A vibrant programme of musician-technology interactions in which performing bodies, musical instruments and novel hardware and software collide, offering three manifestations of the modern-day musical cyborg. Featuring the winners of our 2022 Call for Collaborative Music Projects, Kathryn Williams and Ed Cooper, and Ben Jameson and Harry Matthews.
Drones and tones merge with the human pulse, both heard and imagined, in Fourfold by flautist Kathryn Williams and composer Ed Cooper. Using Soundbrenner’s vibrating metronomes and their own heartbeats, the duo weave a dreamy soundscape with alto flute, electric guitar and fixed media. Active listening combines with performance and spoken word, constructing an augmented, bodily instrument.
Composer-guitarist Ben Jameson and composer-pianist Harry Matthews’ Aeolian Fantasy forms a digital aeolian harp as they feed Vochlea’s audio-to-MIDI software Dubler 2 with prerecorded and live wind sounds. Beautiful and uncanny microtonal harmonies fill the space from small speakers, augmented by live performance on acoustic guitar and synthesisers.
Celebrated Canadian clarinettist Heather Roche presents a poignant set of works for low clarinets and electronics. ‘Droning falsities (for one’s self)’ (2019), composed by Mark Dyer, uses unstable performance techniques and prerecorded murmurs to conjure the ghost of Renaissance composer Guillaume Dufay. In tribute to Robert Phillips, who tragically passed away recently, Heather will perform ‘Rutaceae’ (2015) in which the distinction between live instrument and tape part is held, beguilingly, at a knife’s edge.