Musarc presents:
See, We Assemble II
Saturday 23 Mar 2024, 6–8pm
St Bonifatius German Catholic Church
47 Adler Street, London E1 1EE
* Doors and bar open 5.30pm
Concert 6–8pm
Doors and bar close 9pm
Programme Directors
Joseph Kohlmaier
Sam Belinfante
Director of Music
David Young
Associate Conductors
Cathy Heller Jones
Patricia Auchterlonie
Robert Allan
Norbert Meyn
Standard Issue
Michelle Hromin, Bass Clarinet
Gordon Cervoni, viola
Matilda Sacco, Violin
Amalia Young, Violin
Sound Recordist
Simon Reynell
Photography
Yiannis Katsaris
Food + Drink
Sophie Barshall
Belen Duran
Emily Foster
Toni Gutman
Dan Knight
Carol Mancke
Zeina Nasr
Toby O’Connor
Anna Schabel
Event Support
Afroditi Zernelis
Luca Artini
Ania Krypska
Fabio Mandoloni
Special Thanks
Rev Andreas Blum
Carol Mancke
Kirsty Ferguson-Lewis
Mariam Morshed
Derk Ringers
Reuben Esterhuizen
Ivo Krankowski
See, We Assemble II is Musarc’s latest invitation for the audience to enter the apparatus of the recording studio with its controls, props and wires, recorders, reels, and sonic apertures: to be a witness as the ensemble starts the machines that make the archive instant, to audit that we were there together, not invented by AI, driving a plough through a magnetic field, recording to the left, liveness to the right, cooking, preserving, post pickling on air.
In the first part of the programme, the ensemble attempts a collective performance of Benjamin Patterson’s seminal Fluxus piece Paper Music (1960), originally scored for five performers and 75 sheets of paper. ‘See, We Assemble’ from Henry Purcell’s semi-opera King Arthur (1691), for which the choir is joined by musicians from Standard Issue, is rendered with new words by Joseph Kohlmaier and Edwina Attlee in an arrangement for chorus, small ensemble and objects the singers animate on a Foley table. Nafas ar-Rahman (breath of the compassionate) is a new rendition of Jan Hendrickse’s ongoing project with the ensemble of manufacturing overtone-flutes from proprietary plumbing components and dowels that sees the choir test the harmonic and material affordance of air vibrating in a column, and the common anatomy of instruments and voices.
The second part of the programme features a performance of Johannes Brahms’s epic 1879 motet Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen, set to a verse from the book of Job which opens and closes with the ‘why’ of the theodicy, the vindication of divine providence in the presence of suffering and injustice. The version Musarc will be performing features interventions by composer Sylvia Lim and will be recorded on an old reel-to-reel tape recorder, played back into the space and recorded again. The final artefact captures the reduction, loss and what may be sacrificed when direct experience is deferred. At the same time, the record defies entropy and creates something new through translation, interpretation, and its ability to be continuously repeated, copied, restored, remastered.
Parts of See, We Assemble II are repetitions and audits in themselves, with Lim’s version of the Brahms motet and the new lyrics for the Purcell first having been performed by Musarc on the occasion of See, We Assemble at LCMF in 2019, but never recorded.
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The event takes place in and is generously supported by St Bonifatius, one of the East End of London’s many modernist churches and itself part of a giant record of the transformation cities undergo in the face of destruction and deterioration, and the persisting power of refuge and community. Find out more here: dkg-london.org
John Dryen
‘See, We Assemble,’ from the libretto for King Arthur
See, see, we assemble, Thy revels to hold:
Tho’ quiv’ring with cold, We chatter and tremble.
Edwina Attlee A fit of pique
Yes yes this is a guilty song a song of guilt and dreadful wrong we failed you all so long. A song of guilt and dreadful wrong and mould
the sporing of mould
the scrunching of bones. You perish perish perish
I chop chop chop chop chop. I chop chop chopped you you perish!
Guilty in my dark voluptuous heart guilty in my dark and velvet heart
the sporing of mould
the scrunching of bones
cherry cherry cherry tree you perish
I sigh.
See, We Assemble II
Saturday 23 Mar 2024, 6–8pm
Ada Egg Koskiluoma is a Swiss/ Finnish artist, musician and composer. Their sound practice is rooted in experimental, electronic music production and incorporates field recordings and the writing of words. They are currently working on a new album. Pickling and fermenting food, as well as gardening makes their heart full. Amy Teh is halfway through her Architecture masters at Central Saint Martins. This year she has been researching ‘hairiness’ in terms of body politics, ecological empathy and straw construction. She loves making things from found materials – most recently wiring old glass bottles into lamps. Andy Cowton is a composer working across multiple platforms of film and performance. Anna Schabel is an architect and director of Wilton Studio Ltd. She is a writer for architecture magazines and visiting university critic. She produced a film about women architects and chaired Women in Architecture UK. She is a school governor and trustee of the Hackney School of Food. Annelie Kops runs her own architectural practice and is a lecturer at Central Saint Martins. Beyond architecture, she has a passion for making beautiful objects, especially wheel-thrown ceramics. As a long-standing member of Musarc, Annelie hass been involved in the inception, development and performance of many of its concerts and other rojects. Aranzazu Fernández Rangel is an architect whose practice centres around public realm design and placemaking. She holds an MA in Narrative Spaces from CSM and a PG Dip in Integrative Arts Psychotherapy from UEL. She is passionate about transforming environments, internal and external, through relationship building and participation. Ashmi Thapar is an architect, maker and performer, driving sustainable design with a social purpose. Alongside her practice in innovative housing, she furthers the discourse by curating events, teaching, participating in expert panels and writing. She is passionate about the body in sound, exploring this with Musarc since 2019. Belen Duran
is an adopted Londoner originally from Seville. She is a systemic psychotherapist working in an NHS organization. She is fascinated by the creative possibilities which evolves in diverse human systems. Belen joined Musarc in 2022 and relishes the opportunity to engage in the co-creation and performance of irreverent and subversive artistic expressions. After 25 years in architectural practice and 10 years teaching, Carol Mancke plays in the intersection of fine art and cities. Her collaborative projects engage different time frames and use images, objects, physicality, humour, hospitality and conversation, to create clearings in the midst of everyday life. She would like to be an ocean or river mammal in her next life. Carolyn Roy is a dancer currently interested in fundamentally useless activities and barely perceptible micro performances. She teaches various things at Trinity Laban, LCDS and Independent Dance and is a member of Chisenhale Dance Space. Charles HM Mok is a former boy soprano and art history major who has previously sung in classical and gospel choirs, and is keen to explore further vocal possibilities. Chrys Papaioannou (they/she) is a critical theorist and scholar-activist. They are currently studying/practising the role of improvisation in collective decision-making within social justice movements. Dan Knight is a multidisciplinary artist who studied sculpture at St Martins and the RCA. He focusses on making large interactive sound sculptures and also makes films, paintings, music and performances. He’s finishing number seventy nine in a series of paintings of a being who is deeply connected with nature. Derk Ringers is a designer and researcher with a strong background in industrial systems. After completing his MA in Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins, he has been working on projects that reimagine systems of material production and social organisation. His work has a strong anthropological focus, and he uses aesthetic decisionmaking to engage with complexity. Through an analytical approach, playful investigations, and speculative provocations, Derk’s work aims to express deverse perspectives and imaging resilient futures. Dominic Thurston is a partner, a son, a friend, a brother, an uncle and a collaborator. Much of his life has been shaped by a fascination with people, how they connect and develop relationships, communities, organisations and cultures. He also likes word games,
sea swims, yellow socks, weird music, and that perfect final mouthful of dinner that has all the best bits (not an exhaustive list). Douglas Cape has certificates for BA(Hons) French, PG Diploma of Theatre Studies, WSET Sommelier, and PADI Open Water Diver. In reality he is a photographer, webmaster, blogger, cyclist, grandfather and jazz fan. Founded z360.com Ece Leah Mirzanlı is an actor, a songwriter, a mover and a painter. Began painting with her bare feet at age five and never stopped! Obsessed with staring at trees, colour coordinating, deep feeling and the duality of life. Striving to close the gap between you and I, to connect each of us to love even in the scariest of moments. Emily Foster is an Architectural Assistant at Allford Hall Monaghan Morris. Having recently completed a degree apprenticeship with the practice, she is an advocate for alternative routes into architecture through her work with the Royal Institute of British Architects and architectural charities such as Open City and HomeGrown Plus.
Franziska Boehm is a somatic movement and voice practitioner, dance artist, and lecturer at London College of Music. She spends her time devoting to the skills of softening, gentleness and releasing. She has a cat called RatBetty and when she isn’t in a studio, she is working in a Spanish deli pairing wine and meat. Hannah Zafiropoulos works as a researcher, designer and curator. She spends most of her time bringing people together to try and solve complex problems.
Hélène Lomenech is a Breton in London since 1996. She is a nurse, massage therapist and currently occupational therapist in a psychiatric hospital. Hélène is interested in people, life and death, spirituality, philosophy, health and well-being and the intricate relationships between body-mind-predispositionenvironment-circumstances-habits, etc. She also studied ceramics in Camberwell, has a great appreciation for music and sounds – notably birds –and enjoys the silent presence of cats. Isabelle Pead is an artist working across sculpture, sound, video and performance. Often utilising large scale installation, her work is informed by actions of storytelling and collectivism, exploring the relationship between the voice and the sounding body. She is interested in how sound and the voice can work as social tools for creating community through shared noise making and sonic experiences.
Ivo Krankowski is a film director, writer and producer based in
London. A member of Musarc since 2015, Jakub Modrzejewski is forever trying to strike a good balance between his work as a software engineer and a passion for music and performance. Jeni Be sings and performs with Musarc, with her queer fam F*choir, on her bike & with bands Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business, Trash Kit and Zahra Haji Fath Ali Tehrani. She works in child rights programming for the UN and occasionally in film production. She loves nature and swimming in cold water. Jeni writes poetry and sometimes shares it. She is known for her salads and playlists. Manu Wachter works on diversity, equity and inclusion in organizations. He’s passionate about the interplay between uniqueness and commonality between people, which was one of the motivations to join Musarc in 2024. Margit Kraft is a registered architect, practicing landscape architect and sculptor and has a specialism in sustainable architecture, natural healthy materials and collective construction. She was trained in music since she was six and has been performing collectively since the age of ten; engaging creatively with space, sound and performance form an active part of her practice. The outcomes of Margit’s creative process are as varied as the challenges she meets when engaging with a brief; a collection of proposals for repair and hope. Mariam Bergloff is a music researcher and sound artist based in London. Her compositions take the form of dissonant soundscapes, noisy polyrhythmic loops and generative sound collages. She is also half of Spiraal, a new electronic duo drawing upon the paranormal, OSTs, field recordings, discordant melodies and restless dreams. As part of the newest cohort to join Musarc, Mia Damerum enjoys rekindling her love of group singing and push my musical capabilities. When Mia is not singing, she can usually be found baking, outdoor swimming, or trying to string together a dissertation on Japanese feminist sci-fi. Natalie Savva is an Architect, educator, exhibition designer and scenographer. She has always lived on an island and finds peace in scuba diving and sweltering cross country road trips. An alumna of the Cooper Union, she co-founded multidisciplinary design house Studio naama and teaches Architecture at Oxford Brookes University with a focus on collective and sustainable housing. Paul Martin Art School: Painting, Reliefs, Sculpture, Environment & Performances with fellow students including electronic
tape. Sculpture: Tape Pieces (with fan) Film: River Film, Mist on Mountains etc. Competitions: Botanic Gardens Station, Glasgow; Bellevor Tor, Dartmoor; River Crossings, London. Book: Spirals through Eye. Exhibition: Along the Roman Wall - LYC Museum, Banks (photographs). Sound: Crossness Pumping Station. Field Studies 2012 and following with Davide Tidoni, Aki Onda and Akio Suzuki, Joseph Kohlmaier and others. Musarc Choir since 2013. Unbuilt roads. Rebecca Faulkner is a sea loving Norfolk-dumpling, on occasion she sings, boogies, collects, compiles, writes, ponders, gardens, designs, draws, drifts, walks, reads, cries, laughs and breathes. Reuben Esterhuizen is a composer and performer studying for a Masters degree in composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His music explores minimalism, sparseness, repetition, and not knowing. He is a guitarist and vocalist, playing both open and fixed pieces of his own and others. He is also interested in text scores, and the aesthetics of the commons. Sam Belinfante is a London-based artist. Along with filmmaking and photography, his practice incorporates curating, sound and performance. Recent exhibitions include On the Heights, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2017); This is a Voice at MAAS Sydney and Wellcome Collection, London (2016-17) and To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells, Radar at Loughborough’s Carillion (2018). Recent performances include The Long, very long Journey with Laure Prouvost at Kunshalle Wien, Vienna; Feedback at Palais De Tokyo, Paris (2017) and On the One Hand and the Other at Camden Art Centre where he was artist in residence 2015-16.In 2021 Belinfante presented On the Circulation of Blood, a major sculptural and performance commission for Creative Folkestone Triennial. He is currently Artist in Residence at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (2023). Telling stories on her piano, Saori Miraku is a self- created pianist composer, improvisor and performer. Her musical work includes her compositions, piano solo, improvisation based collaborations with instrumentalists, sound artists and visual artists. Saori has released her piano solo album Many Times on Earth in December 2023, composed and performed by Saori. She also appears in short films, videos and photographic projects. Serena Braida is a poet, writer and performer from Rome, Italy. She is currently a lecturer in Voice at the London College
of Music, University of West London. Sophie Barshall Sophie is a writer and artist from London. Her masters degree in History of Art and Visual Culture informs her practice, encompassing experimental publishing and performance making. Sophie edits The Toe Rag, an arts and culture magazine focused on non-profit and independent work in London. Toby O’Conor enjoys vocal performance, listening and swimming particularly in rivers. He is a local authority urban designer, currently with Swansea City Council and teaches architecture at University College London. He is a happy (go lucky) tenor and sometimes tries to sing alto. Toni Gutman, happily in Hackney since 1973, now spends her time in Musarc, and Maspindzeli (the London Georgian Choir), gardening on her balcony and in Hackney Tree Nursery, Balkan dancing, chatting to neighbours, and (in vain) trying to keep up with all the music, theatre etc. that London offers. Zeina Nasr is a songwriter, improviser, analog synth devotee, and lover of cats. These days, Zsófia Varga’s life mainly consists of studying the UK tax system, going to concerts, and promising herself every day that she’d go to bed earlier next time.
Musarc is one of the UK’s foremost experimental choral assemblies. Founded by Joseph Kohlmaier at the School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University in 2008, the ensemble has developed a distinct reputation for its interdisciplinary, open-minded and research-led approach to music and performance, and the space it affords artists and singers to experiment with new ideas. Since its inception, the choir has collaborated with more than one hundred artists and composers, including Jennifer Walshe, Peter Broderick, Jay Bernard, Lin Chiwei, Jack Sheen, Laure Provost, Ed Atkins, Jenny Moore, Lina Lapelyte, Sam Belinfante, Fritz Hauser, Neil Luck and many others; and numerous festivals and arts organisations in the UK and abroad – including Artangel, BBC Proms, London Contemporary Music Festival, Palais de Tokyo (Paris), the Royal Academy, CCA Goldsmiths, Post Disaster Rooftops (Italy), Museum of London, Extra City (Antwerp), Serpentine Gallery, MK Gallery, Wysing Polyphonic, STUK (Leuwen) Cafe OTO, Bold Tendencies and Whitechapel Gallery. Musarc us open to everyone and does not audition. Over the years, the choir has enabled more than 300 singers to be part of contemporary art and music in the making.
Jan Hendrickse is an artist, performer, researcher and educator, receiving commissions for concert performance, installation works and dance scores. He has appeared with a range of artists from electronic and freely improvised musics, such as Ornette Coleman, Mark Fell, Rian Treanor and David Toop, as well as featuring regularly as a soloist on traditional instruments for major film scores. He designs, makes and modifies instruments for performance and workshop processes. He trained as a western Classical flute player, but has researched and studied many other flute traditions. He now performs mostly with self-made and traditional instruments including Turkish Ney, Tanzanian Filimbi, Chinese Xiao and Dizi as well as Rajasthani Satara and Alghoza. Jan has taught Turkish Ney at the Yunus Emre institute in London as well as in private classes. Jan teaches socially-engaged practice and practice-based research at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and has also led creative projects for in communities around the world including Gambia, Thailand, Germany and Gaza and the West Bank. His PhD research examined the epistemic models adopted in creative practice. He is experienced in facilitating conversations and interviews and has chaired discussions with the musicologist Georgina Born and artists Mark Fell, Michael Gordon and CC Hennix, amongst others. He has recently been a visiting lecturer at ZKM in Karlsruhe as well as Trinity Laban in London. He has just returned from Nepal where he was collaborating with leading UK electronic producers and Nepali musicians.
Sylvia Lim is a composer based in the UK. Her works are intimate, exploring a small amount of material in depth. She is interested in the materiality of sound, notions of close listening, perception, rawness and instability. Recent commissions include music for Ars Nova Ensemble Instrumental + The Riot Ensemble, Mira Benjamin (Music We’d Like to Hear), EXAUDI, The Hermes Experiment, Prague Quiet Music Collective, and Tabea Debus + Samuele Telari. Her music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, ABC Classic and KFAI. Sylvia is the 2022 winner of Rubiks Collective’s Pythia Prize. Sylvia completed her PhD (‘Exploring organic decay through sound’) at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where she also gained a first class Bachelor of Music (Honours) and a Master of Music with distinction, winning the Ian Horsbrugh Memorial Prize for Composition in 2015. She now teaches composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and The Purcell School.
Joseph Kohlmaier is the founder of Musarc and has acted as creative director for the ensemble since 2008. Joseph’s interdisciplinary practice, which brings together performance, research and teaching, curatorial projects, design, and publishing, has been a driving force in the development of the choir and the foundation of its open, experimental and researchled approach. Joseph is Associate Professor in Critical and Contextual Studies at the School Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University, and the founding director of graphic design practice Polimekanos (2001–2020) and Cours de Poétique, an independent imprint specialising in art, critical theory and music.
David Young is Musarc’s new Director of Music. A conductor working on a diverse range of projects across the UK and beyond, David is Chorus Director of the National Symphony Chorus, Ireland, and currently acting as guest Musical Director with the Cambridge University Symphony Chorus. He has worked extensively with the BBC Symphony Chorus, and prepared them and the BBC Singers for a collaboration with Jon Hopkins and Jules Buckley at the 2023 BBC Proms. Forthcoming engagements include conducting Mendelssohn Elijah in Cambridge, a Christmas concert with New London Singers, preparing Mahler Symphony No. 2 for Anja Bihlmaier and Vaughan Williams A Sea Symphony for Leonard Slatkin in Dublin, as well as conducting J.S. Bach St Matthew Passion, also with the NSO. He has recently collaborated with Oliver Beer on his Resonance Caves project, working on recording sessions in the Grotte Font-deGaume where 20,000 year old cave paintings are found. As guest conductor he has appeared with RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and recorded Paul Frost’s orchestral suite The Burning of Cork with RTÉ Concert Orchestra. He has had tenures as Musical Director of Cardiff Polyphonic Choir, Reading Bach Choir, Dorking Choral Society and Stafford Choral Society, and as Choral Director at the Yehudi Menuhin School. His guest work with choirs also includes Huddersfield Choral Society, The Royal College of Music Chorus, amateur choirs all across the UK and a number of professional groups in London including St Martin’s Voices and The Portrait Choir. David regularly works as chorus muaste and has held the post of Sir Alexander Gibson Fellow with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra Chorus.
Standard Issue is a London-based new music collective that goes beyond the archetypal boundaries within music and its culture. As active curators, commissioners, and performers of new music, the group brings fresh perspectives to works by eclectic living composers. standard issue is passionate about the accessibility of new and experimental music and hopes to create unique concert experiences and events that eliminate the barrier between performers and the audience.
Edwina Attlee is a writer and lecturer. She has published two pamphlets of poetry, Roasting Baby (if a leaf falls press, 2016) and the cream (clinic, 2016). A great shaking, Edwina’s first poetry collection, is published with Tenement press in May 2024. Her poetry has also appeared in Test Centre 8, Poetry & Audience and Litmus. Edwina’s writing has also appeared in The White Review, The Architectural Review, Poetry London, Dandelion, the Guardian and The Poetry Review. Her latest book, Strayed Homes: Cultural Histories of the Domestic in Public was published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts in 2022. Edwina teaches Critical and Contextual Studies at the School of Art, Architecture and Design and is a Teaching Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture. She holds a PhD from the London Consortium and runs the reading series Sitting Room.
Part I
Jan Hendrickse + Musarc Nafas ar-Rahman for overtone flutes 2024
Henry Purcell, ‘See, We Assemble’, from King Arthur (1691) arranged for ensemble and Foley objects by Musarc and Joseph Kohlmaier. Words by Edwina Attlee and Joseph Kohlmaier
Benjamin Patterson Paper Piece (1960)
20’ interval
Part II
Johannes Brahms + Sylvia Lim Warum (1911/2017)
Musarc is based at and supported by the School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University. The choir rehearses near Aldgate East on Tuesday evenings from September–July. To find out more about the choir and how to join visit musarc.org
Joseph Kohlmaier
Song of the Earth
i Ev’rything emerged from thee, there ain’t no thing, believe thou me, what we’ve been told that thou canst hold!
A microchip Messiah-son, a crucifix Leviathan, pink wood. We fled the lame doxology, abject orientology, we flung the flintscraps at her, and into Plato’s catarrh, I think that to the latter, we scrolled.
ii
Bladder-like, this theory, remained afloat inside of me: Why blame the dish and not the fish?
An electron’s reality is not something that we can see, we’re told.
We fashion for its burial a celluloid memorial. It doesn’t work on paper, the protons bend and taper, each blossoms like a caper, of gold!
iii
This tv-theodicy, a doors and eyes pornography, of ashes bones and zeros ones.
Two years of death’s magnificence, God’s cat has left the earth twice since, Blue Velvet foaled.
A dark online tutorial, we’ve all become fossorial, our hands are getting fatter, with arses of grey matter we turn into earth’s satyr, and mould!