hcmf// shorts 3 (SOLD OUT)

Bates Mill Blending Shed
6pm – 8pm

Free event
Advance booking required

Our free and action-packed day of wall-to-wall events returns for another year! This year, we’re excited to be hosting hcmf// shorts across three of our favourite Huddersfield venues. hcmf// shorts 3 features a collaboration between Timothy Cape and Mayah Kadish, new work from Trees.R.Good, Bethany Holloway, Luke Nickel and ElettroVoce.

Featuring:

Luke Nickel 

Luke Nickel (Canada, 1988)
Steel becomes silk, gravity recast (2021) 15’ World Premiere

Juliet Fraser voice
Luke Nickel electronics, live simulated roller coasters

A composer and visual artist, Luke Nickel’s work couples fractured sound with brazen, immersive imagery. Known for his designs of virtual roller coasters, his daring approach knots together themes of memory, translation and queer identity. Despite its abstract approach, and its lack of linear resolution – he has described his own visual designs as ‘impossible’ – his work speaks for itself. His work plays on our cognitive expectations, sounding as immediate as it does surreal. 

Nickel’s new work features new rides, placing one of his iconic simulated roller coasters against a vocal performance from soprano Juliet Fraser. A deeply collaborative effort, the piece is a duet in imagination, with Fraser’s singing representing a roller coaster of her own, ‘created in her mind’ and expressing ‘tracks, speed, height and G-force.’ Described by the duo as an ‘incantation’, the piece demands its audience come on board, summoning them for one hell of a ride. There are no notes; only twists and turns. Only roller coasters. 

Steel becomes silk, gravity recast is commissioned by hcmf// as part of the COVID-19 Commissions series

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Trees.R.Good

Trees.R.Good bass guitar / saxophone / keyboards / field recordings

Trees.R.Good (Belgium, 1999)
/to ti ên einai/ (2021) 20′ World Premiere

Her first appearance at hcmf//, multi-instrumentalist Trees.R.Good describes her performance as activism. Her music asserts the innate and unbreakable connection between human life and natural entities, drawing us closer to the environment at a time of ecological devastation. Her new song cycle /to ti ên einai/ is focused on trees, and the forests they cohabit. It describes their inner lives, their non-human communities, and suggests that humans are not the only ones who create and collaborate. In her own words, ‘there’s so much more music out there in the natural world than that made by humans alone’. 

This concert is made possible via the mentoring programme of Reform Radio Soundcamp and Manchester Jazz Festival Soundcheck funded by Youth Music and PRS Foundation

Go Outside is commissioned as part of the Hulme Community Center M15 Mixtape Commission for NiaTV

Heartwood features a sample from an interview with Waorani Indigenous leader Nemonte Nenquimo, produced by Marrow of the Mountain Documentary

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Bethany Holloway + Shirani Brook

Bethany Holloway (UK, 2000)
DJ (2021) 15’ World Premiere

Shirani Brook dancer
Kamila Bookless spoken word

Creating work as part of hcmf//’s Young Curators’ Programme, Bethany Holloway is an artist versed in music technology, sound production and mixing. She’s also a DJ, fostering new ground for different kinds of electronic music to converge. In this new project, created as part of her collaboration with the festival, she emphasises the role of dance in music, and their intrinsic connection to one another.

DJ clashes on purpose. Holloway describes the performance as a contrast of ‘fluid, soft movements with a strong, impactful sonic environment’, evoking the dancefloor introspection that can be sparked in the fastest and loudest moments. Dancer Shirani Brook leads the way, her physical interactions intertwining with the music heard. Brook’s movements are an instrument within the piece. The music, all pre-recorded compositions by Holloway herself, is handed over to Brook, who DJs herself, through her own body movements.

Created as part of the hcmf// Young Curators’ Programme, funded by the Leeds City Region Business Rates Pool through a bid secured by Kirklees Council

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Timothy Cape + Mayah Kadish 

Mayah Kadish violin / voice / performance
Timothy Cape percussion / performance

Timothy Cape (Ireland 1991)
new work (2021) 11’ World Premiere

Timothy Cape (Ireland, 1991)
Sorry For The Late Reply (2021) 12’ 

Jessie Marino (USA, 1984)
RotBlau (2009) 6’ 

A member of the unflinchingly weird composer-performer collective Bastard Assignments, Timothy Cape’s work is both experimental and tactile, often involving personal experiences, recordings of conversations, and physical manifestations of memory. Featuring two of his own new pieces, his hcmf// performance is a collaboration with violinist Mayah Kadish, a member of Ensemble x.y., as well as s t a r g a z e. Her eclectic playing is similarly open-ended, and can be heard across a range of baroque, experimental and folk music projects. 

new work is commissioned by hcmf// as part of the COVID-19 Commissions series

Sorry For The Late Reply is commissioned by Angela Hui Wai Nok

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ElettroVoce

Agata Zubel voice
Cezary Duchnowski piano / computer

Through their collaborative project ElettroVoce, Agata Zubel and Cezary Duchnowski attempt to recontextualise the voice, placing it against improvised environments and digitised timbres. Utilising Duchnowski’s prepared piano and electronics, their concerts exist without parameter or pathway, the duo focusing on the new, unexplored sound palette they’ve blended together. In their first appearance at hcmf//, they spontaneously reimagine their own music, with Zubel stretching her voice through sheets of noise, jumping between sung notes, stray conversation and expressive laughter. 

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hcmf// shorts is produced by hcmf//

Photo: Timothy Cape & Mayah Kidish © Patrick Moss