No Input

Just in case anyone is unfamiliar with the No-Input genre, I've posted this short video from Youtube featuring Toshimaru Nakamura and Sachiko M that may be of interest.

Toshimaru Nakamura and Havard Volden, 24th February 2010

Wednesday provided me with the opportunity of fulfilling my longstanding ambition of seeing Japanese free improv legend and no-input mixing desk player perform live. The gig formed part of a European tour that saw Nakamaru performing in a duo with Havard Volden. Even more exciting was that this gig was taking place in Salford, just 20 minutes from where I live and was supported a by one of my old almer maters, the University of Salford. The gig part of a series held at Islington Mill dependant on the dedication and hard work of Lee Patterson, Ben Gwilliam and Matt Wand.

The first set consisted of two duos. Matt Wand performed with Toshimaru Nakamura and Lee Patterson played with Harvard Volden. The Wand/Nakamura duo kicked off with some quiet and fairly complex noise textures that, although interesting enough in themselves, did not quite seem to develop enough. However, later in the piece, some very nice glitchy rhythms emerged from the layers of noise that were not too dissimilar to some of Autechre's music.

The Patterson/Volden duo inhabited a very different soundworld, which was established early on by Lee's amplified twig burning. Havard elicited a wide range of sounds and textures from his table-top guitar that suited the soundworld perfectly. As a soundscape, this piece was excellent, although I think it may have suffered a little from the fact that when the soundworlds are established so well them become nigh on impossible to break out of without jarring sound or gesture to break the mood.

The headline duo of the evening was Nakamura/Harvard. This was a very satisfying improvisation that contained an inherent form/shape and contrasting, but compementary, timbre pallets. Nakamura produced some lovely feedback that pulsed and phased wonderfully, demonstrating a dedication to his instrument that enabled him to wring maximum interest from a minimum of means. The only slight drawback to this set was that Havard had already revealed his personal vocabulary of gesture and sound during his early duo, which resulted in a loss of impact when they were unveiled a second time during the night.

The Catchlight online material

This is some of the online material for The Catchlight. I wrote this music too.

The Catchlight trailer

A trailer for a drama called The Catchlight that I wrote the soundtrack for recently.

Flute Trio Latest

I completed the flute trio I was working on for Expatrio in August. It was a long coming, but I think it turned out pretty well. The downside is that it looks like it won't be receiving it's premiere at the Bollington Festival until spring 2011, which is ages off.

Strike!

Fénytorék

It's been a long time

It's been ages since I last put something up here!

Since my last post, I've attended the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium in Canada, the 3rd Electroacoustic Juke Joint in Mississippi, USA and L'espace du son in Brussels.

I'm currently doing a bit of work on my string quartet. This is a long term project that I return to at regular intervals. I'm also doing the preliminary wotk for a new piece for quarter-tone alto flute, guitar and live electronics. This is a commission by an excellent UK new music ensemble called Rarescale. The first performance will be in London in the autumn and hopefully there will be a recording of the piece as well.

In June, I'm going to be composer in residence at the Visby International Centre for Composers in Sweden, which looks like it's going to be great.

I'm also having a piece of mine performed in North Carolina USA in August.

Some really great projects are on the horizon, so 2010 may well turn out to be an extremely busy year.