Performing along with Duncan Chapman on 12th July 2018.
Mike McInerney plays shakuhachi and piano. Has studied mathematics and music at the University of York and has a Ph. D from Dartington College of Arts. He works with interactive technology, computer-generated sounds and live processing to create new music for Japanese shakuhachi flute, and other instruments. Mike has studied with the composer Frank Denyer, the shakuhachi player Yoshikazu Iwamoto, the pianist Jo Peach M. Phil. B. Mus LRAM, and the enlightened Zen calligraphy master, Tanchu Terayama.
Toshimaru Nakamura is probably one of the most important electronic composers of the 21st century. His instrument is the no-input mixing board, which describes a way of using a standard mixing board as an electronic music instrument, producing sound without any external audio input. The use of the mixing board in this manner is not only innovative in that the sounds it can create but, more importantly, in the approach this method of working with the mixer demands. The unpredictability of the instrument requires an attitude of obedience and resignation to the system and the sounds it produces, bringing a high level of indeterminacy and surprise to the music. Nakamura pioneered this approach to the use of the mixing board in the mid-1990’s and has since then appeared on over one hundred audio publications, including nine solo CD’s.
He has performed throughout Europe, North America, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia, Korea, China, Singapore and Malaysia, performing and recording both as a soloist and in collaboration with numerous other musicians.
As an active organizer of concerts in Tokyo, Nakamura has helped many musicians coming to Japan find places to perform, both with himself and with others. From 1998 to 2003 Nakamura and Tetuzi Akiyama ran the concert series Improvisation Series at Bar Aoyama and then later the Meeting at Off Site series of concerts. Both these concert series were crucially important in exposing a new manner to improvised music (referred to as Electro Acoustic Improvisation) to the Japanese public and to foreign musicians visiting Japan, making Tokyo one of the global hotspots for this new approach to music.
This is a rare opportunity to listen to an exciting blend of leading experimental musicians from Japan, Berlin and Wales. Also playing: Arai Tatsuru, Rhodri Davies, Jenn Kirby, Dafydd Roberts & Andrew Leslie Hooker.
Angharad Davies is a violinist, one at ease in both improvising and composition, with a wide discography as part of varied range of ensembles and groups. She’s a specialist in the art of ‘preparing’ her violin, adding objects or materials to it to extend its sound making properties. Her sensitivity to the sonic possibilities of musical situations and attentiveness to their shape and direction make her one of contemporary music’s most fascinating figures. She has performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Tate Modern, the Proms, Music We’d Like to Hear new music series, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, El Nicho festival in Mexico where she premiered Eliane Radigue’s Occam XXI for solo violin.
She is an associate artist at Cafe Oto, is a member of Cranc, Common Objects and Apartment House, been artist in residence at Q-02, and played live with Tony Conrad in the Turbine Room at the Tate Modern. Other collaborations have featured the likes of John Butcher, Steve Beresford, Laura Cannell, Daniela Cascella, Anat Ben David, Rhodri Davies, Matt Davis, Richard Dawson, Julia Eckhardt, Kazuko Hohki, Roberta Jean, Lina Lapelyte, Dominic Lash, Tisha Mukarji, Andrea Neumann, Rie Nakajima, Anie O’Dwyer, Okkuyng Lee, Tim Parkinson, J.G.Thirlwell, Silvia Tarozzi, Stefan Thut, Deborah Walker, Paul Whitty, Manfred Werder, Birgit Ulher, Taku Unami and she’s released records on Absinth Records, Another Timbre, Potlatch and Confrontrecords.
Edward Wright is a UK based composer who was born in Buckinghamshire in 1980 which makes him very old to some people and not all that old to others. He completed a practice based PhD in music in 2010, focusing on combining electroacoustic and instrumental forces with Professor Andrew Lewis at Bangor University.
His work is mainly focused towards the electroacoustic end of the musical spectrum although he writes for and plays ‘real’ instruments as well. Highlights include; performances overseas including mainland Europe and the U.S.A., ‘mention’ in the Prix Bourges for his piece Con-Chords, a number of classical commissions, and airplay on BBC Radio 1 and S4C television. Ed also curates the Oscilloscope concert series and performs as part of the electronic trio Accretion Entropy.
Ed lives in North Wales with Emma, their daughter Alena, and finds it very hard to write about himself in the third person.
Dr. Jenn Kirby is an Irish composer, performer, software developer and academic based in Swansea, UK. Her work ranges from instrumental composition, to electroacoustic, to laptop orchestra and the performance of live electronics. Jenn’s work explores elements of theatre, humour and subversion. Jenn works as the Programme Director for Music Performance and Production at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, where she teaches composition and music technology.
Much of Jenn’s research is focused on the performance of electronic music. The output from which includes the foundation of the Swansea Laptop Orchestra and the creation of software for new music performance, and the re-purposing of controllers and interfaces as musical performance instruments.
Jenn makes a very welcome return to play Listen to the Voice of Fire. Again, what to expect?! I love this photo and expect things may be wild-hope so-come and find out.
Fantastic news update, Pefkin are transmuted to become Barrett’s Dotted Beauty for their Aberystwyth appearance. JW myself and Ruth were all hoping that it might happen and so it has…very excited to announce…These were and are legends of the psycke underground, do yourselves a favour and come along for these, a real treat
Barrett’s Dottled Beauty is what you get when you cross a Kitchen Cynic with a Pefkin. Nursing an obsession equally with Syd Barrett and lepidoptera, Alan Davidson and Gayle Brogan formed this duo in 2016, playing semi-improvised experimental folk, informed by their shared interest in nature, folk song and noise. “siren-esque psalms quietly stare, seduce and enchant, beguilement doesn’t begin to touch it, ghostly drone mosaics, which arrive trimmed in classicist vintage whose lineage ripples to a dawning of time whilst sonically balanced on a finite point located somewhere between the primordial psych folk utterance’s of Alphane Moon, Ghost, Our glassie Azoth and the bewitching trips of George Harrison’s ‘Blue Jay Way’. Their second album released in a limited edition of 80 in individually collaged sleeves is long sold out.
Pefkin is the alter ego of Gayle Brogan, one half of Glaswegian vintage synth duo Electroscope and ex-proprietor of the Boa Melody Bar mail order. She has been recording as Pefkin since 1999 and released albums on Morc, Wild Silence, Reverb Worship, Pseudoarcana, etc.
More recently she has been recording with the Kitchen Cynics’ Alan Davidson under the name Barrett’s Dottled Beauty, creating psych-folk hymnals inspired by a mutual love of folk songs and nature, and has been recording with United Bible Studies. On her own Gayle creates a dreamy rural psychedelia from looped vocals, guitar, analogue synth and violin and has received comparisons to Coil, Popul Vuh and Nico. She has just released a new album “Final Instar” inspired by moths on Siren Wire and an 8″ lathe cut on Sonido Polifonico.
Gayle played at last year’s Listen to the voice of Fire as part of Electroscope, and I couldn’t wait to have her back-prodigious and inspiring, slightly odd name Pefkin but come and check out this mesmerising psychedelia.
Here’s one that is a bit obscure, another find from Ed Wright’s Oscilloscope. David Hopewell improvised/performed a couple of what I thought were standout pieces, and promises to perform these again. It is understated, but this was and promises to be a finely sculpted expansive sonic landscape. Here is what he says “Two pieces featuring field recordings and live sound production using field coils capturing electromagnetic signals ‘captured from the aether’”. With the loops of experimental film that Dr Greg Bevan has curated projected o’er him this is sure to be one to watch and soak-up.
Possibly the most intriguing performance next week may go to Steve Moyes. Let us see! Improvisation, using amplified mechanical diverter valve, with live electronic looping and processing. A man after my own heart. “How long is the performance” I asked, “Flexible. Could be anywhere from 10 minutes to one hour”. Steve runs several improvisation and looping activities in Carms., and I’m very pleased that he agreed to perform for us next week.
Wow! Johann Wlight will play at Listen to the Voice of Fire. I found this article about Wlight’s very hard to find re-co (r) dings. If you are unfamiliar with his wraithlike music this is a fine place to start. My first introduction comes many years ago via a swap with the nascent Larkfall cdr label.
I am both alarmed and thrilled that, a little like myself, Wlight has been living off the beaten tracks in our forgotten part of the world just a stone’s throw from where I was for a long time ensconced.
This will be a rare treat and actually unmissable. I am rather thrilled to be on the same bill.
Duncan Chapman is a composer and sound artist who regularly works with leading music organisations throughout the world. Much of his composing and sound artistry results in sound installations, recordings or multi-media performances. Recent projects include co-directing a large-scale performance project for Casa da Música (Porto) and the St Andrews Voices festival in Fife.Duncan’s othernumerous projects includeDark Januaries, an annual personal composition project with Isabel Jones; But where do we get the water?: London Chamber Orchestra for orchestra, young players / laptop ensemble ; Rising Breath with Stewart Collinson and Mike McInerney at Seeing Sound 2016; developing and presenting family concerts (London Sinfonietta) exploring music and science ; leading the Fanfare project for young composers (Royal Opera House); Director, Link Ensemble (Britten Sinfonia) ; Performances with Supriya Nagarajan (Manasamitra) lullabies project at the Ultima Festival (Oslo); the Kamppi “Chapel of Silence” (Helsinki); anthem for the Choir of York Minster and orchestral lullabies (Iceland Symphony Orchestra). The audio-visual piece Mode 5 Down the Mountain was selected for the 2016 Drone Cinema Festival and released on a Silent Records compilation.Duncan is also currently involved in touring White Cane (Salamanda Tandem) and performances for Spitalfields Music, HCMF & Firstsite Gallery. He also contributes to courses at De Montfort & York Universities and is an external examiner (Music & Communities) at Aberdeen University.
Recent performances and presentations include Rising Breath @ Noisefloor Festival 2017 (Stoke on Trent), Lead: Gold @ Listen to the Voice of Fire: Alchemy in Sound Art 2017 (National Library of Wales), Sonifying myself @ The Music of Sound, a sonification symposium 2017 (Oxford University).
Current projects include: directing a project for the 2017 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (with Sound and Music) based on the Music for Young Playersseries of pieces from the 1960’s/70’s, further work with the Lullabies project in Oslo, Helsinki and in the UK, ongoing work with De Montfort University MU on the pan-Eu Interfaces project and mentoring two composers (for Sound and Music) writing pieces for the Paraorchestra.
