LSO Discovery

Black Box Communion constructs a network of feedback loops, where human bodies and technological systems mutually shape each other. The piece is based on the concept of a ‘black box’ – an opaque, algorithmic entity whose internal workings and processes remain unknown to the performers – which measures each musician's pulse in real-time and uses it to generate light and sound. 

The three musicians follow neither a conductor, a metronome nor a score, but the sounds of their own hearts projected back to them. Rather than synchronising, they coexist in adjacent but distinct temporalities, each shaped by their individual perceptual experiences. 

This loop forms a ritual: the performers commune with a system that listens, transforms and speaks back. The lights and sounds triggered by these pulses create a shifting environment that responds to the body whilst also shaping its behaviour in return. The performer becomes both source and subject of their own musical and biological processes. 

_{Note by Hugo Bell}

Hugo Bell

Hugo Bell is a composer and performer based in London. He has worked with groups including Hand Werk, Ensemble Proton, Ensemble TaG, XTRO, Residentie Orkest, New European Ensemble, The Marian Consort, Britten Sinfonia, Ensemble Oerknal, Decibel, Royal Northern Sinfonia and The Tallis Scholars, and has collaborated with performers including Ere Lievonen and Jacob Lekkerkerker. 

His music has been presented across Europe and North America including performances at festivals such as Impuls (2023), Gaudeamus Muziekweek (2020 & 2021), CODA (2018) and Cheltenham Music Festival (2015). Bell's  awards include The Mendelssohn Scholarship (2022), The Conlon Foundation Prize (2021), The Philip Bates Prize (2017) and NCEM Young Composer Award (2014). 

He began his musical career as an aspiring organist and conductor studying at Newcastle University and Gothenburg Academy of Music, during which period he was awarded the Lawrence Phelps Recital Award (2011). After completing his undergraduate studies, his enthusiasm for contemporary music led him to start composing and following two years of private lessons, he was awarded a scholarship to study composition at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Bell later completed a Masters degree in composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, graduating in 2023, where his studies were generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust. 

I Climb 
II Concentric  
III Centre of Gravity  
IV Horizon  

Strobe lights – which emit rapid flashes of very bright light – are often used in nightclubs to heighten visual intensity. They create an illusion that makes objects or people appear to be moving in slow motion or even standing still. They disorient the brain's ability to track movement and continuity, often leaving ghostly ‘afterimages’ after you look away. All these effects inspired Strobe, which borrows from the music of nightclubs and its energies. 

This piece is composed for amplified clarinet/bass clarinet, cello, trombone and Samplepad. The latter triggers an array of sounds, most of which are recorded fragments played by the three instruments. There are also live and fixed electronic effects. 

The music is in four continuous parts: Climb (in which things tend to get higher); Concentric (in which the beats refract and shift frequently); Centre of Gravity (in which things tend to fall) and Horizon (in which the remnants of the energy continue to flicker and buzz). 

_{Note by Joseph Howard}

Joseph Howard

Joseph Howard writes genre-blurring acoustic, electronic, and dramatic music. His work is inspired by tensions between the digital, the handmade, and the spaces in between. Often taking cues from the visual arts, he regularly collaborates with artists, most recently to create the opera Hey, Maudie with painter Rachel Jones. Howard’s concert music has been performed across the UK and internationally. His latest commissions have been for the Ryedale Festival, Jess Gillam Ensemble, Andrew Watts (countertenor), and Roman Lytwyniw (violin). 

Into My Heart an Air That Kills is a piece which examines ideas surrounding intimacy, voyeurism, and the body exposed within a musical performance. Inspired in part by contact improvisation and dance practices, the piece encourages performers to reflect on their own physicality, their relationship with each other and their instruments.  

Within the work, the instruments, performer's bodies and sounds of the breath are highly amplified, revealing sonic details that typically go unheard by the audience. Projecting these sounds throughout the space, I hope to create an immersive environment — one in which the audience feels both connected to and surrounded by the bodies performing before them. My piece also features a ‘hacked’ cello, which responds and amplifies the movements of the player using contact microphones and a transducer speaker fitted to the instrument, establishing a tactile feedback loop between the performer and instrument. 

Throughout the piece, I hope to interrogate the boundaries of spectatorship by posing a set of questions to the audience: Are we witnessing something sacred? Or something we were never meant to see? Are we safe in our seats, at a distance, or complicit in an unfolding intimacy between the players?  

_{Note by Rachael Gibson}

Rachael Gibson

Rachael Gibson is a guitarist and composer based in Merseyside. Her practice has become increasingly focused on the exploration of tactile approaches to music making and engagement. She is particularly interested in how alternative notation practices and technology can be used to interrogate the relationship between touch and performance. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Composition at the University of Liverpool, funded by the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership. 

Recently, she has been a participant in the Britten Pears Young Artist scheme 2023/24 (Composition Alternative Practice and Performance Art), created installation work at the Old Courts Wigan as part of the Wanderscapes Project and participated in the Yorkshire Sound Women’s Network 'Sound Pioneers' Residency. Her music has been performed by the Riot Ensemble, the Pixels Ensemble, and the House of Bedlam. 

Alongside her works for chamber ensembles, Gibson has composed music for theatre, short films and organisations including Whatstick Theatre, The Coach House (in partnership with the Everyman Theatre Liverpool), Twisted Showcase Productions, Claire House Children’s Hospice and DaDa Fest.