GO
HERE FOR PAST EVENTS
Go
here for reviews.
Upcoming
October/November
Performance Dates:
October
19-23rd: Fast and Dirty Dance Project, Aberdeen,
hosted at Woodend Barn, public performances tba.
November
5-8th:
Resonant Frequencies, as part of sound festival in Aberdeen,
featuring myself, Burkhard Beins, Will Guthrie, Mark Wastell,
James Wyness, and fORCH.
***Review
here.
 photo
by Ross Whyte
November
15th,
Shifting Currents:Holland as part of November
Music Festival in s-Hertogenbosch, featuring myself, Rick
Reed, and Keith Rowe.
November
19th,
Shifting Currents:Aberdeen as part of sound festival,
featuring myself, Rick Reed, and Keith Rowe.
November
23rd,
Shifting Currents:Huddersfield as part of Huddersfield
Contemporary Music Festival, featuring myself, Rick Reed,
and Keith Rowe.
**11/13
Interview concerning shifting currents on Huddersfield
Website here.
November
27th, Winter
Light Night in Dundee, with Claire M Singer and Jack
Keenan (visuals), at the Dundee Contemporary Arts. 10pm,
free.
November
30th,
Scotland Homecoming, commissioned work for bagpipe,
fiddle, accordion, and percussion featuring Patrick Keenan,
Martin MacDonald, Claire M Singer, and Naomi Ballentyne.
Inverurie Town Hall.
More
details:
Fast
and Dirty in the Shire, October 19-23rd
Participating with a
range of dancers, choreographers, and musicians in Citymove's
fast+Dirty in the shire workshop/lab. It will host
around 12-14 selected creator participants from fields
within and bordering contemporary dance with the aim to
provide a safe environment where ideas and themes can
be practically explored, shared and discussed over a period
of 5 days….. However in the spirit of fast+Dirty with
more making and showing than talking. Woodend Barn Centre,
Banchory. Possible performance on 23rd, attendance by
invitation (hint).
Resonant
Frequencies, November 5-8, Aberdeen sound festival:
A
weekend of experimental music curated by Bill Thompson.
"The
relationship between live electronics and percussion has
a long history, stretching back to the early work of John
Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, David Tudor, and Max Neuhaus
to name just a few. In many of their works they chose
to focus on the timbral qualities as much as the rhythmic
aspects of percussion, extending this with the use of
found objects, prepared instruments, and live electronics.
Each of the artists featured in Resonant Frequencies -
Mark Wastell, Burkhard Beins, Will Guthrie, and Bill Thompson
- explores a similar territory in their own practice.
In a series of solos, duets and a final quartet, this
crossover between percussion and live electronics is fully
explored as the artists improvise in various combinations
during the week."
November
5th, Burkhard
Beins and
Bill Thompson, 2 solo sets and one duet, 8pm, at the
Suttie Centre, Aberdeen. Donations.
November
6th, Will
Guthrie and
Mark
Wastell, 2
solo sets and one duet, 7:30 pm at the Lighthouse Museum
in Fraserburgh (free bus available from Aberdeen), £5-£7.
November
7th, UK Premier of Bill Thompson's GATES performed
by Burkhard Beins, Will Guthrie, Mark Wastell, and Bill
Thompson, 8pm, Citymoves Dancespace, Aberdeen, £5-£7.
Support by James Wyness.
November
8th, Resonant Frequencies, Connect: Lecture by Ricard
Barrett of
fORCH, workshop
by Burkhard Beins, and Concert at the Lemon Tree by
the improv ensemble fORCH. Aberdeen Uni during the day,
evening at the Lemon Tree. Day session free (rsvp required
for workshop), concert 7pm, £5-£7.
Made
possible due to generous support of the PRS Foundation
for New Music and presented in partnership between Burning
Harpsichord Media, Aberdeen sound Festival, Interesting
Music Promotions, and The Skinny.
Shifting
Currents:
Holland, Aberdeen, Huddersfield (Nov 15, 19, 23rd)
Shifting
Currents with Bill Thompson, Rick
Reed, and
Keith Rowe returns
in a series of concerts in November.
November
15, November Music, s-Hertogenbosch, Holland, 5:30pm.
November
19th, Cowdry Hall, , Aberdeen, Scotland, 8pm,
£5-£7.
November
23rd, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Huddersfield,
England.
Presented
in partnership with Le Weekend, sound, November Music,
and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and with
generous support of the PRS Foundation for New Music,
The Scottish Arts Council, and the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.
November
27th, Dundee Contemporary Arts, evening. With
Claire
M Singer and Jack Keenan. An evening
of live electronics and visuals at the DCA. Stay tuned
for more information.
  
November
30th, Premiere of new work commissioned by the Aberdeenshire
Council for Scotland's Homecoming 2009 celebrations. Written
for bagpipe, drum, fiddle, accordian, and live electronics.
Inverurie Town Hall, evening. More info soon.
Workshops:
TechFest
Aberdeen: September 14-18
A
workshop for young people involving recording and computer
composition. Delivered with Claire M Singer.
Creative
Identities Workshop: October/November
Delivered
with Claire M Singer, Ross Whyte, and Patrick Keenan.
A range of workshops dealing with experimental composition,
recording, and circuit bending. Hosted and supported by
Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen, and Creative Identities.
High
Frequency YMI Project 2009-2010
Over
the course of 2009/2010 I will be working with young people
throughout the Aberdeen area to build instruments out
of old electronic musical toys. Stay tuned for the eventual
live electronics performance group featuring these young
people and their instruments (not even kidding!)
22/07
Moving Forward: College of Arts and Sciences Postgraduate
Conference
Performing
with Claire M Singer and Ross Whyte at the College of
Arts and Sciences PG Conference: Moving Forward. The conference
is £15/advance and £25 at the door. It actually
looks interesting, and we go on at 16:30 on Wednesday,
at Elphistone Hall. For more info go here: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/cass/pgradconf/About.html
26/06
Open Knowledge Network
Speaking
about Circuit Bending at Aberdeen's Open Knowledge Network.
Click here for more info.
30/05
Le Weekend: Shifting Currents
I'll
be premiering my latest work, Shifting Currents
in the first of three concerts at the end of the
month as part of
Le Weekend in Stirling (the other two being at the
sound
festival in Aberdeen, and Huddersfield
Contemporary Music Festival, both in November).
Shifting
Currents was inspired by the story of an individual
who after receiving a cochlear implant was able to hear
various electrical fields as he moved about his daily
life. These electrical fields created delicate hums, roaring
thunder strikes, ticklish electronic trickles, and other
astonishing sounds depending on the specifics of each
situation. I thought it was remarkable that not only was
he able to hear the sounds of the world we often take
for granted, but was also able to hear an entirely different
sound world unavailable to the rest of us with 'normal'
hearing... (read more here).
Burning
Harpsichord Media
Burning
Harpsichord Media is a small independent label that I
created to release various archival as well as upcoming
projects. The first of which is for the upcoming event,
shifting currents at Le Weekend Festival in Stirling
on May 30th, 2009.
The
release shifting currents:installation is a
recording of the full installation running as is, without
the...(read more here).
04/05
'What Happened' at The Arches Glasgow:
One
of my text works, from, will be performed by
a mixed ensemble at 7hings event 'What Happened' at The
Arches, Glasgow, Monday the 4th..
For
more info: http://www.seventhings.co.uk/events.php
Here's
the score:
from
gather
objects from
a
walk, explore
their
sonic properties
be
sensitive, have courage
listen.
bill
thompson
24/04
Performing at Kilau in Aberdeen
I'll
be performing a live electronics event at Kilau's in Aberdeen
at 730pm. Free and fun, come out. Also playing will be:
The Misled Cult of Balvack, and the Matricarians. More
info (and now pix!):
http://kilaucoffee.wordpress.com/
21/02
Fragmented Orchestra Performance with Claire M. Singer
Claire
M Singer and I have been invited to perform as part
of the Fragmented
Orchestra's final event, 24
Fragments. We have created an interactive sound and
visual installation that will merge into a live electronic
and cello performance. The installation begins at 7pm
and the performance begins at 8pm. Location is the Thainstone
Centre just outside of Inverurie. For more information
on how to get to Thainstone click here.
Here
is more info on the event:
The
Fragmented Orchestra is a huge distributed musical instrument,
modeled on the firing of the human brain's neurons. Made
possible by a £50,000 prize awarded to Jane Grant,
John Matthias and Nick Ryan, as the winning project for
the PRS Foundation's New Music Award 2008, it is installed
at the FACT Gallery Liverpool and 23 other sites across
the UK and runs from December 12th 2008 to 22nd February
2009. 24 Fragments will run at all of these sites for
24 hours, from 10am on Saturday 21 February. This sprawling
collaborative work, spanning music, art and science, has
evolved from a fascination by its creators of the inherent
sonic rhythms and adaptive learning of spiking neurons
– ie. the electrical impulses of the human brain.
24
Fragments is a 24-hour festival funded by The Wellcome
Trust, including all 24 sites of The Fragmented Orchestra,
which are linked up by microphones that pick up sound
at each site. All of the events during the 24-hour festival
are designed to be relayed through the distributed 'neuronal
system' of The Fragmented Orchestra and via its website:
www.thefragmentedorchestra.com
May
and November: Shifting Currents: A PRS Foundation
for New Music Joint Commission for Le Weekend, sound,
and Huddersfield festivals for 2009.
I have been commissioned by the PRS
Foundation for New Music to write a piece for the
Le Weekend Festival in Stirling (May 30th), the sound
Festival in Aberdeen (November 19th), and at the Huddersfield
Contemporary Music Festival (during the week of November
20-29th).
The
piece Shifting Currents involves
using special microphones to collect field recordings
of electro-magnetic fields from Stirling, Aberdeen, and
Huddersfield that I created a multiple speaker installation
of delicate, and also harsh, shifting electronic sounds.
This constantly evolving installation forms a shifting
sonic web from within which Keith
Rowe, Rick
Reed, and myself will
improvise using live electronics, found objects, and field
recordings. Not
only will the sounds gathered from each location be combined
in infinite combinations, but they will also be combined
with the improvised reactions and interactions of the
musicians, each themselves using devices that often behave
in unique and unpredictable ways.
For
more information, email here.
25/10
Around the Bend: Circuit Bending Talk
I
will be giving a talk about circuit bending, live electronics
andc composition as part of the sound
festival of Aberdeen. My talk is at 3:45 pm Saturday
the 25th at the McRoberts Building, University of Aberdeen,
but there are also numerous other workshops and talks
that day starting at 10am. The event is free and open
to the public. More info here.
26/10
The Burning Harpsichord Series #6
The
BH Series returns again as part of the sound
festival here in Aberdeen at its new regular time
and place! The last Sunday of each month, starting roughly
at 7pm, we will feature local and traveling experimental
artists. Cost is a donation of £3 to £5 with
no one turned away for lack of funds.
The
location is Aberdeen's newest venue,
The Music Club, at 52-54 Langstane Place, Aberdeen,
AB11 6EN
For
this event which is part of the sound festival occurring
throughout October and November we are featuring Manchester
based artist Rodrigo Constanzo, Jedburgh sound artist
James Wyness, and myself for three intimate live electronics
sets, followed by a group improvisation to finish the
night.
About
the Artists:
Rodrigo
Constanzo was born in Madrid, Spain. He began
playing piano at the age of four. Though he is classically
trained, his primary interest lies in contemporary music.
For the past ten years he has occupied himself by creating
a number of instruments made from modifying electronic
devices, in a process called circuit-bending. As a composer
he is heavily influenced by visual art, and tries to make
each composition self-standing--each idea being a unique
one, and demanding a unique outcome. The one thing that
ties most of his work together is the surrendering of
part of his control as a composer, be it in aleatoric
or arbitrary decisions at the composition level, or through
largely improvised forms at the performance level. For
more info: http://www.rodrigoconstanzo.com/
James
Wyness lives in Jedburgh but is active as an
artist across the UK with works performed overseas in
both directions. His main focus compositionally has been
with with acousmatic listening and the unfolding of the
sound object, with the integration of mimetic and more
obviously musical material and with the emergence of narrative.
As a sound artist he mostly explores the phonographic
forms which deal with documentary and archive, and which
broadly address the disciplines of anthropology and ethnography
through the medium of sound. For more info: http://www.wyness.org
Come
out and enjoy the show!
28/09
The Burning Harpsichord Series: Ressurection
The
BH Series is back with a new regular time and place! The
last Sunday of each month, starting roughly at 7pm, we
will feature local and traveling experimental artists.
Cost is a donation of £3 to £5 with no one
turned away for lack of funds.
The
location is Aberdeen's newest venue,
The Music Club, at 52-54 Langstane Place, Aberdeen,
AB11 6EN
This
Sunday we featured myself using some new instruments built
at STEIM and the use of live video from the The Brakanator,
as well as artists
SumiSumi vs Noma,
The
Matricarians, and video artist John Reed.
The
Matricarians (plus) is a relatively new supergroup
taking members for the Kitchen Cynics, Mickel Mass, and
a few other local experimentors mixed in for an avant-garde
swirl of experimental psychedelia.
SUMISUMI
V NOMA,
is a project combining the efforts of Andy Da Kipp (solo
artist, member of Mickel Mass, DJ) and NOMA (well known
experimental improviser and drone artist active in Glasgow)
Both artists have performed in Aberdeen, either solo or
in groups as part of The Burning Harpsichord Series at
the Lemon Tree or at various events at Peacock Visual
Arts, The Tunnels, Drakes and elsewhere. The combined
efforts of these two gentlemen made the evening worth
coming out for in and of itself.
Stay
tuned for audio and video from the night and Join
us next month, October 26th for the next
installment featuring a full set from myself, phonographer,
composer, sound artist James
Wyness, and circuit bender and sound artist Rodrigo
Constanzo. Email for more info HERE.
08/2008
Developing New Guerilla Street Performance (accepting
performance invitiations: Email
for more details.
08/08
Wrote article for Cultural Enterprise Office: Swimming
in Different Waters
08/02-03
Giving Circuit Bending Workshop
Giving
a beginning circuit bending workshop at Peacock Visual
Arts, August 2nd and 3rd.
Pix
and vids HERE.
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