GEMS - Mysterious Encounters (22 November 2018)

NEXT CONCERT in Glasgow Experimental Music Series:

February 2019 (exact date TBC) at The Project CafĂŠ, Glasgow

Featuring experimental music by local and international composers and two new GEMS commissions: a piece for speaker, audio and ensemble about musical commentaries by Patrick Shand; and a video-score for piano duet by Jolon Dixon which uses pseudo-synesthesia and moving shapes and textures to find new playful and choreographic potential in musicianship.

And -

Glasgow Experimental Music Series Mysterious Encounters

A fun group workshop exploring experimental music composition and performance (no musical expertise required).

Cover image by Neslihan Tepehan

Glasgow Experimental Music Series wishes to thank Hinrichsen Foundation and Enterprise Music Scotland for their generous support.

The Old Hairdresser’s Thursday 22 November 2018 19.00-20.00

Programme

Welcome to Glasgow Experimental Music Series!

Ewan Pearce – E1 (Encounter with Interior Space)

(2018)

Frank Denyer - Whispers

(2010)

Antoine Beuger – place

(1996-7)

Louis d’Heudieres – Laughter Studies 3

(2016)

Ewan Pearce – E2 (Encounter with a Body and its Image)

(2018)

Cathy van Eck – groene ruis

(2007)

Gregor Forbes / Neslihan Tepehan – Passing Piece

(2018)

Ewan Pearce – E3 (Encounter with Sun)

(2018)

This is an extremely exciting concert in the development of the series as the work we are presenting takes us in several new directions at once. Most notably, there are collaborations with artists outside of the musical world. Neslihan Tepehan is a designer from Istanbul who has been based in Edinburgh for the past few years. Her recent work has been a series of beautiful and enigmatic objects, which are primarily to be used in dance as a way of creating indeterminacy. Tonight, these objects are the focal point of a ritualistic music and movement process piece that Nesli and I devised together.

Ewan Pearce is an artist from Glasgow who is developing ideas in several media, and his brand new video projections will be shown intermittently amongst the musical items. In Ewan’s own words: This video work seeks to engage with the experience of encounter in the every day. Looking, thinking, feeling or not feeling. Moments often passed by in the actions of daily life are reassessed and further explored in their immediate realities through imagined potentials. Each encounter is a suggestion – of what, it is unsure.

Besides these ventures into visual art, the rest of the programme has a strong theatrical current. The first twenty minutes of the concert is devoted to Whispers, a remarkable work for solo performer by Frank Denyer which invokes a highly individual world of domestic-like intimacy and imaginative play, inspired to some extent by Denyer’s work as an ethnomusicologist.

Gregor Forbes, performer Rebecca Pericleous, violin, plant, performer Filipa Portela, performer Objects designed and built by Neslihan Tepehan Projections by Ewan Pearce Paul Michael Henry, sound engineer Many thanks to Lewis Forbes for additional tech help

It is also a delight to include an early piece by Antoine Beuger, one which defines the initial aims of the Wandelweiser group with their interest in the varieties of perception and the integration of silence into the musical experience, following the example of John Cage. Antoine’s music, along with music by his Wandelweiser peers Michael Pisaro, Eva-Maria Houben and Jürg Frey, has been featured in the Series before and we are much indebted to these composers’ open sense of community and sharing.

Louis d’Heudieres’ wonderful Laughter Studies pieces have also been performed by us before and we are excited to progress onto the third in the series. Of course, no experimental music series would be worth its salt without a piece for amplified plant, and we are thrilled to be featuring groene ruis by Cathy van Eck, which stages the mythical transformation of the nymph Daphne into a plant and it reflects on the relationship between humans and nature.