BBC Radio 3 Broadcast
Taylor MacLennan flute
Alex Roberts clarinet
Sarah Park piano
David Lopez violin
Morag Robertson viola
Deni Teo cello
Nicholas Moroz artistic director / electronics
Joanna Bailie (UK, 1973) Dissolve (Radio Version) World Premiere (2020) 24′
Lawrence Dunn (UK, 1991) Sentimental Drifting Music (2016, rev. 2018) 12’
Oliver Leith (UK, 1991) Me Hollywood World Premiere (2020) 15’
Explore Ensemble’s performance at hcmf// 2016 was so good it immediately earned them a sequel. They returned in 2017 with stunning new works for ensemble and electronics, as well as in 2018 for a collaboration with EXAUDI. With their ninth year as an ensemble around the corner, Explore have become a festival favourite, proven masters of taking the most radical, ‘rarely heard’ music out there and making a home for it. In a broadcast of new music for hcmf// 2020, they continue to embrace new ideas from new artists, performing work by three drastically different composers.
Earlier this year, London-based composer Oliver Leith released good day good day bad day bad day, a jaw-droppingly gorgeous album for piano and percussion that compassionately looked at the ‘obsessions and compulsions’ that surface in our lives. A heady mix of tender melodies and doomy noise, the piece demonstrated Leith’s pluralistic approach to material, his way of embracing the contradictions that we go through as people, serving up both the ‘debilitating’ and ‘beautiful’ feelings that come into play in our every day lives. In what has been a very busy year for Leith, his new piece Me Hollywood now receives its UK Premiere.
Interested in what he’s called ‘bad taste’, Lawrence Dunn is good at following his heart. His music embraces melody and celebrates emotional expression, playing around with the radical idea of good communication. His music can be beautiful, utilising heart-tugging strings and foggy chords, and also delightfully playful, as per the frolicking stray notes of For Piano (Dancing). His 2016 work Sentimental Drifting Music fits firmly into the former category, floating freely through the ether with next to nothing in the way of interruption. As a programme note, Dunn simply says ‘for Martin Arnold’, honouring the warmth and togetherness of the Canadian composer’s music, the joyful way he approaches chaos and displacement.
With a body of work that investigates memory, nostalgia and transition, Joanna Baillie’s music plays on our warped understanding of history. Working with acoustic instrumentation, field recordings and panoramic visuals, she renders environments that feel just out of focus, not quite as they were. In her hands, the past becomes a kind of science fiction. Her new work Dissolve continues to expand on the audio-visual language she’s developed in pieces such as Roll Call, taking a unique way of presenting material – in this case, the ‘dissolve’ edit that used to dominate film media – and using it to recreate moments in our memory. This radio version of the piece makes use of field recordings made on the street, as well as an ensemble of musicians playing a heavily fragmented piece of music. With Dissolve, Bailie continues to run with the wicked conflict that exists in her compositions: something ‘concrete’ in the found sound meets something ‘abstract’ in music, resulting in what she describes as a ‘dream-like, alienating version of an ordinary activity’. It’s another uncanny fake reality to go with the other ones she’s made up.
Explore Ensemble’s 2020 season is supported by Arts Council England’s Emergency Relief Funding, the RVW Trust, and the Hinrichsen Foundation.
Me Hollywood is co-commissioned by Explore Ensemble and hcmf//
Dissolve is co-commissioned by Explore Ensemble, November Music and hcmf//