The Return of Written/Unwritten

In June this year we collaborated with pianist Matthew Bourne in our Written/Unwritten, which involved collaboration between musicians from both notated and non-notated backgrounds.  On Friday 18 November Written/Unwritten returns, and this time we’ll also be joined by experimental percussionist Vladimir Tarasov.  Ahead of the workshops for this event, Matthew tells us a little about his current musical preferences, and reflects on his previous Written/Unwritten experience.

Back in June, you were listening to Shostakovitch’s String Quartet No.13, Peter Gabriel’s eponymous debut album and Ben E. King’s Stand by Me.  What’s on your favoured playlist right now?

Joanna Newsom: Have One on Me, Olivier Messiaen: Catalogue d’Oiseaux, The Fall: Totally Wired – The Rough Trade Anthology, Dirk Bogarde: Lyrics for Lovers

Tell us a little about your previous experience of working with the London Sinfonietta. Is there anything you might do differently this time?

Matthew Bourne in rehearsal

It was a great experience and I learned a lot from the London Sinfonietta players.

I sketched out some rough ideas and took them along to the workshops and we recorded the results. I then decided which sections would be kept or altered, worked on a new piece and finally ordered the sections.This time the line-up is roughly the same so I’ll be sticking quite closely to the original piece albeit a little shorter in duration…

You’re also to be joined by percussionist Vladimir Tarasov.  How do you think this might alter the process and end performance?

I have no idea! It’ll be fun finding out, though.

Check out our blog next week for an update following the first batch of workshops for Written/Unwritten.

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.

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.