LSO Discovery

Held features suspended moments of time which are filled by the patient, introspective images of filmmaker Alexandra Cuesta. They contain both still and moving glimpses of a love story within a desert landscape. The music does not serve as an underscore; rather the visuals participate actively in the unfolding of time in this composition.

The dichotomy of intimacy and distance pervades both the images and the music. In the images, pairs of various objects appear together then apart. Hands, people, rocks, and lanes of road are repeated motifs that, as in all of Cuesta's work, do not provide a clear narrative but instead an emotional space. The timbres of the sound-world are similarly intimate, opening with a delicate hocketing texture that features a wide palette of resonance, ranging from ringing to muted. As the piece continues, previously independent contrapuntal strands gradually weave together tightly before unravelling once again. The trio also appears mostly as pairs of instruments. Further reinforcing the idea of distance is the violin, which embarks on a lonely solo at the end.

The act of holding plays out clearly in the images, where hands hold objects and people hold each other. The desert mountains hold the entire scene. The concept is also embedded in the trio of stringed instruments, where performance technique is particularly tactile and focused on the hands. Finally, a deliberate use of silence features throughout, representing suspended or 'held' time.

_{Note by Tonia Ko}

Tonia Ko

Tonia Ko has collaborated with leading soloists and ensembles across a variety of media – from acoustic concert pieces to works with electronics and improvisation. The recipient of numerous accolades including a Guggenheim Fellowship and Koussevitzky Commission, Ko’s music has been lauded by The New York Times for its 'captivating' details and 'vivid orchestral palette'. Her work has been presented by Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Royaumont, Podium Esslingen, and the Tanglewood and Aspen festivals.

Recent projects include commissions from Tangram, Riot Ensemble, and Magnard Ensemble. Upcoming premieres/releases include a bubble wrap concerto with Contemporaneous at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust, music for ‘Felix’s Room’, a digital theatre production at Berliner Ensemble, and an album featuring Plain, Air with Spektral Quartet and author Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Ko holds a DMA from Cornell University. She is currently Lecturer in Composition at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Alexandra Cuesta

Alexandra Cuesta is a filmmaker and photographer who lives and works between Ecuador and the United States. Her 16mm films and videos are portraits of public places and urban landscapes, and the people in them. Reminiscent of documentary practices such as street photography, Cuesta’s work is also rooted in the poetic and lyrical sensibility of the avant-garde. Cuesta’s films have been widely screened at venues and festivals such as Centre Pompidou, Viennale International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Los Angeles Filmforum, Queens Museum of Art, and Punto de Vista, amongst others.

Hymn to God...In My Sickness is a multimedia composition for three performers and video. The work is the product of my discovery of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's archival footage of the American atomic weapons tests conducted between 1945–62. These early attempts to capture an unfathomably destructive event exist here as abstract snapshots that have decayed and distorted due to the state of the film itself.

The film and fixed media audio are composed of edited and collaged excerpts from this 'documentary' footage and the few existing audio recordings of the tests. With the now well-established existence of this terrifying technology hiding in the shadows around the globe, I became fascinated by the question of what exactly it looks like and sounds like in the collective cultural consciousness.

Though the reality of global violence and destruction may now be at the forefront of our fears once again, the nature of these events makes it nearly impossible to accurately understand their totality. Instead we rely on Hollywood sound design, special effects, or, in this case, the now antiquated footage of the tests themselves.

My aim in this work is to engage with the materiality of these documentary sources as our best means to grapple with this reality. The audiovisual distortion and granularity that result from the dated documentation are elevated to the work's foreground. The instruments’ role in the work is inflicted upon them by a means of speakers and microphones. These technologies, stewarded by the musicians, are manipulated and transformed to become the primary drivers of sonic material. The work is not intended as a musical rendering of these elements and ideas, but rather it is intended to present this reality in a concrete form to allow the audience to evaluate our relationship to these forces.

This work, Hymn to God...In My Sickness, is adapted from the LLNL Atmospheric Nuclear Tests Collection by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, used under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Hymn to God...In My Sickness is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 by Liam Dougherty.

_{Note by Liam Dougherty}

Liam Dougherty

Liam Thomas Dougherty (b 1996) is an American composer and media artist.  He works between spaces such as electroacoustic concert music, sound collage, and conceptual audiovisual installations. His music is concerned with elements such as drone, noise, and psychoacoustic phenomena, and he often focuses on instrumental design and found-sounds/objects/footage as essential to a composition practice. Recent projects include: a short opera for mixed chamber ensemble and tape on the life of the painter Richard Gerstl and his relationship to the Schönberg family; and a series of installations for a deconstructed upright piano and feedback, and an ongoing series of audiovisual works utilizing archival footage of American nuclear weapons tests. Liam was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in Art History at the University of Michigan, and he is currently completing his Master’s degree in composition at the Royal College of Music in London where he studies with Jonathan Cole and Catherine Kontz as a John Astor Fund Scholar.

Performance-installation for bass clarinet, cello, percussion, electronics, and sculpture (antique wood, handblown glass).

Vision (noun) c 1300 from Middle English visioun, 'something seen in the imagination'.
Vestige (noun) c 1600 from French vestige, 'a mark, trace, or sign'.

An exercise in trans-temporal invention

This time is yours, for now. In due course it will slip beyond your grasp – only vestiges will linger in your memory. For the time being, hold it close, and let this music hold you.

Reach forward – really stretch. Push against the present moment, and feel the dense future soften to the touch. Feel it give – search beyond.

What have you found? Your future is built from the bric-a-brac tucked away in the pockets of your memory. Things you thought were lost, perhaps, fallen through a hole worn over a lifetime. Where have they been? Bound in a secret manuscript, stored in the dark recesses of your mind under lock and key.

See how they assemble, shifting, recombining in your future vision. Novelty is born from that which was once familiar. Hold your invention, just for a moment. Now let it go.

_{Note by Kate Milligan}

Kate Milligan

Kate Milligan is a West Australian composer, conductor, and interdisciplinary researcher.

Kate’s work brings design thinking to music. She researches living systems and natural phenomena for their capacity to inform composition and sound art, with reference to the themes of time and memory. Her work pushes the boundaries of notational practice, incorporating visual arts and sculpture. Kate has written for electro-acoustic ensembles across Australia, and her work has received support from APRA, AMCOS and the Australian Music Centre, as well as the Australia Council for the Arts.

Kate is currently completing a Master of Art in Information Experience Design at the Royal College of Art, London. This study is generously supported by the Schenberg Music Fellowship and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust. She holds a MMus (musicology) and a BA(Hons) (composition) from The University of Western Australia.