Interweaves
My research is situated at the intersection between two musical practices: notated composition and free improvisation. I explore the possibilities of merging and blending these two practices within a single format aided by innovative graphic visuals I term ‘interweaves’. These practices are often viewed diametrically. My research aims to establish new methodologies whereby such opposing practices actively relate to each other – a dynamic environment where the roles and approaches of participants are altered and reimaged. Interweaves encourage musicians to step outside their practice-specific disciplines and embrace other procedures and functions.
Breaking down diametric relations, interweaves aim to assist participants to navigate seamlessly between the text that cannot sing and the song that cannot be seen (Havelock). They also aim to initiate the conversation around the role of the interpreter, the ‘executant-composer’ (Dwyer), authorship (Barthes, Corser) and intertextuality (Kristeva, Corser).
An interweave is a form of notation that explores the relationship between the composer and performer, which challenges the author-centric field of classical music. It further proposes new ways of engaging with a musical work through a study of intertextually and explores the shared notion of authorship.
New Pathways in Improvisation@MDX 2021
presentation 'The Liminal Spaces of Notated and Improvised Music'
interviews
A composer and virtuoso double bassist, Barry Guy is one of the leadings figures worldwide in the free improvisation arena. Founder of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, the Barry Guy New Orchestra and the Blue Shroud Band, he also works regularly with other leading figures in the improvisation world including Evan Parker, Agustí Fernández, Lucas Niggle and Marilyn Crispell. Guy’s orchestral and chamber music has been performed worldwide by the London Sinfonietta, the City of London Sinfonia, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St John’s, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, among others. World-renowned soloists who champion his music include violinists Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Maya Homburger and Muriel Cantoreggi. He has performed under the baton of leading conductors including Pierre Boulez, John Eliot Gardiner, Ernest Bour, Elgar Howarth and Jane Glover. Barry Guy’s contribution to music is acknowledged in the awards of Honorary Doctorate (Middlesex University, London), Honorary Professor (Rhythmic Conservatory, Copenhagen), and in a host of prestigious awards from numerous European countries.
Charlotte Hug is an internationally renowned violist, composer- performer, improviser, visual artist, media artist, and educator. With her unique site-specific, musical-visual performances and her Son-Icons Visual Music, she has created a new genre of transdisciplinary, spatial-scenic music and art. Her intermedial compositions and spatial scores with Son-Icons and Interaction Notation (IAN), which Hug herself developed, offer compositional settings the structure of which are formed by the sensory magnet of the Son-Icons. At the same time, they provide the scope for precise interdisciplinary and intercultural interactions, which are continually developing.
Hug is a musician of the extremes and is constantly expanding the possibilities of her instrument. She has developed the soft bow technique with which she can play up to 8 voices on the instrument, and so reinvents the viola. As a vocalist, she sings over four octaves, from the undertones to the highest falsetto. With vibrating glottal beats, multi-phonics and articulations close to speech, Hug oscillates between the human voice and a hybrid siren song. She also specialises in the sound mixtures of viola and voice; thus, her unmistakably idiosyncratic tonal language.
Nick Roth is a saxophonist, composer, producer and educator.
His work seeks the liberation of improvisation from composition, the poetic syntax of philosophical enquiry, and the function of music as translative epistemology. A curious predisposition and a steadfast refusal to accept the existence of boundaries between the real and the imaginary has led to collaborations with an array of international performers, composers, choreographers, visual artists, poets, sculptors, directors, festivals and ensembles. Often engaging in conversation with scientists from such diverse fields as mathematical biology, astrophysics, forest canopy ecology, orchidology, quantum loop gravity or hydrology, his work is an investigation into how we can come to know through the art of music. Simultaneously subsumed by an insatiable appetite for literature, many of his compositions explore the symbiotic resonance of language as sound and symbol. He is artistic director of the Yurodny Ensemble, a founding member of the Water Project, and a partner at Diatribe Records, Ireland’s leading independent record label for new music.
Jenn Kirby is a composer, performer, lecturer and music technologist. Jenn is a Lecturer in Electronic Music and Technology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She previously held positions at the University of the West of Scotland, the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and Trinity College Dublin. Jenn's output includes contemporary instrumental composition, electroacoustic music, sound art, noise music, experimental-pop, laptop orchestra performance and solo live electronics. Her work has been performed in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Poland, Canada, the United States and Mexico. Jenn has been commissioned by Kirkos Ensemble, Glasshouse Ensemble, Ensemble Entropy, among others. She has undertaken residencies with Cove Park, soundSCAPE Festival and National Theatre Wales. Jenn delivers workshops and masterclasses on creative coding and improvisation.Jenn is very engaged in the performance of electronic music as a performer and a sofware developer. She builds software and re-purposes controllers as musical interfaces to create and perform theatrical and often humourous live electronic music. Jenn's research is focused on developing methodologies for achieving performer agency in live electronic music and utilising audio-visual symbiosis to enhance audience engagement.