Steve's Music Blog

Where am I?

2010-10-02T03:44:00.000-07:00

My more up to date blogs can be found at:

http://stevekilpatrick.wordpress.com/

See you there!

Judging Records by Their Covers

2010-07-22T07:16:00.000-07:00

My last post reminded me of finding Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass' Whipped Cream and Other Delights in a bargain bin in an Oxfam shop in the Lake District. I bought it purely because of the cover, thinking that even if it was awful, I could at least frame it to decorate my room.

It's a cover that has been parodied probably hundreds of times and Christian Marklay's collection of Whipped Cream covers and parody covers has even been exhibited at Exit Art in New York.

Marklay's article on the Whipped Cream cover can be seen here:
http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/3248/

As it happens, it's also a great album.

The Flock - Dinosaur Swamps

2010-07-22T05:13:00.001-07:00

I dug this 1970 album called Dinosaur Swamps by The Flock out yesterday as I was going through my old vinyl. I remember picking this album up at a record standing the old Corn Exchange in Manchester because it featured Jerry Goodman, who later went on to play violin for Mahavishnu Orchestra.

I think at the time I bought it, I was a little disappointed that it wasn't an album of frenetic virtuosity like Mahavisnu's Inner Mounting Flame, but I soon came to realise that The Flock's idea of fusion was a very different beast. As well as the obvious Jazz, Rock and Funk influences you would expect to find on a Fusion album, there is also a very prominent Country sound and elements of Soul. There is also a real Zappa-esque sense of fun about the whole record. Check it out.

Far Out Space Oddyssey

2010-07-22T05:08:00.000-07:00

I'm still a big fan of buying music on vinyl and part of the fun for me is making impulse buys based on album cover art.

In this particular case, I was passing Manchester's best (possibly only these days) independant Record shop, Piccadilly Records. Besides the obvious eye-catching nature of the cover art, I was atracted to the blurb promising "Psychedelic Folk, Electronica, Jazz and Rock from the Out There Edges of Brazil!". I mean, what's not to like there?

I must admit, I wasn't going into this completely blind (deaf?) as I'm a huge fan of Soul Jazz's Brazil '70 release of post-Tropicalia Brazilian Rock and their Nu Yorika album released in the '90s. Both great records with more amazing grooves than you can shake a dirty stick at.

Anyway, Far Out Spaced Oddyssey comes highly recommended by me. It's got great tunes and some amazing, and occassionally freaky, grooves. The final track on side, Diretiz Binario, has a groove that will have you checking that your record isn't skipping!!

Requiem by Steve Kilpatrick

2010-07-20T13:35:00.001-07:00

Requiem by Steve Kilpatrick

Tokyo Yakimono

2010-07-20T13:31:00.001-07:00

Tokyo Yakimono by Steve Kilpatrick

Wingbeats

2010-07-07T06:47:00.000-07:00

The Wingbeats project is starting in earnest now. This is the music theatre project that I will be composing the music for and which we hope will form part of the 2012 cultural olympiad.

The themes athat at central to this music theatre project are:

Flight in all its forms, includeing bird flight and manned/unmanned flight
How can we fly without leaving the ground through movement, music, text etc.
The landscape of the East Ridings area
Vanishing

As part of our immersion into these themes, the librettist/director/producer/mastermind, Adam Strickson, and I spent the afternoon with Steve from the RSPB at Bempton Cliffs.

The point of the day was partly to get a sense of place, as our project is closely related to the East ridings area, and to learn a little about sea birds, their habits and their habitat. Steve was the perfect person for the job and very soon had infused us with his passion for birds and the natural world in general. Within no time, I found myself hugely excited at the prospect of spotting puffins, kittiwakes, herring gulls, gannets, guillemots, razorbills and fulmars.

As well as learning about the birds of the area, this trip also provided me the perfect opportunity to do some location recording. What is so rewarding about location recording is that the microphone functions like a lens in that it has a focussing effect on a particular sound, or group of sounds, that allows you to "see it" in a new way and with some opportunity to remove it from its natural context.

What I found so fascinating about the various calls of the sea birds at Bempton Cliffs was that their vocalisations were so noise-based and were rough, racous and screeching. We often associate birdsong with sweet, chirping, often meodic birds of the inland territories, which has resulted in birdsong featuring in music from the music of Haydn and Beethoven through to Messiaen in the 20th Century. Initially, I would have baulked at the idea of drawing inspiration from birdsong, but in this case, with my interest in noise, I am finding myself drawn to the prospect.

Residue: Voxare quartet at ICMC

2010-07-03T05:56:00.000-07:00

On 3rd June this year, there was a special concert of music for strings and live electronics as part of the International Computer Music Conference in New York and I was lucky enough to have a piece included in the programme, along with music by Tommaso Perego (IT), Spencer Topel (USA), Marc Ainger (US), Tom Lopez (USA), and Neil Rolnick (USA). Sadly, due to technical issues, Marc Ainger's 13forLucky was dropped from the programme at the last minute.

The quartet selected to be quartet-in-residence for this years ICMC where the Voxare Quartet (http://www.voxarequartet.com/).

My piece was a piece for string quartet and electronics, entitled Residue, and was a collaborative project with my friend and colleague Adam Stansbie (http://www.composersdesktop.com/stansbie.html). The collaborative process worked this way; I wrote the music for the quartet and then Adam responded to that music with an accompanying part of electroacoustic textures and gestures built up from the sounds of string instruments that he had recorded.

Despite a couple of technical problems, such as my MaxMSP patch not working and then my laptop crashing on me just before the beginning of the performance, the whole thing went really well. I was really pleased with the way the ensemble played my music and the piece in general got a really great reception from the audience.

The Voxare Quartet were very complementary about my music and intend to play Residue again aome time in their concert series. We are also currently discussing them performing another of my string quartet pieces and perhaps me writing a new quartet especially for them.

Widget

2010-06-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

I stuck a widget on my sidebar, so you can hear some of my music.

Sadly, It's all quite old now, but I'm waiting on some new recordings and I'll post them as soon as they come.

Music for Radio: The Process

2010-06-21T04:48:00.000-07:00

If you've read my blog before, you'll know that I recently composed and recorded the music for a new BBC Radio 4 drama called Amazing Grace. To coincide with the broadcast of the drama in five parts throughout the week beginning 28th June on Woman's Hour, the producer/director, Justine Potter, is putting out a series of blogs about the process of getting a radio drama from an initial idea to a final broadcast episode. As part of this process, she has asked me to write a blog about how the process worked for me as the composer.

For anyone unfamiliar with the story, here's a brief synopsis:

When Grace's Sudanese village was attacked, she grabbed youngest children Kyla (10) and Mia (2) and ran for their lives, with her twin boy’s right behind her - or so she thought. Thankfully safety arrives as a truck full of fleeing villagers lets them on board - she loads her 2 daughters on board and turns to lift the boys up, but they're gone, she can't see them anywhere in the smoke, gunfire, screams, flames and the truck must go. Grace must make an impossible choice;: to save the children she has with her or abandon them to look for the 2 boys who somehow, in all the chaos have got left behind. This is the story of Grace – a refugee now in the UK and her battle to find and bring her children back to her.

Justine and I first talked about the possibility of me producing theme and incidental music for Amazing Grace while the script was still in its writing stage. As usual, I got rather excited and, after finding out from the writer, Michelle Lipton, that the main protagonist was of the Dinka ethnic group, I made a start on researching the music of the Dinka people of Southern Sudan and started throwing together some initial ideas.

As it happens, this was a bit of naive of me because at this point I hadn't actually been commissioned to do anything and had just assumed everything would go ahead. After this misunderstanding was pointed out, I put Amazing Grace to one side and got on with another couple of commissions I was working on.

Once I got the official go ahead from Justine to make a start on the music, I was glad that I'd at least done some initial research as the turnaround for the whole production was pretty tight and I needed to deliver the complete recorded versions of the music very quickly indeed.

The idea that I had had since my initial discussions with Justine was to fuse the Anglican choral tradition with certain musical features of Dinka music. This was because the character of Grace is a christian of Dinka ethnicity who sings in an Anglican church choir when she finds safety in the UK. This choir, without featuring directly in the drama (although it did in earlier drafts of the script) is important to the narrative in that this is where she meets her friend, Bonnie, a middle class, middle aged lady that Grace would be unlikely to get the opportunity to befriend outside of the church community. From our email correspondence, it seemed that Justine and Michelle thought that this approach might be interesting, so this was this path I decided to follow.

During the early stages, many of the important decisions I made about the music were really defined by what I did not want it to be.

First of all, the title, having a musical connection, offered one particular musical route that I felt would be wrong for the drama. By taking Amazing Grace as a starting point,the temptation would be to draw inspiration from the Gospel choral tradition, but that is really an African American tradition that need not necessarily be something that a Sudanese woman in the UK would identify with.

The other thing that I was very keen not to do, was to produce pastiche African music. I'm not an ethnomusicologist or a Sudanese musician and I thought it best not to try and be either of those things. I was very keen that my music would be respectful to the characters culture and would reflect the point of view of the story, which is that of a Sudanese woman mediated by the experience of living in the UK.

One of the themes of Amazing Grace is the way in which she inspires the people around her and enriches their lives. I thought that I would focus on this idea for the main musical themes. Rather than represent Grace with pastiche Sudanese music, I would represent her with an archetype of Britishness/Englishness - the Anglican choir -that has become subtly enriched and infused with Dinka/Sudanese inflections. In this way, Grace is actually represented musically, not as a Sudanese refugee, but as a force for good and inspiration for positive change within her adopted community.

The actual development of the theme itself began with composing the initial melody. I knew from the start that I did not want to "borrow" Dinka tunes for my composition. there were two reasons for this: I wanted my music to be a original piece of work and I was wary of plundering a people's cultural heritage and then doing something with it that could be interpreted as disrespectful.

I did, however, take inspiration from a recording I had from the Smithsonian Institute of Dinka women's songs. Many of the songs used very few notes and were based on a minor pentatonic scale and in a number of songs there was a certain swing that had an equally heavily accented downbeat:
1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 etc.

I knew that I wouldn't be able to get a UK choir to copy the swing I had heard on the recordings, but that was really the point. The point would be that they were trying to emulate that swing.

Once I had the initial pentatonic melody, I re-composed it into a diatonic melody (the usual 7-note major or minor scales we are all familiar with) because I wanted to harmonise it in a very traditional choral way. Then I recomposed the whole thing again to produce a melody and harmony in the aeolian mode and then I did the whole process again to produce a pentatonic version (i.e. making use of the scale that I heard used on the recording of Dinka women's music).

All these versions were recorded by the Leeds University Liturgical Choir and different versions are used as opening and closing themes for the play depending on the dramatic context.

I also wanted to have a version of the theme that was much more intimate that the choral version, so I made an arrangement of the pentatonic version of the theme for voice and piano. In this version, the vocalist sings an octave lower and is recorded with a close mic technique to achieve a warm, intimate atmosphere. to me, This version is almost a lullaby, yet it has a sadness about it. The piano was played by Kingsley Ash and the vocals were performed by Aniko Toth.

I also made some solo piano arrangements of the choral music. These, as well as the intimate voice and piano version, were used throughout the drama as incidental music and "stings" (short musical extracts to punctuate the drama, or to indicate a change of scene).

I was very pleased with our work when I heard the final edit of play. The only thing I was not happy with was the inclusion of the song Amazing Grace at the very start of the first episode, which I felt slightly undermined and contradicted what I had done with the original music. That said, the radio play isn't about my personal vision for the drama, but culmination of months (or possibly years for the writer and producer) of hard work for a large number of people that is (hopefully!) more than the sum of its parts.

The whole process of working on a radio drama is a very exciting one and one that throws up a number of challenges. The first challenge is that this is a collaborative process and the people involved bring a number of different visions of the final product to the table. In this context, music is only part of the finished product and the bottom line is the drama comes first. Sometimes this results in artistic decisions that would not be the ones I would make, but as a composer, I have to trust the judgement of the other members of the team.

The second challenge is the fast turnaround, which can be manic it it clash with a number of other deadlines as this one did. Although, I must say that even given a much longer time to work on the music for this play, I probably would have still produced something similar.

Space

2010-06-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

I'm thirteen days into my residency at the Visby International Centre for Composers and everything is going remarkably well.

I'm taking a couple of days off my piece for Rarescale - tentatively titled Falling Out of Cars as a little nod to the Jeff Noon novel of the same name - to give myself a little bit of distance from it. The piece itself is actually going pretty well and I'm please with it myself, but I need a little space to ponder where I'm going with it next. Normally, I don't get such long periods of uninterrupted composition and it feels pretty intense spending up to fourteen hours a day dealing with the same material.

However, just because I'm taking some time off that piece doesn't mean I'm resting. I've just finished a pretty substantial rewrite of a string quartet and I've been polishing off two pieces from my Extrapolations series that have been hanging around for a while. On top of that, I've been fiddling about with an orchestral piece that I've had at the back of my mind for a while. I've got about three minutes of that down, so it's actually shaping up pretty well.

Visby International Centre for Composers

2010-06-09T04:12:00.000-07:00

I haven't done too well blogging the ICMC. the whole conference was so hectic that I never really got a moment to write it up. When I get back to the UK, I'll make sure I get the whle thing written up in this blog.

I'm currently composer-in-residence at the Visby International Centre for Composers in Visby on Götland, just off the mainland of Sweden. It's a fantastic place with great resources and a lovely view of the harbour. I'm writing my new piece for Rarescale here and it's all going really well so far.

You can check out the centre here:
http://www.centreforcomposers.org/VITC_2010.html

ICMC Day One - 1st June 2010

2010-06-02T06:22:00.000-07:00

After an evening of doing the traditional New York thing of hanging out in an Irish bar nursing jet lag, the 8 o'clock conference enrollment seemed a little severe. I managed to get there at 8:50, in time to pick up my delegate's pack which included a nifty drawstring rucksack, bumper-sized programme, CD of the pick of the conference's music and, oddly enough, a Rubik's cube! The other fun thing is that the some of the conference is held in the Hotel Pennsylvania, immortalised in the big band tune Pennsylvania 65000.

The first paper session concentrated on algorithm design, performance interfaces etc. Much of it was beyond my technology knowledge base, but it all seemed pretty significant.

The first concert of the conference proper took place in Chinatown in the White Box Gallery and was the first in a series entitled Ear to the Earth. I got the impression that a significant part of the audience was made up of passers by who, noticing there was something on, popped in to check it out. The organisers didn't seem to have anticipated the large number of listeners in the audience and many of us were squashed in at the back without chairs. This passer-by theory was confirmed when the two girls in front of me giggled during the first two pieces and then ducked out of the gallery before the start of the third.

The opening piece by Chris Mercer was entitled, The Audible Phylogeny of Lemurs, based, not surprisingly, on lemur vocalisations. That was followed by Hannah Ruth Gilmour's Chill Before Dawn, Aki Pasoulas's Paramnesia and Erik DeLuca's In. The next piece was extracts from a sound installation, called The Argus Project, that should have been on site in one of the ponds at Stony Brook University. Unfortunately, for the artists, Jonathan Kirk and Lee Weisert, the ponds had been drained for some repair work, so they had to make do with presenting a video of still photographs of the project accompanied by sound examples. The final pieces were a clarinet, flute and tape piece entitled A'aa, by Matthew Burtner and a fixed medium piece called Hindisvik, by Rikhardur H. Fridrikson.

The evening concert was at the upper end of Manhattan at Columbia University. Foolishly, I got on the wrong subway line and ended up in Harlem. Not content with that, I proceeded to walk the wrong way. As a result, I arrived covered in sweat after dashing across Central Park just as the concert was starting and latecomers were only allowed in between pieces. This meant that I missed David Berezan's piece, Nijo, which was a real disappointment as I always enjoys David's music and this was not a piece I had heard before. Cat House, by Sarah O'Halloran, was a slightly disturbing, yet at the same time darkly comic, piece of performance art consisting of a monologue over and electronic background. Rita Torre's acousmatic Shaking Mendeleev in the Presence of the Guitar and Lydia Ayers' flute and tape piece, The Chalky White Desert Where Nothing Grows followed.

After the intermission, we had a piece for electronically modified didgeridoo and electronics by Kyle Evans and Lokale Orbits/Solo 5 for 'cello and 8-track tape by Daniel Mayer. The next two pieces were for fixed media, Rupture, by Thomas Royal, and Dorian RPS, by Tony Garrison.

The final piece was by Krzytof Wolek, entitled Un Claro del Tiempo, for soprano, flutes, piano and live electronics. For me, this was the best piece of the day. Instrumentally, it was extremely well written and the electronics melded seamlessly with the acoustic performers and responded gesturally in an intelligent and expressive way. This is definitely a composer I want to hear more by.

Sadly, by this time jet lag had got the better of me and I missed the after hours concert. Hopefully, I'll make that one tonight.

Incoming!!!

2010-05-21T02:34:00.000-07:00

I've finally delivered everything for Amazing Grace. I've a busy time ahead of me for the next month.

At the beginning of June, I have two performances of my music that I will be attending in New York, Strike! and a new piece for String quartet and live electronics called Residue. Residue is a collaboration with fellow composer, Adam Stansbie, who has written the electronic element of the piece. I will be performing the live electronics part myself. Luckily, it looks as if I will get two rehearsals with the quartet before the performance. Phew!

After New York, I am off to the Visby International Composers' Centre in Sweden to be composer-in-residence. While I'm there, I will be completing my piece for quarter-tone alto flute, guitar and live electronics for Rarescale.

Before I set off for New York in June, I will be getting involved in the early stages of my biggest upcoming project, Wingbeats. This is a mini-opera/music theatre piece in collaboration with librettist Adam Strickson that forms part of the curated 2012 Olympics.

Interview with Michael Finnissy

2010-05-21T02:18:00.000-07:00

On 18th May, I had the good fortune to interview Michael Finnissy for an upcoming feature article with photographs by Andras Ridovics (the photo above is not one of ours and comes from Michael's own website).

The location was perfect - outside the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank - and the coffee (served in mugs without handles - very capital city!) was delicious. As always, Michael was extremely generous with his time and was an absolute joy to sit and chat with. We discussed his recent commission for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and he shared his views on art in the wider context and its relationship with his music.

Keep your eyes open and I'll post the link to the feature when it is published.

Amazing Grace Update

2010-05-17T08:37:00.000-07:00

I spent lunchtime recording today recording Dobcross School Choir for some music for a major scene in Amazing Grace. The choir sang beautifully and the recording is going to work really well in the drama.

After that, Paul Thompson and I did the final mixes for the incidental music, as well as the main opening and closing themes. If I do say so myself, the music's turned out really well.

Anyway, the final mixes have been sent out tho the producer and everyone's happy.

Tomorrow, I'm recording an interview with Michael Finnissy for Whatelse Magazine and my old friend, Andras Ridovics, will be doin the photo shoot.

Amazing Grace Recording Session

2010-05-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

I've just got in after recording the Leeds University Liturgical Choir for the main opening and closing themes of Amazing Grace.

The session went very smoothly, mainly because the choir and their director, Bryan White, are such a talented, accommodating and patient group. I was impressed with how beautifully everyone sang and how sensitively they interpreted the music. In short, the whole session was a joy to be part of.

I was also lucky to have my friend and colleague, Paul Thompson, along to record the session. Paul's always a pleasure to work with and he's an extremely talent engineer and producer.

Anyway, I must dash, Paul is currently mixing and mastering the session ready for delivery tomorrow.

Leeds University Liturgical Choir

2010-05-10T08:53:00.000-07:00

I will be recording the Leeds University Liturgical Choir singing the main theme I've written for the BBC Radio 4 drama, Amazing Grace, tomorrow evening. The choir are great, so I'm expecting the theme to sound really good in this version.

All work and no play...

2010-05-03T04:53:00.000-07:00

Final score and parts of Residue now sent to New York.

Wav. file of Strike! now sent to New York.

Final choral parts and text for the opening and closing themes of Amazing Grace now sent to choral director.

Date set for Finnissey interview.

...now what have I forgotten?

Crazy Times

2010-05-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

There's so much going on at the minute that it's getting difficult to keep track.

I'm into the recording and mixing phase of the Amazing Grace themes and incidental music, which is going really well. We did a full day in the studio this week and we have a few location recording session to do oveer the next couple of weeks. Amazing Grace is going to be broadcast in five parts on BBC Radio 4 through the week beginning 28th June.

Residue, a string quartet and live electronics/tape piece I've been working on as a collaboration with Adam Stansbie has been programmed for performance as part of the ICMC festival, so I need to finish of the parts and re-do a couple of other bits with Adam.

I've been asked to interview Michael Finnissey for an iphone/ipad arts magazine called What Else (see Links). That will be a fun gig, but there's a bit of pressure on regarding deadlines.

Although I finished my other string quartet recently, I've decided to give that a re-working.

All this stuff need to be done by the end of May, when I'm off to New York for the performances of Strike! and Residue. Once those gigs are over, I'm off to Visby in Sweden to be composer in residence until the end of June.

Amazing Grace

2010-04-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

I've just started work on a commission for BBC Radio 4 for the theme and incidental music for a serialised radio drama to be broadcast on Woman's Hour later in the year. The drama, Amazing Grace, was commissioned by Savvy Production, who I've worked with previously, and was written by Michelle Lipton. I suppose I can't reveal too much about the play, but it's really powerful stuff.

Spekrox - Album Release

2010-04-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

I've just released an album under the pseudonym of Spektox on the Electonic Musik label. This is a No-input/Noise/Electronica music project of mine that I keep as a bit of a sideline, but is a lot of fun.

It's a free internet release that you can hear/download here:
http://www.archive.org/details/Spektroxem099

I hope you like it!

Arditti Quartet Concert - SAW 25/03/10

2010-04-01T04:53:00.000-07:00

The evening of the 25 March at the SAW conference in Cardiff saw a performance of Helmut Lachenmann's third string quartet ("Grido") by the Arditti Quartet.

This performance formed the first part of a concert programme that was dominated by electroacoustic works of various sorts. However, Lachenmann's quartet did not seem out of place within a programme of the type, due to the elevated status of noise and timbre in the composer's music. In fact, Lachenmann's music has been described as "acoustic electroacoustic music".

I was already familiar with Lachenmann's first string quartet, "Gran Torso", which I am quite fond of, so I knew the kind of soundworld I might expect. In some ways, this newer quartet is a little more accessible than "Gran Torso", although it still focuses on sound and noise as its fundamental material. There were some points of particular beauty, such as a section where the 'cellist double stops two notes very close to one another in pitch which creates a fabulously throbbing pulse, over which the other performers play gossamer-like harmonics and col legno bowing.

All in in all, a fabulous concert of a great piece performed by virtually superhuman musicians.

Sonic Artists in Wales

2010-04-01T04:38:00.000-07:00

From 25 to 26 April last week I attended the Sonic Artists in Wales (SAW) conference at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff.

As my teaching commitments are pretty heavy at the moment, I didn't get the opportunity to travel down to South Wales from Manchester the night before the conference started, as I originally planned, but had to travel down early on the Thursday morning. Although I set off at about 5:30 in the morning, I still arrived at the conference late. Luckily, I got there just in time to deliver my paper, Space-Time Relations in Acousmatic Music, after arriving literally 10 minutes before I was scheduled to begin.

I should have been delivering the paper with its co-author, Adam Stansbie, although, due to his work commitments, he was not actually able to attend the conference.

Teaching load threw a third spanner in the works in the form of Nikos Stavropoulos being able to attend due to teaching committments. This meant that I had to diffuse his piece NictyNasty in the evening concert.

SAW Conference Schedule:

Thursday 25 March
Time

9.30am
Coffee
10.00am
Welcome Introduction Simon Kilshaw

Paper Session A, Room 2.05
10.10am
Control of Digital Audio Effects in Sonic Art: Command or Interaction?Alex Kontogeorgakopolous
10.30am
(In)visible Sound Ewan Stefani / Dr Cristophe de Bezenac
10.50am
Space-time Relations in Acousmatic Steve Kilpatrick and Adam Stansbie
11.10am
Integration of Live Broadcast Radio into Automated Live Electronic Works Adam Jansch
11.30am
Break

Listening Session A, Room 2.05
11.40am
Prajnaparamita - Frederico Macedo
12.00pm
Depth Perception - Jon Aveyard
12.20pm
JohnandMarty - Neil Gillon
12.40pm
Dackatikatic - Deri Roberts / Simon Kilshaw
1pm to 2pm
Lunch
2pm to 5pm
Arditti Quartet Open Workshop
Friday 26 March
Time

9.30am
Coffee
10.00am
Keynote SpeechKevin Austin (live video link from Canada)

Paper Session B, Room 2.08
11.00am
Rediscovering Mozart: Motion Capture Technology in Contemporary Music PracticeJonathan Green / Tychonas Michailidis
11.20am
The Wave and the Wire: Possible Models for Understanding the Electro Mechanical Condition in the Sonic ArtsJohn Piggot
11.40am
Procedural, Reactive and Behavioural SoundAndy Farnell

Listening Session B, Room 2.08
12.00pm
Strike - Steve KilpatrickZither - Stuart RussellRicochets - Jean Monique
1pm to 2pm
Lunch
2pm to 5pm
Octotonic - Smith Challis

Listening Session C, Room 2.08
3.30pm
The Ignorant Speakers - Mike Johnson
3.50pm
Chernobyl - Maximillian Pownall
4pm tp 5pm
Reality Version 1.5 - Mark Collins Wren / Craig Thomas (Room 2.05)
Evening Concert - Thursday 25 March, S4C Studio
Time

7.30pm
Lachenmann's Quartet Nr. 3 "Grido" - Arditti Quartet‘Heloise’ - Rob MacKayCuckoo Borough - Dale PerkinsThe Velvet Lantern - Richard Bowers

Interval
8.45pm
NictyNasty - Nikos StavropoulosFamily Sound Portrait - Daniel PotterPremieres Traces du Choucas - Francis DhomontPierre Boulez’ Anthemes 2 - Mizuka Yamamoto & Tom Mudd
Evening Concert - Friday 26 March, S4C Studio
Time

7.30pm
Paddle - Tychonas MichailidisTidal Waves - David BirdBeat - Smith ChallisCiguri - Felipe OtondoMouvements - Sybille Pomorin

Interval
8.45pm
Precipitation Within Sight - Rob DowCan - Tom WilliamsOctojaques - Gruffydd JohnstonParamnesia - Aki PasoulasBiological Time - Massimo Carlentini

ICMC

2010-03-13T06:05:00.000-08:00

More good news this week. Strike! has been selected for yet another outing, this time at one of the concerts forming part of ICMC (International Computer Music Conference) 2010 in New York.

This has turned out to be my most successful piece in terms of international performances and, in fact, performances in general. I really should get round to writing a new electroacoustic piece to submit for the next round of conferences, but for the next 12 months I'm committed to working on commissions for a number of instrumental pieces.

Green Angel

2010-03-08T02:35:00.000-08:00

On Saturday night, I attended the semi-staged, first third of a new opera in production, called Green Angel. This opera was based on the 2003 novella of the same title by Alice Hoffman, with libretto adapted by Adam Strickson and music by Lauren Redhead.

The adaptation and staging was based on ideas of Noh theatre and so was very static and stylised. Dramatically, rather than rely on narrative, the piece seems to concentrate more on the racking up of the emotional intensity. Musically, there seemed to be an emphasis on noise and percussion that seemed to link it with Noh and Kabuki theatre quite well.

Performances were generally quite good, especially as the cast and ensemble had only had 2 - 3 days to learn and rehearse a challenging score. Aniko Toth (soprano) played/sang the lead role as Ash very well indeed, managing to maintain a high degree of intensity in her performance throughout the piece.

My only disappointment was that the performance was incomplete, as I found myself quite engrossed in the whole production and it would have been great to see it play out to the end. The good news is that the whole production will be performed at The Stage@Leeds next year.

Olga Neuwirth: Remnants of Songs...an Amphigory

2010-03-02T04:13:00.000-08:00

I make a point of trying to listen to BBC Radio 4's Hear and Now show each week in an attempt to keep abreast of what's going on in the music world. Usually, Saturday night isn't the best time to be focusing on serious music (not in my house anyway), so I normally listen on iPlayer the morning after.

This Saturday's show focused on British and Austrian composers and featured a number of good pieces by composers I was not too familiar with.

The piece that stood out was by Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth, already pretty well known thanks to her opera based on David Lynch's Lost Highway. I like the way that this piece played with ideas of memory and recall in its use of quotation. I particularly like the use of As Time Goes By that was effortlessly woven into the texture, while at the same time being clearly recognisable. A wonderful evocation of our relationship between our present selves and our memories.

Here's a review of the piece I found on the Boosey & Hawkes website that describes the work much more articulately than I can:

Remnants is essentially a 20-minute, five-movement concerto for viola and orchestra with a fiendishly difficult solo part, written especially for violist Antoine Tamestit and breathtaking in its virtuosic range. After long, lyrical high arcs on the viola, the orchestra jumps in with exotic percussive effects. Every now and then, a snatch of something tonal and vaguely familiar drifts in. The first movement builds to a glistening cha-cha. The shimmering, unearthly second movement is interrupted by huge, dissonant brass chords. The third movement features chimes, sirens, apocalyptic drums, and the feeling of the world collapsing set against snatches of rhythmic patterns and odd whiffs of tonality. The gorgeous fourth movement is dominated by a big, lyrical viola solo with a grab-holdable melody. The final section virtually follows traditional concerto form, with dialogue between soloist and orchestra, and builds to an audacious, richly-textured finale suggestive of Mahler at his most kitschy. But the work is entirely original, astoundingly complex and, ultimately, gloriously rewarding and uplifting." (Larry L. Lash, MusicalAmerica.com, 08 Dec 2009)

Sonic Artists in Wales

2010-03-01T03:06:00.000-08:00

Strike! is to get another outing at the end of the month at the Sonic Artists in Wales conference held at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama from 25 - 26 March.

As well as having Strike! performed, I will also be presenting a paper I have written with Adam Stansbie, entitled Space-Time Relations in Acousmatic Music.

The conference looks like being great fun and will even include the Arditti Quartet.

More to follow when the full programme is announced.

H. K Gruber Conducts the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester 28 February 2010

2010-03-01T02:21:00.000-08:00

Saturday night saw H.K. Gruber conducting the BBC Philharmonic in a programme of Weill, Gruber and Stravinsky at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.

H. K. Gruber is known for his specialism in the music of Kurt Weill and first up was his Little Threepenny Music, a suite of music from the Threepenny Opera. Gruber certainly conducts with great enthusiasm and effuses a love of the music. However, despite the excellent performance, it still did not help me to overcome my lack of interest in Weill's music.

After an annoyingly long wait while to chairs were rearranged on stage, Gruber took the stage again, this time to conduct the U.K. premiere of his own composition, Busking. This piece was described in the programme as a concerto for trumpet, accordion and banjo, although in performance it appeared to be a trumpet (Håkan Hardenberger) concerto that augmented the chamber orchestra with the less conventional accordion and banjo.

The final part of the programme was Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements, followed by an encore of Scherzo a la Russ.

As an extra treat, Gavin Waite (piano) and Zoe Milton-Brown (soprano) performed eight songs, from Alan E. Willaims' 12 Stories High song cycle, in the bar after the main concert.

No Input

2010-02-26T03:43:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-26T02:27:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-10T10:54:00.001-08:00

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

The Catchlight trailer

2010-02-10T10:50:00.000-08:00

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

Flute Trio Latest

2010-02-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-02-10T10:37:00.000-08:00

Fénytorék

2010-02-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time

2010-02-10T10:21:00.000-08:00

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.

Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium II

2009-06-29T00:58:00.000-07:00

Even more good news. My latest tape piece, Strike!, has been programmed for performance at the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium in August.

Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium

2009-06-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

I received some good news yesterday. My paper, "Music as a Machine for Thinking", has been selected for presentation at the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium in August. Woohoo! That means I'm off to Canada in just over a month.

However, this does mean that I am going to be mad busy until mid-August, as I'm still putting the final touches (ahem!) to my paper for the 20th Century music conference at Keele University in just over a week, writing a flute trio and doing a 5.1 mix of my new piece. I'm also sitting on a panel at Keele about narrative in music, so I have a bit of boning up to do. It should be a productive trip though as Tokyo Yakimono is being played in the listening room there.

I'm still waiting to hear if Toronto have accepted my new tape piece, Strike!, for their concert programme yet.

2001: A Space Odyssey

2009-04-19T04:24:00.000-07:00

This is a clip I used in one of my Music for Film lectures. I put some of my music to this scene from 2001.

New Album

2009-04-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

Brendan and I have finally finished our first album together. We started working on this project two years ago, so it's about time. It should be out on My First Moth in a couple of months.

Tokyo Yakimono

2009-04-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

This is a video I made of Tomomi Kitazawa's ceramic artworks. I've used my electroacoustic piece, Tokyo Yakimomo as the soundtrack.

For String Quartet

2009-03-27T15:04:00.000-07:00

This is a short movement from a string quartet of mine. The photographs are by myself and Anikó Tóth.

The B.E.A.S.T.

2009-02-15T03:04:00.000-08:00

Nikos Stavropoulos Tames the BEAST!!

Another Trof Clip

2009-01-08T03:08:00.000-08:00

Our stuff tends to be long and evolving, but here's another little snapshot.

Trof November '07

2009-01-08T03:04:00.000-08:00

Here's a clip of a performance I did in November '07 with Brendan Williams.

Tokyo Yakimono

2008-12-01T10:26:00.000-08:00

I decided on Tokyo Yakimono as the title of my new piece. Yakimono actually means pottery more than ceramics, but yakimono could refer to fried food and food was a defining feature of my visit to Japan! You can hear an extract from this piece at :

http://www.myspace.com/stephenkilpatrick

I hope Tomo won't be offended that I refered to her ceramic art as "pottery".

Finished Work!

2008-11-23T08:01:00.000-08:00

I've just finished my latest tape piece and I think it' s pretty good, even if I do say so myself. It's composed from sounds derived from tapping and scraping a number of small ceramic works that were given to me by ceramic artist, Tomomi Kitazawa. I made the recordings over two years ago, but I have never been satisfied with the compositions I had attempted with them previously. The sounds have a wonderful grainy quality to them that I was eager to exploit and this time, I think I have managed it.

I had set myself two goals with this piece. One was to exceed 10 minutes duration. The reason for this was to force myself to work hard to develop the material. Many of my most recent pieces are very short and focus on the presentation of one or two ideas. What I was aiming for in this piece was to work developmentally and to engage with longer forms. The other goal I set myself was to write gestural music rather than the textural music I have produced previously in this genre.

I haven't managed to come up with a suitable title for this piece yet. I'm looking for a word in Japanese that is related to ceramics, or percussive/grainy noises. I was thinking of Pachinko, because there is a section with tumbling percussive sounds that reminds me of the amusement arcades I saw on a recent visit to Japan, but I don't think that is really what I'm going for.

There is a rough version of this piece available on my MySpace site and I will put a finished version up soon.

http://www.myspace.com/stephenkilpatrick

This new piece will be played at a concert entitled Echochroma 4, which will happen in the next few weeks at Leeds Metropolitan University.

Flute Trio Update

2008-11-18T12:55:00.000-08:00

I've almost finished one of the movements of my Flute Trio for Expatrio. It's been slow going so far, but I'm starting to come to terms with that particular instrumental grouping. I've been a bit shy about playing any of it to anyone so far, but I ran it by a trusted composer friend this morning and they gave me some really positive feedback about it.

What I am trying to do in this piece is incorporate what I have learnt working with electroacoustic composition into my instrumental writing and so far it seems to be working. The material of the first movement is derived from the partials produced by the flute when playing particular multiphonics. In this way, spectral elements of the flute define the material around which harmony and pitch relationships are based.

Frakture Big Band

2008-11-17T01:32:00.000-08:00

You can find a recording of me playing with the Frakture Big Band here

http://www.frakture.org/ensembles/fbb_audio.htm

The track is "Suck it and See It". I'm playing the Jazzy sounding guitar and the fuzzy bass guitar!

Flute Trio

2008-10-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

This is late news, but at least it lets you know what I am up to.

I have been commissioned by a flute trio by the name of Expatrio for a new work to be premiered in the Summer. I'm really chuffed about this because they are great musicians with really good taste in music.

If you haven't heard Expatrio, you should check them out on MySpace.

http://www.myspace.com/expatrio

Or better still, catch them live.

New Pieces

2008-10-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

I've just spent the afternoon at Brendan Williams place attempting to sort out the hours of recorded material we have. Over the last two years, we have recorded over 10 hours of music intended for commercial release. Unfortunately, neither of us has had time to mix or master this stuff, so it's just languishing in our vaults. It's must easier for us to be motivated to make music than it is to polish it up.

We do have a producer based in Belgium who is working on some of the stuff (hopefully) for the most important experimental music label in Europe. The rest of the stuff we intend to release on the My First Moth label as soon as we can sort it out.

This is the year of the big push!

Boris with Merzbow: Sun Baked Snow Cave

2008-09-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

This second teaming of ridiculously prolific Japanese Drone Rock meisters, Boris, and even more prolific number one J-Noise guru, Merzbow, could well be a marriage made in Heaven or Hell depending on your point of view and the health of your eardrums.

The album consists of a single hour long track, which surprisingly gets of to quite a gentle start with a few acoustic guitar notes from the Boris gang and some gentle buzzes and hums from merzbow. . early section is actually quite calming and makes use of silence in a way less common to J-NoiseThis builds throughout the first two thirds of the album until we are faced with a much more familiar aural assault slightly more intense than the freakout on Boris' Smile, but not in the audio nasty territory of Merzbow's Merzbear. The guitar and electronics merge particularly well here and avoid Boris' tendancy on Smile to occasionally sound too much like they are attempting to play Prog-Rock solos, but failing miserably.

Boris with Merzbow - Definately more than the sum of its parts.

Taku Sugimoto: Live in Australia

2008-09-13T14:18:00.000-07:00

This double CD comes complete with a 1000 plus word essay by Sugimoto himself discussing the nature of music, performance, recording and found sound. Pretty interesting stuff, but unlikely to prepare the unwary listener for the musical experience he/she has just invested in.

What you have here are two tracks, both over an hour in length, on two CDs that are are much about the aural environment as about Sugimoto's performance. For the majority of the recording we can hear cars passing, audience members coughing, rain rattling on the roof, chairs squeaking etc. Occasionally (and I do mean very occasionally), Sugimoto plays a muted note on his guitar. I haven't counted, but I would be very surprised if Sugimoto plays more than 10 notes in the 62 minute Music for Amplified Guitar and it seems like forever before the guitarist makes any musical comment on the torrential rainfal that makes up the first 15 minutes of Dot.

Although this is a fascinating recording for those interested in questioning the nature of performance and the role of recording, it's not recommended for those seeking catchy tunes or virtuosic displays. It might be good for messing with peoples heads at parties though.

Disc 1
Dot (73) 72:24Recorded live by Matthew Earle at Performance Space, Sydney, September 12, 2003
Disc 2
Music for Amplified Guitar 62:20Recorded live by Lawrence English and John Chantler at Nine Hours North, Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, September 14, 2003
All composed by Taku SugimotoTaku Sugimoto: guitar

Taku Sugimoto & Moe Kamura: Saritote

2008-09-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

I have been a fan of Taku Sugimoto's album Opposite for some time now, so on a recent trip to Japan I did my best to track down some more of his music. Out of the CDs I bought, this collaboration with Moe Kamura is the one that has stood out for me.

Sugimoto's music is often labeled Reductionism due to the fact that some of his recordings and improvisations have more ambient noise and amplifier hum than "music" (please debate the inverted commas on your own time!). At one point in his career, Sugimoto estimated that he might only play 11 notes in 40 minutes. On this particular CD, Sugimoto and Kamura keep the number of notes small, but also contract the duration (7 tracks in under 12 minutes) producing a collection of lovely, intimate miniatures.

The sparse textures produced by the toy piano and guitar and the simple melodies and quiet child-like voice create an eery atmosphere that conjures up images of a haunted playroom. Each piece seems to be a fragment of a larger narrative that bring to mind Kurtág's Messages of the Late R. V. Troussova, Scenes From a Novel and Kafka Fragments. On the whole, this is an intriguing CD, although I would have preferred it to be a little longer.

Stay It Fragile (0:27)
A Chair 3 (1:21)
And Yet (2:14)
A Chair 1 (1:22)
A Chair 2 (1:28)
Stairs (2:03)
Postlude (1:51)
All music by Taku SugimotoAll words by Moe Kamura
Moe Kamura: vocal, guitar, toy pianoTaku Sugimoto: guitarTaku Unami: contraguitar (7)
Recorded and mastered by Taku Unami in Tokyo, May 2007Drawing and design by Taku Sugimoto

White Chalk - P. J. Harvey

2008-07-09T13:26:00.000-07:00

I've been listening to this album since it came out in 2007 and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that it's set to be remembered as a true classic.

Of course, all of P.J. Harvey's albums are great, but White Chalk seems to distill of all the her best ideas down to very simple, but fragile statements. For a long time, I struggled to think of a way to describe the atmosphere she creates on this album and now I think I've got it. It's the aural equivalent of listening a conversation that you were never intended to hear. The stories are evocative, but strangely incomplete and yet almost painfully intimate and confessional. It is as though the listener should feel guilty for listening, as if they were reading a teenage girl's hidden diary.

A perfect example is the song "When Under Ether". Lyrically, this song seems to be describing the anaesthetised state of a woman undergoing an abortion, although P.J. Harvey herself denies that this is indeed the subject she was thinking of. Despite, Harvey's denial, it is difficult to escape this interpretation and as a result the reception of the song is coloured by this idea. The vocal performance, like the majority on this album, is naked, heartbreakingly fragile and without artifice.

In an interview in The Wire, Harvey confessed to leaving notes around the house reminding herself to sing as if she were a child again on this album. That's not to say she is imitating an hysterical toddler, but is stripping her voice of the guile, artfulness and insincerities of a professional singer. This approach has allowed her to plumb the emotional depths of each song and deliver performances that can, at times, send a shiver down the spine.

The Gathering: The Reek

2008-07-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

This is a film for Channel 4 that Brendan Williams and I composed the Soundtrack for

Electro

2008-07-08T06:52:00.000-07:00

I've just got back from a mini-spending spree in Manchester. As usual, I didn't intend to buy anything, but consumerism got the better of me. Amongst other things, I picked up a double CD of the Streets Sounds Definitive Electro and Hip Hop Collection for £3 in Fopp!... Bargain!! I used to collect these Electo mixes when I was about 11 or 12 and it really took me back to those days of exchanging 4 sweaty pound notes for a bit of wobbly vinyl full of drum machines, scratching and unlikely monikered rappers.

Besides the obvious big names, such as Grandmaster Flash, Herbie Hancock and Afrika Bamaataa, you get The Real Roxanne, UTFO, Egyptian Lover, The Packman and Full Force.

Worth 3 quid alone for the Hip Hop rendition of the Inspector Gadget theme!

Free Improvisation

2008-06-21T17:08:00.001-07:00

I’ve just got back home from a gig and it’s around one o’clock in the morning. I was playing guitar and bass with a large free improvisation ensemble at a one day festival of Experimental music. There were about twelve ensembles and soloists performing at the event and my band were the last to perform, hence the late hour.

I have to confess that I didn’t attend the whole event, which began at three o’clock, but I have a few observations to make about the artists I did see.

The first observation I have to discuss is that of space. In recent years, space has become the most important element in music for me, but many musicians don’t seem to consider it. What I like to hear from both composed music and improvisations is, not only the musicians leaving room for one another to allow for a musical discussion, but also leaving gaps within the fabric of the sound to allow the music to breathe and to frame the musical gestures. What I heard from several of the groups tonight was a complete disregard for space within their music and a layering of very similar sounds to create an aural mud. I remember reading a good analogy for this in a letter in The Wire which compared this kind of improvisation to mixing paints. The writer suggested that in mixing paint you have at your disposal a range of beautiful colours, but if you mix them all at once, all you get is brown. Sadly for me, many of tonight’s performances were brown.

Something else that disappointed me was the lack of rhythmical impetus in much of tonight’s music. All the performers, with the exception of the one, relied solely on the percussionists and drummers to create any momentum in their music. Most performances were of a very static nature – not in itself a bad thing – but gave the impression of motion through the use of driving or repetitive percussion. I can’t help thinking that perhaps some of their music would have been better without percussion, as they would have had to consider the impetus of their performances at a fundamental level.

My final observation is not a new one and has been a bug bear of mine for some time: guitarists. As usual it was the guitarists who let the side down in several ensembles tonight. They tended to be the worst culprits in terms of not leaving space and creating “brown” music and they really did not seem to be listening to their band mates. My other problem with the guitar is the sound. It is such a limited palate that the guitarist needs to work so much harder than the other musicians to create variety. Many guitarists try and expand the palate of the guitar by using effects, but this just seems to add to the “brownness” of the music. On top of this, every gesture on the guitar is already a cliché.

Although a guitarist myself, I often elect to play piano in improvisations because of the problems with the guitar I have already mentioned. When I do play guitar, I go back to basics. I deliberately use a very limited sound with strong associations (fat Jazz guitar sound) with no effects. I also avoid using any extended techniques, as these have all become Rock clichés on the guitar. I suppose the challenge I am setting myself is to say something new without putting on a funny voice.

I wouldn't say I was succeeding yet, but improvisation is all about failure.

Film Music

2008-06-19T15:31:00.000-07:00

Something I'm really keen to be involved in is film music.

I recently co-composed the soundtrack for a Channel 4 film called The Gathering:The Reek directed by Colin O'Toole. It's a really beautiful short film that you can see at:

http://www.pulsefilms.co.uk/vid/colin/thegatheringthereek.html

Welcome

2008-06-19T15:09:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog!

My name is Steve and I'm a composer. It's posssibly not the easiest of career routes, but I keep coming back to it. I did manage to give it up for about 5 years, but somehow it managed to find me again.

As well as composition, I am involved in free-improvisation. I work in a duo with Brendan Williams called - rather imaginitively - Williams/Kilpatrick. I have also recently started playing guitar in the Fracture Big Band, which is a free-improv collective based in Liverpool.

Like many composers, I do not rely on composition as my only source of income and hold an academic position teaching composition in a UK university.

If you are interested in hearing some of my music, then feel free to check out my MySpace site at:
http://www.myspace.com/stephenkilpatrick

If you like that, you could check out my collaboration with Brendan Williams at:
http://www.myspace.com/williamskilpatrick

I haven't got round to creating my own website yet, but the plan is to sort that out in September.

Thanks for reading!