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

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.

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.