3 posts tagged with "performance"

ARTMUSFAIR is… well, I guess you could describe it as a trade fair for contemporary music (stop giggling) which this year is happening in Glasgow, Thur 29 Oct to Sun 1 Nov. I've got two things confirmed and a third in the pipeline.

First up is a new piece certain assumptions, which was accepted in a call for scores by the Red Note Ensemble. It's for alto flute, horn, marimba, cello and 'tape', with the latter part composed using a patch I made at the pd bootcamp in Wales earlier this year. Here's the 'programme note';

'When you go to the doctor you assume that he will care for you in his normal compassionate way, ultimately finding the solution to your ailments. Why else would you go?

On your last trip to the grocery store did you assume the food was free from bacteria? I bet you did, otherwise you would find somewhere else to shop; that is if you lived through the bacterial infection.

As you can see sometimes assumptions help us relieve potential anxiety. They can be very useful ways of diverting stress but unfortunately even the white knight puts on a black hat once in a while.' (http://bit.ly/LFxW8)

According to the information I have 'the performance is scheduled to begin at 10:30pm on 30th October 2009, in the bar attached to the Millennium Hotel on George Square, Glasgow. The performance will be informal, amplified and compered.'

Then, on the Saturday morning at about 0900 we are planning a performance of CIRCULARTHING and other works by the long-lost Society for High Art Music. To complete a trilogy of van der Walt, I'm also trying to persuade them to let me give the first performance of my soon-to-be-notorious 'Music Is Not Sound' lecture.

The performance of 'The Whirlies' is coming up very soon;

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The Whirlies by J. Simon van der Walt A new piece for strings and electro-junk improviser, inspired by the roundabouts of East Kilbride

Scottish Philharmonic Orchestra Cond Peter Cynfryn Jones Solist Edward 'Teddy' Edwards

Òran Mór (Byre's Road, Glasgow) Monday 17 Nov 2008 Doors open at 1715, Concert begins at 1815 £10 includes cocktail and canapés 0141 357 6200

Also featuring Vaughan Williams A Lark Ascending Debussy Danses Sacré et Profane Respighi Il Tramonto

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Here's a wee snippet of the piece, midi strings, but the impro material is for real:

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Composer's note

"What is East Kilbride famous for? I'm not entirely sure how most people would answer that question! For myself, although I'm not exactly Scottish born and bred, there is a big chunk of me which is 'from' East Kilbride; I spent two highly formative periods of my life there, during my primary school years, and again for the last couple of years of high school before university. And one of the things which always sticks in my head about East Kilbride is… roundabouts! Being one of those 60's new towns, it has an elaborate road plan, with sweeping dual carriageways carefully separated from winding dead-end closes; the kind of town where you can see the house you're trying to get to, but there seems to be no way of actually getting there…

The biggest roundabout in East Kilbride is known to most residents by name; 'The Whirlies'. In recent times it's been rather travestied by the addition of traffic lights, but in it's heyday it was a madness of a junction, roads spiralling off in every direction…

Of course, a piece of music can't really be about a roundabout. More than that, this is a reminiscence of my teenage years, when I first started to become seriously interested in music. There were two strands to this. Firstly, I was starting to branch out from my Father's transcendental but admittedly rather limited listening diet of Bach, Wagner, and, er nothing else, to explore the delights of jazz, experimental rock music, Stravinsky, and Bartók. My second way into music was through the soldering iron, literally getting my fingers burnt hacking together home-made noisemakers using transistors salvaged from broken hi-fi sets and the like.

The piece also forms a trailer of sorts for a forthcoming project provisionally entitled 'The Ted Edwards Electr-O-Matic Orchestra', or something like that.

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Here's the setup I'm using for the electro-junk impro;

That's my grandfather's old banjo-ukulele through a pickup to a genuine original Realistic Electronic Reverb (with added feedback loop), through a mixer to keep the levels under control. No live computer processing! (but a tiny amount of reverb added in the demo to make it 'sit' with the dodgy washy midi strings.)

I hope you like my new direction :|

I have a commission for another piece from the Scottish Philharmonic Orchestra, for a concert at Òran Mór in Glasgow on 17 November. It's going to be called 'The Whirlies', which is a famous roundabout in East Kilbride; to be the first movement of a suite dedicated to the, er, roundabouts of East Kilbride!

The piece is essentially for strings, but - and I haven't exactly told them this yet - I intend to turn up and do some live electro-junk impro along with the piece as well:

Two bits of string material so far;