A Riot at Kings Place: Riot Ensemble's RE[NEW]

Aaron Holloway-Nahum & The Riot Ensemble in Elliott Carter's Double Concerto at LSO St Lukes (Photo Ben Clube)

The Riot Ensemble has started a new relationship with Kings Place, and will be presenting three concerts there next year (2020) under the series title RE[NEW], featuring new works alongside recent classics of the international contemporary repertoire, and two of the concerts will be part of Kings Place's 2020 Nature Unwrapped series.

Extinction Events, on Friday 14 February 2020, takes its name from a recent work by the Australian composer Liza Lim which aspires to ‘make a music out of relics of the past’, here ranging from Janacek’s ‘overgrown path’ to the last-ever heard mating call of the now-extinct Kauai O’o bird. Aaron Holloway-Nahum’s Like a memory of birds (ii) is also about degradation and loss, filtering a familiar melodic line through an alien soundscape until it disintegrates and disappears. The final piece in the programme, Laurence Osborn’s Ctrl, commissioned by The Riot Ensemble in 2017, examines themes of masculinity and violence, and features a virtuoso performance by soprano Sarah Dacey.

On Friday 19 June 2020, the ensemble will perform Georg Friedrich Haas' Solstices which is performed entirely from memory in darkness, requiring a process of deep listening from both musicians and audience. It is The Riot Ensemble’s most ambitious commission to date, co-commissioned with partner festivals Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, the Dutch November Music Festival and Reykjavík Dark Music Days. Solstices is prefaced by a tribute to Oliver Knussen in his short, early and infrequently-performed Océan de Terre, which echoes Haas’ work in its dedication to long harmonic notes - and which Knussen described as ‘closing imperceptibly, like a fan.’

Then in September the ensemble returns with a programme which sets works by established masters Tristan Murail and Gérard Grisey alongside bracing recent works by some of the most original voices of the current generation, Nicole Lizée, Laura Bowler and Brigitta Muntendorf.

Full details from the Riot Ensemble's website.