Saturday 5 February 2011

singingapicture










another stunning evening at snape maltings - EXAUDI working with Bill Thompson explored John Cage’s Song Books http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_Books_(Cage) EXAUDI are so wonderful – i love it as they retune themselves throughout the evening – like the tuning of a machine – constantly navigating their sound within a specific band width. the graphic scores and set ups for the creation of the sound were exquisite and mind expanding. My favourite has to be Solo for Voice 5 (SE) “Wander” over a provided portrait of Thoreau, such that the path resembles a melodic line. Each of eight parts is given a set of time units, ie length of which is determined by the speed with which Part 2 can be performed. The texts are letters and syllable from Thoreau. Electronics should change with the facial features. Accompaniment may include sounds of wind, rain, thunder, etc. http://vorlon.case.edu/~zwb2/songbooks.htm the idea made me think about Eno’s Oblique Strategies – check out the on-line version http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html overall it was an evening that makes one think how marvellous snape is – anybody who complains about the fact that nothing interesting happens in suffolk is just wrong. finally i think that i might be the only person who has been to every faster than sound event in Suffolk as Mira Calix was not present (see previous posts!) – looking forward to her at snape on feb 17th as part of exchange and return a year-long collaborative project, sharing creative ideas and practical working methods between Mira Calix, Tansy Davies and Larry Goves http://www.aldeburgh.co.uk/events/open-session-mira-calix-and-larry-goves