PROGRAMME NOTES

When the LPO announced the brief for this concert – works of art, or other art forms that we respond to creatively – I immediately knew what my topic would be. Aerial arts, a subset of circus arts, was recommended to support ongoing rehabilitation and strengthening needed due to my medical condition, and this performance art captured my interest from the very first trapeze session. Although I will certainly not be flying to the heights some achieve, I was able to feel some of the freedom of movement, thrill and skill acquisition I used to enjoy in arts and sports I can no longer access. I was captivated by the rich history of the medium in all its forms, as well as all that professional aerial artists are creating today.

When I sat down to write the very first sketches, I started at the beginning: the fundamentals of movement and balance. What is now the opening of the work considered micro-adjustments of muscles in either direction needed to stay balanced. This led to consideration of other movements: swinging, tumbling, plunging and spiralling, all of which were explored. The structure is loosely based on the idea of a circus performance, with acts coming and going. As I continued writing I found myself increasingly drawn to explore the images, sounds and sensations imagined in my daydream circus, curated from all my favourite performances. With this, the piece began looking ever more outward –at the history, iconography and playful character of this long-practised and -appreciated art form.

ZL

Manchester-based ZAKIYA LEEMING is a postdoctoral composer at the Royal Northern College of Music and a member of PRiSM (Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music). Born in Australia, her artistic research often involves interdisciplinary collaborations in the fields of science and medicine. Recent commissions include the Royal Philharmonic Society, Riot Ensemble, Ensemble Recherche, Future Music Festival, Explore Ensemble and Psappha. Zakiya has devised and directed a number of artistic events, including #MusicSaysDataSavesLives with Connected Health Cities (CHC), pairing four composers with health data scientists in a sold-out concert at the Manchester Museum, and Dawn, on the Morning After the Storm for Professor Calum Semple OBE and members of ISARIC4C, an international consortium of researchers and doctors whose outputs informed the UK government on COVID-19.

In her undergraduate degree at the University of Tasmania, Zakiya received the Examiner Newspaper Scholarship and the Dean’s Award for Excellence with Honours, and she has been awarded the Soroptimists International Manchester Award in Composition, the Edward Hecht Prize, and a Gold Medal in composition at the Royal Northern College of Music. Zakiya is founding co-director of experimental composer collective Incógnito, and has received a Wellcome Grant to develop a chamber opera with Oxford University Sidney Truelove Professor Paul Klenerman on the science and history of vaccines.

Zakiya was selected for the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Composer Programme 2021/22, and her work has been featured by The Guardian and on BBC Radio 4.