Matthew Bourne

Matthew Bourne – improviser, innovator and all-round inspired pianist/composer -  is currently collaborating with the London Sinfonietta players to create new material for the ensemble’s Written/Unwritten festival.

With the world premiere on the horizon (3 June), Matthew tells us how things got started at his first workshop session with the players, including Karen Jones (flute), Gareth Hulse (London Sinfonietta Principal oboe), Timothy Lines (clarinet), Ollie Coates (cello)  and David Hockings (London Sinfonietta Principal percussion) …

Matthew Bourne (r) starts his collaboration with the LS players. Images © Briony Campbell

I was incredibly nervous before and on the day of the initial workshop sessions in April. Even though this is a collaborative project it is always a daunting prospect presenting one’s ideas to an ensemble of new musicians for the first time. After arriving for the first session my nerves were put immediately at ease by Gareth’s arrival on a BMW GS1200 motorcycle (having become a recent convert to the many facets of motorcycling – with some spanner rash and plenty of dirty fingernails to prove it), with whom I talked to (or bored him to death…) until the other members of the ensemble arrived.

We started by working at some improvisation ideas and then tried some scored sketches/structures that I’d brought along. At one point, Karen, after trying to work around the sample phrases that I’d written for her in Idea I, took the music and turned it over so she couldn’t see the notes at all – preferring to find her own way of doing the same thing without being a ‘slave to the stave’, so to speak. This was a great moment – as this is the kind of collective approach I hoped we would achieve: losing the written music once the principles behind it are uncovered, leaving the musicians to trust their intuition, creating often better ideas than what was written in the first place!!

Over the course of the sessions, the improvised pieces became stronger and more varied and the structured elements began to change with various suggestions from the ensemble. I hadn’t written a great deal for David (sorry, David – I’ll make it up to you in the next sessions!) but I learned a lot from his input and we had some good conversations about sound(s) and the role of the percussion in the pieces and about notation – with reference to Elaine Gould’s incredible (and surprisingly addictive) book Behind Bars. 

Snapshot of one of Matthew's scores in progress ..

My main aim for this part of the collaboration was to try and learn as much as I could from the London Sinfonietta musicians and it was humbling to be working alongside players with such high standards of musicianship. After reflecting on the rehearsal recordings, work has started on a further set of notated ideas, so I’ll be bringing a few more things along that will challenge and stretch us all a little – and hopefully bring our collaborative efforts to fruition on 3 June.

Matthew Bourne

Hear the world premiere of Matthew’s collaboration with the London Sinfonietta at Written/Unwritten on Friday 3 June,  click here to read Matthew’s answers to our 12 quickfire questions, and click here to read Principal percussionist David Hockings’ blog about how the collaboration got started.

We will also be streaming short clips from the audio recordings taken at this first workshop session, so keep checking the Written/Unwritten page for the latest news and music.

www.matthewbourne.com

Matthew Bourne’s 12 Questions

Creative pianist and composer Matthew Bourne first came to national attention as one of the winners of the Perrier Jazz Awards in London, 2001. His unique ability to create powerful imagery through an esoteric piano language fused with spoken word samples earned him the Innovation Award at the BBC Radio Jazz Awards in 2002, and he continues to reap acclaim for his limitless musical imagination.

He is currently collaborating with the London Sinfonietta players to create new material for the ensemble’s Written/Unwritten festival, to be premiered on 3 June 2011. Read on to find out how he answers the Sinfonietta’s quickfire questions … 

Matthew Bourne at the first collaborative session with the LS players. Photo © Briony Campbell

What – or where – is perfection?

Interesting question – I don’t think it really exists even though one may wish that it did…

Who is your favourite hero from fiction (book/comic/film/opera)?

Any character played by the actor Corey Feldman in any film from the 1980′s.

What’s your favourite ritual?

Listening to The David Jacobs Collection on BBC Radio 2 whilst soaking in a hot bath with a glass of Bushmills Whisky at 11pm on Sunday nights. I LOVE his shows…

Which mobile number do you call the most?

It’s a close call between my two best friends, Jonny Flockton and Paul Bolderson (AKA Pb’s. or ‘Peebs’) – Human beings par excellence.

What do you fear the most?

Not having a family of my own someday.

What other talent or skill would you like to possess?

Shoeing a Horse – to become a Farrier.

Tell us about a special memory you have of Kings Place.

Playing duo concerts with Pete Wareham in the Rotunda Bar & Restaurant…

Tell us about a special memory you have of working with London Sinfonietta.

Haven’t done that yet but I’ll let you know in due course!

What’s your favourite website?

I have two longstanding favourites, actually: www.donaldrollerwilson.com & www.pentagram.com

If you could programme your ideal show, which artists (living or dead) would you bring together?

Richard Pryor, Laura Nyro, Lord Buckley, Grace Jones and Scott Walker.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

Impermanance and the unforgiving power of mother nature…

What is the most played piece of music on your MP3 player or in your CD collection?

Most recently it’s been Shostakovitch’s String Quartet No.13, Peter Gabriel’s eponymous debut album and Ben E. King’s Stand by Me…

Hear the world premiere of Matthew’s collaboration with the London Sinfonietta at Written/Unwritten on Friday 3 June,  and click here to read Principal percussionist David Hockings’ blog about how the collaboration got started.

www.matthewbourne.com

David Hockings on Matthew Bourne, improvisation and percussion-related injuries …

London Sinfonietta’s Principal percissionist David Hockings is taking part in Written/Unwritten, our genre-busting festival where composed and improvised music collide. Together with a handful of players, he is working with Matthew Bourne in a new collaboration which will be premiered at Kings Place on Friday 3 June 2011. Read on to find out how things got started …

David Hockings, London Sinfonietta's Principal Percussionist. Image © Briony Campbell

Working with Matthew last week was a very interesting experience, mainly because he’s a really interesting guy. It’s often difficult to begin a collaboration when musicians from quite different backgrounds come together, five of us (LS) versus one of him, so far the odds are good!  However as almost always happens, as soon as we begin to make music a sixth sense cuts in and the creative process begins, no barriers exist.

Matthew has a background largely based around improvisation, and guess what… we don’t. In order to “get going”, we used material selected from Berio’s Sequenza for Oboe that after several attempts we organised into a short repeatable section of music. During the rest of the sessions this process continued based on original material roughly sketched out by Matthew. Virtually everything we tried was recorded so that between now and our final sessions later in May, Matthew will have an opportunity to formulate some of the musical building blocks into one or more pieces.

As well as all this quite challenging work we did find time to exchange stories on how performing various works over the years we had all managed to injure ourselves, my own involving a football ratchet to the head, totally self-inflicted of course and drawing blood. Matthew’s involved staining various pianos with blood as a result of over enthusiastic plucking.

It would be wrong of me not to mention Matthew’s incredible technique on the piano, but perhaps the most surprising area that I think any of us have come across was his method of reaching the highest or lowest notes on the piano whilst both hands were busy in the “central area”: he uses his feet. Another injury story waiting to add to the list perhaps?

Matthew Bourne demonstrates his signature technique ... Image © Briony Campbell.

Whether this will be present in the final work/s who knows, you’ll just have to come and see for yourselves.

David Hockings

Keep an eye on the London Sinfonietta blog over the next few weeks, as Written/Unwritten gets ever closer.

Click here to find out more about London Sinfonietta’s Written/Unwritten festival at Kings Place, book your tickets and view for more photos from this collaborative workshop.

Writing the Future: First Pieces (part 3)

Tim Hodgkinson is another of the six composers selected to take part in the London Sinfonietta’s new Writing the Future scheme, and has been working with the ensemble’s Principal horn Michael Thompson since the scheme’s launch in February.

The result of this collaboration is a Sinfonietta Short, as yet untitled, which will be premiered at a free pre-concert performance as part of Pavilions, the London Sinfonietta’s celebration of new British music on Sunday 29 May.

Tim tells us more about his new piece…

Tim Hodgkinson (L) and Michael Thompson meet at the Writing the Future launch, Feb 2011. Image (c) Briony Campbell

I am at the stage where there is a great deal of impetus coming from what already exists but there are still major decisions being made that require me to step back and think or not think about what I am doing.

I’m not sure about the flavour: ripe fruits with dark undertones of tobacco perhaps.

Just had (Monday) an excellent session with Michael in which we went through the first part working on details of playing and notation. This all went fine. I thought he might tell me the second part was unplayable – it has a lot of little notes in it – but he didn’t. It simply sounds more snakey than I was expecting, which is fine, as the material all derives from a complex wave form. Then we looked at sound ideas for the third part and he suggested using a microphone for the performance so we can use varied breath sounds and they won’t disappear in the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

The next step for me is to firm up the third part whilst keeping hold of how it reflects on what goes before it, as well as how it reflects on a possible fourth part. I think what really holds the piece together is the silences and I have to keep weighing these up. They are hard to fix because they don’t feel the same length if you count them, and the listener won’t be counting them.

Tim Hodgkinson

Book your tickets to hear the premiere of Tim’s new Sinfonietta Short at Pavilions at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on Sunday 29 May, 2011.

Click here to find out more about how the London Sinfonietta is creating new music with some of the finest emerging composers on Writing the Future.

Pavilions is generously supported by Arts Council England, the Holst Foundation, PRS for Music Foundation and the RVW Trust.

Writing the Future is generously supported by The Boltini Trust, The John S Cohen Foundation, Anthony Mackintosh and Michael & Patricia McLaren-Turner.

Writing the Future: First Pieces (part 2)

Shiva Feshareki is another of the six composers selected to take part in the London Sinfonietta’s new Writing the Future scheme, and has been working with the ensemble’s Principal clarinet Mark van de Wiel since the scheme’s launch in February.

The result of this collaboration is a Sinfonietta Short, titled departing in peace, arriving with love which will be premiered at an exclusive London Sinfonietta’s Pioneers’ event on Wednesday 13 April 2011.

Keep your eyes on the London Sinfoniettta website for news about the first public performance.

Composer Shiva Feshareki (r) at the launch of Writing the Future, February 2011. Photo © Briony Campbell

Shiva tells us more about her piece…

Mark and I already knew each other, when we met on stage of the Royal Festival Hall in a Q&A session last year. Not exactly the most common place to meet, but a lot started even then. In regards to this collaboration, I think he had already understood my way of thinking. I like picking up things that come my way very spontaneously, which then register in my head as being significant, or having had an impact on me. So during the time we have spent with each other so far, we have been focussing on emotions and meanings, and what’s significant for both of us, both in music and in our everyday lives. Now, this will remain between just the two of us, however, for example, I asked him about what makes him happy, what makes him smile, why he likes certain passages of music (which he played a lot of for me: such a luxury), why certain things are scary for him or tedious etc (rather than what sound does it produce if you shove a pen knife in the clarinet or what extended technique can we bastardise this time(!)). In other words, for Mark and me, it’s about the personal, not the technical (or techniques). And I really did find some really beautiful moments emerged between us, so far, in the collaboration. This doesn’t mean that the piece I am writing for him will be so tailored for him that other clarinettists can’t play it; it just means that we have found a soul for the piece, and it’s something that I am now translating into the music (it never had any verbal identity anyway).

The next time we meet, Mark will receive the complete piece. He already knew that that’s what I do: something just clicks in my head after much internal thought, and then I write ’the whole’, with no disruption.

Mark is a fantastic person. Not only does he produce one of the best sounds I have ever heard, but his attitude and commitment to music have no comparison. We both trust each other wholeheartedly, and that is the definition of a collaboration.’

Shiva will not be using electronics in this piece.

Book your tickets to hear more of the Writing the Future pieces at our Pavilions pre-concert performance on Sunday 29 May 2011.

Click here to find out more about how the London Sinfonietta is creating new music with some of the finest emerging composers on Writing the Future.

Writing the Future: First Pieces

Edmund Finnis is one of the six composers selected to take part in the London Sinfonietta’s new Writing the Future scheme, and has been working with the ensemble’s Principal viola Paul Silverthorne since the scheme’s launch in February.

The result of this collaboration is a Sinfonietta Short, titled Veneer, which will be premiered on Tuesday 5 April 2011 at the ensemble’s Chopped and Screwed – itself a collaboration between the London Sinfonietta and rising stars of the experimental pop scene Micachu and the Shapes.

Edmund tells us more about his piece…

Edmund Finnis begins his collaboration with LS Principal Paul Silverthorne at the Writing the Future Introduction Weekend, Feb 2011. Photo © Briony Campbell

I have been working on my piece for solo viola while on residency at the Banff Centre in Canada. For the piece, the viola’s lowest string is tuned down a tone to a Bb. I am interested in the way that this seemingly small adjustment to the instrument alters the nature of its resonance. In particular, when played loud, partials from the low string now set up sympathetic vibrations in the D string. The work makes use of the scordatura tuning by exploiting its concomitant range of natural harmonics. These harmonics are played loud and stridently, in a way that lets them continue to resonate beyond the moment the bow leaves the strings. To accentuate the kind of singing quality that I am after, I am looking at the possibility of using subtle, unobtrusive amplification along with a small amount of artificial reverb. I am very keen not to alienate the sound of the natural viola by connecting it to an amplification circuit, and only want to use reverb to emulate the kind of sound one might hear if the piece were played in a large reverberant space such as a chapel.

My work on this piece will doubtless inform aspects of my next large composition, to be scored for 2 viola d’amores and 14 modern strings.

Edmund Finnis

Book your tickets to hear the premiere of Veneer at Micachu and the Shapes with the London Sinfonietta: Chopped and Screwed at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on Tuesday 5 April, 2011.

Click here to find out more about how the London Sinfonietta is creating new music with some of the finest emerging composers on Writing the Future.

Micachu and the Shapes with the London Sinfonietta: Chopped and Screwed is presented by Southbank Centre in association with the London Sinfonietta as part of Ether.

Writing the Future is generously supported by The Boltini Trust, The John S Cohen Foundation, Anthony Mackintosh and Michael & Patricia McLaren-Turner.

Norwegian folk music, polytonality, and lowering the divorce rate: part 2

In the second part of this two-part blog, cellist Zoe Martlew tells us what happens when Norwegian folk fiddler Nils Økland meets the London Sinfonietta in preparation for the first event at Written/Unwritten …

Nils learns all his melodies by ear, and found it strange that we preferred to learn by seeing the written notes first. Composer Charlie Piper was present to help bridge the gap, but it made me aware of the tremendous aural memory required of the folk musician. At least two of our group has perfect pitch – Sam Walton, percussionist and Joan Atherton, violinist, and were able to copy melodies straight off. However, as Joan explained, having perfect pitch can sometimes cause problems when it comes to retuning the instrument, customary left hand finger positions producing different sounding pitches with each scordatura and potentially causing confusion. In the end it wasn’t necessary to retune the strings and we all managed to memorise quite a collection of Nils’ pieces in a short space of time: a “Lazy” tune, with polytonal structures and a lilting rhythm amplified by foot beats; a religious melody so lost in antiquity that heated arguments abound in the Norwegian folk music community about the correct way to play it; a lively running theme with foot stomping dance rhythms; a “grey” melody to be played at 4 in the morning at weddings and a piece of Nils’ own called Blond Bleu after a painting by Lars Hertervig. Now considered one of Norway’s greatest artists, Hertervig was so poor in his lifetime he was unable to afford paper and paint, so made his own from crushed tobacco paper and natural pigments.  For me this painting perfectly evokes the beautiful and mysterious melancholy of so much of the Hardanger music we have heard.

Blond Bleu by Lars Hertervig, which inspired Nils’ original composition.

The modes Nils used were not all familiar to me. One appeared to be a Dorian scale with the first five notes of an E major scale stuck on top, for example, another a mix of two completely different modes. However, I did find myself playing a drone D and A fifth for a fair amount of our improvised sessions and wondered yet again at how often this happens in so many folk traditions: middle eastern, central European, Celtic and by extension in modern film scores where a D bass drone seems de rigour (I speak from hard won film session experience). Perhaps the ancient idea of modes being associated with “the humours” is not so far off. D associated with tragedy, and so on. Nils said that several of his melodies had been influenced by Middle Eastern traditions (would be fascinating to know where, how and when) that can be heard in certain microtonal ornamental inflections.

In order to avoid the danger of us becoming a mere backing band for the distinctive Norwegian colour world, and me going crazy with Dorian mode pedal notes, Sam Walton our percussionist suggested we experiment further with harmonic modulation within the improvisations. John Constable began to add more jagged thematic gestures on the piano, and in the strings we started to use more of the extended techniques discussed earlier and move away from a purely modal tonality. Nils himself is no stranger to other ways of playing, improvising regularly with jazz musicians, free improvisers and once in a punk band, as have I (a band called “Liebeskind” which was unbelievably loud, bad, entirely made up on the spot and unsurprisingly lasted for only 3 gigs. Our first album cover was to have featured our Belgian lead singer carrying the placenta of her newly born daughter. Mercifully, the idea and the band sunk without trace). At one point Sam and I did a high octane piano cello improv moving far away from folk genre, and in much more familiar musical territory for us. Interestingly, Nils said that he finds free improv much harder to do than folk or jazz. Such differences are what makes the collaboration compelling, and spark off new possibilities in making music for us all.

After coffee and cake from the nearby fabulous Konditor and Cook, we discussed the outline of our concert in June and how to balance improvised and written music. We came up with a programme including Stravinsky’s wonderful Three Pieces for String Quartet; two Aphex Twin pieces for piano; the ever popular Fratres by Arvo Pärt, and some music by young Norwegian composers plus the new works created from our group ensemble improvisations at the two day workshop.

We round off our two days of collaboration with a foot stomping wedding tune. The Hardanger folk fiddler traditionally sits down to play. In the past Norwegian weddings would have lasted for at least a week, many people travelling for days on foot over the mountains to reach the party. Once ecsonced, the musician would be playing for hours, hence the need to sit down and presence of “four o’clock in the morning ‘grey’ tunes” previously mentioned. There is a belief that the divorce rate is now much higher in Norway because weddings are now far shorter and don’t allow people the chance to get to know each other as well. It’s nice to think that such hauntingly beautiful music not only can keep trolls at bay but also maintain marital stability. Couples are welcome to put the theory to the test at Kings Place in June.

Don’t miss the results of this unique collaboration at Written/Unwritten on 2 June 2011.

Click here to find out more about London Sinfonietta’s Written/Unwritten festival at Kings Place, and to view for more photos from this first collaborative workshop.

Tunde Jegede answers a few questions from LS …

kora player Tunde Jegede

Tunde Jegede is a composer and multi-instrumentalist, playing cello, kora, piano and percussion. Uniquely placed between the worlds of contemporary classical, African and popular music, he is a prolific producer/songwriter and a virtuosic performer who has worked with artists as varied as Courtney Pine and the Brodsky Quartet.

Tunde performs with the London Sinfonietta on Thursday 10 March, and took a few minutes out of his hectic performing schedule to answer a few quickfire questions for us …

What – or where – is perfection?

In the transcendental musical moment.

Who is your favourite hero from fiction (book/comic/film/opera)?

Macbeth. I like his complexity!

What’s your favourite ritual?

I always try and have a silent moment alone in complete stillness before a concert.

Which mobile number do you call the most?

My wife.

What do you fear the most?

My own anger!

What other talent or skill would you like to possess?

To be able to drive.

Tell us about a special memory you have of Southbank Centre.

The premiere of African Classical Music was given by my ensemble at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre on 22nd October 1991.

Tell us about a special memory you have of working with London Sinfonietta.

I recorded the title track to my debut album, Lamentation with Members of the London Sinfonietta including Christopher Van Kampen who was a fantastic cellist but has sadly passed away now.

What’s your favourite website?

Mobile Me as it allows me to do so much on the move. I am rarely on one place!

If you could programme your ideal show, which artists (living or dead) would you bring together?

I would love to bring to the Southbank Centre a show I did in Paris for the St Denis Festival which brought together the legendary Malian artists, Oumou Sangare, Toumani Diabate, Kasse Mady, African Classical Music Ensemble and the Brodsky Quartet for the first time. The show was an amazing collaboration of some of the world’s greatest artists and has yet to be performed in the UK.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

Patience.

What is the most played piece of music on your MP3 player or in your CD collection?

Tomorrow by Salif Keita.

Tell us about your part in the London Sinfonietta concert in Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on 10^th March.

I am performing a couple of pieces for solo kora drawn from my album, Still Moment.

Tunde performs a selection of pieces for kora, the traditional African lute-harp, at London Sinfonietta’s concert Adès and The Origin of the Harp on Thursday 10 March, 7.30pm. Click here to find out more, or click here to listen to clips from Tunde’s album Still Moment on LastFM.

www.tundejegede.com

Norwegian folk music, polytonality, and lowering the divorce rate – part 1

Cellist Zoe Martlew tells us what happens when Norwegian Hardanger folk fiddler Nils Økland meets the London Sinfonietta in preparation for the first event at Written/Unwritten …

(anticlockwise from left) Zoe Martlew, Sam Walton, Eniko Magyar, Nils Økland, Jonathan Morten and John Constable meet for the first time to collaborate for Written/Unwritten. Image © Briony Campbell

The words “Norwegian folk fiddler” for me immediately conjure up images of craggy old men with flowing white beards leading solitary lives in lonely log cabins by fjords, casting spells on mountain trolls and mist-bound elves with melodies of impossible sadness and antiquity. Cheerfully smashing this picture to smithereens, the youthful Hardanger fiddler Nils Økland burst into our rehearsal space at The Warehouse, full of twinkly humour, an immediately engaging and lively presence, delighted to share the art of his music with us assembled London Sinfonietta players.

He was carrying two Hardanger fiddles with him, custom made modern instruments with exquisitely wrought inlaid mother of pearl fingerboards, embellished wood carving on the body of the fiddle, 4 main strings with 4 sympathetic resonating strings underneath and enlarged f holes (compared to modern violins). He explained that each of the strings is made differently to produce a different timbre: one is wound gut, for example, another straight gut, and so on.  The reason for this became apparent as soon as he started playing.

Nils and the Hardanger fiddle. Image © Briony Campbell

 

Each melody is played on the higher of two strings, the lower played simultaneously as a drone, with the sympathetic strings creating a haunting halo of resonance. The multi modal melodies are freely embellished and mostly un-tempered. By shifting to a new melody and drone on another two strings, the tonality and mood changes with the new string timbre. The result of these shifting melodies is a lilting polytonality accompanied by a regular left-right foot stomp “heart beat” that often seems to go against the melody. The polyrhythms and harmonic colour reminded me strongly of Stravinsky’s music, L’Histoire du Soldat in particular.

The fiddle has a specific tuning for each melody and Nils explained that there are many different scordatura (retunings) used – as many as 50 in some traditions. It’s relatively easy to retune the Hardanger fiddle as the tension on the strings is considerably less than that of the modern violin. Still it was impressive how often and how quickly he was able to retune for each piece, never once needing to refer to a central pitch or tuning fork, revealing the extraordinary aural skills that the Hardanger art demands.

Nils told us that the folk fiddle tradition had almost died out in Norway but is currently enjoying a revival. He has travelled around the country gathering old tunes from the old men in log cabins that do turn out to exist after all. So pure is this aural tradition, says Nils, that he came across one father and son duo arguing about 17^th century ornamental performance practice as passed down by their great, great grandfathers. Eat your heart out Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Some of the tunes Nils plays he has learnt the modern way, over the phone, to avoid the more traditional method of travelling for miles on foot across the mountains to gather music. From all this material, Nils has also composed his own melodies, which have the same seductively mournful quality.

Our task is to collaborate with Nils to come up with an evening’s music both of our written repertoire, his improvised music, and something completely new combining both traditions. We string players immediately face the issue of whether to imitate the delicate sound of the Hardanger fiddle or stick with our own more sharply defined articulation and tone. We all try out his bows and marvel at their lightness and springiness. The one I tried felt as though it barely weighed a gram and certainly made imitating Nils’ style much easier. We have all had some experience playing baroque music, especially violinist Jonathan Morton who owns his own baroque bows and was rapidly able to improvise with the light bow strokes of the Hardanger style. After considerable discussion on the best approach to the overall string sound we decided that a blend of modern and ancient string technique would be more interesting, allowing room for variation between the two. Fuelling further discussion, Nils played us a delicate piece of his called Moths which was full of what we would call “extended techniques”: bow flutterings on the fingerboard, whispered sul pont murmurs, left hand glissandi, tremolos, and so on.  Suddenly we were more in Helmut Lachenmann than baroque performance territory. Our violist, Eniko Magyar, suggested she perform a movement of Ligeti’s solo viola sonata in the concert that uses many of the same sounds and nicely integrates our collective stylistic possibilities.

Another collaborative question to be tackled was that of equal temperament. Interestingly, many of the young Norwegian folk musicians have stopped using the microtones that to my ears make their music uniquely coloured. I remember being struck by the haunting beauty and virtuosity of un-tempered modal Norwegian singing in a bar in Bergen some years back. Even though our ensemble includes the tempered piano, the microtonal embellishments Nils uses in some melodies still seemed to work well alongside John Constable’s carefully chosen chord sequences on the piano. These issues are all part of our process of finding where contemporary music performance practice and folk music can happily meet and inform the other.

Keep an eye on the London Sinfonietta blog over the next few days, when we’ll post the second part of this two-part blog.

Click here to find out more about London Sinfonietta’s Written/Unwritten festival at Kings Place, and to view for more photos from this first collaborative workshop.

Music for 18 Musicians in Glasgow & Birmingham

Serge Vuille was our percussionist at the very first London Sinfonietta Academy in July 2009, and since then he’s graduated and regularly joins the ensemble for our landmark events and touring projects.  This weekend, he performs master minimalist Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians for the first time, and told us a bit about how rehearsals are going…

Wednesday 9th February

The good thing about Henry Wood Hall (a rehearsal space in Borough) is that they serve a brilliant cooked breakfast within the building. So on Wednesday morning, once all the instruments were in the right place, I went down to the ‘crypt’ in the basement and ordered a double egg on toast with tea to make sure I would have plenty of energy for the rehearsal. I have never played Music for 18 Musicians, but I know the piece and know that energy will be required.

I am the only one in the piano-percussion section who has never played this piece, and when the rehearsal starts I still don’t know exactly which part I am going to play. Although there is a music part on each stand in the room, this piece is rehearsed following more of an ‘oral tradition’. The players change from one instrument to the other (including pianists playing marimba, singers and percussionists playing piano), and share the music. So David Hockings (Principal percussion) and Micaela Haslam (director of Synergy Vocals) introduce the piece to me with much expertise and enthusiasm as we go along. I like this way of working, where experience is the main source of information, and printed music acts more like a reminder.

It takes a few moments for me to find the right feel to the music: relaxed but right on top of the beat. It feels safe anyway to be surrounded by great musicians who know exactly what they are doing. I am fortunately familiar with Steve Reich’s music, and after a little while it starts to feel comfortable. I can then concentrate on communicating with the other players, and enjoy the waves and turns of the music.

 

Thursday 10^th February

The singers join us today, but the violinist is ill (he’ll catch up in the afternoon)… This means we can’t run the whole piece as he cues both the beginning and the end, but we can deal with it as this music never really starts or stops, it mainly evolves. There is no conductor and no bars to count, but there are cues and signs from one player to another. During rehearsals, when we take up from a certain place, there isn’t a ‘1-2-3-go’, but one of the players starts (probably a melodic part on the marimba) and the others just come in in no particular order. The two ‘cue masters’, showing the big changes between parts are the vibraphone (Tim Palmer) and first clarinet (Tim Lines).

My part consists mainly in playing repeated chords on all the beats uninterruptedly during chunks of about 10 minutes and changing chord for each section. I love it. It is the backbone of the music (shared between several musician through the piece), and maybe the best position to listen and enjoy the rest (but not too much, because the slightest drop in concentration results in a very subtle but noticeable wobble in time). Just opposite to me is Olly Lowe, playing upbeats, right between my downbeats. We studied together at the Royal College of Music and it is great to play with him again ‘in the real world’. It is the weirdest impression to have this constant pulse of quavers going between the two of us while it is very hard for the ear to distinguish what I am or he is playing. It is sometimes better not to listen too carefully.

I was in the audience for the London Sinfonietta’s last performance of Music for 18 Musicians at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall last year and loved it. One of the great things about a concert performance of this piece is that the listener can focus on many different layers and aspects of the music: the constant pulse, the melodies, the changes in texture, the waves, the visual aspects, the sounds coming from the ground, those flying just under the ceiling, the attack of the sticks on the marimba, or oppositely only the resonance. Steve Reich’s music can sound very simple, but it is extremely rich, and offers a very complete concert experience. I can’t wait to perform Music for 18 Musicians for the first time in Glasgow, and even more so with the London Sinfonietta.

Serge Vuille

Serge is one of the London Sinfonietta’s percussionists for the tour of  Adès’s In Seven Days alongside Reich’s iconic Music for 18 Musicians.

Click here to watch our short film about Music for 18 Musicians, which includes exclusive interview footage with Steve Reich.