October 2010
What you’re into if you’re into sound and music
The magazine of
JACOB KIRKEGAARD BEYOND SOUND Liza Lim Processes of revelation Darmstadt Past and present
Welcome to the October issue of INTO ‘Transmissions’ is the title of Sound and Music’s series of live events at 2010’s Cut & Splice festival – an evocative title that brings to mind all kinds of electronic phenomena, from ghostly radio broadcasts to signals from outer space. Not surprisingly, radio transmissions have proved to be fertile ground for those experimenting with music and sound over many years. Cut & Splice: Transmissions explores this tradition with performances of key works by John Cage, Earle Brown and Antonin Artaud, alongside contemporary artists such as Tetsuo Kogawa, Nicolas Collins and Jacob Kirkegaard, the subject of this month’s cover feature. Kirkegaard talks to Emily Bick about exploring the hidden sounds of places and processes, from the workings of the inner ear to the deserted buildings of Chernobyl, illustrating his fascination with both the aesthetics and science of resonance and hearing. Elsewhere, Nicolas Collins – author of hacker’s bible Handmade Electronic Music – takes over October’s How To feature with a foray into the art of ‘circuit-sniffing’.
Published by Sound and Music www.soundandmusic.org Contact: into-magazine@soundandmusic.org
The properties of sound are also rich source material for the musical imagination of composer Liza Lim, whose work explores issues of identity, history and belief through compositions that are both rigorous and flexible. Tim RutherfordJohnson pieces together the elements of her music. Finally, Shortlist composers Nicholas Peters and Gregory Emfietzis report back from their first experience of the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. In this month’s Sound and Music news, we’re pleased to announce the selections for the new Adopt a Composer scheme in which emerging composers are paired with amateur ensembles, and look ahead to a new series of collaborations and performances. Frances Morgan Editor
Managing Editor: Shoël Stadlen Editor: Frances Morgan Designed by: Martina Dahl Original Design: PostParis, www.postparis.com
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Cover Image: Jacob Kirkegaard, Labyrinthitis, Copenhagen 2007 The opinions expressed in INTO are those of the authors and not necessarily those of INTO or Sound and Music. Copyright of all articles is held jointly by Sound and Music and the authors. Unauthorised reproduction of any item is forbidden.
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CONTENTS
C ntents WHAT WE’RE INTO PAGES 6–7
JACOB KIRKEGAARD PAGES 18-25
NEWS PAGES 8–15
LIZA LIM PAGES 26-31
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CONTENTS
DARMSTADT: PAST AND PRESENT PAGES 32-36
HOW TO…WITH NICOLAS COLLINS PAGES 38-39
OPPORTUNITIES PAGES 40-43
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WHAT WE’RE INTO
Mark Fisher, aka K-punk, guest mix for Pontone, ‘The Metaphysics of Crackle’ More Nicolas Collins video tutorials
What we’re INT What we’re INTO is a small monthly round-up of some of the new music and sound that we’ve been enjoying at Sound and Music. Follow the links to see and hear our audio, video and interactive selections. If you would like to submit your work for consideration, see the open call on our website.
Ubuweb podcast, The Sounds of Silence Rebecca Saunders, Traces part 1
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OCTOBER 2010
WHAT WE’RE INTO
Paul Rooney’s McKenzie installation, Liverpool Sound City
Geeta Dayal on disco in Bollywood
Marco Donnarumma, I C::ntr::l Nature v.3.0
Xan Lyons live music and film
David Shrigley video on savethearts-uk.blogspot.com
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NEWS
NEW HUDDERSFIELD ANNOUNCES REBECCA SAUNDERS AND ENNO POPPE FOR 2010 The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival welcomes Rebecca Saunders as its composer in residence for 2010, with performances of six new works over the course of the festival, which runs from 19 to 28 November. There is also a chance to hear Saunders’ ambitious, acclaimed large-scale piece, Chroma, originally commissioned for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, in Huddersfield Town Hall on 27 November. This year’s HCMF also plays host to Enno Poppe, whose striking new work Interzone, performed by ensemble mosaik and Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, will open the festival. Elsewhere, there is a focus on Mauricio Kagel, including a complete performance of Kantrimiusik, and a series of John Cage ‘Happenings’, one of which takes place at dawn in the nearby Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Devised in response to the current touring exhibiton of Cage’s visual art, the concerts, which include a 12-hour drop-in concert of Cage’s piano music by Phil Thomas, re-imagine Cage’s work in unusual settings – including Huddersfield station and even a commuter train. A notable number of female composers and artists feature at HCMF, with performances and new works from Naomi Pinnock, Olga Neuwirth, Lotte Anker and Claudia Molitor. The late Arne Nordheim is remembered in a special tribute concert presented by NOTAM, the Norwegian centre for technology in music and art. www.hcmf.co.uk
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NEWS
THREE DAYS OF ZAPPA AT THE ROUNDHOUSE London’s Roundhouse, once a fixture of the city’s 1960s counterculture, is the fitting home for a series of concerts paying tribute to the late Frank Zappa, whose prolific output included rock albums and works for chamber orchestra. The three-day festival, from 7 to 9 November, celebrates what would have been Zappa’s 70th birthday with performances from members of original band line-ups, Zappa’s son Dweezil Zappa, and ensembles including the London Sinfonietta and London Contemporary Orchestra. The Sinfonietta presents the UK premiere of The Adventures of Greggery Peccary, featuring actor Kwame Kwei-Armah, alongside pieces by Zappa’s inspirations Boulez and
Varèse, while the Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble present instrumental Zappa classics alongside new transcriptions by RAM head of composition, Philip Cashian, and current composition students. www.roundhouse.org.uk
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NEWS
NEW MUSIC ORBIT LAUNCHES INTO NEW TERRITORIES Innovative music network Music Orbit launch their second series of live events on 14 October at Chelsea Theatre with Film/Music/Other, curated by electronic musician and installation artist Joe Banks. The new mO Ensemble, featuring Joel Bell, Francesca Thompson, Ben Crawley and Steve Beresford, will improvise live film scores including Electronic Labyrinth, THX1138 and Rendévous. October’s event will be followed by a showcase in November, and an evening curated by Kerry Andrew in December. For a taste of past Music Orbit events, the mO website now hosts a selection of live videos, as well as information on how to get involved in the network. www.musicorbit.co.uk
INSTAL ANNOUNCED FOR NOVEMBER 2010 Glasgow-based promoters Arika have announced dates and initial line-up for this year’s Instal festival, set to take place from 12 to 14 November at The Arches, Glasgow. With the full line-up to be revealed at the beginning of November, names already confirmed include Brandon LaBelle, Catherine Christer Hennix, Florian Hecker, Christopher DeLaurenti, Christian Kesten, Iain Campbell, Jean-Luc Guionnet and Eric La Casa, Neil Davidson, Lucio Capece, Mattin, and Resonance FM, with plenty more to be announced. www.arika.org.uk
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NEWS
BCMG PRESENT AUTUMN PREMIERES relationship with BCMG – his 1980 work Lilith was one of their first commissions – A Knot of Time sets poems by Federica Garcia Lorca and features soprano Sarah Leonard. It forms part of a programme that includes pieces by Rolf Hind and Helmut Lachenmann.
MARK-ANTHONY TURNAGE
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group perform a number of new works this season at a series of concerts at the CBSO Centre that continues into 2011. On 10 October, Simon Holt’s A Knot of Time receives its world premiere. Continuing Holt’s longstanding
A concert in honour of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s 50th birthday, conducted by Oliver Knussen, takes place on 14 November, with performances of Kai (commissioned by BCMG in 1990), Crying Out Loud, Dark Crossing and the UK premiere of Three For Two. The concert also includes the first performance of Caught in the Treetops by Charlotte Bray, BCMG’s current apprentice composer-inresidence. www.bcmg.org.uk
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NEWS
NEW NMC, RUNE GRAMMOFON AND TOUCH RECORDINGS: NEW RELEASES ROUND-UP NMC’s key release this month is a new CD by cuttingedge four-piece ensemble Noszferatu, whose Let Op! Drempels brings together works by UK composers such as Howard Skempton, Andrew Poppy and Joe Cutler, who is also a member of the group. Jazz-inflected compositions like those by Finn Peters and Dave Price are evidence of Noszferatu’s eclectic approach to new music, as are the locations of their forthcoming November tour, which takes in Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival as well as London Jazz Festival. Norwegian label Rune Grammofon celebrates its 100th release this month with a special compilation entitled Twenty Years of Stony Sleep, released on CD and vinyl. The 12 tracks on the compilation represent Rune Grammofon’s range of artists, from noise/improv groups Ultralyd and Motorpsycho to the minimal electronic music of Alog and pianist Morten Qvenild’s ensemble In The Country, as well as showcasing new singer Jenny Hval. Supersilent, the improvising band associated with Rune Grammofon since its inception, also mark an anniversary this month with their tenth album for the label, called simply 10. Released at the end of September, Philip Jeck’s An Ark for the Listener is his sixth for Touch, the perfect home for his haunting compositions made with old records and turnables. Much more than just a performance gimmick, Jeck makes use of vinyl’s most evocative qualities, shaping live sets that are often mesmerising. This latest release draws from a performance at Kings Place, London, earlier this year, inspired by Gerald Manley Hopkins’ poem ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’. www.nmcrec.co.uk www.runegrammofon.com/news www.touchmusic.org.uk/
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NEWS
AMERICAN MUSIC IN LONDON
LONTANO
There’s still time to catch most of the 3rd Festival of American Music in London, which takes place at The Warehouse and St Giles Cripplegate from 30 September to 7 October. This biennial event celebrates the work of major American composers, with a programme put together by the Lontano ensemble’s director Odaline
de la Martinez. While composers such Aaron Copland, Charles Ives and John Harbison are well-known, many others on the bill are rarely heard outside the US: this is a chance to hear highly respected composers like Roberto Sierra and Marjorie Merryman alongside works by emerging composers such as Carlos Sanchez Gutierrez, Arlene Elizabeth Sierra and Katie Agocs. A new CD of chamber music by Boston-based composer Peter Child, released on Lontano’s record label LORELT, will be launched at the final concert of the festival on 7 October. www.lontano.co.uk
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SOUND AND MUSIC NEWS
NEW SHORTLIST COMPOSERS AT BRITISH CONTEMPORARY PIANO COMPETITION The eighth British Contemporary Piano Competition takes place at the Music Department, University of Surrey, from 28 to 31 October 2010, and will feature performances by two composers from Sound and Music’s shortlist. The final round on Saturday 30 October sees competitors performing Tombeau de Messiaen for piano and digital audio tape by Jonathan Harvey together with works composed since 1980, at least one of which must be British. During the judges’ deliberations, the piano works by composers selected from the SAM shortlist will be performed by competitors. This performance will follow closed sessions organised by Sound and Music with Rolf Hind and Martin Butler for composers and competitors during the day. The competition is in held in association with Sound and Music and the department of Music and Sound Recording at the University of Surrey. www.britconpc.co.uk/
NEW CALL FOR SAM EMBEDDED/BCMG APPRENTICE COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE SCHEME As the second opportunity within our new artist development programme, Embedded, Sound and Music and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group announces a call for the SAM/BCMG Apprentice Composer in Residence 2010-11. This year-long association is a chance for a composer to spend time working with and contributing to BCMG, and allows the composer to develop skills in working with a professional group – as well as benefiting the group by giving them a sustained relationship with a composer over a 12-month period. Further information and an application form can be found at www.soundandmusic.org/bcmg2010
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SOUND AND MUSIC NEWS
LOS ANGELES UNDERGROUND MUSIC COMES TO LONDON
AIRWAY VOCALIST VETZA
Sound and Music, No-Fi, Harbinger Sound and Second Layer host a weekend of extreme sounds from the US, UK and Japan from 22 to 24 October at the Beaconsfield Gallery, London. Dedicated to the work and influence of Los Angeles Free Music Society, a collective of underground artists formed in the 1970s, The Lowest Form Of Music festival brings together original LAFMS artists such as Airway and Smegma, and artists influenced by the movement from around the world, notably Japanese noise artists Incap-acitants and Hijokaidan. As well as performances, the weekend includes talks and discussions. Highlights include David Toop hosting a panel with one of LAFMS’s founder members, Tom Recchion. www.soundandmusic.org/activities
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SOUND AND MUSIC NEWS
NEW TENTH ANNIVERSARY AND NEW PAIRINGS FOR ADOPT A COMPOSER Sound and Music’s Adopt a Composer scheme moves into its 10th year with a new selection of composers and ensembles who will work together over the next year to produce brand new works.
Since it began in 2000, Adopt a Composer has resulted in 52 partnerships and some diverse and surprising works and performances, from choral settings of William Blake poems to a piece inspired by a box Adopt a Composer pairs of chocolates. In 2007, amateur ensembles with composer Martin an emerging composer, Suckling was nominated who will write a new piece for the British Composer especially for the ensemAwards for his pieces for ble. It is a unique chance for composers the New Edinburgh Orchestra; he to work closely with the musicians who says of the scheme, “It’s one of will perform their work, and for amateur Sound and Music’s best things. It ensembles to play new music and work actively engages local communities.” directly with a composer. In relation to his own practice, he says, “It opened doors and led to This year’s collaborations are as follows: other commissions.” Meanwhile, ensembles find the experience BT Melodians Steel Orchestra with Neil challenging but worthwhile – “We Luck (mentored by Fraser Trainer); would encourage any choir to do it,” Essex Symphony Orchestra with was the verdict of Reading-based Andrew Hall (mentored by Colin Riley); choir Thames Voyces. Harmonie Concert Band with Aaron Parker (mentored by Fraser Trainer); Adopt a Composer is funded by the King Edward Music Society with PRS for Music Foundation and run by Christopher Swithinbank (mentored by Sound and Music in association with David Horne); Musarc with Jessica Making Music. You can find out more Curry (mentored by Colin Riley); and about the scheme and about this University of Strathclyde Chamber year’s composers, ensembles and Choir with Emily Crossland (mentored mentors at www.soundandmusic.org by David Horne).
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INCOMING
Incoming A news feed direct from Sound And Music’s composers from around the UK, with details of new projects, forthcoming concerts, academic appointments and much more. If you’re a composer or artist and would like to let us know what’s going on in your world in 45 words or less, get in touch at incoming@soundandmusic.org. Edd Caine’s ensemble cat*er*waul have been engaged to perform in Lauren Redhead’s opera Green Angel next January. The group will also be performing as part of the Late Music Concert Series ‘Performer’s Platform’. Edd Caine will be giving a paper in the October RMA Leeds Postgraduate Study Day on 23 October. The paper will be about how collaboration affects the compositional process, and will feature Sound and Music commissioned piece [squeezeBox]2 as well as a number of others. Writing the paper now, and it’s going quite well! Aki Pasoulas submitted his PhD thesis titled The Perception of Timescales in Electroacoustic Music. In addition, a CD with three of his short compositions and many additional sounds for film trailers has been recently published by KPM, a division of EMI Music Publishing. His compositions continue to travel around the world; next appearance is at EMM Festival in Illinois, in October. Tazul Tajuddin has received a RM$40,000 Fundamental Research Grant Scheme 2010 (FRGS) from the Malaysian Higher Education Ministry for research titled ‘New Techniques in the Performance Practice and Compositions of the Malaysian Keroncong’. The recent success of the 1st Malaysian Composers Concert Series UiTM-klpac 2010 last August, when Tazul was the artistic director and conductor of the project, has led to this becoming an annual event. He and the organiser are also planning an International Composers Concert Series for 2011–2012.
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JACOB KIRKEGAARD
JACOB KIRKEGAARD, BLOKU (2008)
bey s
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JACOB KIRKEGAARD
yond sound
Jacob Kirkegaard investigates, and excavates, sounds from places where the naked ear can’t reach: in fact, some of his work unpicks the mechanisms driving the cells of our inner ears. Other pieces unleash the secret tones held in the hearts of metal plates, in buildings, and in water. He works with the forensic precision of a bench scientist, but with an artist’s romantic sensibility – the kind of mix of temperaments you might find in a Victorian naturalist, as excited by sketching as by taxonomising creatures. Ever on the lookout for unknown sources of sound, he visits places like Chernobyl, abandoned after the 1986 meltdown of its nuclear reactor, and creates beautiful drones out of the stillnesses of empty rooms in a ghost city. Or he ventures into the Arctic, away from traces of civilisation, to record the Northern Lights, and returns with recordings that fizz with sounds like a summer forest full of cicada-like insects. Jacob Kirkegaard talks to Emily Bick about the work he will be performing at next month’s Cut & Splice festival in London, and about his art and practice.
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JACOB KIRKEGAARD
Emily: For Cut & Splice, will you be doing something with radio sounds? Jacob: I will be presenting a piece based on VLF recordings, so-called very low frequency natural radio. This phenomenon is closely linked to the Aurora Borealis, and the NASA-related INSPIRE group has kindly sent me some of their recordings to work with. You’ve done some other pieces with the Aurora Borealis before... In 2004 Thor Magnusson and I went on a trip to Iceland with the aim of recording the phenomenon. Our recordings became part of a small work we made for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denmark. In 2007 I created a 16-channel sound installation for an exhibition in Luleå in Sweden, called ‘Let There Be Light’. I had sixteen speakers hanging in a dark room, and so you were able to walk around in the sound of the light. VLF sounds quite natural, almost like animals, or birds. Actually, I didn’t expect to be working more with VLF sounds, but then Richard Whitelaw who invited me [to Cut & Splice] proposed it. Most people’s experience of the Northern Lights is visual – would you say a lot of your work seems to reveal the differences between observing something by the senses, and then translating it through recording? When you have something that looks spectacular, like the Northern Lights, I can’t help asking myself what it sounds like. To me, everything can have a
JACOB KIRKEGAARD, BLOKU (2008)
sound, because if something has a vibration, there must also be a way to listen to it. I have for example read articles proposing that the VLF sounds should be possible to hear with your bare ear. The theory is that if you have long, frizzy and dry hair, and if you are in a place where you have a lot of solar activity and northern light, then the static from the atmosphere could interfere with your hair, as if you have a sweater on, and you pull it over your head, and it could make it slightly vibrate, and thereby your hair sacs. In this way, you would ‘hear’ it through your skull.
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JACOB KIRKEGAARD
my evoked otoacoustic emissions. The composition is – roughly speaking – made in such a way that when you listen to the recordings of the tones of my ears, your ears will generate tones in response. I will, so to speak, evoke your Evoked OAE’s with my OAE’s. It can be quite an amusing and intimidating experience to listen to a sounds happening inside your head. You will, literally, hear your own ears play. A true paradox. How do people know whether their ears are generating tones?
Is this how your Labyrinthitis piece [2007] works? No, I am not vibrating the skull directly, but the hair cells inside the ear. The piece is created of tones generated by the hair cells inside my own ear, which have been recorded with a tiny microphone. The scientific name for these sounds is otoacoustic emissions (OAEs). There are different kinds of OAEs: some are called spontaneous otoacoustic emissions, and others are the evoked or triggered otoacoustic emissions. Labyrinthitis is created from
One of the scientists at the Centre for Applied Hearing Research in Denmark who recorded my ears told me about this harbour worker who came into his office with his little girl, and he was pretty confused because he thought he could hear tones coming from the child’s ears, but she couldn’t hear them herself. He wasn’t sure if he was getting crazy. They measured her ears, and found a very strong spontaneous otoacoustic emission (SOAE), but she couldn’t hear it. I think it makes sense in this more philosophical sense: how are we able to hear something if it has always been there? But as for the evoked otoacoustic emissions (EOAEs) which I am working with, it is in fact possible to hear one’s own ears play! Pythagoras invented the concept of the ‘Harmony of the Spheres’, and I believe it was also he who, when asked the question why we then don’t hear it, argued that since we had heard the sound since we were born, we had become deaf to it.
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Tell me about your work in Chernobyl, why did you go there?
JACOB KIRKEGAARD
JACOB KIRKEGAARD, ZONE (2005)
In 2004 I was invited to do a workshop at the academy for architecture in Copenhagen. Together with the students I listened to the rooms of the academy and made different recordings of its rooms and of the city. Of course, we discovered so much sonic activity everywhere, so I thought it would be interesting to listen to buildings that once had been used but were now abandoned. And this led me to the idea of going to Chernobyl where I then recorded four abandoned but radioactive rooms: a swimming pool, a gym, a concert hall and a church. The result of this work became a CD (4 Rooms) on British label Touch. I decided to let myself be inspired by Alvin Lucier’s piece, I Am Sitting in a Room, in which he records his voice and then the recording of his voice is played back into the room, and then the microphone that was recording his voice before is now recording his voice coming out of the speakers, as if it is recording the recording. After a while, the words dissolve. I wanted to do work with this method, but only to record and play back the rooms’ sound – not to say anything, just to listen to the rooms. Was it scary, because of all the radiation still there? Did you have to dress to protect yourself from that while you were photographing and recording? No, not really. The people there who are in charge of the place have a map which
‘It was the nature [of that haunted me the the autumn landsca beautiful and quiet, was there because o tion inhabiting the p
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f Chernobyl] e most… ape was so but no-one of the radiaplace’
OCTOBER 2010
JACOB KIRKEGAARD
tells you where the level of radiation is high and where it is low. The radiation is mostly grounded in the soil, so with a proper maintenance of the place the radiation doesn’t drift that much. There is this international rule that you can be there for 14 days, and then you have to go away for 14 days to sort of cool off. There are around 5000 people working in Chernobyl, actually, on shifts. They maintain the forest, do fire prevention, and maintain the dykes which prevent the contaminated river water from mixing with the clean water that runs into Kiev. Then there is also a constant but rather hopeless maintenance of the worn out sarcophagus. Because of all that there is a little train that goes every day and there is a little supermarket, there is a bar, and it is really a mini-society. It’s a very eerie feeling to be there. I made a photo series of the place I was staying at. It was a little ghostly container building and they called it Hotel Chernobyl. But of course I just didn’t want to stay there for too long. When I was in the field working, and being very concentrated on my works, I wasn’t afraid, and I had done a lot of research about the dangers of going there. But I do remember lying there in bed at night in Chernobyl town, under my blanket without any clothes on, all of a sudden feeling more exposed, more fragile. Just there with your fragile body, and the world is evil! [laughs] Did it feel haunted? Definitely. But not haunted in the conventional or obvious way. The
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JACOB KIRKEGAARD
‘When you have something that looks spectacular, like the Northern Lights for example, I can’t help asking myself what it sounds like’ eerie feeling wasn’t radiating from a dark abandoned room. Of course it is extremely interesting to discover how nature absorbs whole cities, but it was the nature that haunted me the most. This October autumn landscape was so insanely beautiful and so quiet, no-one was there because of this ‘beast’: the radiation inhabiting the place. You don’t smell it, you don’t see it. Everything is just beautiful. Yet, you look at this beauty which we call nature. Nature is supposed to be healthy, but this nature kills you. In this way the natural becomes the unnatural. This was very frightening and thrilling at the same time. My feeling reminded me of the opening scene in Tarkovsky’s Solaris where the protagonist gazes into the river. He knows that he is going to leave the Earth and travel into space. He has already adapted to the unnatural world of Solaris and therefore feels alienated about Earth’s nature. You’ve explored nuclear power plants in Sweden and in other countries...
I visited some nuclear power plants during the time I went to Chernobyl, trying to listen to this thing that was so dangerous, and yet invisible. Together with Tobias Kirstein, I recorded the Barsebäck nuclear powerplant in Sweden. Barsebäck had 2000 rooms and each room was more noisy than the other: all this noise for this delicate process of splitting atoms. I just had to ask, but of course I was not allowed to record inside the reactor. But then the guide said, ‘There is no sound in there anyway.’ What does this mean, that the process of splitting the atoms is completely silent? You have 2000 roaring rooms all around a silent reactor… it’s the eye of the tornado. Or Lucifer’s home at the centre of the Malebolge? Such a place just can’t be silent! Jacob Kirkegaard performs at Cut & Splice: Transmission in London on 4 November. www.soundandmusic.org/activities
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Listening post and further reading
Jacob Kirkegaard’s website
4 Rooms
Douglas Kahn on Labyrinthitis
Sabulation, 2010
Live performance of Eldfjall, Touch Radio
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Photography: Astrid Ackermann LIZA LIM
OCTOBER 2010
LIZA LIM
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LIZA LIM
PROCESSES OF REVELATION Liza Lim’s music evokes dream states and transitory places, asking questions about culture and identity with both flexibility and rigour. Tim Rutherford-Johnson takes a look at the ideas underpinning Lim’s work and describes its unique, sound-led character. Opening a Liza Lim score for the first time, one is struck by its mix of precise rhythmic and pitch notation, and generalised, graphical indications of timbre and sound production. A flurry of microtonal demisemiquavers under a 9:8 tuplet might, for example, be followed by a hand-drawn wavy line and the instruction ‘sweep bow’. When one listens, however, the contrast between the controlled and the speculative dissolves, revealing something utterly new and original. Liza Lim’s biography tells a similar story of transition and revelation, of constructing secret gardens within and between places, cultures and traditions. Although her parents are Chinese she grew up first in Brunei and then Australia. Her education in these two Commonwealth countries was therefore informed by British educational priorities and Western values, but she considers herself to have always lived ‘in a quite in-between space’. Although this mixed cultural background has brought its own personal difficulties it has also given her
a privileged position as an artist, able to step back from allegiance to any culture and observe and analyse its true form. I interviewed Lim last November in Paris, the morning after her third opera, The Navigator (2008) was given a semi-staged performance at the Opéra Bastille. The Navigator itself exemplifies that privileged position: it owes certain thematic and musical debts to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde but, as Lim says, ‘A German composer would never go there, they would probably have to deconstruct it much more…destroy it in some way!’. Lim’s second opera Yuè Ling Jié (Moon Spirit Feasting, 1999), proved to be a much more provocative cultural confrontation. Subtitled ‘A Chinese Ritual Opera’ it was a conscious attempt to address certain aspects of her personal background, which expanded outwards into questions of Chineseness in general. Lim’s approach is never less than sensitive – her background research for each piece is conducted with an ethnomusicologist’s attentiveness – but this did not prevent Moon Spirit Feasting from running into trouble. At one talk at which Lim spoke about the work, some Chinese student composers voiced their offence at what they saw as inauthentic cultural appropriation. Lim’s response today is key to understanding this dimension of her work: “Everything,
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LIZA LIM
‘No culture stays static, it’s in constant dialogue with everything around it’
LIZA LIM IN REHEARSAL WITH CONDUCTOR LOTHAR ZAGROSEK
including the hybrid, has its own authenticity. The notion of cultural purity is an absolute illusion. No culture stays static, it’s in constant dialogue with everything around it’” The real strength of Lim’s music, and possibly the source of its challenge, derives from her analytical approach to cultural examination, a sort of ethnographic modernism. As a result, her ‘Chinese-inspired’ music doesn’t sound Chinese; likewise, her more recent music, which is inspired by Australian Aboriginal culture, doesn’t sound Aboriginal. The more ‘authentic’ route
demanded by conservatives can lead in fact to appropriation and casual mimicry; what Lim does instead is engage with the structures that make up different cultures’ expressions of life force. She denies using a systematic approach – and the flexibility of her scores would seem to bear this out – but nevertheless often refers to Christopher Alexander’s theory of pattern languages. A ‘pattern’ is an abstracted, highly generalised solution to a design problem – a place for waiting, for example – that is made up of a balance of forces and desires: in this case, an entrance to the
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LIZA LIM
Photography: Astrid Ackermann
waiting place, room for those waiting to congregate, some form of comfort and so on. The pattern may be applicable to several situations – waiting room, bus stop, etc – but its form is fixed. A ‘pattern language’ is the collection of interlinked patterns that make up a more complex structure – a doctor’s surgery or a city transit system. In recent pieces, such as Invisibility (2009) for solo cello or Songs found In Dream (2006) for ensemble, the pattern language of Aboriginal culture – patterns of ritual, secrecy and knowledge transfer between initiated individuals – is unfurled
to produce music of exceptional vibrancy and presence. Interpreting the pattern language of Aboriginal art, in particular that of the Yolngu of Arnhem Land, with whom Lim has spent time, becomes a study in concealment and revelation. Her starting point is sound. Individual sonic moments are first broken down into their constituent forces and parameters. These forces may be physically embodied, such as the performer’s action upon her instrument, or acoustical, such as the balance of sounds that make up a particular timbre. Once identified, these patterns may be reformed and developed
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LIZA LIM
THE NAVIGATOR, PRODUCTION BY ELISION, D
In Songs Found in Dream, the process of revelation is the music
WITH BAVARIAN RADIO ORCHESTRA IN MUNICH
into a musical continuity. The approach is modernist in origin but is less abstract in both its cataloguing of parameters and its manipulation of their values. So one parameter might be the relative tension of a string, or an intensity of noise: both of which are profoundly different concepts from the more traditional parameters of pitch of dynamic, even if their relative spectra of sonic results overlap. The results are highly dynamic and flexible, but grounded in something (the pattern form) that only reveals itself over time. In Songs Found in Dream, for example, the process of revelation is the music. The songs of the title are never quite stated: they are a secret knowledge that remains out of reach. Instead we hear the moment
of their discovery, the emergence rather than the fulfilment or completion, as though we are glancing into a newly opened world rather than describing and reifying it. Ironically, Lim herself is still somewhat ‘hidden’ in Britain. She is greatly respected in Europe, Australia and the USA, in all of which she has had major premieres and commissions recently, but although she holds a prestigious academic seat here (as Professor of Composition at Huddersfield University, and Director of the Centre for Research in New Music) she is still a rare name on British concert programmes. That situation may be on the turn, however: once again ELISION are performing her music at Kings Place in London,
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LIZA LIM
DIRECTOR BARRIE KOSKY
Listening post
Photography: Justin Nicholas
and two CDs from the University of Huddersfield’s CeReNeM label feature recent pieces Invisibility, Songs Found In Dream and the brilliant trumpet solo Wild-Winged One (2007). It’s high time Liza Lim’s secret knowledge was shared a little more widely. The premiere of The Guest for orchestra and solo recorder, performed by Sudwest Rundfunk Orchestra conducted by Rupert Huber, takes place on 15 October at Donaueschinger Musiktage. www.swr.de Spirit Weapons for solo cello and The Quickening for soprano and qin (Chinese zither) will be performed by ELISION at Kings Place on 15 November. www.kingsplace.co.uk
Songs Found in Dream
Invisibility
‘Angel of History’ aria, The Navigator
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DARMSTADT
TOP LEFT: THOMAS SCHÄFER; TOP RIGHT: CHAYA CZERNOWIN COMPOSITION SESSION
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past and present
DARMSTADT Sound and Music Shortlist composers Gregory Emfietzis and Nicholas Peters attended the Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music earlier this year, and found themselves in an intense working environment that, while informed by Darmstadt’s past, they feel is making moves towards a more open future.
The Darmstadt International Courses for New Music were founded in 1946 to regenerate cultural life in the German city of Darmstadt after it had been devastated by an Allied bombing raid in the latter stages of World War II. Initially intended to expose German musicians to the music they had missed during Hitler’s time in power, by the early 1950s the courses soon became the meeting ground for aspiring avant garde musicians from across Europe and beyond. British composer Brian Ferneyhough played a part in revitalising Darmstadt in the 1980s, as Christopher Fox outlines in this Guardian article; but Fox also calls attention to the “institutionalisation of modernism” that can be seen in a “commitment to an old concept of the new”. However, when Gregory Emfietzis and Nicholas Peters attended Darmstadt for the first time in July this year they found some unexpected ideas, influences and performances. They discuss how the summer courses are adapting to the 21st Century under the new directorship of Thomas Schäfer, and describe their own impressions of taking part. The conversation took place after the second concert of the 45th International Summer Course for New Music, which featured Harry Partch’s The Wayward (1941-43). Nicholas Peters: Historically, this wasn’t the standard Darmstadt concert. Just think of Stockhausen, Boulez, Nono, Maderna, Ferneyhough, Lachenmann – they’re the norm at Darmstadt. It’s best not to make too much of this ‘opening up’, but it’s a major signal of intent by the new director of the Darmstadt International Institute for Music, Thomas Schäfer. This was Schäfer’s first summer course, explaining that the plethora of activities (many happening at the same time) was his express intention. “We would like to use the potential that course participants bring to Darmstadt themselves, giving that potential a chance to unfold […] this can only succeed, however, when many of them show initiative.” Thus, Schäfer introduced the
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‘There’s always going to be a certain level of competitiveness amongst a large group of composers all vying for exposure’ Open Space – one of many brand new projects for Darmstadt 2010 – for “anyone who desires encounters and an unregulated, self-organising exchange of ideas, knowledge and experiences.” This really set the tone for the course, I thought… Gregory Emfietzis: When Thomas first came on stage describing these projects, I couldn’t really see any link to what I’ve heard about Darmstadt. NP: I’d heard that it had an extremely competitive and intense atmosphere, to the point of being hostile and that there wasn’t much point attending Darmstadt unless you were having a piece played – both false by the way! Otherwise I hadn’t heard much about the recent courses. GE: Based on those rumours we’ve all heard, I couldn’t imagine these projects succeeding. I’d easily reconsider these thoughts now, even though some of the rumours still seemed to exist in this ‘modern’ Darmstadt. NP: There is a historically based rumour of a dominant compositional style in Darmstadt and that if you don’t write in this style – such a horrible word anyway! – there is little point in attending. I strongly disagree with this. The programmed concerts mostly included music which was a fusion of post-Ferneyhough and post-Lachenmann, but among the participants it is a different story; the music is more diverse and certainly included spectral, experimental and minimal tendencies. GE: We should mention some interesting and diverse programming by some of the young ensembles… NP: The Sonic Art Quartet, the Fathom Trio and Ensemble Interface all gave astounding performances. In the concerts generally, though, I was expecting a broader range of
TOP RIGHT: BRIAN FERNEYHOUGH
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music, considering there were ensembles from different countries. We must have heard a sound with an exponential crescendo to silence on over 300 (no joke!) occasions throughout the two weeks, meaning a lot of the pieces unsurprisingly merged into one! GE: That’s a problem in new music concerts and festivals. The number and duration of the concerts need to be considered more accordingly to a real human listener, as in the case of Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, especially since quite a lot of people attend Darmstadt with a slightly negative attitude. NP: Why’s that? I, for one, went with an open mind and positive spirit, up for challenging myself. There’s always going to be a certain level of competitiveness among a large group of composers all vying for exposure. However, the atmosphere was the total opposite; friendly, open and supportive. Although I wished to learn from the teachers, who raised some interesting questions in my work, I particularly wanted to meet composers and performers of my generation. GE: I also found some of the lessons productive; more often, though, what happened in between the course activities was most interesting. NP: Yes, chatting through ideas that emerged in activities was fab – I never expected to laugh so much either! Even more, the participant performers were always open to workshop material – I loved doing this. I am currently writing several pieces as a result of these meetings... GE: I thought that could be the point for future development. As the composers and performers were based in separate buildings, a 15-minute walk apart, the communication between the two camps was almost entirely based on the willingness of people to commute between the two buildings. NP: Actually, I think that the separate camps made more rewarding encounters with performers possible, as everyone wasn’t lumped together in a massive group. Also, the Open Space (OS) provided a great environment for
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‘The number and duration of the concerts need to be considered more accordingly to a real human listener, as in the case of Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival’ smaller group discussions. OS deserved a more central role, as well as a proper performance space for short concerts throughout the day. An OS more integral to the courses would be the best way to continue to ‘open up’ Darmstadt. That said, Schäfer has now introduced the ideal environment for this so it is also down to us as participants to show initiative, go further and challenge ourselves and one another – and the past? The courses continue to offer the perfect environment for aspiring musicians to meet to do this and, for me, is the best reason to attend Darmstadt. This version is taken from a longer conversation that is available to read at: http://www.emfietzis.com/darmstadt2010. All photographs by Albrecht Haag, Jens Steingässer and Anja Trautmann, copyright of Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt www.imd.darmstadt.de
Listening post Click on the links below to hear some of the young ensembles Nicholas and Gregory saw in performance. www.ictus.be www.ownvoice.com www.ccmm.ru www.nadarensemble.be www.jackquartet.com www.ensemble-recherche.de www.iceorg.org
www.internationale-em-akademie.de www.klangforum.at www.ensemblenikel.com www.ensemble-cairn.com www.asamisimasa.com www.fathomstringtrio.com
TOP RIGHT: ENSEMBLE INTERFACE AND ENNO POPPE REHEARSAL
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HOW TO
H WT
EAVESDROP ON HIDDEN ELECTROMAGNETIC MUSIC Nicolas Collins, author of DIY electronics bible Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking, comes to this year’s Cut & Splice with a workshop on how to turn a portable radio into an exciting sound source. He provides a taster for the session with this video on the art of ‘circuit sniffing’, or knocking the symmetry out of radio. To the extent that anyone still thinks about the anachronistic medium of radio in this age of cable, satellite and internet, reception is inextricably tied to the notion of transmission: why would anyone own a radio if not to listen to broadcasts from known stations? In the early days of wireless listeners struggled to extract signal from noise, and welcomed every development that made this task easier. Today’s digital receivers have removed from our soundscape all the distracting ghosts, swoops and hissing of mistuned dials. I feel we are poorer for this loss, and I would appear not to be alone in this sentiment. Following in the tradition of Alvin Lucier’s Whistlers (1967), Joe Banks (aka Disinformation), Jacob Kirkegaard and others have created music out the electromagnetic traces of meteor showers and other ionospheric disturbances. For Christina Kubisch’s Electromagnetic Walks (2003) listeners don special headphones and follow maps that guide them through the a series of sonic landmarks resulting from the spurious signals emanating from ATMs, heavy machinery, security gates, etc. The Irdial label has released CDs of VLF (Very Low Frequency) radio signals of uncertain origin, as well as recordings of the electromagnetic voices of (presumably) ghosts. Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Kurzwellen (1968) owed much of its uncanny
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beauty to the unintended sideband effects of shortwave reception, and the 12 radios in John Cage’s Imaginary Landscape No 4 (1951) would have yielded little more than a pre-post-modern mash-up of popular music were it not for the preponderance of interstation static. And as early as 1948 programmers placed radios on top of mainframes to pick up the spurious electromagnetic signals emitted when running calculations: software loops of varying lengths produced the roughly intoned melodies of the world’s first computer music. It is with this waggishly transgressive history of misused technology in mind that I include “electromagnetic sniffing” in the hacking workshops I’ve been presenting for the past decade, as well as in my book, Handmade Electronic Music – The Art of Hardware Hacking. There’s something magical about connecting a few cents worth of wire and iron to an amplifier and unleashing the torrent of secret sounds that lurk in household objects, public transport, and thunderstorms. For the second edition of my book I produced a DVD that includes video tutorials of several of the projects in the text – here is my guide to eavesdropping on hidden electromagnetic music.
Nicolas Collins’s Cut & Splice workshop, entitled Radio Hacking and The Devil’s Music, takes place at Cafe Oto on 3 November at 6pm. To find out more, visit www.soundandmusic.org www.nicolascollins.com
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OPPORTUNITIES
Opportunitie Spitalfields Music – student ambassador scheme
[‘tactus] Young Composers Forum – call for works
Spitalfields Music is looking for enthusiastic and outgoing students interested in classical music and the arts, who are studying in London, to work as volunteer ambassadors for our organisation and in particular to promote our annual music festivals.
[‘tactus’] is seeking submissions for its 2011 working sessions with the Brussels Philharmonic and conductor Michel Tabachnik in Brussels 24 - 29 January 2011. Up to 6 composers will rehearse up to 10 minutes of an orchestral work and workshops will be followed by discussion in the presence of internationally renowned composers. Lectures will be given on aspects of composing for symphony orchestra.
Deadline: 11/10/2010
The Student Ambassador Scheme includes: free tickets and access to concerts as well as opportunities to work/volunteer with the organisation in return for promotion of our events and bringing in new audience members. For more information go to spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk or contact Rebecca Steel on 020 7377 0287
Deadline: 15/10/2010
One or more works will be selected following the workshops for possible inclusion in the programmes of the Orchestre National de Lille, the Brussels Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The sessions will end with a closing concert given by the Brussels Philharmonic, conducted by Michel Tabachnik, on 29 September 2011 at the Théâtre Royal in Mons. This concert will include one or more of the works selected. For further information and an application form see www.tactus.be/en/ home.html
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Yvar Mikhashoff Trust pianist/composer commissioning project
OPPORTUNITIES
Reveille Trumpet Collective – composition prize 2011 Deadline: 01/03/2011
Deadline: 15/11/2010
The Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music is pleased to announce the guidelines for the fourth annual international competition for pianist/ composer collaborations. The goal of the competition is to encourage the composition and performance of new works for solo piano reflecting and continuing the legacy of the distinguished American pianist, Yvar Mikhashoff (1941-1993). The winning composer and pianist, who apply together as a team, will receive $3,000 each. The composer will write a new piece for piano solo, with or without electronics; this work will then be premiered by the pianist between January and September, 2012. The competition is limited to applicants, both pianists and composers, born on or after January 1, 1976. To download an application form, please go to: www.mikhashofftrust. org/funding.html. Questions by email only to Amy Williams, Competition Coordinator (amy@mikhashofftrust.org).
The Reveille Trumpet Collective, a new group devoted to innovative presentation of contemporary music, announces a 2011 composition prize. The winner will receive: $1000 (CAD); at least two performances by members of Reveille during the 2011-12 concert season; a short video presentation promoting the winning piece; a publishing contract with qPress.ca All composers born 1976 or later are invited to submit unpublished, un-premiered works for trumpet and piano of at least 5 minutes’ duration. All submissions must be PDF format computer-generated scores (Sibelius, Finale, etc) accompanied by a midi or mp3 realization. The scores will be made anonymous by the contest coordinator prior to distribution to the jury. There is a $30 (CAD) application fee, payable by Paypal only. Visit reveilletrumpet.org or contact the contest coordinator by email: aaron.hodgson@gmail.com
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OPPORTUNITIES
Opportunitie University of St Andrews – 600th anniversary composition competition
(Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St Andrews.) The piece will be used throughout the University’s 600th Anniversary Celebrations.
The University of St Andrews Music Society intends to award £1,000 to the composer of an original piece for symphony orchestra, in order to celebrate the University’s 600th anniversary.
www.st-and.ac.uk/~mussoc/600
This competition is open to all under 30, or in full-time education. It is anticipated that submissions will be received from composers of all levels of experience, from those still at school to those young composers already making headway in the profession. The piece will be between 9-12 minutes long, must not have been previously performed or submitted elsewhere. Shortlisted entries will be performed at a concert on 21 April 2011, when entries will be judged by a panel comprising Sally Beamish, Thomas K Butler (Director of University of St Andrews Symphony Orchestra), Michael Downes (Director of Music, University of St Andrews), Richard Ingham (Fellow in New Music and Composer in Residence, University of St Andrews), and Louise Richardson
Composers are invited by the New York-based contemporary ensemble Orchestra of Our Time to submit a work for chamber ensemble, from a solo piece up to a maximum of 5 instruments consisting of string quartet, contra bass, trumpet, clarinet, oboe, two percussionists, piano, flute, bassoon, trombone and electronics.
Deadline: 07/01/2011
Orchestra of Our Time – call for scores Deadline: 31/12/2010
Submitted pieces may be up to 5 minutes and the call for scores is open to composers of any age or nationality and all musical genres. 5-10 scores from the readings (taking place in March) will be selected for a performance in May 2011. Visit orchestraofourtime.org/wordpress/call-for-scores for more details on how to apply.
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OPPORTUNITIES
The magazine of