hcmf// shorts 1 (SOLD OUT)

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 1 features performances from Juliet Fraser + Mark Knoop, Heather Roche and Dejana Seuklic, as well as the live premiere of Anna Appleby’s Zeitgeist Commission. 

Featuring:

Zeitgeist Commissions: Anna Appleby

Amy Green soprano saxophone

Anna Appleby (UK, 1993)
13.8 Billion Years (2020) 5’

Anna Appleby’s music has its own shape. Inspired by choreography, the Manchester-based composer’s work moves in its own peculiar way, rising and falling with movements of the stage. She has swung through musical styles, writing fluid, spontaneous pieces for chamber groups and dance troupes. In 13.8 Billion Years, she has created an expansive solo piece, imagining ‘the formation of the universe, through clouds of matter to galaxies, to stars, planets and, eventually, life’. Yes, it’s a bit ambitious to cover all of this with five minutes of saxophone, but if anyone can do it, Appleby can. And she’s realistic about her chances, too: ‘the universe is estimated to have begun 13.8 billion years ago’, she says, ‘a length of time which is a bit longer than this piece’. Fair play.

Premiered as part of hcmf// 2020‘s online programme, this is the first live performance of 13.8 Billion Years.

13.3 Billion Years is co-commissioned by the Riot Ensemble and hcmf// in partnership with Zeitgeist Online Gallery

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Heather Roche

Heather Roche clarinets

Scott McLaughlin (Ireland, 1975)
Fringing (2021) 11’ World Premiere

Larry Goves (United Kingdom, 1980)
Borneo Rivers 2 (2021) 6’ World Premiere

Amber Priestley (Australia/UK/US, 1973)
k. 581 (but not quite his way) (2021) 5’ World Premiere

Through his new project The Garden of Forking Paths, Scott McLaughlin wrote music for the clarinet as if it were an ecology, drawing up a map from its sound that encompasses air, wood, and reed. It is, environmentally, an open world instrument, containing over 300,000 possible fingerings, traversable as different paths for different players. Eschewing traditional notes, McLaughlin instead took these fingerings as a starting point, writing a score that used extended techniques, championing the indeterminate possibilities of the instrument found by thinking of it as an ecosystem, rather than an object. 

One of the world’s leading experimental clarinetists, Heather Roche has been a key part of The Garden of Forking Paths, field-testing McLaughlin’s ideas. In this performance, she showcases music from the project, alongside new commissions from Larry Goves and Amber Priestley, who have built on the project’s ideas, continuing to open up new paths that sprawl out of McLaughlin’s. 

Supported by Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and UK Research and Innovation

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Dejana Sekulic 

Dejana Sekulic violin

Dario Buccino (Italy, 1968)
Finalmente il tempo è intero nº 16 (2019) 13’

Liza Lim (Australia, 1966)
The Su Song Star Map (2017) 12’30”

Violinist Dejana Sekulic conceived of her project Temporality of the Impossible as a collection of pieces for her instrument that escape fixed form. They deliberately wrestle with their structure, eluding the direction laid out in their notation. Documented in her release of the same name for Huddersfield Contemporary Records, Sekulic here shares two pieces from the project’s expansive programme.

Despite its detailed and predetermined instructions, Dario Buccino’s Finalmente il tempo è intero nº 16 invites its performer to ‘play incorrectly’, to create the feeling of an improvisation through their interpretation. He suggests that there’s space for discovery through intricacy, and that a construction keeps secrets. Sekulic performs his own piece alongside Liza Lim’s The Su Song Star Map, a work that she describes as ‘magical’ in its unpredictable use of the low register’s ‘rolling depths’, alongside sudden juxtapositions of pitch and harmony, the piece detailing the universe as both a structured system and an infinite journey.

Finalmente il tempo è intero nº 16 is commissioned for the project Temporality of the Impossible

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Juliet Fraser + Mark Knoop

Juliet Fraser soprano 

Mark Knoop piano

Laurence Crane (UK, 1961)
Natural World (2021) 50’

Laurence Crane’s Natural World expresses the poetry of information. A full-length work in three parts, it draws on his love of reading textbooks, reflecting on how we are able to delight in knowledge – to follow a list of facts through the alphabet to its conclusion. Crane’s piece deals delicately with this pastime, celebrating fantasy and imagination as part of building reality. 

Taking place across three distinct movements, Natural World is indebted to several distinct books: The Observer’s Pocket Book of Birds, a pocket-sized handbook for British birds, and the many works written by marine biologist Rachel Carson. It’s brought to life by soprano Juliet Fraser and pianist Mark Knoop, with electronics slowly emerging through the piece as it gathers new information – presented here in colour, with wonder. 

Natural World is commissioned as part of the Carson Commissions, supported by Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants, PRS Foundation’s Open Fund for Music Creators and the RVW Trust. Commissioning partners include Musica Sacra and Oxford Lieder. 

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hcmf// shorts is produced by hcmf//

Photo Scott McLaughlin © Sam Walton