crossing boundaries - music at the edge

MOOT - music of our time presents

May 7th - 14th 2016St Nicholas’ Church, Brighton BN1 3LJFeaturing music by Milton Babbitt, Morton Feldman,Shabaka Hutchings, György Kurtág and Karlheinz StockhausenArtistic Director: Norman Jacobs

Crossing BoundariesMUSIC AT THE EDGE

This year’s series is a celebration of contemporary music from the avant-garde postwar period to music written in the last few years, responses to contemporary musical concerns in all manner of different ways.

We are privileged to have Alain Louafi perform a piece for which he is the leading exponent, having conceived and developed the part of the mime-dancer 40 years ago with composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. INORI is a masterful work, providing a ‘history of music’ from single melodic line and rhythm to complex polyphony.

Milton Babbitt was a major pioneering figure in the field of music. His centenary provides musicians and audience alike an opportunity to discover and reassess his music. Join us for our concert on what would have been Babbitt’s hundredth birthday, with music by the composer and pieces by his colleagues and students.

Alongside some well-known pieces by Schubert and Ravel, the Kemp Duo will feature several of György Kurtág’s arrangements of music by J.S. Bach and modern miniature masterpieces for piano duet by Stravinsky.

The week-long series concludes with a newly commissioned performance of Babbitt’s final string quartet by the Ligeti Quartet. They are joined by BBC New Generation Jazz Artist Shabaka Hutchings for Morton Feldman’s clarinet quintet, which inspired Shabaka to write his own quintet Octavia, something which I’m personally looking forward to hearing for the first time.

It’s going to be an interesting week. See you there!

Norman Jacobs – artistic director

PS – To learn more about MOOT please contact us via Facebook or www.musicofourtime.co.uk

Welcome to CROSSING BOUNDARIES - music at the edge

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Inori with Alain LouafiSaturday 7 May & Sunday 8 May, at 8.00pmSt Nicholas Church, BrightonThe origin of Inori goes back to a visit Stockhausen made to Australia in 1970, when he befriended Philippa Cullen, a young dancer. When Stockhausen three years later got a commission to write a large orchestra piece that would have a ‘lasting value for posterity’ in the culture of Japan, he started to envision Inori, in the guise of a great musical prayer. Stockhausen remembered the gifted Australian dancer, which gave him the idea of having a dancer/mime express gestures of prayer with the orchestral music.

Stockhausen started to look at the prayer behaviour of different religions. He commissioned American anthropologist Nancy Wyle to make him a collection of illustrations in this vein from all possible cultures; earlier she had collected divine names from different cultures and religions for Stockhausen’s Stimmung. Connecting all these gestures and bodily postures from all over the human world Stockhausen created a harmonious merger of music and movement in a ‘chromatic scale of prayer gestures’.

STOCKHAUSEN'S INORI WITH ALAIN LOUAFI

Hand gestures observable in stained glass panels at Cologne Cathedral (Photo: Norman Jacobs)

CROSSING BOUNDARIES – MUSIC AT THE EDGE 3

The Importance of Stockhausen’s ‘Inori’by Gabriel JosipoviciOn Wednesday 23 October 1974 an event of outstanding importance took place at the London Coliseum: the first English performance of Stockhausen’s latest work, Inori, subtitled Adorations for Soloist and Orchestra. I am not sure whether the work should be looked at from the point of view of music, of mime, of ballet or of theatre. Its importance, I think, lies in the fact that it forces us to rethink all these categories and the barriers we normally erect between them…

Inori is the first piece in which [the composer] has introduced a figure on the stage whose function is not primarily to make music. And since with Stockhausen each new work is…a radically new departure, [having] a meaning not just for music but for all the arts, it is worth trying to understand the function and importance of the mime in Inori. - The work is not realistic, it is not stylised, it is not mythical, and it is not

abstract in the sense in which modern dance is often abstract. What then is it?

In his programme note Stockhausen has explained the underlying structure of the work… ‘The whole work,’ he writes, ‘is developed from an URGESTALT (primal shape) or even formula, which was composed first of all. It has 13 different pitches, plus 2 repeated at its end. The 13 pitches are associated with 13 tempi, 13 dynamic levels, 13 timbres, and 13 gestures of prayer (plus 2 final gestures).’ This primal shape, which has five parts, lasts for about a minute. It is then projected onto a scale of about an hour, the duration of the piece…

The gestures of prayer [the composer goes on] are performed absolutely in synchronisation with the orchestra by a person raised on a podium in the middle of the orchestra. A gesture performed with clasped hands in the region of the heart, close to one’s chest, corresponds to the pitch middle C, pianissimo, and with the longest duration. When this gesture is made in a forward direction, away from the belly, this corresponds to a crescendo from pianissimo, to be graduated in 60 levels. When the hands are raised or lowered, this corresponds to an alteration of pitch, and the vertical alterations of the gestures of prayer become a sort of chromatic scale of pitches distributed over 3 octaves…The different gestures of prayer are used like timbres and tempi.

What Stockhausen has done is in effect to create the choreography as he creates the music. What the viewer experiences may at first seem rather like a form of Indian dance: thousands of highly stylised gestures, learned and mastered each for an appropriate occasion… To try and transplant this to Western Europe would only be a form of dilettantism and mystification. Inori is indeed, as the composer insists, a mystical work, but only because it is absolutely free of mystification. The work stems neither from a source in the past outside him, and to which he claims special access, nor from a source inside him, which he is specially privileged to possess. The formula is presented to us from the start, and then it is worked upon, in front of us, in terms of sound and sight. The marvellous feeling of release provided by the piece stems from this fact. Once the thirteen pitches and thirteen gestures have been established, they are subjected to a process of ever fuller transformations; but these, however complex, are always logical, always clearly stated, and always available for our understanding. There is nothing behind the gesture, just as there is nothing behind the music. And this leads to an extraordinary focussing upon surface: the surface of the mime, like that of the music, becomes luminous. The music takes on plastic form and the mime dissolves into pure relation. The experience is thus at once extremely physical and extremely abstract. It is also extraordinarily cleansing, in that we are made to feel that such luminosity is within reach of any of us – not through any mystical initiation, as in Wagner; not through taking part in any orgiastic rite, as in Henze, but through a kind of submission which allows us to rediscover our full physical and intellectual potential.

Edited from the original text with kind permission of the author.

Alain LouafiAlain Louafi was born in France in 1945. Following his studies at the École Normale, where he received a diploma to teach French, he attended MUDRA, a school founded by Maurice Béjart, where he received instruction encompassing dance, theatre, singing and yoga. Since then, he has extended his training by participation in seminars on dance (African dance, Butho), theatre ( in Poland, Grotowsky; in Japan, Nô and Kyogen), martial arts (Aikido, Kendo) and yoga (André van Lysebeth).

Alain has appeared as soloist in numerous Maurice Béjart performances and has performed in productions by Micha van Hoeck, Caroline Carlson, Jean-Paul Franssens.

He has also participated in many films, such as in the film EXAMINATION of THURSDAY from LIGHT (WDR, 1990).

Alain Louafi took part in the following staged performances of new music: Voix, Gestes, Silences (1976) by Georges Octors, Futuristie (1977) by Pierre Henry, INORI (since 1974), THURSDAY from LIGHT (since 1979) and MONDAY from LIGHT (since 1988) by Stockhausen.

Starting in 1973, Alain Louafi has staged and realised numerous choreographies, and in addition to this, he has taken part in many other productions as collaborator and chroeographer. He taught acting and other disciplines at MUDRA (Brussels, Dakar), at the INSAS (Brussels), and from 1977–1992 at the Herman Terlinck studio in Antwerp. From 1992, the year Maurice Béjart’s new school RUDRA was founded in Lausanne, until 1997, Alain was the head professor for acting. He is presently professor at the conservatory in Lausanne and since 1997 also at the École de Théâtre de Martigny.

Alain Louafi worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen on the creation of the role of the DANCER-MIME performing the gestures in INORI. He remains the leading interpreter of this role. Mr. Louafi worked with Stockhausen on many subsequent projects, taking leading physical gesture roles in several of his operas. He is presently professor at the conservatory in Lausanne and since 1997 also at the École de Théâtre de Martigny.

CROSSING BOUNDARIES – MUSIC AT THE EDGE 4 CROSSING BOUNDARIES – MUSIC AT THE EDGE 5

MILTON BABBITT (1916-2011) – Accompanied Recitative (1994) 2’Huw Wiggin, soprano saxophoneJulian Trevelyan, pianoIn his youth, Babbitt learned to play a dozen musical instruments, mostly toplay jazz. One of his favourites was the saxophone.

With thanks to Julian Trevelyan for creating engravings for theperformance of this piece.

BABBITT – Duet (1956) and Semi-Simple Variations (1956) 2’Norman Jacobs, pianoDuet is Babbitt’s shortest piece, a two-part invention lasting under a minute in duration, written for the composer’s young daughter Betty Ann. Semi-Simple Variations is a set of five six-bar variations on a six-note theme.

BABBITT – String Trio (1939-41) 8’EUROPEAN PREMIERERachel Gorman, violin, Sue Appel, viola, Cecilia Bignall, celloOne of Babbitt’s earliest works, the String Trio was rejected by his university, due to the piece’s modernism, in favour of the more conventional Music for the Mass. It has remained unpublished other than in an edition of Perspectives of New Music which marked Babbiitt’s 60th birthday.

With thanks to Georgina Bowden for creating engravings of the parts for the performance of this early unpublished work.

Tuesday, May 10, at 7.30pm. St Nicholas Church, Brighton

BABBITT – The Widow’s Lament in Springtime (1950) 3’Poem by William Carlos WilliamsLeonora Dawson-Bowling, mezzo-sopranoNorman Jacobs, pianoThis piece is Babbitt’s earliest vocal composition to apply twelve-tone methods, setting a poem by William Carlos Williams, looking back to the late Expressionism of Schoenberg.

BABBITT – Minute Waltz (or) 3/4 ± 1/8 (1977) 1’Julian Trevelyan, pianoMinute Waltz (or) 3/4 ± 1/8 was written for a collection of modern waltzes, instigated bypianists Robert Helps and Robert Moran written by contemporary composers whichincluded John Cage, Philip Glass and Joan Tower. Babbitt dedicated his waltz to hiscomposition teacher Roger Sessions for his 80th birthday.

SAMUEL ADLER (b. 1928) – Milton from Four Composer Portraits (2001) 2’ Julian Trevelyan, pianoSamuel Adler became one of Babbitt’s closest friends, especially during the years that they were colleagues at Juilliard. Adler writes:Four Composer Portraits are birthday cards for Milton Babbitt - who suggested the project - and three of my other friends: Gunter Schuller, Ned Rorem, and David Diamond. Each birthday card tries to emulate the style of the composer as best I could. Those for Babbitt and Schuller are studies in 12-tone writing… The general idea of writing birthday cards was suggested by the many “cards” that [composer and critic] Virgil Thomson wrote to friends and colleagues on various occasions.

NEWTON ARMSTRONG (b.1970) – Too slow, for Milton (2011; part of a Babbitt memorial project) 5’Julian Trevelyan, pianoThe piece borrows harmonies from Babbitt’s Composition for 12 Instruments (harmonies which Babbitt had in turn borrowed from Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon), but unfolds them as part of a musical texture characterised by repetition, resonance, and a slow rate of change. As Babbitt once told me that my music was ‘too slow’, this seemed an appropriately obstinate form of homage.

Note by Newton Armstrong

100 Today! Happy Birthday Milton Babbitt

< Norman Jacobs and Betty Ann, the composer’s daughter, in New York, January 2016


MILTON BABBITT –Three Theatrical Songs (from Fabulous Voyage) (1946) 5’“As Long As It Isn’t Love” (words by Milton Babbitt)“Penelope’s Night Song”, “Now You See It”Sarah Gabriel, voice. Julian Trevelyan, pianoBabbitt’s musical play Fabulous Voyage is an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. The composer writes: These songs reflect that peripheral part of my musical life… which had its origins in a misspent childhood devoted in large part to the writing, arranging and performing of “popular” music, and which ended, in 1946, with Fabulous Voyage.

BABBITT – In His Own Words (1988; words by Mel Powell) 5’ EUROPEAN PREMIERESarah Gabriel, voice. Julian Trevelyan, pianoOnly ever published in the journal Periodical, In His Own Words is a 65th birthday tribute to Babbitt’s friend the composer Mel Powell. Best known for having written the music for the Tom & Jerry cartoons, Mel Powell acted as pianist and arrange for Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman jazz bands.

With thanks to Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University for providing access tothe Mel Powell papers without which this performance would not have been possible.

MEL POWELL (1923-1998) – Letter to a Young Composer (1988) 5’ Sarah Gabriel, voice & percussionPowell’s piece contains quotations from Babbitt’s Widow’s Lament, Pierre Boulez’s Pli selon pli and his own Haiku Variations plus operatic snippets from Verdi’s La Traviata and other operas by Bellini, Debussy and Wagner.

BABBITT – Phonemena (1969/version for voice & tape 1975) 4½’Sarah Gabriel, sopranoJames Bull, sound technicianIn 1968, Noam Chomsky’s The Sound Pattern Of English, the basis for generativephonology, was published. Babbitt was one of several composers who were inspired by this new step in linguistics, allowing composers to advance from writing fundamentally vowel-based vocalises to pieces applying extra syntactic components.

PAUL LANSKY (b. 1944) –notjustmoreidlechatter for computer-manipulated voices (1989) 8’James Bull, sound technicianNotjustmoreidlechatter makes special use of a technique known as Linear Predictive Coding, a kind of sound analysis originally developed in the telephone industry for handling large quantities of sound data as compactly as possible (as in the computers that store voicemail). Essentially, the software attempts to “guess” certain parameters of the sound, and in doing so sometimes produces some aurally pleasing “errors.”

This piece can be found on the CD More Than Idle Chatter. With thanks to Paul Lansky.

DAVID RAKOWSKI (b. 1958) – Scatter from Three Encores (1991) 2’Sarah Gabriel, soprano. Julian Trevelyan, pianoScatter is dedicated to Paul Lansky, though the idea of the piece came from Babbitt’sPhonemena. Rakowski has taught since 1995 at Brandeis University.

RAKOWSKI – RIP (2013) 4’ – WORLD PREMIEREJulian Trevelyan, pianoPrelude 28, Rip is a passage taken (or “ripped”) from the second movement of Rakowski’ssecond piano concerto - that movement is an elegy for Babbitt - and rewritten and givenan ending.

INTERMISSION

MILTON BABBITT –Soli e Duettini (1989) 8’Jon Rattenbury &Brian Ashworth, guitarsAlthough an instrumental duo, it is also an opportunity for each performer to play a solo role, quite independent of the other – hence this title.


BABBITT – Souper (1987) 2’ – EUROPEAN PREMIERECommissioned by the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, Souper includes brief snippets of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, setting poems not used by Schoenberg out of the Albert Giraud cycle.

With thanks to Sarah Gabriel for her translation of the text and to Julian Trevelyan for creating engravings of the separate parts for this work in order to make this performance possible.

BABBITT –Quatrains (1993; setting of a poem by John Hollander) 5’Sarah Gabriel, sopranoSteve Dummer & Neil Greig-Smith, clarinetsComposed for Mary Wiegold and The Composers Ensemble, this piece was first performed at Dartington International Summer School in 1994 where Babbitt led a class in advanced composition.

Night beside me, I turned from her toward day,Cloyed with the stillness of our common clay,And twitted in the morning by the birdsFor not delighting in their brightened gray. This dream was broken by my opening eyes:Flowers in pots… Among them, butterfliesTiny, and like the flowers in color, swarmBefore resemblance in the daylight dies.

Extract from John Hollander’s poem Summer Day

In einer müden GondelAuf dunkelblauer FlutSitzt traut mit ColombinePierrot beim roten WeinJohanniswürmchen leuchtenAls ihres Haars DemantenIn einer müden GondelAuf dunkelblauer Flut(Der Mond in seiner GüteGiesst all sein Gold hernieder!)Und ihr zu Füssen duftenDie Veilchen welk, verstreutIn einer müden Gondel.

In a weary gondolaOn dark blue tideCosily with ColombineSits Pierrot in red wineGlow-worms gleamHer hair diamondsIn a weary gondolaOn dark blue tide(The moon in his goodnessPouring down his gold!)And at her feet, the scentThe violets wilted, scattered,In a weary gondola.

BABBITT – No Longer Very Clear (1994; setting of a poem byJohn Ashbery) 5’ – EUROPEAN PREMIERE

In this house of blues the cold creeps stealthily upon us.I do not dare to do what I fantasize doing.With time the blue congeals into room like purplethat takes the shape of alcoves, landings . . .Everything is like something else.I should have waited before I learned this.

Dartington International Summer School, 1994:Gavin Henderson, Martin Butler, Milton Babbitt, Bill Colvig and Lou Harrison

Mixed ensemble, directed by Julian TrevelyanSarah Gabriel, soprano – Rebecca Griffiths, fluteSteve Dummer, clarinet – Rachel Gorman, violinCecilia Bignall, violoncello – Norman Jacobs, piano (Souper)


BABBITT – Philomel for Soprano, Recorded Sopranoand Synthesised Tape (1964) 19’ – NEWLY RESTORED VERSIONPoem by John HollanderJuliet Fraser, sopranoJames Bull, sound technicianLost, lost in the wooded night, bruised and speechless, Philomel begins her song.We find her alone, tongue torn out — her punishment at the hands of Tereus, King of Thrace and new husband of her sister, who was sent to bring her from Athens to be reunited with his queen, but who, fast-tangled in lust, raped and silenced her inthese woods so dense.

Composed in 1964, Philomel is for soprano and four-channel tape (recorded snippets of the soprano and synthesised sound) and sets words by John Hollander that, rather than retelling the whole Ovidian myth, probe into Philomel’s psychological renewal as much as her physical metamorphosis. The piece is structured in three sections, each of which flows as a series of fleeting episodes (tape and live voice) and interludes (tape only). In the first section, we sense Philomel feeling her way from incoherent utterances towards self-expression. The second section is the Echo Song in which Philomel, undergoing her transformation into a nightingale, calls to the birds of the forest. In the third section, Philomel’s suffering is redeemed in song: according to the myth, she told the world of her fate by weaving her story into a tapestry; here the story emerges as the melodic strands of voice and tape are finally woven together.

Now my song will range/As once it flew/Thrashing, through/The woods of Thrace.

Note by Juliet FraserRestored tape version by Newton Armstrong

Huw Wigginsoprano saxophoneCommonwealth Musician of the Year, First Prize and Gold Medal winner of the 2014 Royal Overseas League Annual Music Competition, Huw Wiggin is one of the most popular saxophonists of his generation.

Norman JacobspianoFounding Artistic Director of MOOT -music of our time, Norman has createdand produced ninety events during thepast five years.

Rachel GormanviolinRachel Gorman holds both a Bachelor of Music and Master of Performance degree from the Royal College of Music where she was the recipient of a Henry Wood Scholarship. She has a thriving private teaching practice in Brighton and London and regularly freelances with London based ensembles and British Orchestras. In 2015 Rachel will playing with Southbank Sinfonia full time.

Sue AppelviolaFreelance professional violist, Susan hasplayed with London Mozart Players,City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra,BBC Scottish Orchestra and many otherwell-known ensembles.

Cecilia BignallcelloCecilia Bignall is a cellist and composer based in London. Passionate about chamber music, she is a member of the multiple award-winning Jørgensen Trio and of exciting new ensemble Duo Bayanello, as well as performing with other ensembles.

Leonora Dawson-Bowlingmezzo sopranoLeonora Dawson-Bowling is a regular concert soloist and sings with groups including theBBC Singers, contemporary music specialists EXAUDI and the Philharmonia Voices.

Julian TrevelyanpianoAged 17, Julian is currently studying for a geology degree. He is a member of Aldeburgh Young Musicians and is a keen violinist and singer. Julian reached the keyboard category final earlier this year in the BBC Young Musician contest.

Sarah GabrielsopranoSarah Gabriel sings music spanning400 years. She made her acclaimedUSA debut in Britten’s The Beggar’s Opera conducted by Lorin Maazel and her European debut as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady at Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris for which Le Monde described her as, ‘as fine an actressas she is a singer’.

PERFORMERS – IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE


James Bullsound technicianJames is an Audio Engineer, Sound Designer and Musician. He is also a singer with Intimate Voices who performed Stockhausen’s Stimmung to sell-out audience at a previous MOOT event.

Brian Ashworth & Jon Rattenburyguitar duoGuitarists Brian Ashworth & Jon Rattenbury have recently begun playing as a duo to explore both contemporary guitar duets and arrangements of more traditional music. Brian and Jon have extensive performance experience as solo players and in a variety of ensembles on both classical and electric guitar.

Steve DummerclarinetFounder of Talkestra! and principal conductor of Horsham Symphony Orchestra, Steve playedMessiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time in a previous MOOT event that also featuredactress Harriet Walter.

Neil Greig-SmithclarinetNeil Greig-Smith studied privately with Norman McDonald and Alan Hacker. He has a special interest in contemporary music.

Rebecca GriffithsfluteRebecca Griffiths, born in Wales in 1991, began playing the flute at the age of 11. Rebecca wasPrincipal Flute of the National Youth Orchestra of Wales from 2008-12, and was consequently invited to play with the National Orchestra of Wales in the BBC Proms in the summer of 2012. Highlights of next 2015 included a performance of Pierre Boulez’s Sonatina for flute and piano with James Kreiling, which was broadcast onBBC Radio 3.

Juliet FrasersopranoJuliet has performed as a guest soloist with Plus-Minus, We Spoke: New Music Company, LondonSinfonietta, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Endymion, ICTUS, and Ensemble Intercontemporain. This year she will premiere new solo works written for her by Rebecca Saunders, among others, and her recording of Morton Feldman’s Three Voices will be released on HatHut Records in June. She is also co-founder and principal soprano of EXAUDI.

Photo credits: Kate Mount (Milton Babbitt, Steve Dummer), Raphaelle Photography (Sarah Gabriel), Johan de Cock (Norman Jacobs), Katy Dash (Kemp Duo), David Jacobs (Julian Trevelyan). All performer images unless credited are the property of the individuals. We apologise for anyunintentional credit errors or omissions. They will be corrected in future editions.

Programme edited by Norman Jacobs.

Friday, May 13, at 4.00 & 7.30pmSt Nicholas Church, BrightonFeatured in this programme of piano duets by Schubert, Ravel and favourites by other other well-known composers, are several arrangements by the Hungarian composer György Kurtág of music by J.S. Bach. Kurtág, who recently turned ninety, wrote these piece for himself and his wife Marta to play together and to perform in public. They are masterworks in the art of transcription, neither adding not subtracting a single note from the original, but devised so that four hands can play these pieces at the piano, keeping in mind the sound world of the organ for which Bach wrote these pieces some three hundred years ago.

György & Marta Kurtág

KEMP DUO

Zhanna Kemp was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. She graduated from Saint Petersburg Music College and then from University as a music teacher majoring in classical music. She moved to Brighton five years ago and continues teaching piano in English and Russian languages.

Norman Jacobs studied piano with Yael Molchadsky-Zmora and Nelly Ben-Or. He came to Brighton twenty years ago to study 20th century music at University of Sussex. As a result of his interest in contemporary music he founded MOOT - music of our time in 2011, since then creating 90 events. He currently curates the weekly lunchtime concert series at St Nicholas’ Church.


KEMP DUO PLAY PIANO DUETS

INTERMISSION

BABBITT – String Quartet No. 6 (1993) 25’WORLD PREMIERE OF NEW VERSIONBabbitt’s last quartet was written for The Brentano Quartet and later recorded by The Sherry Quartet. It demonstrates the composer writing at the height of his compositional powers, at his most radical, creating a a unique world of sound, form and colour.

World premiere of the very first engraving of the piece by Ann Chance,commissioned by Norman Jacobs for this performance.

Saturday May 14, at 7.30pm. St Nicholas Church, Brighton

Shabaka Hutchings

Shabaka Hutchings is part of London’s community of younger jazz musicians. Born in London he moved to Barbados at the age of six. In 2010, Shabaka was awarded the title of BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist. In July 2013 Shabaka was commissioned by Leasowes Bank Music Festival to write a piece for clarinet and string quartet, performed tonight.

Shabaka’s primary project is the group Sons of Kemet, which won the 2013 MOBO Award for Jazz Act of the Year. In June 2014 Shabaka was invited to join the Sun Ra Arkestra, performing with them and recording a session for BBC Radio 3. He has performed and recorded with Courtney Pine’s Jazz Warriors, Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics, Polar Bear and Soweto Kinch. Some of the many notable musicians he has shared the stage with include Jack DeJohnette, Charlie Haden and the Liberation Music Orchestra, Louis Moholo, Evan Parker, King Sunny Ade and Orlando Julius to name a few.

SHABAKA HUTCHINGS (b.1984) – Octavia (2013) 20’Octavia was commissioned by Leasowes Festival in 2013 and first performed by Shabaka Hutchings and Ligeti Quartet. The piece explores some of the themes present in the writing of science fiction novelist Octavia Butler. Butler writes of change being a force within the world to be revered and consequently adaptation to change (within whichever situational manifestation it presents itself) is a form of worship. This was the principle defining the composition of this piece: how various thematic choices can cohabit and weave their way into one another successfully.

The Feldman piece is incredibly important for me as it immediately transports both the listener and the performer into another sonic realm whereby the usual considerations of the passage of time and timbre seem to dissipate.

Note by Shabaka Hutchings

Ligeti Quartet

Ligeti Quartet is dedicated to performing modern and contemporary music and engaging a diverse audience. Formed in 2010, they were united by their fascination with the music of György Ligeti. The Ligeti Quartet regularly works with artists outside classical music; they have performed with musicians such as Wadada Leo Smith, Shabaka Hutchings, Laura Jurd, Meilyr Jones and You Are Wolf.

Ligeti Quartet are: Mandhira de Saram, Richard Jones,Patrick Dawkins, Val Welbanks

SHABAKA HUTCHINGS & LIGETI QUARTET MORTON FELDMAN (1926-1987) – Clarinet and String Quartet (1983) 40’Morton Feldman wrote about and was inspired by the work of the New York School of Abstract Expressionist artists. Like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, the application of intuition and the use of space seem to be paramount features of Feldman’s work.

Art Lange writes:From the epigrammatic graph pieces of the ‘50s to the epic notated scores of the ‘80s, the question haunts us: Is it music? Acutely composed, the dramatic gestures, discomfort of form, and tension between stasis and movement are so alien to our past experience of music, and require not only a new way of listening but a new way of responding, that doubts are raised, anxiety thrives.

Writing in 1962, Feldman recalls his first meeting with the composer John Cage:

‘I brought John a string quartet. He looked at it a long time and then said, “How did youmake this?” I thought of... how just a week before, after showing composition of mine to Milton Babbitt and answering his questions as intelligently as I could, he said to me, “Morton, I don’t understand a word you’re saying.” And so, in a very weak voice I answered John, “I don’t know how I made it.”

The response to this was startling. John jumped up and down, with a kind of high monkey squeal, screeched, “Isn’t that marvellous. Isn’t that wonderful. It’s beautiful, and he doesn’t know how he made it.” Quite frankly, I sometimes wonder how my music would have turned out if John had not given me those early permissions to have confidence in my instincts.’

‘Stockhausen once…asked me what my secret was. “I don’t push the sounds around.”Stockhausen leaned over, and asked, “Not even a little bit?”

Quotations from Liner Notes and Crippled Symmetry inGive My Regards To Eighth Street, the collected writings of Morton Feldman.


Arts Council England

Thanks also to:Brighton Fringe FestivalPeters EditionAckerman Music

MOOT Volunteers:Thomas JonesWill KempHind Nemassi

Special thanks to:

Dr. Joel Sachs,Juilliard School, New YorkBetty Ann Duggan andPaula BushkoffProf Paul LanskyProf David Rakowski,Brandeis UniversityNewton Armstrong

Without the support of the following organisations, this series would not have been able to take place:

Kathinka Pasveer andSuzanne Stephens,Stockhausen VerlagAnn ChanceGeorgina BowdenJulian TrevelyanProf Wendy Heller,Princeton UniversityGene Caprioglio, PetersEdition, New YorkJane Gottlieb, JuilliardSchool LibraryMelissa Strange, NewEngland ConservatoryIrving S. Gilmore MusicLibrary, Yale UniversityProf Gabriel JosipoviciKate Mount PhotographyCatherine Stead, BrightonPhilharmonic OrchestraSmith PublicationsSandra B. Shorr

Helen BurfordClive CraskeFred SherryJoanne Morrell,St Nicholas’ ChurchRik Child, BrighthelmCommunity CentreBen King, BrightonJubilee LibraryPhilip Botteley, RutlandPiano ServicesMaff Littlemore,Draw Blank DesignMail Boxes Etc.GENIE PrintSussex Event Hire

MOOT Friends & Patrons and all the musicians involved in this project

THANK YOU

Crossing Boundaries: music at the edge – May 2016MOOT is a non-profit group promoting contemporary music arts education MOOT – music of our time, Community Base, 113 Queens Road, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 3XG

Patrons: Pierre Boulez (1925-2016), Alexander Waugh, Dr Paul Whittaker OBE (Music and the Deaf)Committee: Norman Jacobs; Georgina Bowden; Thomas Jones; Will Kemp; Dr Adam Swayne


crossing boundaries - music at the edge

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