London Symphony Orchestra
LSO Soundhub
Phase I Showcase
Northern Ireland's parade culture, relationships and gatherings, murder ballads, the contour of waves on a quiet shore … The inspirations behind tonight's music are as varied as the experiences and voices of their creators.
Programme & Performers
Ryan Latimer Down at Black Delph
Clare Elton Around
Ruaidhrí Mannion I mBéal na toinne
Anselm McDonnell The Union is our God
Darren Bloom conductor
Clare Duckworth violin
Noël Bradshaw cello
Amanda Truelove cello
Colin Alexander cello
Joe Melvin double bass
Clare Findlater flute/piccolo/bass flute
Chris Richards clarinet
David Jackson percussion
Sam Walton percussion
Tom Ellis electric guitar
Bartosz Glowacki accordion
This performance is broadcast on YouTube. Available to watch for free on demand from Saturday 10 April 2021.
Recorded at LSO St Luke's on Saturday 13 February 2021 in COVID-19 secure conditions.
About the Scheme
Based at LSO St Luke’s, LSO Soundhub provides a flexible environment where composers can explore, collaborate and experiment, with access to vital resources, support from industry professionals and LSO members and staff.
Soundhub is a composer-led resource, responding directly to the needs of those using it: a supportive framework for artists to try out new ideas, develop existing work and benefit from peer-to-peer networking and support.
LSO Soundhub is generously supported by Susie Thomson and The Garrick Charitable Trust.
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Ryan Latimer
Down at Black Delph
Amanda Truelove cello
Joe Melvin double bass
Chris Richards clarinet
Bartosz Glowacki accordion
Down at Black Delph draws inspiration from traditional folk ballads, particularly murder ballads set around the West Midlands, where I live. Black Delph is a stretch of canal connecting Dudley and Stourbridge and is the setting of Liz Berry’s murderous poem, The Black Delph Bride. My piece hopes to capture something of still and quiet lethargy of the canals and their surroundings, while allowing more sorrowed voices to surface and gently drift along.
'I was especially excited about the prospect of writing for accordion in this context … I find it such a richly versatile instrument perfect for the intimate scale of this type of ensemble. Bartosz Glowacki's expertise and depth of insight was crucial in helping me to better understand not just the complex mechanics involved in playing the instrument itself, but also the huge variety of colours and subtle expressive qualities available. '
Ryan Latimer
Ryan Latimer is a composer based in Birmingham. His music has been performed internationally by ensembles including the London Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, China National Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Warsaw Chamber Opera and St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra. Ryan was recently in residence with the BBC Symphony Orchestra as part of the Sound and Music Embedded scheme; his new work for the orchestra was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and was subsequently featured during the ISCM World Music Days 2018 in Beijing.
He is a regular collaborator with the contemporary dance group, Cohan Collective, and has worked closely with New York-based choreographer Jacqueline Bulnes and Phoenix Dance Theatre’s Artistic Director, Dane Hurst. Recordings of his latest compositions, Mills Mess, Moby Dick and Chloe have recently been released by RMN Records, Ablaze and on NMC Recordings’ Next Wave album.
More from Ryan
Antiarkie
Performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra
Clare Elton
Around
Clare Duckworth violin
Noël Bradshaw cello
David Jackson percussion
Around explores relationships and gatherings. With the bass drum forming the centre around which the performance takes place, there is a sense of coming together throughout the piece, and musical ideas revolve around conversing, remembering, mimicking and learning. Everything gradually leads towards and away from a central, yet fleeting moment of unity and togetherness. Beyond this, the music is fragmented and blurred. There is a tie to memory and its fragility, where the electronics use only the recorded sounds of the instruments and found sounds, offering glimpses of the familiar.
'My first step when composing was to begin by thinking about instrumentation. Having less experience in composing for percussion outside of orchestral or larger ensemble settings, I decided to use this as my starting point. I was drawn to the bass drum and its sonically demanding presence.'
Clare Elton
Clare Elton is a composer based in London. After graduating in music at Royal Holloway, University of London with first-class honours, Clare began a Masters in composition at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, graduating in 2018 with a Distinction, followed by a composition Fellowship until July 2019. She was supported by the Guildhall School Trust, a Vaughan Williams Bursary, and was a Sydney Vale Scholar.
Clare’s music has been heard on BBC Radio 3, performed by ensembles including musicians from the London Symphony Orchestra, EXAUDI vocal ensemble, Plus-Minus Ensemble and Psappha, and performed at venues including Wigmore Hall, Milton Court Concert Hall, Union Chapel and at the Cheltenham Festival.
With a strong interest in collaboration with other artists, she has composed music for a chamber opera performed at the Asylum Chapel, a site-specific opera performed at the London Transport Museum, and collaborated with choreographers on performances at The Place and the Laban Theatre. In 2019, Clare was commissioned by the Barbican to compose a site-specific opera performed in the Sound Unbound Festival. She was also selected to be on the London Philharmonic Orchestra Composers Programme, which resulted in a new work for orchestra performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in July 2019.
More from Clare
Till time shall cease …
Revolving around the idea of a lullaby that inhabits the line between sleep and consciousness, dreams and reality, a repetitive rocking motion and the rhythm of breathing characterise Till time shall cease.
Ruaidhrí Mannion
I mBéal na toinne
In the mouth of a wave / At the edge of the sea
Noël Bradshaw cello
Amanda Truelove cello
Colin Alexander cello
Written for three cellos and three sine waves, it is a piece both whispered and in slow motion. The strings and electronics constantly mirror each other in a deconstructed musical narrative that mimics the rhythm of breathing while sleeping, and the undulating movement of the sea. Observing the unique shape of each harmonic utterance – its attack, sustain and release – has a meditative and conditioning quality, and was inspired by my first attempts to compose again following the birth of my son, Naoise, during the first lockdown of 2020. While composing I drew heavily on imagery of the motion and contour of quiet waves near a shore, thinking on how to represent how the air and the sea take each other's inverted shape as their volumes meet when the waves rise and fall.
'In some sense, finished works and ideas share less in common than you might think. Ideas revel in the shapelessness that gives them so much potential, while finished works demand the absolutism of form and solutions. It remains so difficult to discuss what a piece of music is all about because as creators we are often the least capable of knowing when or how these ideas took the form that they eventually did as we reflect on the points of origin.'
Ruaidhrí Mannion
Ruaidhrí Mannion is an Irish composer and sonic artist living in London. In 2019 he completed his doctorate at the Royal College of Music under the supervision of Dr. Jonathan Cole and Gilbert Nouno (IRCAM), and was generously supported by the Soirée d'Or Award.
Ruaidhrí specialises in combining electronic sounds with classical instruments and multimedia to create immersive and evocative live concert experiences. Previous commissions include Mise en Abyme, a concert-length immersive multimedia creation co-authored with Swiss composer Benoit Moreau for the Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain in Switzerland; and Occupy the Pianos for two pianos and electronics, funded by the Association du Concours Nicati and premiered at the Bern Biennale by the Francoise-Green Piano Duo. He was commissioned by Cully Classique Festival in Lavaux, Switzerland to write (W)Edge for piano and live electronics, and was under the mentorship of renowned Austrian composer Beat Furrer.
He has composed an audio-visual music theatre work exploring modern surveillance culture London 1:14 with pianist Gwenaelle Rouger (Soundinitiative) and Sara Hibbert (Royal College of Art); was commissioned by the Royal Academy of Art to compose Scáth, a saxophone sextet for their critically acclaimed Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined exhibition; and he collaborated with the award-winning Mercury Quartet to create an interactive electroacoustic performance at the Tate Modern's critically acclaimed Matisse: The Cut-Outs exhibition.
More from Ruaidhrí
iaMrhinoandRuin
'iaMrhinoandRuin' is a musical alter-ego. iaMrhinoandRuin does live laptop/electronic performance and has been broadcast on NTS Radio, Rinse FM (LuckyMe Records) and BBC Radio 3.
Anselm McDonnell
The Union is our God
Clare Findlater flute/piccolo/bass flute
David Jackson percussion
Sam Walton percussion
Tom Ellis electric guitar
The Union is our God was inspired by musical sounds and idioms from Northern Ireland’s parade culture. The work transitions between abstract, gestural music (inspired by memories associated with marching bands) and dramatic bursts of energy based on popular rhythmic patterns from lambeg drum playing. These passages form structural markers in the piece; territorial boundaries that encroach upon and eventually engulf the other musical materials.
'This project is my second collaboration with lighting artist Kurt Laurenz Theinert, who creates beautiful light projections that respond in real time to the music. While we had originally hoped to work in LSO St Luke's, transforming the architecture of the building, the pandemic prevented us both from travelling to London. Instead, Laurenz created a separate video layer which is overlaid on the recording made in LSO St Luke's and reacts to the music within the constraints of a screen's 2D space.'
Anselm McDonnell
Anselm McDonnell is a composer of Irish/Welsh heritage currently based in Belfast. He has composed more than 60 pieces for orchestra, chamber groups, choirs, soloists and electronics. His music has been performed in North America, Canada, Finland, Japan, Russia and across Europe. A diverse range of interests have led to the creation of work in collaboration with lighting designers, theologians, poets, filmmakers (including 360 VR, ambisonic recording and spatialized sound), improvising musicians, fashion designers, dancers, and actors.
Anselm has written for the London Symphony Orchestra, CRASH Ensemble, Chamber Choir Ireland, BBC Singers, Ulster Orchestra and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. His music has been played on BBC Radio 3, Lyric FM and Radiophrenia Glasgow. His work has won several awards: both the Feis Ceoil Choral and Chamber Music Composition Prize, winner of the Third International Kastalsky Choral Writing Competition, Moscow, and finalist in the 14th Sun River Prize in Chengdu, China. The large chamber work Engines of Babel was highly commended in the TMAO Symposium, Bangkok, Thailand.
His work is to be released on four CDs in 2021: his first portrait album, supported by Moving On Music; an album of solo viola works from Laura Sinnerton with the Birmingham Record Company; a new release from the CRASH Ensemble entitled Reactions; and a work for Ensemble Offspring on the newly formed Irish Composer’s Collective label.
More from Anselm
Album Teaser: Ceaselessly into the Past
An extract from the first recording session of Anselm's debut album, recorded in February by Cahal Masterson in Murcia, Spain.
Kurt Laurenz Theinert
Kurt Laurenz Theinert is a live performing light and media artist. His 'visual piano' performances are shown all around the world in São Paulo, London, Sydney, Berlin, New York and Singapore. He concentrates in his work on visual experiences that do not refer, as images, to anything. He creates pure visual music – live, abstract and space filling by using 360° panorama projection. The pandemic forced him to develop new screen-based approaches not simulating a space but accepting the two dimensions of the screen, still visualising the emotions of the music in a separate layer on top of the reality in the video.
Artist Biographies
Darren Bloom
conductor
© kevinleighton.com
Darren Bloom is a composer, conductor, producer and educator. Described in The Times as ‘almost mystical… a genuine frisson’, Darren’s music is noted for its combination of ‘evocative harmony’ and ‘raw power’. His recent chamber symphony, Dr Glaser’s Experiment, commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra for their 2016 Futures Festival, was praised in The Arts Desk as a ‘confident answer to the question: How can an orchestra perform the music of the future?’ Darren’s chamber work Strange Attractors was selected by the UK panel of the International Society for Contemporary Music to represent the UK, and his chamber opera KETTLEHEAD was created as part of his second year of residence with the London Symphony Orchestra as a member of the LSO Soundhub Scheme. Recent projects included a curated set for New Dots’ Curiouser event, which incorporated his new work Alice’s Dream Fragments for the Octandre Ensemble, and Borexino-Borealis, a commission from the Park Lane Group for the Borealis Saxophone Quartet. Darren is one of the current winners of the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize resulting in a commission for the 2017 Cheltenham Festival.
Darren is a founding member and conductor/creative producer of the Ossian Ensemble with whom he has given the premieres of dozens of new works over the past decade. Other conducting highlights include a performance of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ Five Klee Pictures in the presence of the composer, recording music for BBC4 documentaries, directing several youth new music ensembles, including the Composers Ensemble at Junior Trinity, and working for the past four years as a conductor for the LSO Soundhub Scheme.
Darren studied composition with Edwin Roxburgh, Brian Elias and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, and conducting with Neil Thompson, Edwin Roxburgh and Christopher Austin. He was awarded a DipRAM and the Manson Fellowship from the Royal Academy of Music as well as recently being appointed an Associate of the RAM. In 2015 he commenced an AHRC funded PhD in Composition at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Richard Causton.
Darren is an alumnus of the LSO Soundhub Scheme. His work Dr Glaser's Experiment was premiered at LSO St Luke's in March 2016 as part of the LSO Futures festival.
© kevinleighton.com
© kevinleighton.com
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