840 x NME
New Music for Voices and Strings
10th December 2016
St James Church Islington
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The NME collaborated with 840, a London-based experimental music concert series, founded in 2014 by the composers Alex Nikiporenko and Nicholas Peters. Committed to championing new pieces by composers that they believe in, each concert in the series focuses on a particular chamber instrumentation; this time voices and strings. |
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Masking Set (2016)
by Georgia Rodgers This piece is composed from five combinations of pitches and rhythms, stitched together to make one unfolding form in which groups of notes are covered and uncovered in turn. This process of covering up sounds led me to thinking about the phenomenon of auditory masking, whereby the perception of one sound is altered by another which occurs simultaneously (or very soon before/after). Auditory masking can affect the nature of sounds we hear in various ways, particularly when those sounds are already closely related in pitch or timbre. |
Sara Rodrigues (voice) Julia Vaughan (viola) Roxanna Albayati (cello) |
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HarM (2016)
by Nicholas Peters HarM explores ideas that I first encountered in Kerry Tribe’s double projection of a single 16mm film called H.M. (2009) that was recently on display at The Wellcome Collection, London. Tribe’s film explores the true story of Henry Molaison, an amnesiac man, identified simply as “Patient H.M.”, who underwent “frankly experimental” surgery to cure his debilitating epilepsy in 1953. An unintended outcome of the surgery was that Molaison was unable to form new long term memories although his short term recall, for around 20 seconds, remained intact. |
Sara Rodrigues (voice) Julia Vaughan (viola) Rodrigo B. Camacho (voice) Roxanna Albayati (cello) |
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TWENTY NINE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED TWENTY
THOUGHTS ABOUT GOOD COMPANY (2016) by Rodrigo B. Camacho We are both standing in a room, looking at the walls and stuff. Someone comes in and shouts “SOLO!!!” and stands there like a prick. I mean, like a statue. Not so much in shock, we are nevertheless intrigued by this strange event. I look at you [fast and precise, with a slightly angry face] and, in response, you look back at me [slower, with a calmly elevated left eye brow]. We both nod affirmatively. Once, twice, three times [we should have stopped here] four times, five, six, seven, eight, nine [this is totally going too far] ten times... We believe there is complicity in our understanding of what “SOLO!!!” means, but in every nod lives a different thought about good company. |
Sara Rodrigues (voice) Rodrigo B. Camacho (voice) Julia Vaughan (viola) Roxanna Albayati (cello) |
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Counting Duets (1982)
by Tom Johnson The many formalistic, religious, arithmetic, psychological, linguistic, and musical implications of counting have come to interest me a great deal, and since I have a special love for patterns and numbers anyway, I have focused much of my work in this direction. I count strings on a psaltery, count keys on a piano, count in duets, count in different languages, and keep finding new ways to do pieces about counting. |
Sara Rodrigues (voice and clapping) Rodrigo B. Camacho (voice and clapping) |
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Chamber (2006)
by Mark Barden Mark Barden’s work represents a staging of the failures that occur just before and just beyond the limits of what the body can hear and what it can enact, but where the failure itself is always palpable. The sounds of this music are, by turns, dense, visceral, and febrile; the tangibility of the performer’s loss of precise physical control is mirrored in the listening experience. |
Nicole Trotman (voice) Rodrigo B. Camacho (voice) Sara Rodrigues (voice) |
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In the Name of God (2016)
by Sara Rodrigues In the Name of God’ is a compilation of speeches and interviews by various world leaders, mainly Prime Ministers and Presidents of nations that in the last two decades have been involved in an international conflict. There are both direct and oblique connections between each of the statements, being that all are bound together by their comparable use of religion in matters tightly linked to political power and control. “Yesterday the devil came here, right here, and it smells of sulphur still today...” |
Sara Rodrigues (voice) Rodrigo B. Camacho (voice) Julia Vaughan (viola) Roxanna Albayati (cello) |
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Traditional Turkey Song (2016)
by Alex Nikiporenko Waitrose’s Traditional roast turkey recipe is converted into music in this joyous and festive celebration of British cuisine. This conversion is implemented through a series of processes, the main one assigning a chord to each of the 12 vowels of the English phonology. |
Nicole Trotman (voice) Julia Vaughan (viola) Roxanna Albayati (cello) |
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Eggs and Baskets (1987)
by Tom Johnson Eggs and Baskets was written in 1987 at the invitation of friends in upstate New York who wanted something for the school concerts they were doing. We thought this piece, perhaps with a couple of baskets and a few eggs as visual aids, would be perfect for children, but we were wrong. The kids didn’t understand anything and lost interest after a short time, but the parents loved the piece. So it has been a piece for adults ever since. |
Rodrigo B. Camacho (voice) Julia Vaughan (viola) Roxanna Albayati (cello) |