Meet architects, acoustic engineers and sound artists Paul Bavister, Ian Knowles and Jason Flanagan from Audialsense at the exhibition who will be giving a talk about previous projects and their installation for Chambers.

Admission free. Please email j.kohlmaier@musarc.org if you wish to attend.

Book tickets >

Saxophonist John Butcher, originally a physicist and a musician whose work ranges from improvisation and composition to the exploration of unusual site-specific acoustics, will be improvising to Audialsense’s installation in the auditorium.

With a performance by wind ensemble Tambourine Trio and the ASD Choir who will perform traditional and experimental works from the 15th century to the present by Guillaume Dufay, William Cornyshe, King Henry VIII, Pierre Passereau, Jan Wuytack and Vaughan Williams, including an arrangement of Cathy Berberian’s onomatopoeic piece Stripsody for choir and Stimmung for voices and radio by artist and ensemble member Sam Belinfante.

Bar opens 6.30pm
Doors: 7.00pm
Concert: 7.30pm
Admission: £5.00

Tickets will be available at the door. Seating in the Forum is limited.
To avoid disappointment, please click here to book your tickets.

Venue:
Department of Architecture and Spatial Design
London Metropolitan University
Spring House
40–44 Holloway Road
London N7 8JL
Directions

Opening times
26–28 March 2010
Friday 10am – 7pm
Saturday and Sunday 10am – 3pm
Venue information

www.audialsense.com

Peter Cusack, based in London, works as a sound artist, musician and environmental recordist with a special interest in acoustic ecology. Projects range from community arts to research into the role that sound plays in our sense of place. His project ‘Sounds From Dangerous Places’ examines the soundscapes of sites of major environmental damage.

He produced ‘Vermilion Sounds’ – the environmental sound program – for ResonanceFM Radio, London, lectures on ‘Sound Arts & Design’ at the London College of Communication and is a Research Fellow on the multidisciplinary multi-university ‘Positive Soundscapes Project’. CDs include ‘Your Favourite London Sounds’ (Resonance), ‘Baikal Ice’ (ReR), ‘Favourite Sounds of Beijing’ (Subjam).

He is the author of Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (Continuum 2006). Through his work with Errant Bodies Press he has co-edited the anthologies Site of Sound: Of Architecture and the Ear (1999), Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language (2001), Surface Tension: Problematics of Site (2003) and Radio Territories (2007), along with a series of monographs (Critical Ear series) on sound and media artists.

As an artist he is active in the fields of sound installation, performance and public interventions. His work has been featured internationally, including the exhibitions and festivals Sampling Rage, at Podewil Berlin (1999), Sound as Media, at ICC Tokyo (2000), Bitstreams, at the Whitney Museum New York (2001), Pleasure of Language, at Netherlands Media Art Institute Amsterdam (2002), Undercover, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde (2003), Radio Revolten, a festival on radio, Halle (2006), Copo da Voce, Museum of Contemporary Art, Niterói (2008), and Tuned City, a festival on sound and architecture, Berlin (2008).

In addition he presented a solo exhibition at Singuhr galerie in Berlin (2004), an experimental composition for pirate drummers as part of Virtual Territories, Nantes (2005), and his Prototypes for the Mobilization and Broadcast of Fugitive Sound was exhibited at the Enrico Fornello gallery, Prato, in 2007.

His ongoing project to build a library of radio memories was presented at Casa Vecina, Mexico City in 2008. He also collaborates within the collective working group, Surface Tension, and within the working team, e+l. He has numerous audio releases on international experimental music labels, and regularly produces works for radio.

http://www.errantbodies.org/

He has performed, lectured and exhibited widely throughout Europe [Sonar, Tate Modern, ICA], USA/Canada, (The Walker, XI, Mutek, Princeton), Japan, and Australia (Sydney Opera House). In 2008 he won the Paul Hamlyn Award for Composers Prize, and The British Composer of the Year Award in Sonic Art for Extended Play (Triptych for the child survivors of war and conflict).

Listen to selected recordings from this event

Installation: the Gas Organ

The audience will be able to play the Gas Organ before and after the concert.

The Gas Organ is a type of Pyrophone, from the Greek words for fire and sound. Sound is generated in an open-ended tube when the heat from a propane flame causes the air to heat up and vibrate, which sets up resonance in the tube. The pitch of the sound is determined by the length of the tube, with longer tubes producing lower frequency of vibration. Chaotic turbulence produced in the flame by air currents, and sound pressure waves add vibrato and beats to the already complex mix.

The propane torch used to provide the heat for the Organ is controlled by servos (small motors) which adjust the volume of gas in the flame, and also the ratio of the Gas/Air mix. The servos are in turn controlled by a random signal generator, which uses analogue microprocessors. Control can also be input using Radio Control transmitters, allowing the Gas Organ to be played by performers. Read more about Lou Smith, the inventor of the Gas Organ.

Performances by the ASD Choir

The Choir at the Department of Architecture and Spatial Design (ASD), LondonMet, will perform works by Orazio Vecchi, Orlando di Lasso, Gavin Bryars, Anton Bruckner as well as spirituals and traditional carols from the 15th century to the present. The audience will be able to single along to some well-known carols at the end of the concert.

Trio Tambourine

Trio Tambourine will be performing the first movement of Jean Martinon’s Sonatine 4, op.26 (ca. 1940) and Darius Milhaud’s Pastorale for oboe, clarinet and bassoon, 0p.147 (1935). Read more about Trio Tambourine here.

*

Friday 11 December 2009, 7.00pm
St Bartholomew the Great
West Smithfield
London EC1

Doors and bar open 7.00pm
Concert 7.30pm
Doors close 10.30pm

Admission £5.00
Tickets available on the door
Includes a drink

Download selected recordings

Download programme notes

*

1
Gas organ 5:14
Lou Smith and Matthew Venn
Performed by the audience

2
Fa una canzona 1:09
Orazio Vecchi [1550 – 1605]

3
Introduction to the concert 4:29
Joseph Kohlmaier

4
Matona mia cara 2:30
Orlando di Lasso [1532 – 1594]

5
Introduction to On photography 1:46
Cathy Heller-Jones

6
On photography (1994) 2:56
Gavin Bryars [b. 1943]
First movement: ‘Expressa solis

7
Locus iste (1869) 3:17
Anton Bruckner [1824 – 1896]

8
Sonatine 4 for oboe, clarinet and bassoon 5:34
Op. 26 (ca. 1940), first movement
Jean Martinon [1910 – 1976]

9
Pastorale for oboe, clarinet and bassoon 4:08
Op. 147 (1935)
Darius Milhaud [1892 – 1974]

10
The holly and the ivy 2:41
English traditional carol,
arr. by H Walford Davies

11
Coventry carol 2:35
English traditional carol,
16th century version

12
Plenty good room 2:19
Traditional spiritual,
arr. by Henry Smith (1937)

*

Recorded by Sam Levine
Mixed by Joseph Kohlmaier
MUSARC 2009 | Some rights reserved

Drip Piece was a six channel sound installation first shown at the Wolburn Research Centre in 2007. For Chambers, Belinfante’s piece will be recreated in a hidden but busy back staircase at the ASD which connects the main ground floor corridor with the studio and teaching spaces on the floor above. A set of piezo transducers and a condenser microphone suspended above the stairs will route the sounds created by people circulating through the space to a laptop, which manipulates the sound in real-time and replays it through six speakers.

Juxtaposition brings together traditional and modern choral and instrumental works by composers as diverse as di Lasso, William Billings and Zoltán Kodály with contemporary performance and electronic music. The evening includes a rare performance of Morton Feldman’s Palais de Mari and John Cage’s The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs for voice and closed piano; Piece for score, a new performance for electronics and voice by sound artist Sam Belinfante; and Kallabris: Inbetween the sound sound. A sound understanding of a phrase and the misinterpretation of its meaning, a performance by German experimental musician Michael Anacker.

For Juxtaposition there is no traditional stage and performances happen as consecutive events in space. The audience will be required to stand and make use of the auditorium floor. Some seating will be available. The performance will last approximately 90 minutes.

10 July 2009, 8.00pm
Wilton’s Music Hall
Graces Alley
Off Ensign Street
London, E1 8JB
www.wiltons.org.uk/find-us