to every bedroom producer with a laptop, but the institute continues to explore the limits of sonic knowledge. Under present-day director Frank Madlener, current research areas include the psychology of sound perception, work on room acoustics that could enhance our experience of concert halls and studies in instrumental acoustics that answer questions such as how a specific sound arises from the breath that produced it.

IRCAM's website offers a wealth of resources, incorporating a multimedia library, composer information and specialised search tools for contemporary music. The institute plays a vital part in the Europe-wide CASPAR project, which aims to ensure the preservation of digital data into the future. On the performance side, recent works include Hypermusic, a collaboration between composer Hèctor Parra and physicist Lisa Randall billed as ‘A Projective Opera in Seven Planes'. It seems that these days the Pompidou Centre's mysterious neighbour shows its inner workings in endless ways.

Book tickets now for events featuring the work of Jonathan Harvey and Emmanuel Nunes. Online prices from £9.

IRCAM website in English.

Vocalise Revs Up

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:24:00 +0000

Young people in Kirklees have found their voice...and it sounds like machinery. They've been taking part in weekly vocal workshops with an experimental edge as part of Vocalise, a project run by HCMF and Kirklees Music School and funded by Youth Music.

Over the past couple of months, participants aged between eight and 18 have been working with local music leaders Laura Sillitoe and Sarah Turnbull to explore a range of vocal and contemporary music techniques. Inspired by the Honda Civic advert in which a choir imitated the sounds of the car being driven, the vocalists have devised their own piece around the theme of machinery, to be performed at Kirklees Music School's end-of-term concert on 10 July.

"We took the Honda advert as a stimulus, but we came at it from a different angle," says Laura Sillitoe. "We wrote some stories and are now developing something into a graphic score." The workshops are divided into two groups, covering school years five to seven and eight to 13, and the older students have taken a role in creating music for the younger ones.

"We've been keen to push the fact that the process is just as important as the piece," Sillitoe says. "For the performance, we won't necessarily perform something that we've ever done before; we'll be going through the process that we've been working on. So each time we perform it, it might be different." She adds, "Every week they do something new. They've taken some things in directions that would never have occurred to me."

As the workshops progress the participants will be putting their extended vocal skills to the test with a new piece by Alvin Curran, the American composer and co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva. The as-yet-untitled work will be performed on 29 November at an HCMF concert also featuring Huddersfield Choral Society in Huddersfield Town Hall.

In the meantime, more young people will have the chance to extend their vocal horizons through a set of Vocalise summer holiday workshops taking place from 27-30 July at Thornhill Junior School. These will be led by innovative trio Juice, whose work ranges from cross-genre a cappella performances to part-improvised live film scores combining voice and electronics.

The Vocalise programme will also feature a series of Continuing Professional Development workshops for music leaders this autumn, focusing on different approaches to using the voice in creative music projects and accompanied by a resource pack written by Kate Pearson.

It's not too late to join in with either the weekly workshops or the summer holiday sessions. Both are free of charge and no experience is needed. For more information on how to join, please contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116; email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk. Alternatively complete the booking form below.

Read more about Juice and Kirklees Music School.

HCMF Composer in Residence Jonathan Harvey in conversation

Fri, 29 May 2009 10:57:00 +0000

Jonathan Harvey knows when he heard his future calling. He was eleven, and a chorister.

"I remember exactly the moment," he says. "I was coming out of the church and the organist hit a wild dissonance. With that chord, I said to myself, ‘I'm going to be a composer', and I wrote it down mentally. I remembered it for two years, five years, ten years, and now sixty years."

Appointed Composer in Residence at HCMF 2009 and with an honorary doctorate from the University of Huddersfield among his many accolades, the career of one of the world's leading contemporary composers spans orchestral, choral, chamber, opera and tape works, in settings ranging from concert hall and campus to sacred spaces and the ultra-modernist bunker of IRCAM. Harvey's music sees ancient spiritual texts newly illuminated through electroacoustic experimentation, and inanimate instruments digitally wedded to living voices.

Born in 1939, Harvey was introduced to music by his father, an amateur pianist and composer. At the age of eight he became a chorister at St Michael's College in Tenbury Wells, a school established by Frederick Ouseley in 1856 for the preservation and perfection of Anglican church music. Pupils sang in daily services and rehearsals, a timetable he describes as "a real immersion in music. We covered an enormous repertoire - in fact, people said it was a larger repertoire than any cathedral in the country."

Even with this wealth of musical experience, Harvey yearned for more adventurous sounds. "I was always impatient with the church music because the modern pieces, mostly by contemporary living organists, seemed to me to be so tame," he says. "I can remember this childish frustration very well. I heard modernistic works, like The Rite Of Spring and a lot of Sibelius and Bartok, and none of the modern church music seemed to come near to that degree of sophistication."

He was, perhaps surprisingly, encouraged by the choirmaster to pursue his interest. "I used to go into the organ loft and improvise. I had the key to this dark, huge building and I would play happily away. It was an awe-inspiring experience."

Later, as Harvey went on to study at St John's College, Cambridge, he benefited from the guidance of Benjamin Britten, who suggested he receive private instruction from Erwin Stein, then, after Stein's death in 1958, Hans Keller. Both were Austrian refugees living in London, and their knowledge of the Second Viennese School made a great impression on him. "I went very deeply into Schoenberg; he remains an extraordinary figure for me," he says.

Nevertheless, Harvey found the early 20th century composers' theories did not entirely satisfy his sense of how music could be. "I was never a thoroughgoing serialist, for instance. I wrote serial works, but not ones that were very close to Schoenberg in technique," he explains. "But I did follow the serial path, right through to Milton Babbitt, with whom I studied." Harvey gained his PhD from Glasgow University in 1964, whilst working as a cellist with the BBC Scottish Orchestra, and then took up a lecturing post at Southampton. In 1969 he was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to study at Princeton, where Babbitt was part of the faculty.

"I wanted to gather from Babbitt how much one could hear, how possible was it to get to a real sense of structural depth, which one has almost automatically in the great tonal works. I came away, having made my own experiments in composition, with a feeling that that was not really the path. Keller, with whom I was in contact, certainly urged me that the important thing was spontaneity, inner logic rather than outer logic, and freedom. These things were very important, and he was quite an influence in making me forge a way beyond serialism."

In the mid-1960s he also had a growing fascination with Stockhausen, and started working on a book, The Music of Stockhausen, published in 1975. "My serialism became more Stockhausen-esque, and at the same time more free," he notes. Ultimately he found his own balance between formal rigour and freedom:

"I tested all my serial ideas with my perceptions and asked myself how much I could really hear; how much did this mean to me? And that's why I began to only keep those things which genuinely contributed. Sometimes they can be quite deep things, systems that are going on under the surface, but nevertheless they immediately give the listener a sense of unity and logic.

He adds, "It's important to have nourishment for the impulse towards freedom and imagination and inspiration, to finding the thing which we all long for, which is deeply hidden inside us."

Harvey had an early encounter with computer music at Princeton and would later work with analogue electronics at Cardiff University. However, an invitation from Pierre Boulez, the director of IRCAM, the Parisian electroacoustic research institute, marked the start of a deeper engagement with electronic music. Over the course of several years Harvey realised eight works at IRCAM, the first of which was 1980's Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco.

Taking its name from an engraving on the side of the largest bell in Winchester Cathedral, the tape piece (which will be presented at HCMF 2009 as an audiovisual installation by Visual Kitchen) used spectral analysis and digital synthesis to create a haunting fusion of the bell's sound and the voice of Harvey's son, also a chorister.

"From these two very familiar and, for me, sacred and beloved sounds I made a fantasy, a poem, with the aid of computer manipulation. I see the bell and boy as connected by electronics. Two completely different things: the great dead black thing, the Mortuos, and the lovely little boy who's very much alive - and now is a charming man - to take these very different entities and unite them through numbers in the computer. Integration of the opposites is very important, to show how, in some deep sense, everything is connected. And everything is fluid."

Harvey finds unfettered possibilities for realising his musical aims in the electronic medium. "I love music which dissolves and makes ambiguous whatever exists. Electronic music does that: it can turn anything into anything else; it can make sounds which remind you vaguely of something but which are not exactly that thing. Well known instruments can be made ambiguous, made to be both themselves and something else."

As technology develops at such a rate that the software and processing power which was previously only available to Harvey at IRCAM can now be carried around in a laptop, can he see any limits to what electronic music can achieve? "Actually, no. Which is an extraordinary revolution," he replies.

"All the last inventions, such as the invention of horns with valves, or the use of alternative techniques on a violin, all have their limits. With electronics that's not the case, and more and more it's possible to simulate the complexity of real instruments, and having done that, to actually make those instruments evolve into something far beyond what they are today."

With so much of the choristers' time devoted to religious music, those early years at St Michael's didn't just imbue Harvey with a taste for dissonance. "I never got over that sense of making music for the glory of God," he says, "because we had nobody to listen except God." In his adult life, that sense of spirituality would expand beyond Christianity to include study of Hindu, Buddhist and Sufi beliefs in an ongoing quest to understand what he calls "the human aspect. I'm struggling along the path, like everyone else, and what interests me is the nature of suffering in an unsatisfactory life, and the vision that liberation or enlightenment offers us."

In Harvey's view, computers are as valid a companion on the spiritual journey as acoustic instruments and human voices. "There are many techniques with which one can manifest this expression of my sensibility. They are in electronics, by dissolving the sound-world; in other combinations of instruments and voices, by dissolving the reality of the known world; and through a choice of texts with ambiguous meanings. There's also the ritual element which is common to my works, to give the audience a sense of belonging, of being part of a function, in a way. And the function is being together in a certain mantric activity, the attempt to come together in a unified rhythm of perception."

Many of these elements combine in Harvey's 1982 work Bhakti, where electronics realised at IRCAM underpin twelve interconnected orchestral sections inspired by the sacred Hindu Rig Veda, texts he was studying as part of his practice of meditation.

"They're very ambiguous texts, literally, because the words of Sanskrit were not confined to a single meaning. But that's quite intentional on the part of the poets, I think, because they aimed to unify the world, to bring about connections. It's not the modern idea of words which point to a single object. It was much more the words are there to show the nature of the world as it is beyond labelling. So I wanted to try and capture that."

For Harvey, the discipline of meditation has a beneficial effect upon the job of composing. "I find that ideas come during meditation and, vice versa I often find that experience of meditation is the object of the music. The music tries to describe the state of consciousness which I experienced."

Hindu philosophy and Western culture meet once more in Harvey's newest work, Sringara Chaconne, which will enjoy its first UK performance at HCMF 2009. "The word ‘sringara' means ‘love', and that love can be between a man and a woman, or it can be between a mother and child. It's a flavour, what they call a rasa, which can be explored in poetry or music," he explains. "So I took this Indian way of doing art and tried to compose a piece with it. It's called Sringara Chaconne because it's based on just four, rather gentle chords repeated over and over again, which is what a chaconne [a type of dance from the Baroque period] tends to do. There are many transformations and plenty of variety in the piece, but it is nevertheless in one sense static."

Six decades after that galvanising, dissonant organ chord, does he feel as though he finally understands the mysteries of music? "I think the more you understand, the mysterious music becomes, actually. It's a fundamentally very mysterious thing, because it reflects what I call the emptiness of the world, a Buddhist term, the non-existence of the objective world. Nobody can say what music is, or what its fascination lies in."

Sing at HCMF!

Wed, 20 May 2009 15:30:00 +0000

HCMF and Kirklees Music School are working together to form two new vocal ensembles for young people in North Kirklees in 2009.

Funded by Youth Music, the aim of the new groups is to create and sing new vocal music and explore unusual vocal techniques in a fun and relaxed atmosphere.

The groups are open to any young person in Kirklees in Years 5 - 13. Participants need have no previous experience to join and there is no charge to take part.

The new groups will be led by inspirational local music leaders Laura Sillitoe and Sarah Turnbull. During workshop sessions participants will be able to experiment with different ways of using their voices including as a soundscape (for example the Honda advert!), and as an accompaniment to visual image. They'll be encouraged to compose, improvise and perform their own work over the course of the year. Both groups will also work towards a high-profile performance as part of HCMF in November 2009, singing an exciting new piece written by experimental composer Alvin Curran.

The two groups cater for different ages; the first for Years 5 - 7 and the second for Years 8 - 13. They will meet weekly during term time on Friday evenings, starting on Friday 30 January, at the following times:

Group 1: Years 5 - 7
Fridays, 3.45pm - 4.45pm at Thornhill Junior & Infant School, Edge Lane, Thornhill, Dewsbury, WF12 0QT

Group 2: Years 8 - 13
Fridays, 5.30pm - 6.30pm at The Mirfield Free Grammar, Kitson Hill Road, Mirfield, WF14 9EZ

For more information on how to join either of the groups, please contact Heidi Johnson on 01484 471116; email h.johnson@hud.ac.uk. Alternatively you can complete the Booking Form below.

Reseau Varese receives five-year funding

Tue, 19 May 2009 10:06:00 +0000

The pan-European network Réseau Varèse has been selected as one of nine multi-annual cooperation projects to be subsidised between 2009 and 2014 as part of the European Commission's Culture Programme supporting musical creation and dissemination.

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival has been a Réseau Varèse member since 2000. Bringing together 21 members from 16 European countries, the network encourages exchanges and the circulation of contemporary music projects between countries and venues. The other UK member is the Southbank Centre, London.

In 2008, HCMF joined other Réseau Varèse members in hosting a range of events celebrating and paying tribute to the late composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. In addition, an HCMF 2008 world premiere will this year travel to other Réseau Varèse locations. Members interested in presenting John Butcher's Composition for eight musicians, in which eight seasoned improvisers are encouraged to leave their collaborative comfort zones, include the Gaida Festival, Vilnius; the Arena Festival, Riga; Wien Modern in Vienna and Berlin's Maerzmusik.

Since 2000, Réseau Varèse has benefited from funding from three successive European Commission Culture Programmes. Forty-two projects have been supported between 2000 and 2009. Sixteen of these have been musical shows, including opera, musical theatre and choreographic works; the other 26 were concert programmes including recitals, chamber music, symphonic and choral productions. These 42 projects led to 169 events, with over 360 public showings in Europe. 53 composers of 20 different nationalities benefited from support from Réseau Varèse during this period, and 42 new works were premiered within this framework.

The budget for Réseau Varèse's actions from 2009-2014 has been set at €5,474,850, of which €2.5 million will be funded by the European Commission's Culture Programme.

Past Réseau Varèse projects at HCMF:

2008
Homage to Stockhausen:
Nicolas Hodges: 3. Stunde aus Klang: Naturliche Dauern
Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart: STIMMUNG
New London Chamber Choir: Chore fur Doris / Litanei 97

2006
Pan Sonic / Atli Ingolfsson / Yan Maresz / Giovanni Verrando / Riccardo Nova: Microwaves

2005
Helmut Lachenmann: Portrait
Olga Neuwirth / Roberto Paci Dalo: Italia Anno Zero

2004
Fausto Romitelli: An Index of Metals
Hanspeter Kyburz / Quatuor Diotima: Streichquartett
The Contemporary Hardanger Fiddle

2003
Sir Harrison Birtwistle / London Sinfonietta: Theseus Game
Georges Aperghis / Willy Dorner: Ob:scena
Mauricio Kagel / Christian Kesten: Mare Nostrum
Jonathan Harvey / Quatuor Arditti: String Quartet #4 with computer music

2002
Martin Matalon: Le Scorpion
Ensemble Recherche / Neue Berliner Kammerorchester: Unknown Feldman
Evan Parker: Memory-Vision / Staring onto the Time of the Future

2001
Salvatore Sciarrino / Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski: Lohengrin
Heiner Goebbels: Hashirigaki
Kaija Saariaho: From The Grammar Of Dreams

2000
Ensemble Modern: Tribute to Wolfgang Rihm

HCMF + Nieuw Ensemble Composers' Programme hits right notes

Tue, 19 May 2009 09:53:00 +0000

The four composers taking part in the first HCMF + Nieuw Ensemble Composers' Programme have returned from a second trip to the group's studio in Amsterdam. After an intensive weekend working through their ideas with Nieuw Ensemble, they each now face the task of completing a piece to be premiered by the musicians at HCMF 2009.

"When you hear your ideas played by an ensemble with so much experience and of such good quality, it makes them clear in a way that you're not able to imagine them previously," says Lauren Redhead, one of the four composers selected after a launch workshop at HCMF 2008. "Really experienced players can give you absolutely everything that you've written on the page, and a bit more."

Run in partnership with Nieuw Ensemble and Yorkshire Universities and supported by NFPK and the Musicians' Benevolent Fund, the three-year programme offers professional development opportunities for emerging composers at higher education institutions in the region. Alongside Redhead, who is pursuing a practice-led PhD at University of Leeds, the chosen composers are Jenny Jackson (University of Sheffield), Ben Isaacs (University of Huddersfield) and Dimitris Maronidis (University of York).

The first trip to Amsterdam in February saw the composers get to grips with Nieuw Ensemble's unusual instrumentation. With guitar, mandolin and harp alongside the more traditional strings, woodwind and percussion, the 12-piece ensemble has long been dedicated to building its own repertoire in partnership with composers.

"The whole ensemble sound was the challenge, and also a really exciting part of the project," recalls Redhead. "The first weekend, I spoke to the ensemble about how they musically interact with each other and the different ways that they would respond to notation. The music I then wrote for the second weekend tried to incorporate those ideas."

April's workshop offered the composers opportunities to gain feedback from the players, from artistic director Joël Bons and from Richard Ayres, who teaches at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

"It's really quite an informal environment where you feel able to express your ideas any way you like," Redhead says. "The focus isn't so much on one piece as your whole musical language." The four also observed their counterparts from Nieuw Ensemble's Netherlands programme and attended performances at the Bimhuis and Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ.

Redhead and her three fellow musical travellers will stay in contact with Nieuw Ensemble over the summer as they compose the pieces for November's premieres, helping to maintain the inspirational momentum of the workshops.

"Although I'm happy with some of the things I've written," she concludes, "I now have a lot of ideas for how I could take it further."

Magnetic Yields: Shifting Currents

Tue, 19 May 2009 09:37:00 +0000

Sound artist Bill Thompson has turned his microphones upon the silent and invisible world of electromagnetism for Shifting Currents, a new installation and performance coming to HCMF 2009.

Commissioned in partnership with Le Weekend festival in Stirling and Aberdeen's sound festival, Shifting Currents features electromagnetic recordings of distinctive and atmospheric places from each of the three locations, alongside improvised responses from Thompson, Keith Rowe and Rick Reed.

Shifting Currents explores the unstable, unpredictable realm of electricity as a metaphor for the way in which music flows and changes around us. In keeping with the found sound aesthetic of his previous work, Aberdeen-based Thompson has used a stick-on telephone microphone to capture electromagnetic signals and interference, transforming the inaudible waveforms into delicate and harsh sonic textures. He recorded in Stirling's historic Church of the Holy Rude, where the infant James VI was crowned, and in Fraserburgh Lighthouse on the windswept Aberdeenshire coast. In Huddersfield he found inspiration in the university's engineering department.

Shifting Currents receives its premiere on 30 May at Le Weekend before visiting HCMF and sound in November. The former wool blending shed at Bates Mill will play host to a constantly evolving multi-channel installation of Thompson's recordings, with Thompson, Rowe and Reed weaving the sounds into their own musical performances on guitar and electronics.

Keith Rowe has been a key figure in British improvisation since the mid-1960s, when a new year's resolution to stop tuning his guitar set him on a journey away from the jazz he was playing with Mike Westbrook and towards free music. As well as several decades as part of the group AMM, Rowe's career includes the founding of M.I.M.E.O. (who performed at HCMF 2007), and numerous solo and collaborative recordings. The one-time art student's break with traditional playing techniques parallels the innovation of Jackson Pollock's floor canvases: laying his guitar flat upon a table, he incorporates found objects, electronics, contact mics and radio transmissions into his music-making.

Rick Reed shares an artistic background with Rowe, and a home state, Texas, with Thompson. After college he moved to Austin and became involved in the city's experimental music scene, making music with synthesisers and tape machines, alongside video art and sound installations. Shifting Currents will also pay a visit to the November Music festival in the Netherlands, transmitting the intangible qualities and hidden music of Huddersfield, Stirling and Aberdeen to a new location.

Shifting Currents will take place on Monday 23 November, 10pm at Bates Mill and is a free event.

Shifting Currents is produced by hcmf// co-commissioned by hcmf//, Le Weekend and sound; supported by PRS Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn and Scottish Arts Council.

Step inside sound with Visual Kitchen

Fri, 15 May 2009 13:05:00 +0000

Visitors to the 2009 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival will be able to literally step inside a work by HCMF Composer in Residence Jonathan Harvey, when it forms part of an installation by Brussels-based video artists Visual Kitchen.

Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco is a tape piece created by Harvey in 1980, during a period when he was invited to work at IRCAM, the Parisian electroacoustic research institute. The eight-channel music is composed of two digitally manipulated sound sources: Harvey's son, who was a chorister at Winchester Cathedral, and the cathedral's largest bell.

Visual Kitchen's video accompaniment features a floor projection on a white square bounded by the loudspeakers, encouraging visitors to step between them and be surrounded by the music.

"It's the whole question of how people relate to a space that's only created by sound," says Sam Vanoverschelde, who founded Visual Kitchen with Jurgen Van Gemert in the late 1990s. "The most important thing was to figure out how we were going to do an eight-point installation with the sound coming from all angles, when we only had one video. It was the contrast between spatialised sound and having a flat surface with no depth."

Vanoverschelde and Van Gemert started out as part of a VJ collective in nightclubs, moving on to create music videos and audiovisual performances. An artist-in-residency post at Bruges' Concertgebouw in 2003 marked the start of a continuing engagement with contemporary music that includes interpretations of Stockhausen, collaborations with fellow Brussels sound artist Eavesdropper and video for a new 2009 production of Karel Goeyvaerts' opera Aquarius.

Premiering in St Catherine's Church, Vilnius in October 2008 as part of the city's annual Gaida festival, the finished video mixes together eight visual tracks. Its hypnotic, shifting imagery, including stars, radiating lines and a close-up of the iris of Vanoverschelde's young daughter, lures people to the spot where the music will be most striking. "It creates an atmosphere that draws people's attention to the middle of the cube," Vanoverschelde says.

He found that some visitors appeared nervous about stepping onto the projection, due to either the disconcerting illusion of depth created by some of the imagery, or inhibitions about standing on a work of art. "In Vilnius we learned that maybe we should give people something, such as the plastic shoes you get in hospitals, so that it give people the permission to stand on it," he notes.

Anyone bold enough to enter the installation unwittingly becomes part of it: "During daytime it's more something intriguing that people stand around before going onto the video. At night it's something to be submerged in. Since the projection is from above, people have light falling upon them. Sometimes it has little flecks like stars and sometimes the shapes alter people. If you look at it from afar and see people in the beam of light, it's like a divine light falling down."

Jonathan Harvey – Visual Kitchen

Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco

Electronic music (1980) by Jonathan Harvey, realised at the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination
Acoustique / Musique (IRCAM), Paris, Distributed by Faber Music Ltd., London

Video installation (2008) by Visual Kitchen (Sam Vanoverschelde & Jurgen Van Gemert)
Concept: Lieven Bertels - Production: The Holland Festival, Amsterdam

World première of the installation: Gaida Festival, Vilnius (Lithuania), 25.X.2008
Commissioned by Gaida Festival in the framework of the ISCM World Music Days 2008

Book tickets now for events featuring the work of Jonathan Harvey. Online prices from £9.

See the Mortuos Plango installation in Vilnius here .

Visit Visual Kitchen's myspace and Vimeo page for lots more content.

John Tilbury nominated for RPS Award

Wed, 06 May 2009 10:02:00 +0000

John Tilbury's book Cornelius Cardew: A Life Unfinished, launched at HCMF 2008, has been shortlisted for a Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award in the Creative Communication category.

Cornelius Cardew was a musician of genius for whom Life and Art were as one. He was a radical, both artistically and politically, becoming a tireless activist and uncompromising Marxist-Leninist. Passion and imagination governed all he did: his boldness and humanity continue to intrigue and inspire.

John Tilbury, whose close friendship with Cardew dates from their first concert together, in January 1960, has worked for many years on this biography, and brings his subject vividly to life. In doing this, he has drawn extensively from Cardew's journals and letters, and obtained first-hand accounts from friends and colleagues. The handling of this material is thoughtful and meticulous. Tilbury is a master story-teller and this particular story is of epic scale and character. We begin in 1932, appropriately on May Day, with the first meeting of his parents. Later, we encounter the intrepid schoolboy and student, who impressed sufficiently at the Royal Academy of Music to receive funds to study in Cologne with Karlheinz Stockhausen. The narrative during this period is delightfully picaresque, a colourful prelude to the years of family responsibilities and extraordinary musical endeavour and achievement (AMM, Treatise, the Scratch Orchestra and The Great Learning). As events unfold, discussion of the music is given due weight, but is never unduly weighty.

Towards the end, there is an implacable gain in momentum as Cardew's political work makes increasing demands on his time and apparently limitless reserves of energy.

Cornelius Cardew: A Life Unfinished can be ordered from Matchless Recordings: http://www.matchlessrecordings.com/cornelius-cardew-life-unfinished

The winners of the RPS Music Awards will be announced on the 12 May 2009 at a dinner at the Dorchester Hotel. Since 1989 the RPS Music Awards have recognised not only the calibre of today's classical musicians but also those who push creative boundaries to produce work which excites and engages audiences. The shortlists for the 13 categories honour inspirational performers, composers, programmers, communicators and outreach work

The shortlisted nominations for all categories of the RPS Music Awards can be seen here: http://www.rpsmusicawards.com/2009/shortlists/shortlist2.html

Sketches are all very well...

Wed, 06 May 2009 09:42:45 +0000

Having recently returned from the second workshop weekend, for which I prepared a further four sketches, I am in the process of listening back to recordings and evaluating the results. The eight sketches I have written overall enabled a familiarisation with the distinctive sound of the Nieuw Ensemble and it has been a fun and informative process. Somehow I persuaded myself that the sketches were just for the workshops and found them easy to produce as they carried no value beyond the purpose of discovery and experimentation. Now, however, I am faced with the reality of writing the final piece and the thought of the first perfomance is making the task appear both exciting and daunting, possibly to the point of immobilisation. I'll try not to project too much...

Jenny Jackson

Winner of CeReNeM / HCMF Scholarship announced

Fri, 01 May 2009 15:53:00 +0000

Lefteris Papadimitriou is the winner of the inaugural 2009 CeReNeM/HCMF Scholarship. The scholarship covers three years tuition fees for doctoral study at Huddersfield with stipend and enables him to work closely with HCMF's Artistic Director, Graham McKenzie.

Lefteris Papadimitriou was born in Greece and is a graduate at the music department of the University of Athens where he studied composition with Iannis Ioanidis. He was the winner of the 2006 Gaudeamus prize for his composition for piano and orchestra "Black and white". He was awarded a commission from the Asko/Schoenberg Ensemble, Amsterdam 2008 and participated in the 2007 "Acanthes" composition workshops under Michael Jarell, Marco Stroppa and Yan Maresz.

He has written many works for instruments and various electronic media, which have been performed in Greece and abroad. Together with Marios Tsagaris he performs live electronic works and improvisations with laptops. http://www.lefterispapadimitriou.com/

The Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNeM) at the University of Huddersfield aims to conduct and disseminate research of the highest international standing into composition, contemporary performance, and new technologies. CeReNeM promotes discourse between departmental staff and visiting artists by supporting the creation and presentation of work through residencies, publications, workshops, seminars and concerts.

CeReNem website: http://www.hud.ac.uk/mh/music/cerenem/

Preparing for April workshops...

Fri, 01 May 2009 15:04:49 +0000

Only two lines are now missing from my sketch for the second weekend of workshops. A lot of time, ink, and tippex, as well as four sheets of (now ripped and curled) A2 paper have been used. I have expanded my string quartet sketch from the first weekend (where constantly shifting harmonic phrases move quietly and unpredictably between pitched and un-pitched sound) to create a longer, more substantial passage in which consistently intricate internal detail creates a largely homogenous, slowly moving surface. The result, I hope, is an intense and perhaps unstable environment, somehow imposing yet dominated by microscopic gestures. I can't wait to hear it!

Tackling the pluckers...

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:15:34 +0000

The first weekend workshops were excellent and provided me with a catalogue of live sounds and colour combinations which I can now go and play with. The microtones on the cor anglais sounded wonderful and just how I'd imagined, although a couple of them were impossible to play - just what I needed to find out! The challenge now (before the next workshop weekend in April) is to tackle the pluckers (the harp, mandolin and guitar). They can so easily be lost within the texture of the larger ensemble but also offer a real delicacy and lightness. The guitar is out of the cupboard, so this is serious!

High Notes

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:32:05 +0000

I wrote a piece last year for the violist Bridget Carey that was full of extremely high harmonics and had a great fragile and delicate feel to it. I'm really looking forward to trying similar ideas across the four bowed strings in the Nieuw Ensemble - I have no idea what it will sound like!

This is a fantastic opportunity to write a large-scale piece - I've never written for more than six players before - and I'm still trying to figure out how to cope with so many musicians. Hopefully things will become clearer when I meet the group! Roll on Amsterdam...

Ben Isaacs is currently studying for a Masters degree in Composition at the University of Huddersfield with Aaron Cassidy, and enjoys playing in the University's edges ensemble and Split, his free-improvising, notation-reading, experimenting trumpet trio.

Ben is one of four composers selected to join this year's HCMF & Nieuw Ensemble Composers' Professional Development Programme, which sees emerging composers spending two weekends of workshops in Amsterdam working alongside the Nieuw Ensemble, trying out new ideas with the ensemble and receiving advice and guidance from the tutors. Each composer will have their piece performed by the Nieuw Ensemble at HCMF 2009. The first set of workshops runs from 20-22 February and the second set from 24-26 April.

Yikes! Only a week to go...

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:18:08 +0000

With the first workshop weekend in Amsterdam fast approaching, the PhD writing up is officially ‘on hold' (my decision: what a brilliant excuse!) and I'm having a go at a few sketches to take with me instead. After weeks of writing words it's such a relief to be working with sound again and I'm particularly looking forward to experimenting with the huge range of colours available within the Nieuw Ensemble. Of course, I do have to get over my guitar ‘thing'... It will be good to meet the ensemble next week and to start the collaboration, and to meet the other composers too. I hope to be inspired and educated, and to come back armed with ideas and a better working knowledge of the guitar and mandolin. And, of course, going to Amsterdam can't be bad... Wahey!!

Jenny Jackson (b. 1971) is currently studying part-time for a PhD in composition with George Nicholson at the University of Sheffield. She is one of four composers selected to join this year's HCMF & Nieuw Ensemble Composers' Professional Development Programme, which sees emerging composers spending two weekends of workshops in Amsterdam working alongside the Nieuw Ensemble, trying out new ideas with the ensemble and receiving advice and guidance from the tutors. Each composer will have their piece performed by the Nieuw Ensemble at HCMF 2009. The first set of workshops runs from 20-22 February and the second set from 24-26 April.

Janek Schaefer wins The British Composer of The Year Award

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:25:00 +0000

Janek Schaefer has won the British Composer of The Year Award for Sonic Art 2008 for his work Extended Play, which was commissioned for HCMF 2007.

The winners of the 2008 British Composer Awards were announced on Tuesday 2 December 2008 in a ceremony hosted by the British Academy of Composers & Songwriters at the Law Society, London.

Now in its sixth year, the Awards are sponsored annually by the Performing Right Society (PRS), and are run in association with BBC Radio 3.

As winner of the Award for Sonic Art, Schaefer will receive £5,000 from the PRS Foundation towards a new commission or towards a project which contributes to the furtherance of the artist's career.

Extended Play

Extended Play (Triptych for the children of war) is an uplifting and enveloping bittersweet tribute to the child survivors of conflict and war.

I started my own family recently, and have been very aware of how lucky we are in our own situation. I have been comparing this to the fact that my mum was born in Warsaw in 1942. How opposite can two beginnings be? It dazzles me and inspired me. Also, in our new garden is a derelict WWII bomb shelter. I used to think it was a nuisance, until I appreciated what it represented for the first residents to move in.

As I turn on the TV, what I see reported is the never ending cycle of war, terror and conflict of one type or another. I'm not convinced you could make a 24hr News Channel about only the 'very very best' things that are happening globally, right now. So, Extended Play contemplates and celebrates hope, survival, and new beginnings.

In the installation, a cello, a violin, and a piano are recorded individually playing their part of a 10-minute composition inspired by the WWII system of musical codes called 'Jodoform'. These were musical messages broadcast between London and Warsaw by the BBC World Service after the midday news. Extended Play lifts and propagates a three note phrase from a jolly Polish Tango that was broadcast on the day my mother was born. The score was developed in close collaboration with the talented young composer Michael Jennings.

The string parts are played by two brothers, Simon Hewitt Jones and Thomas Hewitt Jones with Michael Jennings on piano. Each instrument solo is then cut onto a 12' vinyl record and played back repeatedly on three retro record players at various different speeds. This mechanical technique alters both the pitch and the speed of the instrument parts. Each of the nine record players (three for each instrument) is sensitive to the presence of people - get too close and it stops playing until you stand still or move away. The result is a continuously shifting mass of evolving sound that is never the same twice.

'a piece to return to again and again... haunting and lulling' The Wire

British Composer Awards: http://www.britishacademy.com/awards/britishcomposerawards/

Janek Schaeffer, Extended Play:http://www.audioh.com/projects/extendedplay.html

HCMF Shorts duo perform in the Netherlands

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:52:00 +0000

Clarinet and piano duo Wake Up performed at a prestigious event in the Netherlands as a result of their HCMF Shorts performance during HCMF 2008.

Heather Roche (clarinet) & Kate Ledger (piano) were invited to perform at a concert celebrating the award of the Johan Wagenaar prize to Louis Andriessen at the Theater De Regentes, The Hague on 24 January. Heather and Kate performed Andriessen's Double for clarinet and piano.

First HCMF + Nieuw Ensemble Workshops in Amsterdam

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:32:00 +0000

Four composers studying at Yorkshire Universities visited the Netherlands recently to take part in HCMF's new high-profile Composers' Professional Development Programme.

Jenny Jackson (University of Sheffield), Ben Isaacs (University of Huddersfield), Dimitris Maronidis (University of York) and Lauren Redhead (University of Leeds) flew to Amsterdam at the end of February for a series of workshops with the Nieuw Ensemble at their studio.

During the workshops they tried out new ideas and sketches with the ensemble and received advice and guidance from the tutors. Whilst in Amsterdam they also observed workshops with other composers from the Nieuw Ensemble's existing Netherlands programme and attended performances at the Bimhuis and Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ.

Ben Isaacs commented: ‘The players were really helpful and I was very encouraged by their response to what I'd written. The atmosphere during the workshops was friendly and supportive and every effort was made to realise my intentions. Having never written for such a large ensemble before, I learned a lot in a relatively short space of time. After the workshops, I now have the confidence to continue the work I have started, and have a clearer conception of my ultimate aims for my final piece.'

The aim is of the programme is to provide sustained and valuable professional development opportunities for emerging composers, learning from and working alongside a leading international contemporary music ensemble in one of Europe's most vibrant cultural centres.

You can read Ben Isaac's blog here: http://www.hcmf.co.uk/category/show/4

and you can read Jenny Jackson's blog here: http://www.hcmf.co.uk/category/show/3

Composer Information

Ben Isaacs has recently written music for Bridget Carey, Philip Thomas, Barrie Webb and Wake Up, who premiered Peel at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music 2008. He is currently studying for a Masters degree in Composition at the University of Huddersfield with Aaron Cassidy, and enjoys playing in the university's edges ensemble and Split, his free-improvising, notation-reading, experimenting trumpet trio.

Jenny Jackson (b. 1971) is currently studying part-time for a PhD in composition with George Nicholson at the University of Sheffield. Her music reflects an enthusiasm for the visual and performing arts and literature which often serve as stimuli for new pieces. Recent work includes short pieces for chamber ensembles, including Fluxus Boxes (2007) for clarinet trio & flexible wind orchestra, and to break a young horse... (2007) for string quartet & string orchestra, and she has also written three pieces of music theatre including an adaptation of Alexander Pope's mock-heroic poem The Rape of the Lock (2006). She was selected to participate on the Jerwood Opera Writing Programme based in Aldeburgh in 2007, and received tuition from Harrison Birtwistle.

Dimitris Maronidis was born in Thessaloniki in 1980. He studied Counterpoint, Harmony, Orchestration and Composition at the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki with Prof. Kostas Siembis and Kostas Tsougras. From years 1998 to 2006 he had studied at the Music Department of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and he graduated after the successful completion of his thesis regarding the use of Markov Chains in interactive music environments composed/constructed with Max/msp.

He is currently studying for the Ph.D degree in music composition at the Music Department of York University under the supervision of Dr. Thoma Simaku with funds from the State Scholarships Foundation of Greece (IKY).

Lauren Redhead is originally from Manchester but now lives in West Yorkshire. She is the president of the Forum of Composers and Musicians (FOCAM); is undertaking postgraduate study at the University of Leeds with Mic Spencer; and is interested in non-linearity and the music of the 21st-century.

Funded by NFPK+ and Musicians Benevolent Fund

In a large, open space

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:56:00 +0000

HCMF would like to thank all the musicians who participated in the performace of James Tenney's In a large, open space on Monday 24 November with Quatuor Bozzini:

David Canter (clarinet), Scott McLaughlin (cello), John Kendrick (clarinet), Joseph Kudirka (guitar), Susie Barrett (violin), Sue Watts (violin), Stephen Chase (melodica), Michael Straus (saxophone), Dana Jessen (bassoon), David Higginson (keyboard), Jane Halnan (violin), Jenny Brierley (double bass), Garett Sholdice (guitar), Deborah Nash (celtic harp), Amanda Vickers (violin) and Taylan Susam (clarinet).

Thank you to you all!

Later in the evening at Bates Mill twenty or so musicians (students and amateur) join Quatuor Bozzini to perform James Tenney’s work In a large, open space. The musicians are seated throughout the space and the audience are encouraged to move around them as the piece develops. It is an incredibly emotional and inclusive experience and when it comes to an end 60 or so minutes later – applause somehow seems intrusive and it really feels that we should all simply disappear into the night holding on to the warm feelings and the communal experience that we have shared.

Taken from HCMF Artistic Director Graham McKenzie's blog for the Huddersfield Examiner.

Links

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:10:00 +0000

Interesting links to other projects you might be interested in:

Isle of Dogs: You Are Hear

Interactive soundmap from Trinity College of Music's You Are Hear project:

http://www.iodmusic.org/youarehear/

This contains location recordings, music and some time-lapse recordings of the courtyard at Trinity College of Music and is intended to be a repository for future work on the Isle of Dogs.

Sound Diaries

http://www.sound-diaries.com/

The Sound Diaries initiative is focused around sound-recordings and sound-texts and the ways in which we can use sound as a document of our lives. It is hoped that you will join in with the project contributing your views, sound-recordings, sound-texts, project ideas and perspectives on the notion of Sound Diaries.

What is a Sound Diary? Why create a Sound Diary? What period does it cover: minutes, hours, days, weeks, years? How much of that period will it capture? How do Sound Diaries relate to written diaries, or photo albums? What is a sonic snapshot? These are some of the issues that will be addressed during the Sound Diaries project - do get involved!

If you have ever made a Sound Diary or worked with the notion of Sound Diaries, you can send us sound-recordings, sound-texts, images relating to your project, and a line of two of text introducing your contribution. We can then create a page for you on the website and link this to any upcoming events you are involved with.

In 2009 the Sound Diaries project will be the subject of a symposium hosted by the Sonic Art Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University and of a publication featuring your contributions. Don't miss out on this exciting opportunity to get involved with the world of Sound Diaries; come and check out the site; send us your sound-recordings, sound-texts and comments. Felicity Ford & Paul Whitty

HCMF 2008 SO FAR...

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:32:00 +0000

So far this year's Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival has seen an array of international guests, innovative thought provoking performances and sold out events. Here are some of the highlights...

• Some of Kirklees brightest emerging talent perform an astonishing array of musical styles and genres on laptops. We heard the first fruits of students working with the Abelton Live software package, and while generally rooted in ambient techno the results were very impressive.

• On Saturday International producers, festival directors, and assorted international guests arrived for the opening weekend of HCMF. The first weekend of HCMF presented a strong British showcase of the some of the best contemporary and new music being created right now in the U.K.

• The Arditti's played beautifully to great acclaim including a stunning work by Sir Harrison Birtwistle.

• The world premiere of Christopher Fox's new commissioned work. The hall was absolutely packed, there was a huge demand for tickets and the concert ended to rapturous applause.

• The new composition by saxophonist/improviser John Butcher, which we premiered the weekend before at November Music in Holland was sold out and a great success with everyone who attended raving about the performance.

• Sunday afternoon saw the wonderful Hade Edge and the University of Huddersfield Brass Bands participating in Dror Feiler's composition Basurawhich. It was then followed by the second piece MULL performed by Klangforum Wein including full ensemble and garbage truck! Throughout the entire piece the mechanism of the truck was churning ‘rubbish'. This meant of course that the engine was running throughout, and we had to have a length of pipe to guide the fumes out of the space!! At the end the composer Dror Feiler received a standing ovation but perhaps the loudest cheer was for the refuse truck operator who rightly takes a bow from the stage.

• Twenty or so musicians (students and amateur) joined Quatuor Bozzini to perform James Tenney's work in a large, open space. The musicians were seated throughout the space and the audience was encouraged to move around them as the piece developed.

• The lunchtime concert for the piano baschet sold out. This concert was the first outing for the half instrument half sculpture in the U.K. and featured new works especially composed for the instrument.

• The performance by Continuum featured collaboration between composer Richard Ayers and the controversial Canadian film maker Guy Maddin. The film featured scenes of a sexually explicit nature that apparently even shocked the normally liberal Amsterdam where it was recently performed. Anyway the occasion passed without incident and Huddersfield took it all in its stride!

• John Tilbury played the music of Cornelius Cardew and talked about his recently published book on Cardew. I have been privileged to receive a copy some weeks ago and I highly recommend it!

The pictures below do not do the concerts justice. Large pictures will be available on this site soon, alternativly go to myspace.com/hcmfuk to see them in all their glory. In order to experience the magic of this year's festival the only advice we can give is for you to come the last concerts over this coming weekend!!!

Blog bed-time - it's been fun!

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:11:20 +0000

This blog has reached a conclusion. Had a great time at the launch last Friday (thanks again to Heidi, HCMF, and Jay & Bill, Green Building Company, for last minute help) and Sunday morning with all the people that showed up for the soundwalk (thanks to you all). Full details of the project are now available at the:

Colne Valley Listeners website (thanks for visiting)

Colne Valley Listeners launched

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:00:00 +0000

Matthew Sansom's Colne Valley Listeners installation, commissioned by the River Colne Sculpture Trail and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, has been launched at Rotcher Picnic Site, Slaithwaite.

Colne Valley Listeners employs active listening to explore and enhance the relationship between the valley's beauty and significance, with people past, present and future. Designed to reflect both the industrial heritage of the valley and the natural setting of the installation, it is an acoustic exploration of the environment, its diversity and our relationship to it. The project combines a permanent sculptural installation of two acoustic mirrors at the Rotcher Picnic Site with a guided soundwalk and accompanying audio.

The River Colne Acoustic Mirrors are parabolic dishes fashioned in aluminium: one dish eavesdrops on walkers as they approach from the picnic site and the other listens out towards the trees and across the valley. Close-up, these devices focus and subtly amplify the soundscape at a focal point a short distance from the centre of the dish. Whilst drawing inspiration from the gigantic concrete acoustic radar dishes from between the World Wars and, in part, from playground sound mirrors, they are distinct in their three-way function as conceptual sound art, sculptural form and sound sculpture. Interaction with the acoustic mirrors helps direct awareness towards the surrounding soundscape, leaving a subtle perceptual imprint that listeners take with them as they continue their walk.

The River Colne Soundwalk, available as a download or from Slaithwaite Library on pre-loaded mp3-players, explores the location of the installation. The guided soundwalk, incorporating the installation, includes audio tracks for playback at fixed locations and whilst walking. It combines material from local children's sonic explorations of the area, sound archive descriptions of the area and location recordings made along the walk.

Download Matthew Sansom's River Colne Soundwalk here

Soundwalk directions and MP3 players are available to borrow from Slaithwaite Library at the following times from 21 November onwards:

MONDAYS & WEDNESDAYS 10AM - 12.30PM, 2PM - 5PM
THURSDAYS 10AM - 12.30PM, 2PM - 7.30PM
FRIDAYS 2PM - 5PM
SATURDAYS 10AM - 12.30PM

Alternatively you can download the Soundwalk directions and audio yourself here: http://www.matthewsansom.info/colnevalley.htm

Funded by an anonymous donor, Arts Council England, Yorkshire, Huddersfield Common Good Trust and the Patricia and Donald Shepherd Charitable Trust

With thanks to the Green Building Company and Green Building Store

Also with thanks to The staff and Year 5 pupils at Nields Junior, Infant & Nursery School. Cate Clark, River Colne Sculpture Trail. Mick Smith, River Colne Project. Desmond Brett. Neil Windett, Kirklees Council Countryside Unit. Isobel Holland, Kirklees Sound Archive. Bill Butcher, Green Building Company. Phil Kemp, Artec Engineering Ltd.

You can read Matthew Sansom's Colne Valley Listeners project blog here .

Sneak preview

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:02:43 +0000

Really busy finalising the dishes, still on target for Friday ... just! The dishes are looking superb.

Presenting the dishes! well, very nearly...

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:02:11 +0000

Artec have been working hard to meet the deadline - hugely appreciated by everybody involved in the project. They've sent through these images, not of the dishes, not yet, but of the form used to make the dishes. Tantalising!

Project nearly online

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:01:30 +0000

Drafting the website for downloading the audio and soundwalk instructions: go here for a preview >> Soundwalk Downloads

Keeping Cool

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:00:50 +0000

I have loads I could put up here now... but the truth is, with the launch just 7 days away, I am just too busy. See you next weekend?

Scott McLaughlin

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:12:56 +0000

An HCMF short. As a performer, Scott McLaughlin is active in the field of live electronics and free improvisation. He performs regularly with the groups ‘Murmansk’ and the ‘Deserted Village Collective’.

Pierre Alexandre Tremblay

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:08:57 +0000

Pierre Alexandre Tremblay is never quite where you expect to find him. Each of his activities is influenced by the others and he loves that this shapes his creativity infinitely, keeping him from always staying in one place.

Phillip Thomas

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:06:31 +0000

In recent years Philip has pursued a passion for freely improvised music, after significant encounters with the music of AMM and Sheffield-based musicians Martin Archer, Mick Beck and John Jasnoch.

"Being avante-garde is normal"

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:15:00 +0000

When I meet Dror Feiler he's already coming downstairs to the front door wearing a preoccupied frown. He spots me and asks ‘Who are you?' with a bewildered air. ‘Ah, yes, yes' he says when I tell him, ‘come and look at this!'.

Without waiting for a reply he strides off across the courtyard.

We're in the centre of an extraordinary rabbit warren of apartments tucked down a side-street in the south of Stockholm, where he's lived for the past decade.

‘We also have a gallery here where we do installations', he says or rather shouts over one shoulder, without breaking his stride. We duck our heads to enter the building (it dates from the 17th century so the doors are lower than you expect, the long wooden-beamed passages interestingly crooked).

The ‘gallery' is barely the size of a sitting-room. It's white and completely bare apart from a forest of partly-inflated balloons on the floor, each mounted on its own vertical mount like a windsock.

‘We're still assembling this. It's by a German artist who I think is very interesting,' he says. We gaze at it for a while, and then suddenly Feiler remembers I'm there. ‘Ah yes, you want to talk. Come!' he says, in an eager and imperious tone.

Back we go across the courtyard, and up some winding stairs to the apartment he shares with his wife, the Swedish artist Gunnila Skold-Feiler, who's as blonde and mild in manner as Feiler is dark and intense. The space is a beguiling mixture of Northern airiness and lightness and Middle-Eastern warmth, with rugs on the floors and walls.

We go up more narrow curving stairs into his study, which is as modest as the gallery we've just left. Outsize scores of Feiler's music teeter precariously from a rough-hewn white-washed space above the door. Books in Hebrew, Swedish, German and English are crammed into the shelves, which cover every inch of wall space. Some of them look like family heirlooms, including the volumes of Marx.

It's really no surprise when Feiler says, ‘My parents were typical Jewish intellectuals of the time. My father was leader of the local Communist party in Tel Aviv, and he was interested in all the modern trends in the art. He was a violinist, my mother was a singer. This impressed on me the idea that being musically avant-garde and politically avant-garde was completely normal, in fact it was more than normal, it was essential. You know that wonderful saying of d'Alembert about freedom?'

I confess I don't.

‘You don't? Oh it's wonderful! He said ‘All Freedoms are bound together. If you want to keep the monarchy, don't change the form of opera!'

Feiler's own parents suffered for their left-wing politics. His father served a prison sentence for fraternising with Palestinians in the mid-80s and his aged mother still works for a charitable organization that dispenses health care to needy Palestinians.Feiler too would become a political activist, but through the medium of music.

‘After my military service - by the way did you know I refused to serve in the Occupied Territories? I was one of the first refuseniks. Anyway, I came to Sweden to see some friends, not knowing quite what to do. I was already interested in new music, and active as an improvising saxophone player. I saw there were some interesting courses at a music college, the Fylkingen Institut, so I thought, why not stay for a while. Then I went on the University, and then to the Conservatoire, where I studied with some wonderful teachers like Brian Ferneyhough. By then I was already playing improvised music, and had set up my own group. So somehow or other I stayed, and now I have been here for 33 years!' he says with a resigned shrug.

But the mild, sweetly reasonable, social-democrat air of Sweden hasn't mellowed Feiler. Nor have his long years in music education turned him into a conventional ‘new music' composer. Though he's now in his late 50s, he still has the air of an outsider, and his encounters with the august institutions of classical music haven't always been happy.

‘Look at this,' he says, pulling down one of those outsize scores. ‘This was the piece commissioned by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra', he says. ‘Halat Hisar' (State of Siege) has more staves than any score I've ever seen, each of them so tiny that I can barely make out the notes. ‘Yes, that was a problem for the conductor' says Feiler, ‘I had to make a new score with bigger staves. But then they refused to play the music because it was too loud.'

A kind of music that has to shout at 105 decibels might be thought to be nothing more than a sophisticated kind of sadism. But Feiler sees loudness as expressively potent.

‘You know one of the first good reviews of my music was from Louis Andriessen,and he loves loudness too! I love to play loudly myself, I don't just ask others to do it. But also it's to do with the way we listen. We musicians always compare things, in a way we are the worst listeners, always saying when we hear something, ‘Ah, yes, that reminds me of...' But if I play really loud it shocks you, you stop thinking and comparing and really listen.'

The political engagement and the aggressive high volume are all ways Feiler tries to break the mould of new music.

‘There is such a stale atmosphere in new music world, that's why I have always found improvisation attractive. Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, these were the people I really admired. Free improvisation creates a special intensity, something hot and molten like lava. I use written notation as a way of achieving a similar intensity by a different route.'

Is that intensity hard to maintain in his own creative life?

‘Of course! There's far too much music in the world, and most of it is created without any real existential need. For a long time I refused to accept commissions, to avoid exactly this problem. But then no-one takes you seriously, they think you have no confidence in yourself. So now I accept commissions, but try to subvert them and turn them to my own purposes.'

Those purposes are always political as much as artistic. I wonder exactly what those politics are, and ask, has he inherited his father's communism? At this point Feiler smiles, spreads his arm wide and shrugs, as if to acknowledge that he's swimming against the tide of history.

‘What can I say? Yes...yes, I am a communist, though I know it's supposed to be an impossible position these days...'

He thinks for a moment, and suddenly becomes heated.

‘Yes, I am a communist because it's to do with having real democracy in the world. What is the point in voting for governments when so much of the real power in the world lies with the multinational companies, who are responsible only to their shareholders? We need a democracy in wealth and ownership.'

Feiler's involvement with politics has frequently got him into hot water. He's visited guerilla camps in Latin America with radical theatre companies, he's chairman of ‘European Jews for a Just Peace', and a recent art installation he created with his wife was the subject of a political storm. ‘Snow White and the Madness of Truth' showed a boat bearing a picture of a female suicide bomber crossing a blood-red sea, while Bach's ‘Mein Herz Schwimmt im Blut' played over loudspeakers. The Israeli ambassador to Sweden was so enraged by what he called this attempt to ‘beautify' suicide bombers that he vandalized it.

‘The Swedish government then asked him to leave,' says Feiler, ‘and soon afterwards I was described by an Israeli commentator as ‘Israel's no 1 enemy in Europe.' I'm now regularly described as a ‘Jewish self-hater'. I'm even compared to Noam Chomsky, which I must say is very flattering.'

Doesn't he ever long for the quiet life of the non-political artist? Feiler snorts with derision at the very idea. ‘I am not interested in just creating art objects, I want to use art as a way of revealing a truth about the world. My art and my politics are really the one thing. I want to be on the side of the all the people in the world who want to change things for the better.'

Visit Dror Feiler's web-site at: http://www.tochnit-aleph.com/drorfeiler/

Ivan Hewett

Lawrence English

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:35:12 +0000

Lawrence English is media artist, composer and critic based in Brisbane, Australia.

Mathew Adkins

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:34:23 +0000

Mathew Adkins is a composer, performer, of electronica, electroacoustic and instrumental music. He was introduced to electronic and acousmatic music during his music studies at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Speed painting: Mathew Adkins

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:32:54 +0000

The Importance of Listening

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:32:00 +0000

The group Cranc (Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies and Nikos Veliotis) invited Radu Malfatti to join them for a twelve-hour durational performance at the 2008 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. The performance was entitled ‘XII hours (for violoncello, room, hi-fi, trombone, dvd player, television, electric harp and violin)'.

Before the event, Rhodri interviewed Radu about his work, his views on improvisation and composition, and the excitement of collaboration.

Rhodri: I don't think you are invited to play enough in the UK and your work is too rarely performed here. I am therefore very happy that you are joining us for this project and glad that HCMF have offered us this opportunity.

Would you like to say something about your pieces that we may be performing during XII hours? There are three of your pieces on our list of resources: Claude-Lorrain 1 (For Trombone and Sine-waves), the piece you wrote for Cranc in 2002, Dann Klopfte Sie Lange Beethoven, and your new quartet piece written especially for this event, Northumberland 4. Nikos is also keen to play your CD Indiscreet Silences during our performance.

Radu: I am fully aware of the rare performances, but not only in the UK.

Well, about my pieces, the new one, Northumberland 4, is very different to the older one Dann Klopfte Sie Lange Beethoven. In 2002 I had left microtonality behind me and was still working with chance operations. Gradually i moved to a kind of stringent, yet quite open architecture of silences and sounds.

For instance, there would be the duration of a sound - 16 seconds - followed by a silence of 16 seconds. then the same sound appears but this time it lasts only 15 seconds, followed by a silence of 15 seconds and so on till the sound lasts, let's say, only four seconds. Then there is a pause of 2 minutes. After that the same sound starts again for four seconds, but one note changed. Then the sounds grow in length again till they reach the 16 second-duration. Again a pause of two minutes and a new sound appears with again just one note changed.

So I am working a lot with perception and the thoughts behind. What do we hear, how do we hear, what do we realize while listening - and playing?

Nobody will hear the difference between a sound lasting 20 seconds and 19 seconds. But a careful and attentive listener will certainly realize and think, "...the sound seems much shorter then the ones before..."

And the two minutes pause is just about long enough to keep the memory of the last soundings in mind and realize that this sound is in a way different. If you play the two sounds immediately one after the other, then you and everybody else hears the obvious change.

The piece i've written for Sage Gateshead worked along the same lines but instead of changing a note I changed a sound, which means the piece was for 21 strings and all the string players never touched the string during the whole piece which lasted 76 minutes. They all bowed different places of the body of their instruments, starting with a very low sound, gradually wandering (after the 2 minutes silence) to a higher sound. At the end all the strings played a very high pitched sound.

The new piece is quite different though. Even if I still use a similar kind of architecture within the piece, it sounds different because the musicians don't play the sound at the same time anymore. And the silences are different too. The shorter the sound gets, the longer the silences are and vice versa. So it seems to be a much more open structure to listen to, but the underlying "strictness" is still audible.

Rhodri: The configuration of music is clearly important to you: you studied architecture for a while and have used the analogy of the shape of a building to explain form, material and structure in music.

How do you feel about your pieces sharing time and space with other pieces and improvisations within the larger structure of XII hours? Of course we have given much thought to our choice of compositions to make sure that they have a certain compatability, but what are your thoughts about other forms and structures interweaving with the inner logic of the pieces you talked about above?

Radu: I don't feel like expanding too much on the difference between impro-visation and composition - it has been done over and over again. To some people there is no difference and to some there is an insurmountable gap in between.

As usual, both sides are right and wrong. The question is not "is it improvisation or is it composition?" the question is whether there is room and space enough to share it with other people and other musics!

As we all know, there are certain members of our society who are not able to listen - they like to talk and talk and talk and say nothing. Same with musicians and composers: some are just too much involved in the competitional aspect of their activities. Therefore they play and play: higher, faster, louder! The composers write and write, filling hundreds of pages with what we used to call "flyshit"!

Of course I am interested in structures and materials - mainly in structure that is - and if I play improvised music I still tend to think or feel in certain kinds of structures. If I am able to work with the right settings of people, I have enough room and space to follow my own ideas and listening to their offerings at the same time.

I once had a very nice experience in the primary school where I teach music. In order to stress my point of what to me is a very important aspect in music - the listening - I asked the kids to pronounce a word of their choice: all at the same time! After that, i asked different students whether they understood a word of let's say this person over there.

Of course nobody could. I asked them to say the same word again, but this time individually one after the other. Everybody could now hear and understand all the words and one girl even remembered almost all the words that were spoken. By the way, the title of the course is "Sensibilisation of the Listenings".

The other experiment was a concert in New York with my collegues Jürg Frey and Michael Pisaro. We all wrote a piece of 45 minutes and called it Three Back-grounds. We worked at it individually at home and nobody knew what the other was doing. We were quite curious how it all would come together during the performance. The result was quite amazing: the piece sounded like it was written by one - to be honest, sometimes a bit undecided - person. But it was wonderful!

Interweaving musics can be very exciting and satisfying, but you have to be with the right people together.

Which, of course, is true for any situation.

Planning Permission?

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:55:29 +0000

Got it!

REVOLUTIONARIES #2

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:03:09 +0000

Following fantastic performances by Grizzly Backere and The Invisible Worm at last week's Revolutionaries event, HCMF is pleased to announce that the second Revolutionaries event on Thursday 13 November will feature duo Ed Jenks & Matthew Barnard plus the the University of Huddersfield's laptop orchestra, HELO, directed by Scott Hewitt.

Revolutionaries is a new initiative delivered in partnership with The Media Centre, aiming to showcase new work, new talent and new thinking by providing a platform for the best young creative talent in Kirklees.

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival is hosting a series of Laptop Revolutions in the build up to HCMF 2008; showcasing emerging musicians aged 16-25 in Kirklees working with music technology and electroacoustic music. A selection of performers from the first two events will then be invited to perform at a final, recorded event on the eve of HCMF itself.

Everything crossed...

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:50:32 +0000

You may not be aware reading the blog recently that we still don't have planning permission. But a bit like another important announcement today coming from across the Atlantic, we will hear this morning from Kirklees Council if we've been successful... Will keep you posted!

Site Visit

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:49:37 +0000

Had a great visit to Slaithwaite on Monday 27th - fabulous autumnal weather, as you can see. 9 hours in the car round trip but well worth it. Finally met Desmond in the flesh! and now so close to installation. Me being the dishes:

Everybody say, 'acoustic mirrors!'

Desmond, Neil (Kirklees Council), Heidi (HCMF), and Cate (RCST)

Popeye the soundscape man

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:45:32 +0000

Okay well here's a video of me talking about the project back in July. Thanks to Oliver Jones for this and for making me look like gurning soundscaper (oh, and for mispelling my name). All in a day's work. http://www.hcmf.co.uk/media/show/16

HCMF short - Pierre Alexandre Tremblay

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:20:16 +0000

HCMF short - Phillip Thomas

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:19:05 +0000

In recent years Philip has pursued a passion for freely improvised music, after significant encounters with the music of AMM and Sheffield-based musicians Martin Archer, Mick Beck and John Jasnoch. He has worked with improvisers in a variety of contexts a

HCMF short - Scott McLaughlin

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:18:25 +0000

As a performer, Scott McLaughlin is active in the field of live electronics and free improvisation. He performs regularly with the groups ‘Murmansk’ and the ‘Deserted Village Collective’ and has released several albums on independent labels in Ire

HCMF short - Mathew Sansom

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:17:11 +0000

Mathew Sansom is interested in refocusing attention away from external stimuli towards inwardly activated qualities. This involves listening to sounds and silences, their relationships, contexts and meanings in order to reflect on what they might reveal a

HCMF short - Volunteer!

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:16:25 +0000

We go out and meet some of this year's steward volunteers who are currently in the process of getting ready for one of the best shows in town.

HCMF short - coming soon!

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:15:13 +0000

Stay tuned for artists, animations and more...

The Graphical Method Bicycle (1979) part 2

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:08:51 +0000

Performed by: Bart Visser (bicycle) and Edwin van der Heide (sound) Production: Nico Bink The performance was made possible with the support from: Nederlands Fonds voor Podiumkunsten Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Special thanks to: STEIM 4D-FilmVisi

The Graphical Method Bicycle (1979) part 3

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:06:17 +0000

The Graphical Method Bicycle (1979) part 1

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:17:13 +0000

INTONA Hommage to Dick Raaijmakers (Short version)

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:14:06 +0000

INTONA Hommage to Dick Raaijmakers By Babeth M. VanLoo Musictheaterparformance by Dick Raaijmakers & paul Koek Editing: Geert Braam Produced by: FILM ART AMSTERDAM Special thanks to: Kasper van der Horst Anne Wellmer V2_ Joke B

Op zoek naar een vergeten toepassing (2000)

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:12:52 +0000

Op zoek naar een vergeten toepassing (2000) Directed by Jacqueline Oskamp Camera Marc Felperlaan Sound Menno Euwe Montage Peter Rump Production Michiel Hobbelink Sander van Meurs Soundmontage Mark Dubbeldam Colorcorrection Ron

INTONA Hommage to Dick Raaijmakers (long version)

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:03:20 +0000

Funders

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:27:00 +0000

Lots of activity!

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:51:35 +0000

Well, after holding my breath for a while things are rocketing forward ... a big relief. I now have dates in my diary for a site visit to peg out the space for the concrete pads that the dishes will sit on, and also for transportation of the dishes. Here are some realisations of what it all should look like at the site (thanks to Heidi at HCMF):

1958 - The Timeless Year

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:29:00 +0000

Few years in modern history have been so sentimentally fetishized as 1968.

The year of revolutions - most of them lacking any sort of ideological seriousness or consistency - the year of assassinations, the year of The White Album, Khe Sanh, the Tet offensive, My Lai.

And back home in America - Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Second Wave Feminism at the Miss World pageant, Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae encyclical against birth control and the ‘post-pill paradise' of John Updike's Couples. While in Iraq, that anomalous creation of the Western powers, Saddam Hussein staged his coup.

A forty years perspective lends those twelve months a strange and ironic cast, but was 1968 the epoch that those who experienced it, either in optimistic youth, or more vicariously, have subsequently claimed? Did the world sit any differently on its axis at year's end?

The politics and culture of the 1960s have had powerful proponents - Arthur Marwick in the UK, Morris Dickstein more subtly and sceptically in the US - but a rising tide of revisionist history has started to set the key moments in the post-modern evolution a little further back in time.

To some degree, this is mere book-making, the kind of comfortable regress that allows scholars - eager to notch up another bibliographic citation - to demonstrate that every cultural advance has a pre-history. There have been, however, more significant efforts to show that the 1950s, far from being a decade of bland prosperity, sleepy consensus and lack of adventure in the arts, were the real crucible of political experiment and creative endeavour.

In his fine book Deliberate Speed, W T Lhamon jr suggests that the Eisenhower years witnessed not just the birth of the civil rights movement - along with feminism later, the only real engine of objective change in American life since the Progressive Era - but also the beginning of a period of artistic experiment which ran in parallel with political developments.

Some of Lhamon's attempted connections may seem a little strained. It is hard to think of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations operating in the same intellectual universe as rock 'n' roll, for instance, but for the most part the case is securely made. The music of Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, the early fiction of Thomas Pynchon (some might argue that all that followed was hyper-extended footnotes), the gestural paintings of Jackson Pollock, and critically the advent of cheap hi-fi, the portable tape recorder and television.

There are gaps in Lhamon's survey. He no more than glances in the direction of John Cage, omits Sun Ra and Stockhausen altogether, and having shown the impact of new and accessible technologies makes nothing of electronic music. But then, this is a very American account and ignores much that is non-native in origin or in spirit.

The other overwhelming reality of the 1950s is that globalisation and the internationalisation of culture were becoming realities. The Global Village of the 1960s had arrived a decade before, when the hippies were still in grade school.

It answers nothing more than narrative convenience to pick a single year as historically representative or exceptionally significant, but since 1968 is considered to be a cusp, why not look again at 1958, which happens to be the point de mire of the 2008 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

At first glance, it doesn't look in any way to be a year of soaring confidence. In 1958, a sharp global recession hit the United States with unexpected severity. America's powerful post-war trade boom faltered and stalled. Prices rose. Nevertheless, as George Katona reported in his 1960 book The Powerful Consumer, public confidence remained high despite ‘cumulative adverse expectations'. Wonderful phrase! Americans had money to spend; they simply elected not to for the moment.

The balance of trade was not the only thing to fall. With the year only four days old, Sputnik I - the ‘second moon' celebrated in an early song by Dick Raaymakers, working as ‘Kid Baltan' - fell back to earth. This was only a Soviet failure in a symbolic sense, since the satellite was subject to a strict gravitational equation, but it lifted American spirits. The alien bleeps from overhead - the CIA was convinced the Russians were broadcasting coded passages from Das Kapital; in fact, the little metal ball was merely playing out its call sign, over and over - had been silenced for the moment and at the end of January America launched her own artificial satellite, Explorer I, followed in March by Vanguard I.

In the year that saw the formation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) America had momentarily taken a lead over the Soviet Union. One of her most bizarre Cold Warriors, 14 year old Bobby Fischer won the national chess championship. It seemed only a matter of time before he was ready to take on the mighty Russians at what had become their own game. One young American had already done that, when in April 1958, Van Cliburn won the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. The cultural battle had already been taken to the Russians.

For a curious, poised moment the balance between New World and Old held and then shifted subtly. Elvis Presley was inducted into the US Army and sent to Europe. What a wealth of symbolism in that moment! Middle America was quietly relieved that a priapic boy with Native American cheekbones had been shorn and tamed, his Cherokee whoop momentarily silenced. A ‘Red Indian' who sang and played ‘Negro' music had been sent over the ocean to make the world safe for democracy, and at the very moment when influential voices in the Old World seemed ungrateful for the gift of arms.

Bertrand Russell only merits a fleeting reference in Deliberate Speed, but he fits Lhamon's argument every bit as well as his friend Wittgenstein. In 1958, Russell helped found the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the Aldermaston marches began, under a banner which bore Gerald Holtom's crusading device, a combination of the semaphore positions for N and D, not copyrighted and now known universally as the ‘peace symbol'.

The cultural energy was momentarily with Europe as well. The Brussels Expo, opened by King Baudouin, was to witness the extraordinary utopics created by Le Corbusier, Iannis Xenakis and Edgard Varèse in the Philips Pavilion. Pierre Boulez had just completed Doubles, his first major orchestral work after the lost symphony of 1947. Karlheinz Stockhausen had just seen Gruppen for three orchestras receive its premiere and was working on the electronic material for Kontakte. Olivier Messiaen had completed the Catalogue d'oiseaux and narrowed the distance between the first singers and human performance. Where else was music as primal and as powerful being made?

If American culture is somehow divided between ‘Redskin' and ‘Paleface' tendencies, as Leslie A. Fiedler suggested, then the sidelining of Presley and with him symbolically the new rock and roll might mean that older forms and configurations of music might enjoy fresh prominence for a time. But a new spirit was abroad and had acquired a new kind of confidence.

The idea of a ‘retrospective' of ‘avant-garde' music seems on the face of it absurd, but that is what Emile d'Antonio, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, acting together as ‘Impresarios Inc', intended to put on at Town Hall in New York. The Twenty-Five Year Retrospective was an opportunity to revisit the work of John Cage, going back to the Six Short Inventions of 1933, taking in Imaginary Landscape, The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, the Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano, and coming right up to date with the premiere of Concert for Piano and Orchestra.

The event has been likened to the premier of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps, though generally more supportive. The organisers hadn't planned a claque for Cage, but the audience contained enough sympathetic painters, dancers and other artists to guarantee that the sceptics wouldn't shout it down.

Cage was at the same time, of course, preparing his lecture Indeterminacy for the World's Fair in Brussels, another example of textual utopics that played with the concept of duration and form in narrative. If there are moments of Zeitgeist, this was surely one of them.

The Retrospective was recorded by the distinguished engineer/producer George Avakian, who is perhaps best known for his work in jazz. And it is a jazz record, albeit most emphatically not one of Avakian's, that best sums up this remarkable moment in cultural history.

Herman Sonny Blount, known as Sun Ra, had been making long-playing records for five years when he created the extraordinary Jazz in Silhouette. The music caught him and his Arkestra mid-way between the Fletcher Henderson-style swing arrangements of his earlier years (and to which he would return later) and the space-obsessed avant-gardism of the 1960s. It is music that is at once intellectual and visceral, still based on themes-and-solos but also the work of a collective in which individuality mattered less than common purpose.

Sun Ra's personal mythography was, if you like, the opposite of Karlheinz Stockhausen's, though they seemed to move along similar vectors. The German composer, whose country had effectively started the space programme and then seen it colonised by the United States (Werner von Braun was behind both the V2 and the early American manned flights), saw it as human destiny to move beyond that new coinage ‘aerospace' and into the cosmos.

It was a new version of Manifest Destiny, again reimported into the Old World. By contrast, Sun Ra's personal mythology - he claimed to have been born on Saturn - was the expression of a black man in a hostile white culture: he might as well come from Saturn, so little did he fit in. Cumulative adverse expectation led inevitably to dreams of exotic escape, but in the process connected Sun Ra directly back into the old Nilotic narratives, where gods and men live side by side, where the stars are neither abstract nor unimaginably distant, but part of the cycle of the days and the months.

Extraordinary things were afoot in 1958 - contradictory, perverse, geographically diverse (the above takes no account of what was happening in China, Brazil, Australia, South Africa), resistant to straightforward readings - but it seems a time that speaks to us very directly. The most powerful impression one takes from Jazz in Silhouette is its timelessness. Like much of what happened in that year, it was conceived in the now and destined for the ages.

Brian Morton

Composer, Researcher, Artist

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:25:00 +0000

By Arjen Mulder and Joke Brouwer

Dick Raaymakers' oeuvre is a source of wonder and inspiration. It covers a period of almost fifty years, beginning with the first electronic pop song ever, "Song of the Second Moon" (1957) and ending with Ritual Moment (2005), which was performed just once, in a church, by three percussionists two in full view of the audience and the third hidden in darkness.

The first points to Raaymakers' enduring preoccupation with the medium of electronics and everything it implied for contemporary music in terms of new possibilities and problems; the latter illustrates his preoccupation with the sound of falling, the way sounds move inside a space, the hypnotic power of repetition, and the religious origins of music theater.

And what a diverse, poignant and highly complex oeuvre lies between these two extremes! Dick Raaymakers has, in fact, worked in six or seven different disciplines: electronic music - autonomous tape music and "popular electronics" - performances, installations, music theater, essays and poetry. And a good case can be made for including his innovative activities as a professor at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and his detailed and meaningful lectures as additional independent components of his oeuvre.

Raaymakers calls many of his works "instructional pieces" or "learning exercises" he is not concerned with entertainment, as humorous as many of his compositions are. There is always something more at stake: a life or death confrontation between art and technology. Or, rather, for both art and technology, Raaymakers tries to create specific spaces, to develop new resources, and to rediscover old and forgotten methods. He analyzes each discipline to its very core. And then, using the insights he has obtained, he plays a game with strict rules, for the purposes of enjoyment, uplifting the mind and pushing the body to extremes.

These strict rules are what make Raaymakers' work so vivid and at the same time so elusive and timeless, so absolutely human and yet so extraterrestial. It is almost impossible to tell which period it stems from, despite certain quaint details, like the fact that all of his electronic music has been made with analog means. Raaymakers uses archetypal images, primeval forms and primal emotions elements on which time has no grasp, which keep the works open for further development. In this essay we'll delve into some of Raaymakers' characteritic archetypes and primeval forms, both from his life and his work. The quotes in italics are all Raaymakers' own words.

Early electronics
Dick Raaymakers was born in Maastricht, the Netherlands, on September 1, 1930. The family lived in Maastricht until Dick was eight years old. His father was a high ranking civil servant there with the Social Security Board.

My earliest memory. I see tiles, black shoes, endless trouser legs. And a cube. And I know that I pointed at that cube and I said: Radio!

This radio contains music. And its shape, the cube, evokes the image. And I am pointing at it. And this pointing, one might say, already hints at the teacher I will be.

I have been able to verify this memory. One day during office hours, my father came home with a radio, and in some way or other, I understood it. My very first memory. Radio, cube, pointing.

In 1938, the family moved from colorful, exuberant Maastricht to the petit bourgeois industrial Dutch city of Eindhoven, where Raaymakers' father was now chairman of the Social Security Board. They moved into a new house, designed by the renowned modernist architect Willem Marinus Dudok. Apart from a few isolated periods, Raaymakers (partly because of his later tenure at Philips) continued to live in Eindhoven until 1963. He completed his studies at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague in late 1953, earning a diploma that qualified him to teach piano.

In my last year as a student, I made an extensive exploration of the fields where music and technology professionally intersect. In those days, that mainly meant the worlds of radio recording technology and the record industry. I was hoping to pursue a meaningful career in one or the other after my studies at the conservatory ended. Obviously, the idea of having to spend my life as a moderately talented pianist and ditto piano teacher did not particularly appeal to me. On the other hand, the thought of entering fields that would do justice to a combination of my two talents in technology and music was exciting and inspiring. Hence my determination to choose a new direction no matter what; if need be, I would start as an unskilled laborer. Which is exactly what happened. The retraining of the in more than one way "untrained" Dick Raaymakers could begin.

Beginning in early 1954, Raaymakers worked for two years on the assembly line in the radio and TV set production department of Philips in Eindhoven, gaining experience in the field of applied electronics. During the same period, he took a hands on course in "radio and measurement technique." By the end of 1955, he obtained a diploma as a "radio mechanic" from the Dutch Radio Society. The technical engineer Roelof Vermeulen, an authority and pioneer in the field of stereophony and artificial reverberation, showed him another possibility for combining electronics and music: electronic music. A few years later, when Raaymakers was working in the acoustics lab at Philips, Vermeulen asked him to explore the possibility of making popular music with the electronic equipment they had developed. In 1957, this led to "Song of the Second Moon," produced with a modified ondes Martenot and a few audio and measuring generators that were connected by some cutting and pasting and pieces of tape. The piece was finished right at the time the Russians launched Sputnik, which explains the title: the second moon was now a fact.

In December of 1957, he followed "Song of the Second Moon" with "Night Train Blues," an electronic pop composition for three ondes Martenots and piano, originally intended as the B side of "Song of the Second Moon" but never released as such. Raaymakers began giving lectures on electronic music at various locations in the southern Netherlands; he continued to so almost without interruption until 2005. From 1966 on, he also teached at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague; his classes often took the form of small performances and public lectures.

I have been privileged enough to witness the totally unexpected integration of two established disciplines, music and technology, from the beginning. And I have been able to follow this development from the sidelines. At the time, this integration was simply called electronic music. When it came about, it was more a kind of congealing, an odd form of reciprocal use, than a really close knit integration. Music had been using technology for reproductive purposes for several decades, and to this day there is a music industry, but at a creative level this integration did not come about until after World War II.

Why do I say I was privileged? Because I was in a position to witness what happened when the peace of the traditional music world was rudely shattered by a kind of electronic meteorite that radically penetrated it. Technology penetrated music and caused a shock wave of expectations and utopian dreams, which people would not be able to express in words for some time to come. But also a shock wave of dismay and disapproval: "Music cannot be mechanized just like that! We will not be plugged into the mains!" said the director of the Royal Conservatory. And he said to me, "As long as I live, I will prevent this from happening violinists being plugged into the mains." This shock wave was very interesting.

Graphic Method Bicycle
From 1963 until now, Raaymakers lives in The Hague. His studio for twenty years was a condemned property in the center of the town. Raaymakers moved in, in spite of continuous threats that this house would be demolished very soon. It was not entirely coincidence that the new studio was close to the Royal Conservatoire, with which the studio began a close collaboration a few years later. Despite the studio's simple facilities, key works were produced there in the next few years, such as Five Canons, Erlkönig Ballad, the film scores Bekaert and Sidmar, the three Mao pieces Chairman Mao Is Our Guide, The Long March and May Mao Live!, and also the interactive music pieces Quartet and Quintet, and the performances The Graphic Method Tractor and The Graphic Method Bicycle.

My pieces can be divided into two categories; there's really no middle course. Either they're completely level and flat like Quartet, Quintet, The Long March and also the Five Canons or something ignites and violence breaks through, as in Flux and Plumes, and Erlkönig Ballad for loudspeakers. What happens then I call ecstasy. Ecstasy is the absolute opposite of technique. Or, more to the point, ecstasy is what is totally lacking in technique. Any emotion evoked by technique through a TV screen or speakers is false and sentimental. What you get is the reproduction of ecstasy, not ecstasy itself. Real ecstasy is about monastery cells, high mountains, immobility. It is different from catharsis. Catharsis has to do with breaking through, with liberation a long tailed comet, except in reverse. Catharsis is asymmetrical; ecstasy is symmetrical. Ecstasy is a process of growing and reducing, and it requires much more discipline than catharsis. Ecstasy is something you do; catharsis is something that happens to you. I know that people experienced this ecstasy at the performance of Chairman Mao Is Our Guide. You were led to this one moment, the shining of this huge red light, and time stood still. Something was released that was much greater than ... than what it was.

In 1976 Raaymakers made the music theater piece The Graphic Method Tractor. The work shows 72 frames from Sergei Eisenstein's film The General Line (1928) in slow motion - showing a tractor emerging from the earth - while a musical box plays "The Internationale" slowed down hundred times. In the spring of 1979 he composed The Graphic Method Bicycle. In this performance, a nude cyclist steps off his bicycle in slow motion over a time span of over 20 minutes, while being pulled along by a wire. Audio sensors register his heartbeat, respiration and overall physical effort. This piece was inspired by an 1891 chronophotograph by Etienne Jules Marey.

In 1878, the French physiologist Etienne Jules Marey (1830 1903) published a book with the title La méthode graphique, in which he described a number of techniques he developed to record physical movements in graphic time patterns by using purely mechanical devices (in a way that is somewhat related to the seismographic registrations of earthquakes). From around 1882, he started adding photo graphic technology, which led to his fame as a pioneer of cinema. Marey introduced new image media that allowed him to disconnect movement from the mover. With cinematographic devices he made human figures, animals and objects move, without movement being performed in reality.

In both The Graphic Method Tractor and The Graphic Method Bicycle the objectives of Marey are extended and even reversed. The aim is to analyse the relationship between labor and its result by using technical and respectively living images in the world of the visual, acoustic and dramatic arts. As a research project, The Graphic Method Bicycle aims to record exactly what happens when one tries to bring back to life a photographically recorded movement in this case, a man getting off a bicycle (as if, through a reversal of time, an insect trapped in amber is suddenly released).

Out of the hundreds of experiments Marey conducted, Raaymakers chose the one involving the dismounting cyclist for this project, because it best lent itself to a theatrical enlargement of the graphic method. Moreover, this experiment allows a reverse course to be taken, from fixed photograph to dynamic process in other words, from a static two dimensional photographic image (amber) to three dimensional living motion (the insect flying away).

Connections to a number of physiological measuring instruments are clearly visible on the cyclist's body. These sensors monitor his heart, breathing, and muscular and emotional activity during the dismounting action, and acoustic signals are amplified and loudly transmitted to the audience. The aim of all this is to enlarge the human body to auditorium size.

The essence of a cycling cyclist is that he travels without fear of losing his image along the way. That is biking: moving forward on a piece of technology with which and on which you are in balance, in the absolute certainty that you're taking your image along with you, that it will not be stolen along insight. And this addition, this quality, is not a commodity. It only becomes a commodity when you reproduce it on records.

The fundamental difference between art and technology is that art results in unique objects that in a material sense are composed of materials of little value canvas, paint, music paper, ink. Science, on the other hand, and especially technology, results in large numbers of very sophisticated, very hard, very consistent and very valuable, completely identical products. Art leads to this one unique, irreplaceable product that you cannot own, however passionately you try to obtain it at auction. Art begins where the objective presence of that particular object ends. Technology, on the other hand, leads to a mass of identical things inviting you to take them. This is why every effort to integrate art and technology, like in the '60s, is doomed to fail. Their interests and their operations are irreconcilable.

So, to visualize how compelling a technical insight can be, to demonstrate this and to show the true value of art, I perform reversal operations in which I drive technical images back into the image machines from which they came. This is not performance, this is Kaspar Hauser. He wanted the apples to go back on the trees, too.

After The Graphic Method
In 1982 Raaymakers developed a performance for two actors, a knocking over machine, lighting and soundscape. The piece, Ecstasy, was dedicated to Josine van Droffelaar, a member of the board of the Amsterdam arts foundation De Appel and a dear friend of Raaymakers. Van Droffelaar, her partner and the entire staff of De Appel died in a plane crash in Switzerland, on August 20, 1983.

In Ecstacy a cyclist knocks over on his head in extreme slow motion, in some 20 minutes. He is linked with a chain to a lame man who slowly arises from his chair while the cyclist falls. When the cyclist eventually falls flat on his face on the stage, an old recording of the Henri Duparc song about love and death, "Extase", is played. Ecstasy is probably the most beautiful and moving work of Dick Raaymakers.

Tumbling off your bike is something that just happens to you. One minute you're riding along and the next you're on the ground. Now something really strange happens if you slow down this action of tumbling enormously. Suddenly you become very involved, as the cyclist as well as the spectator. You experience everything. What happens then is nearly impossible: the inevitability of a fall suddenly seems avoidable. It goes so slowly that you think that you could interfere in every phase of this excruciatingly slow rotation. You can warn the cyclist, or try and persuade him that it would be better to desist from his rash behaviour and list all the advantages of interrupting the falling process.

By putting a falling cyclist in slow motion on stage in reality, like in Ecstasy, you lead the audience to believe they can actually interfere. And at the same time you don't. Because it is theater too. On the other hand, it's also so terribly realistic, that it's literally life threatening. The bicycle only has to slip off its hook and the cyclist will break his neck. It is truly an incredibly dangerous performance, the way he very slowly rolls head over heels and makes a full circle like the big hand of a clock. It is that weird sensation that you recognize from dreams where you are falling, and the slow motion, and nearly the ability to intervene and to say... That this cyclist says: 'Well, actually, this is not really what I wanted or what I had in mind,' that's what I meant, that play of forces.

Raaymakers went on to make a series of new projects, starting with Shhh! (1981). In all these productions, the soundtrack of Laurel and Hardy's Night Owls plays a central role. In the large scale theater production Soundmen (1984), nine soundmen on a huge stage set reproduce the heavy and voluminous falling sounds from the film by operating enormous constructions, machineries, levers, handles, pulleys and trapdoors. The Soundwall (1982-84) is a kinetic pneumatic construction in which heavy metal cubes move independently of each other. The cubes' movements are based on those of Laurel and Hardy: the scaling of walls, opening of doors and entering of windows. The music theater Ow! (1984) is based on the obstacles Laurel and Hardy must overcome in Night Owls: doors, windows, and walls. Each fall from a wall or slam of a door is reproduced by one of four percussionists "playing" wooden beams. In the last piece, The Microman (1982), a single performer reenacts Laurel and Hardy's antics in Night Owls on a miniature scale as a piece of "tabletop theater."

Another important series of work was started by Raaymakers in 1991, when he made the first sketches for Der Fall Leiermann, a solo music theater piece in three acts that served as a study for the later work Dépons/Der Fall. A disassembled tape recorder is hand cranked like a street organ by a lonesome organ grinder as ambient sound fragments are played. On Dépons/Der Fall (1992) Raaymakers worked with percussionist/theater director Paul Koek and Theater Hollandia. In this music theater piece for three actors, consisting of a prologue and three scenes, Raaymakers comments on Pierre Boulez's composition Répons (1981 1984), using "falling machines" and techniques derived from Japanese bunraku theater. This was followed by a large scale music theater piece Der Fall/Dépons (1993). In its seven acts, the phenomenon of imitation is treated exhaustively.

In 1995 Dick Raaymakers completed some of his biggest collective music theater pieces, including Der Stein and The Fall of Mussolini.

Der Stein is a "suitcase opera" in five acts for two actors about a decisive event in the life of the virtually unknown eighteenth century German music teacher Anton Scheuer (1734 1810): the theft and relocation of the boundary stone of the town of Selters in Germany's Taunus Mountains.

The Fall of Mussolini is a collaboration with Theater Company Hollandia and Toneelgroep Amsterdam that mixes, in thirteen "stations of the cross," the demise of Benito Mussolini, recordings at the Hal Roach film studios of a Laurel and Hardy movie, and a 1930's novel of the Dutch poet J. Slauerhoff on Mexican Indians in the town of Guadelajara. These works are all in some form derived from the archetype of humans falling. Falling makes human beings into human bodies, and liberates them from their wish to become machines themselves.

Works of Dick Raaymakers
CD box set: The Complete Tape Music of Dick Raaijmakers. Donemus/Near 1998, Basta 2006
Cd box set: Popular Electronics: Early Dutch Electronic Music from Philips Research Laboratories, 1956 1963. Basta, 2004.
Book: Arjen Mulder and Joke Brouwer (eds), Dick Raaymakers A Monograph. V2_Publishing, 2008.

For more about The Graphic Method: Bicycle at HCMF 2008 click here

For more about the Dick Raaijmakers documentary exhibition at HCMF 2008 click here