Music We'd Like to Hear; H&N, Sat 5/8/17; 10:00pm

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Music We'd Like to Hear has now been running every year since 2005: a collective of Musicians funding and promoting concerts of works which they'd heard about, found interesting, but never experienced Live. Tomorrow night's programme features Music by British Artist, performer, & composer Sarah Hughes (b1983), American Nomi Epstein (b1983), German Hauke Harder (b1963), and Christian Wolf (b1934). Actual titles of works are not given on the H&N website, nor details of performers, but the MWLtH website is more illuminating:

Hughes: fires and conifers (2012)
Epstein: forCage99 (2015)
Harder: 88bb (8 strings - 8 primes - bowl-back) (2011)
Wolff: Banjo Player (2015)

Ensemble We'd Like to Hear with guitarist Seth Josel - part of a concert given on 30th June at St Mary on Hill, London.

Rather than broadcasting the other works on that programme, the remainder of H&N is devoted to a performance of David Bedford(1937-2011)'s Star's End, a large-scale work, originally written for Mike Oldfield in 1974. This performance is given by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Edwin Outwater, with Mats Bergstrom (electric guitar), Pete Wilson (bass guitar), and Steve Barnard (percussion).


David Bedford would have been 80 today (4/8/17).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09026by

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Nomi Epstein on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/nomi-epstein

... her website:

http://nomiepstein.com/

... and an interview from 2013, published in the Chicago Tribune:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-06-06/entertainment/ct-ott-0607-nomi-epstein-local-sounds-20130606_1_professional-classical-musicians-nomi-epstein-sound-art

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ooh! And youTube has one of those very useful videos-with-score thingies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwtQ3hliVTo

I quite enjoyed that on first hearing - somewhere between Feldman's graphic Music and Wandelweiser, with a determination to strip the Music of rhetorical gestures (which is a sort of rhetoric itself, I suppose). Anti-commercial, in the absence of any immediate "thematic" material, and with minimum rhythmic interest, it made me focus my attention on the subtle differences in tuning, drawing attention to intonation in ways different from what's encountered in the sort of old "New" Music that gets commissioned for the Proms. Not (yet) convinced by the last, five-minute "page" (the "Suspension Passage" from letter G) - I can't (yet) work out what the change of mood is there for ... which might be the point, of course.

[MrGongGong]

Thanks for this, interesting stuff

There is going to be a festival/seminar-type thing devoted to David Bedforrd's music at the Southbank next year
I'm not sure of the dates yet
but it does connect with something that's not on the HCMF website yet

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There's less on the Net (that I can find) of Sarah Hughes' Music - though I did find this excerpt from the piece to be broadcast (Spoiler Alert):

https://soundcloud.com/consumer-waste/the-set-ensemble-stopcock

... and there's plenty of examples of her sculptures:

http://www.sculpture.org.uk/artist/sarah-hughes

https://sarahhughes.org/

... and here's her Sound and Music blurb:

http://britishmusiccollection.org.uk/composer/sarah-hughes

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for this, interesting stuff

There is going to be a festival/seminar-type thing devoted to David Bedford's music at the Southbank next year
I'm not sure of the dates yet
but it does connect with something that's not on the HCMF website yet

Ooh - looking forward to that! I did once meet David Bedford; it was in the early 1970s when he was touring a duo of himself and Lol Coxhill, reclaiming mainly old music hall stuff with a slightly surrealist twist, as can be imagined. If was one of those occasions that are unfortunately becoming so rare, when I could find nothing to say! I can also remember a performance of "The Garden of Love" at the Vic Rooms in Bristol around the same time - a piece if I'm not mistaken which Boulez turned down conducting! - and much enjoying the earlier parts of the work, containing a lot of improvised material, but walking out when the music, performed by Bedford and Kevin Ayers' Whole World Band with personnel add-ons, turned to evident audience delight into some sort of Pink Floyd soundalike - at any rate to my ears, back then.

I'm afraid those of us who thought we knew better considered "Star's End" to be compromised Ligeti. From what I remember Mike Oldfield's name was not on the original cover.

[Bryn]

Bear in mind that all Radio 3 programmes are available in 'Concert Sound' via http://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/projects...concert-sound2 during the current Proms season. Why make do with FM, DAB or the iPlayer HD Sound when lossless 48/16 is available?