The Art of the Duel ft. Cevanne and Chris Montague

Here is a radio interview we broadcast on Resonance FM the other day which features a preview of our performance on Thursday 24 October

'The Art of The Duel' October gigs

For two Thursdays and two Sundays in October, Handel House will be filled with DUELLING. I'm sure Jimi and George would approve. I've got us a MEGA-line-up... 

CREWDSON (Matthew Herbert), CHRIS MONTAGUE (Troyka), MANU DELAGO (Björk), DAVID WRIGHT (Red Priest), TOM NORRIS (LSO), GREGOR RIDDELL (Solstice String 4tet), ELLIE FAGG, RAYMOND YIU, RICHARD BULLEN, ROBERT SZYMANEK, NINA HORROCKS-HOPAYIAN and more TBA...

produced with Handel House Museum, LSO SOUNDHUB & TRUDI STEVENS

Booking Information Tickets: £9, £5 students Booking line: 020 7399 1953

ELLIE FAGG & TOM NORRIS 

Thursday 17 October, 6.30-7.30pm

Ellie and Tom are astounding violinists who perform across the world with the LSO, Puertas Quartet and Living Room London. They are also husband and wife. With a programme exploring the balance and infinity of ground bass, a duet may become a duel. I'll be there with voice and harp to mediate and agitate.

LSO Soundhub composer feature : Richard Bullen

Thursday 17 October 

He is a master of making use of performance space to heighten perception of sound, structure and the drama inherent in the musical material. He is writing a piece especially for us in the spacial acoustics of Handel House.

CREWDSON 
Sunday 20 October, 2-4pm

Hugh ‘Crewdson’ Jones is a prolific inventor and who performs with Matthew Herbert. He has created an electronic concertina inspired by the subtlety of acoustic folk instruments. The ‘Concertronica’ will sample and manipulate my harp to create modern British folk songs. The duel of electronics and acoustics will be so entangled, you will not know where one ends and the other begins. His exquisite inventions will be exhibited on the same day, with an interactive demo from the maestro himself.

LSO Soundhub composer feature : Robert Szymanek

Sunday 20 October

He's a composer, singer, songwriter and producer with a thirst for the eclectic. He's creating something especially for this event, and at present it's TOP SECRET!

CHRIS MONTAGUE 

Thursday 24 October, 6.30-7.30pm
Chris (of Troyka) is a virtuosic guitarist described by Jazzwise as ‘one of the most imaginatively skilled young axesmiths on the London scene’. In this concert, he will battle blues, Baroque and memories and emotions will be captured in ‘Pandora’s music box’ (which I'm making). 

THE EVE OF BATTLE Oratorio feat. MANU DELAGO 
Sunday 27 October, 2-4pm

 What if Eve were a codebreaker, who resurfaces throughout time, with different names, different faces? A duel of storytellers in music, eager to claim their version of Eve as the best: Björk’s percussionist Manu Delago versus Red Priest’s harpsichordist David Wright; Cellist Gregor Riddell against Bel Canto singer Nina Horrocks-Hopayian. Accounts of Persephone, Pandora, and even Alan Turing may become ammunition. For the first time, this duel pits one of the newest instruments, the hang (and its leading virtuoso) against Handel’s weapon of choice. Whose tale will triumph? The Eve of Battle is a world-première commissioned by Handel House.

LSO Soundhub composer feature : Raymond Yiu
Sunday 27 October

It's such an honour that this award-winning composer it writing especially for my collaborative oratorio. He'll create a cello piece for Chang'e, the Chinese moon goddess, to form one of the Eve tales in our battle.

Booking Information Tickets: £9, £5 students | Booking Line: 020 7399 1953

Composer Vlog No.2 at Handel House

Composer Vlog No.1 at Handel House

Ta-da!

Here I am! I've had a packed few months at Handel House. I'm planning my concert series in October, and my commission in June, but so far, I've been creating learning projects. With some talented children from RNIB, we created an ode to Handel House, drawing inspiration from court composers from across the globe, and their practice of dedicating work. Handel himself was blind at the end of his life, so it was truly inspiring to experience sound more intensely with such young masters. To contextualise, I performed a planxty by O'Carolan (a blind harper, and contemporary of Handel), and 'Kamantcha', an ode to a 'spike fiddle' by Sayat Nova, an 18th century Armenian composer to the Georgian court. His song beautifully concludes : 'the fiddle relies on Sayat Nova for its voice, while Sayat Nova relies on the fiddle for his sight'.

During the London Handel Festival in March, Hillyfield Primary School helped me 'improve' Handel's opera Imeneo, by writing a pirate copy. We enjoyed the original, but the children were not convinced that Rosmene should be married off in the name of duty. We constructed a libretto set on the pirate ship from Handel's opera, and the First Mate found herself in a similar battle of heart and duty to that of poor Rosmene : torn between the mutineering crew, and her selfish Pirate Captain. The children insisted that the First Mate followed her 'moral compass', and the Pirate King saw the error in his ways. The role of Pirate King was owned by the charismatic Luke D Williams – none other than Imeneo in the London Handel Festival. He gave us a vocal masterclass about baritone range, and the bits of opera that singers love – arias, chorus numbers, etc. The children (or terrifying mutineers) then developed a new style of recitative using their own musical language, which included a rap battle, with much shouting and kissing of teeth. The performance was an instant hit with the rest of the school and the pirates' parents.

I will be sending out a little vlog from Handel's room each week, with news of my music series, compositions, and answering any requests. I might even sing something at the harpsichord, if you like.

So anything you want to know, see, hear, discuss : get in touch here, on youtube, Facebook, twitter – whatever floats your boat.

www.youtube.com/CevanneTV

www.facebook.com/Cevanne

www.twitter.com/CevanneMusic

Bowing Out (introducing Screech! A composing video webgame)

It's hard to believe that it has been almost two years of being Composer In Residence here at Handel House Museum. I've led tons of workshops in the space, got kids to write a mini-opera, worked with a wealth of wonderful musicians via the RNIB's various projects including summer schools in composing for voice, and hugely enjoyed curating two seasons of new music.

My first commission for the House, the electro-acoustic/spoken-word portrait Graininess and Sheen, now sits amidst other British Sonic Journeys as well as elsewhere online, but it's been a while since you heard any new music from me!

I've actually worked over many a month in 2012 on my second commission; entitled badluck birds, and for the recorder quintet Consortium 5, it had the aim of demystifying the process of composition, by existing only in layers which could be re-arranged by, well, YOU! The piece, which is in three movements (which all take the idea of a British bird's regional mythology as a starting point) ended up taking many forms.

Two of them, Scribblie and Bog-Drum, exist as live pieces; I wrote two linear pieces, but with the idea that an audience member could 'turn on' and 'turn off' players as the piece went along. This meant that as I composed, I always had to have in mind that any combination of players might be being heard at any one moment... they were premiered at Handel House in October. Here's one!
The other movement, Screech, ended up as a different beast. First of all, it is made up only of 51 fragments for recorder, of different lengths, which can be arranged (but only in up to 5 at a time) any which way. I made a graphic score version that Consortium 5 can play live, and also take into schools for younger groups to be inventive with. BUT most excitingly, it also exists as a fabulous webgame, which is here!

SCREECH - composing webgame

Please visit the site and see how YOU can compose a piece for recorder quintet! Think of it as an 'open-source' piece, made up of layers that you can put together. The most fun thing is that you work with videos of the girls, and can drag and drop musical fragments at your own volition, then play and watch your work in progress! Make sure you visit the 'About/How it works' page before you start, then save and share your work!

Huge thanks to Consortium 5, Vincent Van Uffelen, master web designer, and Pete Gomes, filmmaker, for their hard work on developing this with me.

***

And before I go, a plug for my third and final commission for the House! I've been writing a small set of songs based on London's lost rivers, what with Handel House being on the site of the old Tyburn. I'll be singing these with the part-improvised help of wonderful jazz/folk/classical acoustic trio, 7 Hertz, on February 3rd. Not only that, but you can get a guided walk of part of the Tyburn with London's river guru, Tom Bolton! A perfect Sunday afternoon, if you ask me...

That's it from me! Big thanks to all at Handel House, and a hello to incoming composer Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian. Over to you, Cevanne!

Composer in Residence Curated Season 2012!

I'm very excited to introduce this autumn's Composer in Residence season, as curated by... moi! It's a series of concerts featuring old and new music, twisted and turned.

1) Ensemble Amorpha with special guest Michael Finnissy
    Thursday October 4th, 6.15pm

Ensemble Amorpha are an exciting chamber ensemble led by composer Luke Styles (currently Composer in Residence at Glyndebourne), who champion new music often across various disciplines. They will be bringing Michael Finnissy's 'Molly-House' to Handel House's various rooms, and Michael will be giving a talk about the piece, which samples Handel himself. Come along and wander through the rooms to hear this piece, as well as hear Ligeti's Solo Violin Sonata and work by Luke.

2) Consortium 5 plus You Are Wolf
     Thursday October 11th, 6.30pm

Effervescent recorder quintet Consortium 5 will be giving the premiere of my second commission for Handel House, a three-movement work called badluck birds,  a three movement work inspired by regional lore around three British birds. The work has 'open source' elements: the piece has been composed in layers, with the audience able to arrange various layers as they choose, creating new versions of the piece for each performance. Keep an eye out for the online game version of one movement, 'Scrietch'! 

Also featuring Kerry in her alt-folk guise, You Are Wolf, with some exclusive arrangements of her folksong project 'birdlore: murders, charms and murmurations' for YAW and C5.

3) Alasdair Roberts
     Thursday October 18th, 6.30pm

Don't miss the brilliant opportunity to see renowned Scottish folk singer/songwriter in the hushed and intimate performance room of the Georgian townhouse where Handel lived and worked. A totally unique folk gig!

Alasdair Roberts is a much-admired singer and guitarist immersed in the traditional song and balladry of the British Isles. His starkly beautiful renditions of centuries-old songs are complemented by self-penned material

 dense with dark wordplay and mythological references. He is an avid collaborator, having created music with the likes of Will Oldham, Emily Portman, Jackie Oates, Lisa Knapp and the poet Robin Robertson.

4) juice
    Sunday October 28th, 3pm

I sing in the experimental (and award-winning!) vocal trio juice, and we'll be returning to Handel House for an hour of brain-tingling vocal fabulousness! Featuring the London premiere of Lucy Mulgan's cheeky work '7 Sins'.









All concerts last an hour. Tickets are £9/5 and can be booked on 020 7399 1953. I really hope to see you there!