Aldeburgh

Waley-Cohen(s): Permutations

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson ~ 1 Comment

Permutations & Unveil 
Compositions by Freya Waley-Cohen
Tamsin Waley-Cohen, violin
Signum Classics SIGCD496. 27’46

This short recording is of two pieces by composer Freya Waley-Cohen, written for her older sister, the violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen. The key work, Permutations (c18′), is described as a “roaming performance artwork”. It has a fascinating compositional background. It was commissioned as part of Aldeburgh Festival’s 2017 season and composed during a residency at Aldeburgh and is intended as an exploration of the relationship between architecture and music.

Permutations consists of six independent lines of solo violin music, all pre-recorded by Tamsin Waley-Cohen, and replayed within an architectural setting designed by Finbarr O’Dempsey & Andrew Skulina. Both the music and its setting were planned simultaneously during the Aldeburgh residency, with each acting as a muse for the other. The architectural setting has six flexible and adaptable enclosures, one for each of the six violin parts. A central space allows all six violin lines to be heard in balance, or the listener could move around, and adjust the acoustics of the space to hear various combinations of the six contrapuntal lines. Continue reading →

Hermes Experiment: The Winter’s Tale musically reimagined

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson ~ 2 Comments

The Winter’s Tale: Shakespeare musically reimagined
The Hermes Experiment
The Cockpit. 13 December 2016

14717295_967030003437802_3495517478729583208_nThe Hermes Experiment are usually a four-piece band with the unusual instrumentation of harp, clarinet, soprano voice and double bass. In their short but impressive life span, they have commissioned new music from around 36 composers, and well as using their own improvisatory skills in performance. Alongside appearances in their four-member format, they are also involved in cross-disciplinary collaborations. For their ‘musical reimagining’ of Shakespeares Winter’s Tale, performed in a one-off show in London’s Cockpit Theatre, they worked with director Nina Brazier, composer Kim Ashton and five actors.

They developed this hour-long take of The Winter’s Tale during an Aldeburgh Music Residency (see video trailer below), with composer Kim Ashton setting out ideas for musical improvisation as much as issuing new composed music. He described the ‘score’ as being ‘a compilation of instructions, including only sparse musical notes’, noting that the music is as much by The Hermes Experiment as by him, and that’most of what we will hear is being improvised live’, responding to ‘musical shapes and behaviors agreed in advance’. Shakespeare’s own text presented in manageable chunks and with musical accompaniment and interludes merging and emerging from the text. Continue reading →