Five questions with composer Juliana Hodkinson

 

Juliana Hodkinson’s Stills is featuring in the forthcoming one day festival New Music Show 3 on Sunday 2 December at Southbank Centre. Find out more about Juliana and her work below. 

 

Juliana Hodkinson

 

What was the first recording you bought?
A tape cassette of Sibelius’ Lemminkäinen Legends and Swan of Tuonela – after hearing the Legends in Mrs. Parsons’ school music lesson.

 

Can you tell us a little bit about your background? How did you start in composing?
Originally, I guess it was a desire for more pocket money. There was a competition where you could win £50. I think I got second prize, which must have been £25. My violin teacher and his wife played in my piece, for piano and string quartet. Devon County Council ran residential youth-orchestra courses where composition was one of the afternoon activities, so I got my first taste there. The council also employed a composer-in-residence, Christopher Williams, who gave me lessons and pointed me towards Renaissance madrigals, Balinese music and contemporary music. I would never have formulated the idea of composing music if it had not been for these local frameworks, which gave me the opportunity to work with professional musicians on my ideas and get professional feedback, criticism and encouragement. 

 

Who or what inspires you?
That’s an endless list, because it’s always changing. Working together with musicians is a key source of inspiration for each piece in the development process. And the work of other artists; works in other media often provide me with metaphors for compositional concepts or processes that I can then put into sound. I’ve spent the last 14 years chewing over two video pieces I saw in Belgium by David Claerbout. But Varèse’ Ionisation repeatedly packs an immediate punch.

 

If you could pick a favourite project or personal career highlight to date, what would it be?
That would be All the time, an instrumental theatre production I developed in 2001. It was an extreme meeting between the most reduced artistic material I had ever worked with before, and the most extensive/intensive rehearsal and production process. Together with 4 musicians and a theatre production crew, we spent weeks putting soooo much effort into lighting matches, dropping feathers, splitting near-silent tones, unpacking a clavichord in the dark, tuning, tuning and re-tuning ancient instruments… I was exhausted, I had never spent so many hours in a black-box space before, and my music was getting quieter and more sparse, day by day. By the time the journalists came to interview me for the pre-show PR, I hardly had a score left to put on the coffee-table. It was a low point and a high point at the same time. The delicate and pain-staking production of All the time was the moment I learnt how much artifice and rehearsal is required for the simplest expressions, and how rewarding it is to bring the integration of sound and light under control in the same gesture. The next main production I did after that was a huge, loud orchestral electro-acoustic video extravaganza …

 

And finally, name your 3 most listened to pieces of music at the moment…
1. Deep Purple’s Smoke on the water (coming from my son’s bedroom)

2. Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf (a musical toy that hangs over my daughter’s cot)

3. And everything in between: all kinds of radical contemporary music and sound art that I’m researching for my curatorship of Spor Festival in Denmark next May – so I can’t tell you about it, as we want the programme to be A Surprise.

Interview with Netia Jones, Projection Designer

We are delighted to be working with Netia Jones, designer of projections for our performance on Saturday 21 April as part of Impossible Brilliance: the music of Conlon Nancarrow. We caught up with Netia to find out what’s involved in producing and  designing her projections.

Can you tell us a little about your background?  How did you end up working as a projection designer?

I currentlywork as an director/designer in opera and concerts always using projection and film. I studied music and visual art simultaneously and introducing technology was a natural progression. Along the way I have worked in editing, installation and interactive media to forage for techniques that can best be applied to dealing with live music in performance, which has its own very specific demands and negotiations.

How do you go about designing projections to accompany existing works?

On any given project I will spend an earnest amount of time in preparation, both listening and reading up. Some projects have a greater narrative content and some, as this one, are just about creating a supporting layer to enhance the listening experience. There is always a visual language that emerges after this period of research, which can only really come out of total immersion.

 And how do you go about realising them?

I film and collate all the visual material, and edit to sound or to scores depending on the project. Then there is an extended period of programming to enable it all to be played live. The fundamental idea is that the film and projection follows the live performance, rather than the other way around. For me visual technology is a fantastic toolbox for responding to sound worlds in a way that enriches the experience of participating in live music. Projection can be as simple as integrated projected text, or it can encompass interactive triggers, sound, live cameras, film, or any combination of these.

Here’s a video of some of Netia’s previous work:

Who, or what, inspires you?

I am completely inspired by quiet geniuses, the kind of creative innovators who are impelled along a certain path whether anyone is listening or not. I’m afraid I am also slightly obsessed with mechanisation, machines, mathematics, science, technology and projected light.

If you could pick a favourite project or personal career highlight to date, what would it be?

Projecting 30 metres high onto Sizewell Nuclear Power station while performing Ligeti, Scelsi, Ockeghem and Mazulis. I can’t believe I was allowed to. Possibly I dreamt it.

Can you tell us about the projections in Impossible Brilliance: the music of Conlon Nancarrow?

Unlike other projects that are more narrative or concept-driven, I see projection in this concert to be a way of supporting this amazing and exhilarating programme, and perhaps suggesting, or allowing, some ideas about the composer to emerge. We have some really wonderful images of Nancarrow, and the tools of his fairly unique trade are so beautiful that I think some reliance on stills, and possibly text, can bring together these startlingly brilliant pieces and create some kind of picture of the man behind them. I am very interested in this quote from Nancarrow: “My essential concern, whether you can analyze it or not, is emotional; there’s an impact that I try to achieve by these means”. I have been slightly in love with Nancarrow for quite a while and it is a pure joy to be working on this project.

 And finally, what is the most played piece of music on your mp3 player right now?

Conlon Nancarrow String Quartet No.1, Oliver Knussen Upon One Note, György Kurtag Jatekok.

Developing the Double Bass Concerto

Enno Senft, soloist in the world premiere of Dai Fujikura’s Double Bass Concerto on 5 November, talks about his close involvement in its composition.

Enno Senft and Dai Fujikura in rehearsal (image © Briony Campbell)

The Double Bass Concerto grew out of a close collaboration between Dai and I.  After  performing two of Dai’s  challenging ensemble pieces, Fifth Station and Blue Sky Falling, I was excited as well as daunted by the idea of him writing a bass concerto for me. We met at my house looking for inspiration for Dai’s creative mind. I first freely demonstrated the instrument’s more conventional characteristics- its timbre, resonance, harmonics, gentle dynamics, and colours in the middle register.  Then I moved to more experimental, extended techniques, for example treating the bass like a big guitar  (many taxi driver’s preferred description of the bass!), using arpeggio chords, fast tremolo and slap effects.

Dai’s lateral approach to the instrument encouraged me to get carried away with suggestions like changing the tuning of the instrument altogether, extreme tremolo effects on high treble harmonics (imitating an electric guitar) and playing both parts of the stopped string. I forgot in this process that Dai videoed all of this, but certainly remembered when the score of his first preliminary solo piece ES  landed on my music stand! This piece introduced many of the ideas that later became the material for the Double Bass Concerto.  Now I faced unprecedented technical challenges, partly brought about by myself!

Subsequently, we worked closely together to find realistic solutions which make musical sense and fit with Dai’s aesthetic language.  In some ways, the new techniques used in the Double Bass Concerto has meant that learning the concerto has been like learning a new instrument.

I believe that Dai has created a truly innovative concerto that tells its own story and well as realising the full potential of the solo double bass.

Enno Senft, London Sinfonietta Principal double bass

Click here to hear extracts of Enno and the London Sinfonietta rehearsing the Double Bass Concerto.

Dai Fujikura: 8 questions

Dai Fujikura’s Double Bass Concerto is one of the pieces receiving its world premiere during our Pavilions: New Music Show 2 on 5 November at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.  Find out what Dai worries about during concerts, where he has many of his compositional ideas and what he considers to be perfection.

Dai Fujikura

 

What do you fear the most and why?

“Will musicians play the actual notes I wrote at the concert?”…”What if someone collapses in the audience during my piece and unwittingly disrupts the performance?”…”What if a power cut happens during the performance, and all the monitors for observing the conductor also shut down, will the musicians still be able to see the conductor and play?” and so on….

I think I don’t need to explain why…

Which mobile number do you call the most?

I hardly call anyone, nor does anyone call me. If I decided to cancel my phone, I don’t think anyone would notice!

What ­or where­ is perfection?

If it is music, music which doesn’t have any bits I dislike.

A perfect world exists only in my imagination where nothing I dislike exists, which I try to recreate in my composition. In a way, that’s the reason why I compose music.

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

Right now? I don’t know….when I was a child, I guess Dragon Ball and all those heroes in Japanese comic books; I am sure any kids in Japan (who were born in late 70s) would say the same.

What’s your favourite ritual?

Taking a long bath where I write emails, sketch, read books etc., but also think. Almost all of my compositional ideas come from the bath. I can’t live in a flat without a bath.

What other talent or skill would you like to possess?

I never thought about it…. even musical talent (since your question is “OTHER talent” so I presume you think that I think I have some musical talent?), do I have a drop of it, or not, I never thought about it…..

I don’t know, I am ok, being like this; maybe this would not be ok for others, but I have always done and am doing everything I want to do in my life, so I don’t think I have any desire for an extra talent or skill in addition to what I have already.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

You can’t have everything, and it is always good not to set your expectations too high so that when something good does happen, however little it is, I will feel positive.

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

Secret of the Beehive by David Sylvian.

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.

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

Q and A with George Benjamin

Ahead of his birthday concert on 7 February 2010 George Benjamin gives us an insight into his life through a quick fire Q and A. For more information on the concert please visit the event page.

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What – or where – is perfection?

Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter

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

Lok, the endearing, though deeply tragic, central character in William Golding’s The Inheritors

What’s your favourite ritual?

A concert

Which living person do you most admire?

Dr. Nazeer, my parents’ incomparable NHS GP

Which mobile number do you call the most?

I prefer texting

What do you fear the most?

Things too obvious to state

What other talent or skill would you like to possess?

To play the viola

Tell us about a special memory you have of Southbank Centre (Royal Festival Hall/Queen Elizabeth Hall/Purcell Room/Hayward Gallery)?

The Festival Hall concert Pierre Boulez conducted with the BBC SO in 1987, which included the world premiere of his revised Le Visage Nuptial, Schoenberg’s orchestral variations, Messiaen’s Chronochromie (with the composer present) and my own Ringed by the Flat Horizon

What’s your favourite website?

Ultra slow-motion videos of lightning on ztresearch .com

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

Living: my great friends pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard and composer/conductor Oliver Knussen. Dead: to see Mahler conduct Beethoven

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

To try to listen

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

In recent weeks the cd of the very strange and striking Schnee, a 55 minute ensemble work written by the contemporary Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen

George Benjamin