Riot Ensemble / Raven Chacon + Marco Blaauw / b-l duo

Free event

Riot Ensemble:
Richard Craig flute
Rocio Bolaños clarinets
Marie Schreer violin
Louise McMonagle cello

Aaron Holloway-Nahum (USA, 1983) Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale (2022) 20’

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale was inspired and shaped by Dan Albergotti’s short poem of the same title. Written long before the pandemic, the short sentences imagine activities that (I assume) Jonah might have used to fill the time while living in the belly of the giant beast. Read, reread, and reread many times again – the activities which range from the pithy (‘Count the ribs.’) to heart-wrenching (‘Make small fires with the broken hulls of fishing boats.’) took on steep, exaggerated meanings as the days of lockdown passed.

I treated the sentences both personally (in composing the music) and as impersonally as possible: I sent the poem to two percussionists (Sam Wilson and David Skidmore) and asked them – with no further input from me – to interpret the various sentences in the form of a video diary. Their ‘entries’ (including a full reading by Sam) make their way back into the piece, triggered at the appropriate moment by the bass clarinettist. Layered on top of these videos are captions that I harvested during months of watching Netflix with a small baby in the house: The volume turned down in the hopes of some unbroken moments of entertainment. © Aaron Holloway-Nahum

Raven Chacon + Marco Blaauw 

Marco Blaauw trumpet
Raven Chacon live electronics

Raven and I met last June and just started playing. The language we use is quite noisy and the dialogues are swift and full of texture changes – very dynamic and electric. We had a great time from the moment we started, so we are very happy to get the chance to continue our conversation in Huddersfield. This collaboration is very different from our work on his compositions…the process of rehearsing is a lot slower, made of searching the right sounds and experimenting with the pacing, timing and flow. © Marco Blaauw

b-l duo:
Bertram Wee keyboards
Lynette Yeo keyboards 

Alex Paxton (UK, 1990) Sometimes Voices (2020; new version 2022) 10’ (World Premiere)
Bertram Wee (Singapore, 1992) vessel III (2022) 10’ (World Premiere)

Two moments of plastic ecstasy: a pair of pieces for MIDI keyboards which embrace the apparent artificiality of digital noise in casting the eruptive, frenzied body in sound.

Sometimes Voices is an irreverent, psychedelic romp that reflects Alex Paxton’s freewheeling attitude towards aesthetic and genre. At once, the piece recalls the manic rhythmic excess of Nancarrow’s player piano studies, while also alluding to the blast beats of heavy metal and the wailing synthesizer sweeps of EDM. Originally written for keyboards and drums, we will premiere a new version of the piece for multiple keyboards that leans wholeheartedly into the digital hyperreality of the whole affair.

Taking Lucier’s multivalent conception of an environment as a point of departure, Bertram Wee’s growing vessel series of compositions are standalone studies in avant-garde talkboxing. The corporeal form is recognised and exploited as acoustic space – a ‘speaker cabinet in flesh’ of sorts – its resonant potential activated by the much-maligned effects pedal. Aesthetically, these pieces recall the transgressive vocal noise work of Japanese acts such as The Gerogerigegege and Masonna.

A new piece in the vessel series will be developed for this programme.

Produced by hcmf//