What's On Contemporary and New Music May - Jul '19

CONTEMPORARY AND NEW MUSIC

THU 2 MAY

ERROLLYN WALLEN (PIANO) WITH NEXT MUSICIANS/THALLEIN ENSEMBLE M AY – JUL 2019

Credit: Dominic Harris

0121 331 5909 | BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS /RoyalBirmCons

@BirmCons

Birmingham City University

SUN 5 MAY

FIZZLE: X-X

THU 2 MAY

2.30pm Recital Hall £10 (£8) Featuring Hannah Marshall on cello, Alcyona Mick on piano and Stella Roberts (Dorcha) on keyboard, the musicians will create brand new live scores to a selection of short films made by pioneering female directors, incorporating elements of jazz, improv, contemporary classical, electronica and much more.

TUE 30 APR

SUN 5 MAY

8pm The Bradshaw Hall

4.30pm Recital Hall

£14 (£12)

£6 (£4)

Opening Flatpack Festival this year is the world première of a newly commissioned live score by Sinestro Home Video, a six-piece ensemble pulled together by composers Matt Eaton (Pram) and Gareth Jones (Misty’s Big Adventure, Grandmaster Gareth).

Following on from Fizzle’s all-female line-up, this selection of shorts continues to celebrate creative women with a programme of films that saw ten animators collaborating with ten composers from across Europe.

Thought lost for nearly five decades and then rediscovered in the 1970s, A Page of Madness is a stunning, surreal exploration of truth, memory and mental illness. Alongside the band, vocalist Atsuko Kamura will play the role of live benshi (narrator and storyteller), recounting the tale of a sectioned woman and her husband’s doomed attempts to extricate her from the asylum. The film has recently undergone a sumptuous restoration, and with Sinestro Home Video’s terrific new accompaniment it should be a festival opener to remember.

SUN 5 MAY

SAT 4 MAY

The evening will also feature the world première of a brand-new piece of music and video specially created for this performance by multi-award winning composer Lara Poe.

FLATPACK FESTIVAL: A PAGE OF MADNESS REMODELLING THE HAPPINESS MACHINE

SPACE ODYSSEYS 12pm Centrala

SOUNDSCREEN 7pm Recital Hall £10 (£8) This event sees the NEXT cohort combining live performance with moving image – the films ranging from the surrealist Franco-Spanish 1929 film Un Chien Andalou to Nicole Lizée’s spellbinding Alfred Hitchcock mashup.

Birmingham Record Company Day launches an exciting partnership between BRC and the internationally acclaimed NMC Records with this special one day festival featuring performances and works from many of the artists associated with the label.

VOYAGE FOOG, PHAT MOOG

Expect to hear a diverse range of explorative, energised and fresh new work ranging from minimal, rhythmically driving music for piano and electronics through to wild ensemble composition and performance works which question the nature of concert music presentation in radical and innovative ways.

12.30pm The Lab

Join us to celebrate this unique development and experience some of the future releases from the label performed by an array of exceptional artists. #BIRMINGHAMNEWMUSIC £5 individual event, £20 day ticket

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

For surround-sound Moog-based electroacoustic.

ED BENNETT: OUT OF NOWHERE Xenia Pestova piano Ed Bennett electronics

Out of Nowhere draws upon material from the traditional Irish air Pórt Na BPúcaí (known in English as Song of the Fairies), a ghostly and beautiful tune believed to have originated in the Blasket Islands off the remote south west coast of Ireland.

Lauded for ‘dynamic energy and crystalline precision’ (RTE Nova Ireland) Xenia Pestova’s performances and recordings have earned her a reputation as a leading interpreter of uncompromising repertoire of her generation.

Ed Bennett’s music has been described as ‘anarchic’ (Irish Times), ‘manic’ (Classical Music) and ‘thrilling’ (Gramophone) and is often characterised by its strong rhythmic energy, extreme contrasts and the combination of acoustic, electronic and multimedia elements.

£6 (£4) 50 years on from the first person walking on the moon, we thought we’d honour that milestone and task this year’s crop of RBC composers with the challenge of writing and performing new scores to four short films exploring the theme of ‘space’. Featuring work from Charlotte Kedge, Oliver Hayne, Kunling Liu, Catherine Mole, Alvin Kwok, Jonah Raes, Rob Roberts, Hannah Liu, Tristan Kersten and Adam Parry-Davies.

11am Recital Hall

This work was commissioned for Xenia Pestova by INTER / actions Festival for Interactive Electronic Music / Frontiers+ Festival / Cork Orchestral Society and was made possible with funding through Beyond Borders from the PRS for Music Foundation, Creative Scotland, Arts Council of Ireland, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Arts Council of Wales.

Ed Bennett

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

THU 2 MAY

Catalogue d’Emojis

BIRMINGHAM RECORD COMPANY DAY

Errollyn Wallen Credit: Hugo Glendinning

Errollyn Wallen Credit: Dominic Harris

CATALOGUE D’EMOJIS POST-PARADISE 4pm Workshop 2 Post-Paradise is a grassroots experimental music series run by a collective of composers based in Birmingham, UK. Now in its third season, they have created a centre of activity for new music in the city, programming established and emerging composers from the UK and abroad. This concert will be a one-off event, showcasing the curatorial vision of the series in a different space and format.

NEXT MUSICIANS/THALLEIN ENSEMBLE WITH ERROLLYN WALLEN (PIANO) 2pm Recital Hall Errollyn Wallen piano Thallein Ensemble NEXT Musicians Andrew Toovey Music for the painter Jack Smith Andrew Hamilton Waldo Genevieve Murphy Your Blue, my Purple Kirsty Devaney Root Fumiko Miyachi Hedge Errollyn Wallen Greenwich Variations Joe Cutler Slippery Music

THIS IS ABOUT 6pm Recital Hall

As part of this special day of events, the inaugural cohort of NEXT musicians joins our Thallein Ensemble for a programme of new and recent works from composers, who are either tutors or graduates of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. This event will be recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Hear and Now.

Created by Seán Clancy and Andy Ingamells This could be about being an Englishman in Ireland playing Gaelic sports in secret. It could be about having a son and being a dad, about male friendship and bonding, buddy movies and playing catch in the back garden on a sunny afternoon. It might also be about making electronic sounds, possibly with text, somewhere between improvisation, composition, hurling, co-operating, and being open to suggestion.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

7.30pm The Lab A concert event by Paul Norman and Michael Wolters Feat. Cobalt Duo (Kate Halsall and Fumiko Miyachi) Emojis are a comparatively recent addition to our lives, but their look and style as well as their use has shaped the way we communicate. They are a pictorial, symbol-driven language and thus quite close to the language of music notation.

Anna Palmer Credit: Tom White

Some people use them in every text message they send, some people revert back to their old Nokia phone to avoid them. The selection of emojis decided on by the developers is fascinating, their official names and descriptions create fantastically odd texts, the gender and race issues around emojis say a lot about the state of the world.

We have created Catalogue d’Emojis as a “concert event” (which is not really a thing but it’s about as close as we can get to a definition that we are happy with). It could also be called “music theatre”, but we think that “concert” emphasises the fact that it is a through-composed piece of music. “Event”, on the other hand, relates to the FLUXUSinspired idea of the “event score” and the fact that we give ourselves tasks that we execute in the performance.

When the audience walks in they will have a choice of sitting or standing. There is only one row of chairs that surrounds the stage. This brings the audience extremely close to what the performers are doing. The show consists of lots of music but also movement and dance, text and stories, vegan music and more.

BRC LAT E 9pm Eastside Jazz Club An all-star line-up bring today’s one day festival celebrating Birmingham Record Company to a close.

This event features sets from Conservatoire tutors and graduates including Khyam Allami, Luke Deane, Anna Palmer, Howard Skempton and Errollyn Wallen.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

Dane Hurst Credit: Karl Schoemaker

MON 10 – SAT 22 JUN AT ROYAL BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATOIRE INSPIRED FESTIVAL CELEBRATES THE CREATIVITY OF BIRMINGHAM CITY UNIVERSITY’S FINAL-YEAR ARTS, DESIGN AND MEDIA STUDENTS THROUGH A WEEK OF EXCITING GRADUATE SHOWS. Student work will be on display, embracing areas of architecture, art, English, design, fashion, jewellery, textiles, visual communication and live performance. We invite you to explore all of our exhibitions and performances, and join us in celebrating the launch of the next generation of creative talent. Enjoy the shows! For more information and for full Inspired Festival listings, please visit www.bcu.ac.uk/inspired

TUE 11 JUN

DAVE MARIC & MILLENNIAL PERCUSSION 6pm Recital Hall £10 (£8)

SUN 5 MAY

NEW VOICES – SCINTILLA LAB 6pm The Lab £10 (£6) including a free drink Dane Hurst dance/choreography Jack McNeill clarinets James Dooley live electronics Stuart Brown drums/percussion Stuart Brown MNDMTH Liz Johnson Scintilla (work-in-progress)

Followed by an open discussion between artists and audience introduced by Richard Whitelaw.

This event provides a unique insight into two new worksin-progress: Scintilla creates a rich tapestry of dance, live poetry and music, weaving through layers of live electronics that transform and shape-shift, exploring wild exterior landscapes and the interior landscape of the mind with award-winning choreographer/dancer Dane Hurst.

MNDMTH is a new solo project exploring the use of drums to trigger and manipulate live audio-visual elements, creating an immersive, multi-media performance which challenges the traditional role of the drummer. Liz Johnson and Stuart Brown are among Sound and Music’s current ‘New Voices’ artists, and there will be a chance to discover the rich and varied work of the full New Voices cohort through a listening station at the event.

Have your say over a free drink in a post-performance conversation with choreographer Dane Hurst, and composer Liz Johnson.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

TUE 11 JUN

Producer Adrian Spillett Director Dave Maric

4pm The Lab

Dave Maric piano/electronics Millennial Percussion

INTEGRA LAB £8 (£6) Integra Lab presents a selection of interactive music technology performances showcasing staff research and performance collaborations. Exploring live electronics, gestural controllers and music interaction design, this concert will feature exciting new works.

Dave Maric Vigil movement 3 “London Brick” Dave Maric Two scenes from “Ghosts” Dave Maric On Impulse Dave Maric A Greek Tragedy Dave Maric Trophic Cascades movements 5 & 6 Dave Maric We Made Us, movement 3 “Finsbury Park” Dave Maric New Work for Percussion Quartet (world première) Millennial Percussion are back for their annual composer featured collaboration. This year they will be presenting the music of the British composer and performer, Dave Maric. Dave will be performing piano and electronics alongside the musicians in an eclectic programme of acoustic and electro-acoustic music. This will feature the world première of his percussion quartet, plus a selection of his concert hall and staged works written during the 2000s and 2010s.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

WED 19 – THU 20 JUN

Join us for a two-day festival of ground-breaking new music as CODA returns to Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Echoing our state-of-the-art venue, artists will perform both inside and out of conventional performance spaces. £5 per event unless otherwise stated

WED 19 JUN

WED 19 JUN

3pm-4pm The Lab

6pm-6.40pm The Lab

Composer Paul Taylor Orchestra in the Shape of a Pear (cond. Yannick Mayaud)

Circles is a new EP release by violinist and composer Anna Olsson. Themed around the circulation of time and space and the cyclic nature of our universe, the short album features five pieces for multitrack violin. This concert will present the compositions in a live context, using live looping, electronics and surround sound to create an immersive aural experience.

CITY LIGHTS

Counterculture of the West Coast USA has inspired a unique experimental tradition in art and music. City Lights is an immersive mixed media work that will explore sonic landscapes of the city of San Francisco through live performance, field recordings and recorded text.

WED 19 JUN

CIRCLES

WED 19 JUN

WORLD MUSIC SHOWCASE 11am-12pm The Lab World Music! We tend to forget about the non-western side of music, and this concert is specifically dedicated to showcasing all different types of music. Ranging from: Indian, African, Asian, Middle-Eastern, Central and South American, Oceana, Afro-Cuban music and Klezmer.

BLUSH & NAME BY MONDAY – BEYOND SONGS

WED 19 JUN

1pm-2pm The Lab

8pm-9pm The Lab

Alex Collett-Sinfield and Cam Athanasiades have put two interdepartmental groups of performers and composers together. They would like to unite them to produce Beyond Songs, a concert consisting of a variety of quasi-improvised music accompanied by visuals, playing heavily with texture and structure. The group will include a diverse mix of acoustic and electronic instruments, and their interplay will be central to the composition.

The groups would also like to explore means of alternative notation and visuals to accompany the music during the performance.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

ANALYSIS WED 19 JUN

SHE PLAYS ANGEL MUSIC (WHERE PEOPLE MIGHT DIE) 5pm-6pm Recital Hall

She plays angel music (where people might die) is a concert installation by Michael Wolters and Paul Norman involving a number of female harpists dragging their harps on trolleys across a virtual map of Europe, while telling the biographies of male harp composers.

By Susannah Self Abhishek Shivakumar technology Meghan Blaszczyszyn video artist

Analysis explores turning points in the composer’s life through the prism of a ten year Jungian analysis. It is dark, witty, revealing and outrageous: ‘I remove all my clothes’. Nothing is off-limits! The analyst listens, reflects: ‘I have been waiting for this moment all my life’. The work ‘plays’ within an interactive installation consisting of a complex three dimensional labyrinth, in which everyone is invited to participate.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

WED 19 JUN

THU 20 JUN

THU 20 JUN

9.45pm-10.30pm Boult’s Bar and Restaurant

12.30pm-1.30pm Eastside Jazz Club

7pm-8pm Boult’s Bar and Restaurant

Free admission

The Creative Ensemble comprises performer-composers from RBC with works encompassing a broad range of approaches, from the completely notated to the completely improvised, and everything in between.

Free admission

RM2: FRAGMENTARY

Artist/composer group RM2 present Fragmentary.

A continuous 45-minute mixed media performance comprising short fragments of material amongst moments of improvisation. Expect a cosy evening of tape loops, found objects, video, singing and small acoustic instruments.

CREATIVE ENSEMBLE

RM2 is comprised of Birmingham-based composers Dan Cippico, Tom Earl, Oliver Farrow and Peter Bell.

GEORGE WEST//PETER BELL//JAMES ABEL

An electronic trio exploring ideas of waste, noise and the downright absurd. This immersive experience sees the trio using a variety of concepts and processes to explore discarded objects and material collected from around Birmingham.

THU 20 JUN

l(a

3pm-3.50pm The Lab One event. Once.

THU 20 JUN

SINGER-SONGWRITER SHOWCASE 8.30pm-9.30pm The Lab Hear a diverse range of music from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire composers in this eclectic set.

WED 19 JUN

ARR.

10am – 12am Workshop 1 Free admission This all day installation is the product of a year’s toil of bin diving and arranging wasted sheet music into a mix of visual art, interactive workshops and happenings. arr. forces the audience to confront the wasteful attitude of society in various practical activities.

THU 20 JUN

JAWBREAKER 11am-11.20am Eastside Jazz Club Free admission

THU 20 JUN

TENDER BUTTONS: OBJECTS, FOOD, ROOMS 2pm-2.50pm Organ Studio Free admission Featuring Thomas Strønen Gertrude Stein’s ground-breaking stream of consciousness work of 1914: ‘Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms’ has been heralded as “a masterpiece of verbal cubism”. Her unique writing style challenges traditional alignments of words addressing instead their underlying sound and rhythm: “By departing from conventional meaning, grammar and syntax, she attempted to capture ‘moments of consciousness’ independent of time and memory.”

This contemporary interpretation of Stein’s work is a cross-disciplinary symbiosis of composition and improvisation, setting her unorthodox text for four piece vocal ensemble (SATB) and improvisers: drums/ percussion/electronics and trumpet.

Short and to the point, Jawbreaker is a seven part suite of music that aims to cut out the nonsense and get straight to the point. Each part revolves around a single simple idea that is quickly developed, experimented with, and then thrown away! Each layer of the suite offers a new flavour to be enjoyed, sometimes pleasant and palatable, but sometimes raw and aggressive.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

THU 20 JUN

SKIN

6pm-6.30pm The Lab An immersive concert-installation experience exploring the concept of body image through sound and moving image.

A compilation of experiences, emotions and considerations of practicality form a structure for understanding and the potential of rejection, acceptance or neutrality.

THU 20 JUN

PHAME

9.45pm-10.30pm Boult’s Bar and Restaurant Free admission Phame is a transatlantic collaboration that creates an uncomfortable post-anarchic doom narrative that thrives on bleakness. It is a project that aims to challenge the perception of the musical “works of art” by extending the boundaries of what is deemed the performance by the act of disruption as a musical gesture.

FURTHER PROGRAMME DETAILS AVAILABLE AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS

SUPPORTERS & EVENT FUNDERS

HOW TO FIND US Royal Birmingham Conservatoire is situated at 200 Jennens Road, Birmingham B4 7XR, opposite Aston University and behind Millennium Point.

PARKING

There is a multi-storey car park owned and managed

by Birmingham City Council situated adjacent to Millennium Point. The car park entrance is on Howe Street off Jennens Road. If you are using a sat nav please use the postcode B4 7AP.

BUS ROUTES Please note all listings correct at time of going to press.

The 14, 55 and 66 all go from Priory Queensway (Argos) and stop on Jennens Road. There is a stop almost opposite Royal Birmingham Conservatoire with a pedestrian crossing nearby.

ACCESSIBILITY

Wheelchair users are entitled to concessionary priced tickets with a complimentary companion seat. Guide Dogs are welcome at all Royal Birmingham Conservatoire venues. If you wish to bring a Guide Dog or wheelchair, please let the Events Office know by calling 0121 331 5909.

BOOK NOW AT WWW.BCU.AC.UK/CONCERTS