Music connects all of us, and people can create on all levels: RNS Moves to make its London debut

RNS Moves

RNS Moves, the ensemble made up of professional disabled musicians and non-disabled members of Royal Northern Sinfonia, will make its London debut on 21 September at Kings Place, performing a programme that brings together renaissance choral music, contemporary minimalism and modern experimental.

Improvisation and experimentation lie at the heart of the ensemble, and their performance at Kings Place will see them pair works by Caroline Shaw, Philip Glass, James MacMillan, Julius Eastman and Terry Riley with Tallis and Purcell.

Clarence Adoo MBE co-founded the ensemble after a life-altering car accident left him paralysed from the neck down, meaning he could no longer hold his position as trumpeter in Royal Northern Sinfonia.  Following the accident, German composer-come-inventor Rolf Gehlhaar was asked to create a bespoke instrument for Adoo so that he could continue to play music. The result was the Headspace - an innovative MIDI wind instrument controlled by breath and head movements. Alongside the Headspace, accessible instruments within the ensemble also include the LinnStrument  - a touch based expressive MIDI controller - played by Charlotte Bott. 

The ensemble works hard to promote that it doesn’t matter if someone has a disability – music connects all of us, and people can create on all levels. It meets at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music in Gateshead several times a year to collaborate and create. They invite inspiring and pioneering artists to join them, to bring new perspectives,

The 25/26 season will also see RNS Moves' collaboration with Candoco Dance Company and a new partnership at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. 

Further information from the Glasshouse website.

The cello concerto by Austrian composer & contrabass virtuoso Johann Matthias Sperger gets its first modern performance

Schloss Ludwigslust where Johann Matthias Sperger was based from 1789 until his death
(Photo: Matthias Süßen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Johann Matthias Sperger (1750-1812) was a name that was new to me. He was a distinguished Austrian contrabass virtuoso and composer with a significant body of work to his name. Born in Feldsburg in what was then Austria but is now Valtice in the Czech Republic, his name may well originally have been Jan Matyáš Sperger.

He studied in Vienna and may have been a pupil of Albrechtsberger. From 1777 he worked for the Archbishop of Pressburg (now Bratislava). He then went on extended concert tours that made him famous as a contrabass virtuoso and composer, both at home and abroad. In 1789 the court of Archduke Friedrich Franz I in Ludwigslust (a Baroque palace some 40km south of Schwerin) appointed Sperger to the position of principal contrabass in the Mecklenburg-Schwerin Court orchestra, where he remained the rest of his life.

Sperger produced some forty symphonies and numerous instrumental concertos, including eighteen for double bass. There is a chance to hear one on 23 February at Kings Place when Leon Bosch directs The Hanover Band in the first modern performance of Sperger's Cello Concerto in C with soloist Sebastian Comberti in a programme that also includes Cimarosa's Oboe Concerto (with soloist Geoff Coates) and symphonies by Haydn and Mozart.

Full details from Kings Place website.

Love Lines: deep emotions & island soundscapes in London Sinfonietta's programme of contemporary Scottish music at Kings Place

London Sinfonietta - Love Lines - Electra Perivolaris

Love Lines: Judith Weir, James MacMillan, Peter Maxwell Davies, Electra Perivolaris; London Sinfonietta; Kings Place
Reviewed 6 December 2024

Contemporary Scottish music in a programme centred on Peter Maxwell Davies' 2004 clarinet quintet exploring deep emotions arising from pregnancy, linked by a soundscape by Electra Perivolaris inspired by her home on Arran.

As part of Kings Place's Scotland Unwrapped season, London Sinfonietta presented Love Lines in Hall Two on Friday 6 December 2024, a programme of contemporary Scottish music centred around Peter Maxwell Davies' Hymn to Artemis Locheia alongside music by Judith Weir and James MacMillan, including the world public premiere of MacMillan's Love Bade Me Welcome and the world premiere of Electra Perivolaris' A Wave of Voices. The performers were Jennifer France (soprano), Mark van de Wiel (clarinet), Simon Haram (saxophone) and members of the London Sinfonietta.

The programme was linked by a series of surround sound recordings, using the hall's d&b SoundScape system, created by Electra Perivolaris. These used natural sounds that Perivolaris made around her home on the Scottish Isle of Arran. These moved from purely natural soundscape to sound art, not always restful, so that waves crashing around us morphed into something more disturbing. The way that Perivolaris used the system's surround capabilities gave the soundscapes a surprisingly directional feel.

Earth Unwrapped: Sirens for a wounded planet - Kings Place's latest year-long series announced

Kings Place's 17th instalment in its year-long Unwrapped series will be exploring our relationship with nature and the eco-system, plant life and ornithology, the climate crisis, activism, protest and more, through music and spoken word. 

Earth Unwrapped, subtitled Sirens for a wounded planet, begins in January 2025 and continues throughout that year. The series will feature artists in residence, Mercury Prize nominated singer-songwriter Sam Lee, composer and producer Gazelle Twin (aka UK composer, producer, singer and visual artist Elizabeth Bernholz) and sound artist Jason Singh. 

The Sacconi Quartet and Festival Voices open Earth Unwrapped with a rare performance of Terry Riley’s Sun Rings, celebrating Riley’s 90th birthday in 2025 and the first London performance of the work in over 20 years. Utilising audio recordings of NASA’s Voyager I and II, the 10-movement suite questions humanity’s place in the universe. The Ligeti Quartet also celebrate Riley with a performance of his seminal work Cadenza on the Night Plain and the premiere of a new arrangement of Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band.

Theatre of Voices present the UK premiere of a new work by Julia Wolfe (a Kings Place commission) alongside Nigel Osborne’s The Tree of Life, inspired by his work in Lebanon with Syrian children in refugee camps. Erland Cooper presents the world premiere of his new work The Peregrine for small ensemble, inspired by J.A. Baker’s book of the same name. Cellist Nicholas Altstaedt joins the Carice Singers for an evening of old and new music that questions our relationship with an increasingly threatened environment including premieres from Raquel García-Tomas and Josephine Stephenson, as well as music from Galina Grigorjeva and JS Bach.

Violinist Daniel Pioro joins forces with Manchester Camerata for Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, interspersed with newly commissioned poetry by Sir Michael Morpurgo preceded by Caroline Shaw’s The Evergreen. Pioro also curates a weekend of deep listening entitled Time Unravelling, Sound Unfolding, inspired by Pauline Oliveros’ concept of deep listening. Audiences will be invited to actively listen and explore emotional states via the music of Bach, Oliveros, Tenney and a new commission in collaboration with Valgeir Sigurðsson. Oliveros’s music is also featured by The House of Bedlam and soprano Juliet Fraser, pairing her To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation, written in the aftershock of political upheavals of 1968, with Larry Goves Crow Rotations, performed in-the-round and enhanced through the d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system.

The venue's resident ensemble, Aurora Orchestra, present a year-long exploration of Gustav Mahler and his fascination with nature. Resident Quartet, the Piatti Quartet take a contemporary look at our relationship with nature and the English landscape with a programme centred around the poet Alice Oswald, the quartet perform works by Joseph Phibbs, Imogen Holst, Thomas Ades and Britten. Voces8 and the Carducci Quartet present The Lost Birds, an tribute to bird species driven to extinction by humankind. The Solem Quartet contemplate and mourn Earth’s current condition, with works from Hildegard von Bingen, John Metcalf, Nick Martin, Meredith Monk and Max Richter.

All thus plus folk, jazz and much much more. Full details from Kings Place's website.

Both audience & player go on a journey together: Latvian pianist Reinis Zariņš discusses Messiaen's Vingt Regards which he performs at the London Piano Festival

Reinis Zariņš (Photo: Andris Sprogis)

Latvian pianist Reinis Zariņš will be performing Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus, a work for which he is becoming known, at the London Piano Festival, co-Artistic Directors Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva, at Kings Place on Sunday 6 October 2024. 

Written in 1944 and completed shortly after the liberation of Paris, the work premiered in 1945. A two-hour long, 20-movement meditation on the infancy of Jesus, Messiaen's work has a distinct wow factor and it has played a significant role in Reinis' performing life. Katya Apekisheva heard him playing it and was determined to find ways to get him to perform it again. He is delighted to be performing it at the London Piano Festival and somewhat amazed that the festival has found a way to include a recital that consists solely of one religiously flavoured piece. He understands how tricky programming is nowadays, so this result is a landmark achievement!

He first studied the work at Yale, during the Messiaen centenary when the members of his class each learned a couple of movements. He was given movements 5 and 6, two of the more difficult ones and these set him on his journey, learning the other movements and hearing other pianists performing the work, taking several years. He describes it as an absolutely genius concert piece, with its two-hour length there is nothing quite like it. Reinis feels that the thematic arrangement of the work with Messiaen's use of leitmotifs makes it rather like an instrumental opera, which is how he thinks of it, and it is this hidden narrative which contributes to the work's impact.

Celebrating diversity in classical music: Black Lives In Music presents Classically Black at Kings Place

Ayanna Witter-Johnson (Photo: Misan Harriman)

Black Lives In Music (BLiM) is an organisation set up to address racial inequality in the music industry and create opportunities for Black, Asian and ethnically diverse musicians and professionals today. BLiM recently announced a landmark 10 Point Orchestral Plan, introduced with the Musicians’ Union and Association Of British Orchestras. 33 organisations have signed up so far, with leading orchestras including the five BBC Orchestras and BBC Singers, London Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra. After becoming aware of shocking abuse, BLiM has also launched their new survey, Your Safety Your Say, to address bullying and harassment in the music industry. BLiM will use the anonymous survey to collect real world data.

On 19 October 2024, BLiM is presenting Classically Black at Kings Place,  one-day symposium exploring the cutting edge of classical music. There will be two newly commissioned works by British Black composers,  jazz pianist Pete Letanka and saxophonist/composer Jason Yarde, along with Julian Joseph's Violin Concerto, to be performed and recorded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, plus a late afternoon showcase for emerging talent, networking opportunities, interactive discussions, panels, and music workshops. In the evening, singer/songwriter, cellist, pianist, composer, Ayanna Witter-Johnson is joined by friends for a concert highlighting how her classical tone weaves its way through her musical roots of reggae, soul and jazz.

Full details for Classically Black from Kings Place website.

The Goldberg Variations Reimagined: Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque at Kings Place

The Goldberg Variations Reimagined: Rachel Podger, Brecon Baroque; Kings Place

Bach/Chad Kelly: The Goldberg Variations Reimagined: Rachel Podger, Brecon Baroque; Kings Place
Reviewed 3 December 2023

A new orchestration of Bach for nine instruments brings out a sense of colour and style in a series of vivid reinventions, superbly played

Bach was an inveterate re-worker and re-user of material, most Baroque composers were. After all, the potential audience for any piece of music was usually relatively small, unless you were one of the lucky few with a wide published circulation, so composers could reuse without constantly worrying in the way modern composers might. 

And when Bach reused he could be quite creative in his reworking. After all, the Christmas Oratorio, which we heard on Saturday from Masaaki Suzuki and the OAE [see my review] is almost entirely based on pre-existing material.

So what might Bach have done to the Goldberg Variations? This thought kept popping into my head as I listened to The Goldberg Variations Reimagined, Chad Kelly's new version of Bach's Goldberg Variations created for violinist Rachel Podger and performed (in its London premiere) by her and Brecon Baroque at Kings Place on Sunday 3 December 2023.

Bach wrote the Goldberg Variations specifically for harpsichord, though it is common practice to perform it on the piano as well and there have been any number of transcriptions including that by Dmitry Sitkovetsky for string trio. Chad Kelly's avowed intention with his version was to ensure that the arrangement was idiomatic both to the historical instruments and to the styles and genres referenced in the work. What Kelly was trying to avoid was the sort of tricksy orchestration that remained true to Bach's keyboard notes, producing something stylistically anachronistic.

So we had an instrumental ensemble of Rachel Podger and Sabine Stoffer, violins, Jane Rogers, viola, Alex Rolton, cello and five-string cello, Carina Cosgrave, violone, Leo Durante, oboe and oboe da caccia, Katy Bircher, flute, Inga Kaucke, bassoon, and Marcin Swiatkiewicz, harpsichord. 

From the venue that we didn't know we needed to vibrant arts hub, Kings Place celebrates 15 years

Kings Place from the Regents Canal (Photo: Nick White)

Kings Place is 15! The venue opened in 2008, the brainchild of Peter Millican who conceived the idea of office building founded on an arts centre, a hub for a multitude of arts charities, where business events supported the artistic programme, with spaces and galleries open and free to the public. It was a space that we didn't know we needed and became a cultural beacon in the development of the Kings Cross area.

Over 500 world and UK premieres have been performed at Kings Place since 2008, and the programming each year continues to prioritise new music and the support of contemporary composers. Kings Place has commissioned and co-commissioned 19 works, including pieces by Nico Muhly, Space Afrika/Jack Sheen, Hauschka, Cassie Kinoshi, Tansy Davies, Thomas Adès, Oliver Leith and Judith Weir. Looking ahead to 2024, the venue will see a diverse range of premieres and commissions from Anna Meredith, Jasdeep Singh Degun, LVRA, Donald Grant, Aileen Sweeney, Ninfea Crutwell Reade and Helen Grime. 

The venue's annual Unwrapped series has become increasingly imaginative, after Unwrapping Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, Minimalism Unwrapped (2015) won Kings Place’s first RPS Award and since then there has been Cello Unwrapped, Time Unwrapped and Venus Unwrapped with Sound Unwrapped in 2023 featuring Hannah Peel and Space Afrika as artists in residence, and next year sees Scotland Unwrapped with Karine Polwart as artist in residence and Jackie Kay and Aidan O’Rourke as guest curators.

Full details from the Kings Place website.

Piatti Quartet launches its Rush Hour Lates at Kings Place with Dvorak and Schubert

Piatti Quartet at Kings Place (Photo: Piatti Quartet)

The Piatti Quartet (Michael Trainor, Emily Holland, Miguel Sobrinho, Jessie Ann Richardson) is the new quartet in residence at Kings Place and they launched their series of Rush House Late concerts on Wednesday 25 October 2023 with a programme of Schubert's Quartetsatz and Dvorak's String Quartet in F, Op. 96 'American' and future concerts in the series will explore further late Dvorak quartets.

Schubert wrote his Quartetsatz in 1820, it is effectively the sole example of his quartet writing between his early works, written before 1817, and his late masterpieces in the genre written a few years later. The quartet exists as a single movement, plus a few bars of an Andante. Like the Unfinished Symphony of 1822, and quite a lot of other works, Schubert seems to have simply broken off writing it. The single movement is a powerful, confident piece of writing though you notice that Schubert was still influenced by earlier quartet writing with its solo violin plus accompaniment style.

From a 1000 year old Celtic lament to Judith Weir and a Jasdeep Singh Degun premiere with the Scottish Ensemble: Kings Place's 2024 Scotland Unwrapped

Kings Place has announced the next instalment of its Unwrapped series. 2024 is to be devoted to Scotland Unwrapped, a celebration of music and spoken-word from Scotland encompassing traditional and regional arts as well as the vibrant contemporary scene, with a wide range of musical genres from contemporary composers, folk musicians and Scottish classical ensembles.

Things kick of on 13 January 2024 when sitarist and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun joins the Scottish Ensemble to present work from his Anomaly album as well as the London premiere of a new work [see my recent interview with Jasdeep]. Other premieres during the year include Anna Meredith, LVRA, Donald Grant, Aileen Sweeney, Ninfea Crutwell Reade and Helen Grime. The Colin Currie Quartet present the world premiere of a Kings Place commission, Anna Meredith’s Dodgem Studies arranged for percussion quartet, as well as the world premiere of a new work from Ben Nobuto and the London premiere of Aileen Sweeney’s new work for percussion quartet [7 Dec].

Jasdeep Singh Degun (Photo: Robert Leslie)

Scottish classical music includes the earliest-known liturgical music from the 16th century Dunkeld Partbooks from the Marian Consort [18 Oct], the polyphony of 17th century composer Robert Carver from the Sixteen [26 Jan], triumphant anthems of the 1603 union between Scotland and England from ORA Singers [15 Mar], whilst Ensemble Hesperi conjure up a musical evening in Enlightenment Edinburgh, when James Oswald’s music brushed shoulders with Handel and Geminiani [20 Oct].

The Maxwell Quartet will be exploring Scottish folk-music including a a thousand year old Celtic lament [22 Feb], whilst tenor Nicky Spence surveys the astonishing inspiration of Robert Burns on songwriters from Amy Beach to Shostakovich, Schumann, Britten and Coleridge-Taylor in a recital with fellow Scot Eleanor Dennis, featuring a premiere by Helen Grime [24 Apr].

The BBC Singers honour Dame Judith Weir in her 70th birthday year [9 Feb] and the Dunedin Consort and Hebrides Ensemble join forces for James Macmillan’s Since it was the day of Preparation – a Kings Place commission from 2012 - presented in partnership with Macmillan's Cumnock Tryst festival [25 Oct].

The Aurora Orchestra will be presenting a range of concerts through the season from Mendelssohn and Maxwell Davies [3 Feb], to folk-ballads [27 Apr] and Gaelic songs with traditional and contemporary works including premier by Donald Grant [28 Sep].

As well as the Cumnock Tryst, there are festival spotlights from St Magnus Festival, Orkney Folk Festival and HebCelt Festival, whilst songwriter, folk singer and storyteller Karine Polwart is Artist in Residence and guest curators include poet Jackie Kay and folk musician Aidan O’Rourke. There is a strong Scottish folk element to the year's programme and not surprisingly highlights include a Burns Night supper & ceilidh.

Full details from the Kings Place website.

The chance to deep dive into Dvořák's quartets: Michael Trainor of the Piatti Quartet introduces their new residency at Kings Place

The Piatti Quartet - Miguel Sobrinho, Jessie Ann Richardson, Emily Holland, Michael Trainor

The Piatti Quartet (Michael Trainor, Emily Holland, Miguel Sobrinho, Jessie Ann Richardson) starts as Resident Quartet at Kings Place in October with a season of concerts exploring Dvořák's late string quartets alongside more contemporary repertoire. Here Michael Trainor, the quartet's first violin, introduces the new season.

"The sun is just coming over the horizon and there’s a tangible excitement in the air. All of a sudden a figure on horseback throwing up plumes of dust comes into view, riding with speed and flair.."

That's a segment of how we like to introduce Dvořák's 'American' Quartet from the stage just before our performance. It's a fantastic work which conjures up images and narratives like these all the time, the music completely encapsulating something distinctly American. Indeed so much so that it has remained one of the most popular chamber works to this day and has lost none of its sheen nearly 130 years later.

And so we will begin our journey as the new Resident Quartet on 25 October at Kings Place this season. We're taking over the baton from the Brodsky Quartet who have been resident there for 10 years and we'll certainly look to carry on their sense of adventure they bring to programming.

In these Rush Hour Lates concerts at Kings Place we will present Dvořák's late string quartets and end with the brilliant Piano Quintet No.2 in A major with pianist Emmanuel Despax. With the quartets, No.12 'The American' and No.13 in G major we know very well- in fact No.13 we performed at the final of the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition back in 2015- however the A flat major, No.14. will be a real discovery for us. Whenever we discover a 'lesser' known work like this by a famous composer, it truly reminds us of the extraordinary riches and depth of string quartet repertoire.

What excites us about this residency? The chance to build a really strong rapport with the audience that comes along. We'll be out chatting and meeting with the audience post-concert. It's always something we've loved doing, but since those strange empty Covid broadcasts from vacant halls, they've taken on an even stronger significance. The chance to deep dive into Dvořák's quartets is another plus. Dvořák is endlessly fascinating with texture, techniques he really perfected with these works. Like any great composer for quartet, it adds up to something much greater than the sum of its parts. From an audience perspective you can either choose to let those catchy, searing and passionate melodies wash over you or zone in on all that detail, either way Dvořák's spirit will bring you on a wonderful journey.

Finally the opportunity to get to intimately know one of London's best concert halls is a big attraction, Hall One at Kings Place. It has a brilliant acoustic, with a natural resonance that makes string instruments sing and radiate warmth.

A new commission from young composer Anna Appleby and one of our most popular commissions with audiences, a 2022 work by Charlotte Harding, will add a compelling dimension to the concerts along with works by Ina Boyle, Anton Webern and Franz Schubert. All will start at 6:45pm and last no more than an hour. 

Full details can be found at the Kings Place website. 

The Piatti Quartet is named after Alfredo Piatti, a 19th Century virtuoso cellist who was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music (the alma mater of the founders of the quartet) and also a major exponent of chamber music and contemporary music of his time [Piatti's own operatic fantasies for cello and piano were recorded in 2020, see my article]. The quartet won joint second prize and the Sydney Griller Award at the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition. 

They have premiered a mesmerising number of new works over the years beginning with Anna Meredith back in 2009 and including works by Mark-Anthony Turnage, Emily Howard, Charlotte Harding, and Joseph Phibbs, as well as making the premiere recording of Ina Boyle’s String Quartet in E minor, and performing lesser known quartet gems by Ralph Vaughan Williams, E.J. Moeran, Rachmaninov, Ireland, Haas, Ulmann, and Durosoir.

The juxtaposition of extreme eras of music makes people think about what is fascinating in the music: Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko on his London Piano Festival programme

Vadym Kholodenko at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival in 2022

The Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko gives a recital at the London Piano Festival at Kings Place on Friday 6 October 2023 playing a programme that moves from Handel's Suite in Bb HWV 440 and Haydn's Sonata in C sharp minor, Hob XVI No. 36 to Beethoven's Sonata No. 27, Op. 90 to Silvestrov's Bagatelles Op. 1 and Adès' Traced Overhead, ending with Liszt's Après une lecture de Dante and Tarantella in G minor from Années de pèlerinage II (Italy). And Vadym returns to the UK in December for Bartók's Piano Concerto No.3 with the Ulster Orchestra, conductor Elena Schwarz.

Vadym Kholodenko (Photo: Jean-Baptiste Millot)

Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Vadym took his first piano lessons at the age of six and began touring internationally at thirteen years old. Educated at the Kyiv Lysenko State Music Lyceum and the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, he studied with Natalia Gridneva, Borys Fedorov, and the late Vera Gornostaeva (1929-2015). In 2013, he took the Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

He enjoys playing a wide range of composers, and his idea behind the Kings Place recital is partly to show the range and variety he is currently interested in. Music by a composer such as Handel certainly does not sound how the composer might have heard it, but Vadim enjoys playing this music. The score is very minimal, so he takes a fairly free approach to the piece, making his own version by mixing different sections, so for instance the opening material is repeated at the end. He is following the idea of the freedom of improvisation that Handel might have taken, and in many ways, Vadym likens it to jazz, the music consists of a set of chords and he can do his own thing.

Later in our interview, I followed this comment up with a question about playing jazz, but Vadym admits that he is not a jazz performer, he can't do it, though he did once participate in a competition with jazz players in Lithuania!

He very much enjoys playing Haydn's sonatas, but there is a similar problem to Handel, in that the late Beethoven sonatas are the first to work best on a modern piano, earlier sonatas by Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn are not completely appropriate for the big monster. And sadly, Haydn's keyboard sonatas are still not that popular. For Vadym they are beautiful and he finds so many fresh ideas in them that seem to create developments that end in Beethoven. But he adds that the symphonies are similar, they are just not so much done in the concert hall.

Overwhelmingly intense electronic sound worlds from marginalised voices: Nonclassical's Disruptive Frequencies at Kings Place

Aniruddha Das aka Dhangsha

Disruptive Frequencies: Gary Stewart, Amit Dinesh Patel, Nikki Sheth, Poulomi Desai, Nicole Raymond, Aniruddha Das - Nonclassical at Kings Place
16 July 2023, reviewed by Florence Anna Maunders

A fruit of Amit Dinesh Patel's research into cultural diversity in experimental sound, Disruptive Frequences featured six performers in almost complete darkness, giving a theatrical and almost religious aspect to the whole evening

Disruptive Frequencies is one of the results of Amit Dinesh Patel's research into cultural diversity in experimental sound – a project with the aim of addressing the the distinct lack of visibility of Black and Brown artists within the field. The record label, music promoter, events producer and charity Nonclassical worked together with the SOUND/IMAGE Research Centre (based at the University of Greenwich) to create this album, parts of which were presented live at this record launch / concert in Islington's Kings Place. In almost complete darkness, the stage was set with multiple altars of sound equipment, giving a theatrical and almost religious aspect to the whole evening.

Opening proceedings with his work Dark Energy Live Stream Track 2, Gary Stewart spun a compelling and complex web of manipulated white and filtered noise, delivered at crushing volume and building into a driven, lopsided pulsation, which successfully maintained an aloof poise of non-expressive abstraction over an extended span, with gargling, rumbling subterranean oscillations held in check and only infrequently allowed to emerge from a tightly controlled cage. The darkened, expectant silence which followed was galvanised by the overwhelming noise-scape of Patel's extended sonic essay Chakria. Defying all attempts at a conventional formal approach, this was a piece which embraced a sense of timelessness. Lacking the convention of any regular pulsation to divide the passage of time from moment to moment, the unearthly timbres seemed to exist in an unlimited aural void, defined without recourse to human expectations, exploring an alien landscape of crackling static electromagnetic fields, cycling machinery and broken transmissions.

In complete contrast, the two pieces presented by Nikki Sheth, developed from field recordings, both conveyed a very real sense of place. The splashing water, manipulated honking geese and flapping wings of Sandwell Valley worked in harmony to effectively construct an impressionist landscape with sounds, a mediation on location without any need for the Western affectations of form, structure and long-term development, as did the often beautiful collage of subtly edited bird calls which comprised Pemberton Gardens.

The DIY punk aesthetic of the self-taught multidisciplinary artist and curator Poulomi Desai was very much evident in the overwhelming sonic experience of her evocatively titled Electromagnetic signals from our raging Black Earth, all our flora and fauna are burning, which lived up to its titular expectations with blasts of distorted, furiously raging electronic signal-noise, layered with insistent warning sirens, the clangour of broken circuitry, and a sense of theatrical overload. Very much a highlight of the evening, and of the album as a whole, this is music for the end of the world – a distress call from the heart of destruction rendered in coruscating electronic timbres at ear-pulverising volumes.

Exploring a wide range of sampled distorted voices & glitchy synths, Nicole Raymond's set was a study in the use of panned delays. In a live setting, as opposed to the immersive world of headphones, this created a very different impression, somehow both more focused and simultaneously more incoherent. Her techniques strip sounds of their original meanings and contexts, like a collage of panels from different comics, presented in the infinitely receding reflections of a hall of mirrors - somehow creating a new meaning, but a meaning which is always just out of reach to the listener. Raymond's sound world is hypnotic, disorientating and perplexing, with a sense of dark humour.

Concluding the evening, the vastly experienced eminence behind the whole project, Aniruddha Das (aka Dhangsha) performed a live electronic remix of his own tracks Mahapralay and Germinate. Drawing on a wide range of cultural influences, from dub to bhangra via African clave patterns, this was the most traditionally metrical and groove-based work on display across the evening, as evidenced by the number of bobbing heads in the well-attended and mixed audience. Additionally, as the only artist this evening to work extensively with synthesis, his was the music with the most pitch-based content. Continually varied through constant repetitions by gradual alterations, disintegrations, distortions and fragmentations this was music that seemed constantly dancing on the edge between rigid order and collapse into total chaos. Straddling a line between tradition(s) and innovation, Das presented a set which was on the verge of danceable, yet never crossing the line into predictability of phrase, pattern or timbre.

Reviewed by Florence Anna Maunders

Disruptive Frequencies is available as a double vinyl or download from Nonclassical.

Disruptive Frequences at Kings Place, 16 July 2023
Bantu (Gary Stewart) - Dark Energy Live Stream Track 2
Dushume (Amit Dinesh Patel) - Chakria
Nikki Sheth - Sandwell Valley
Poulomi Desai - Electromagnetic signals from our raging Black Earth, all our flora and fauna are burning
NikNak (Nicole Raymond) - Combative Embers / Swirls
Nikki Sheth - Pemberton Gardens
Dhangsha (Aniruddha Das) – Mahapralay / Germinate

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• I have rarely heard Bach's Mass in B minor performed with such consistency of style, integrity and sheer musicality: Vox Luminis at Wigmore Hall - concert review
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Aural Adventures: Colin Currie Quartet and Liam Byrne at Kings Place

Liam Byrne at Kings Place (Photo: Viktor Erik Emanuel)

Dark Full Ride: John Luther Adams, Rolf Wallin, David Lang, Steve Reich, Connor Shafran, Julia Wolfe; Colin Currie Quartet; Kings Place
Reconstructing Resonance: Picforth, Alex Mills, Maddalena Casulana, Nico Muhly; Liam Byrne; Kings Place
Reviewed 20 January 2023

The launch of Sound Unwrapped included two contrasting explorations, four percussionists surrounding the audience, and a single viola da gamba made modern via electronics and sound installation 

Kings Place's new season, Sound Unwrapped, launched on Friday 20 January 2023 with an evening of concerts exploring the season's themes of sound art and ways of listening. In Hall One, the Colin Currie Quartet gave us Dark Ride with John Luther Adams' Qilyaun, Rolf Wallin's Twine, David Lang's the so-called laws of nature, part II, Steve Reich's Drumming, part I, Connor Shafran's Continental Divide and Julia Wolfe's Dark Full Ride. Then later in the evening in Hall Two, Liam Byrne's Reconstructing Resonance combined his viola da gamba with computer software to explore the full range of resonance offered by Hall Two's new Soundscape system installed by d&b audiotechnik, with music by Picforth, Alex Mills, Maddalena Casulana and Nico Muhly providing the starting point.

The Colin Currie Quartet at Kings Place (Photo: Viktor Erik Emanuel)

The Colin Currie Quartet (Colin Currie, Owen Gunnell, Adrian Spillett, Sam Walton) based their programme around pieces where all four percussionists play near-identical instruments. They began with John Luther Adams' 1998 work Qilyaun based on four wooden frame drums; Qilyaun is the name of the drum in the language of the Inupiat people of North East Alaska, where Adams lived between 1978 and 2014. The four percussionists were placed at the four corners of the balcony, thus placing the audience at the centre of the sound. It was a thrilling yet subtle piece, with remarkable changes of timbre and texture. Whether loud or soft, the sound rolled around the hall and at the end as the rhythmic drumming got faster and faster, the results almost approached orgasmic. An observation I made about a number of the pieces in the programme! 

Six musicians & four jugglers: introducing United Strings of Europe's Apollo Resurrected

Apollo Resurrected - United Strings of Europe at Kings Place (Photo Dimitri Djuric)

The United Strings of Europe will bring together juggling and string playing in a new show exploring themes of social and artistic recovery. The world premiere performance of Apollo Resurrected takes place at Kings Place on 28 October with a second performance as part of the Leeds International Concert Season on 3 November. Artistic Director Julian Azkoul sets the scene.

Classical music and circus arts do not appear at first glance to be obvious bedfellows. There are no ballets for clowns or operas about jugglers. Nevertheless, circus arts and juggling share many elements with music: rhythm, timing, gestures, phrases, patterns, even shapes. As a string player I came to appreciate this when I took part in a show with the pioneering juggling troupe Gandini Juggling that explored commonalities between juggling and classical dance. In the production, music was the glue that bound these disciplines together.

Noh Reimagined 2022: Spirits of Flowers Festival

Noh Reimagined at Kings Place in 2018 (Photo mu:arts)

Noh Reimagined is a biennial festival at Kings Place that brings together Japanese Noh theatre with contemporary arts to create something intriguingly new. Hilary covered the 2018 festival for us [see Hilary's article] but the 2020 festival was cancelled. Now, Noh Reimagined is back with Noh Reimagined 2022: Spirits of Flowers Festival at Kings Place on 24 and 25 June 2022.

This year's festival explores how the natural world is celebrated and interpreted in one of Japan’s oldest theatrical traditions, alongside what it means to our lives today. Top-class Noh performers including celebrated Noh shite (the masked protagonist in a Noh) actor Sano Noboru and wildly inventive nohkan (lit. noh-pipe) flautist Isso Yukihiro will be performing, and there will be premieres of new Noh-inspired work by some of the UK’s top creative artists, including the remarkable contemporary artist Cerith Wyn Evans, acclaimed contemporary dance duo Thick & Tight, and a new interpretation of the Noh Sumida River combining music and gesture with sign language.

There are two days of performances and workshops, culminating in the final event when the Noh performers will come together with Thick & Tight and recorder player Piers Adams to perform Hengenka (meaning transformations), an exquisite Noh music drama, written by nohkan flautist Isso Yukihiro, which combines elements of traditional Noh repertories, baroque music and ancient divine dancing to create a dreamy music drama perfect for a high summer evening.

Full details from the Kings Place website.

A South American Journey

The newly rejuvenated Bath Festival Orchestra is returning to London on 16 June 2022 with a programme that will transport the audience at Kings Place to South America. Conducted by Peter Manning, the orchestra will be performing Villa Lobos' Guitar Concerto with soloist Ahmed Dickinson, Canciones Remotas by the Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, Serenade for Strings by the Venezulan pianist and composer Maria Teresa Carreno (1853-1917) and Ginastera's Concerto for Strings.

Villa Lobos' concerto was written in 1951, commissioned by the Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia, who gave the world premiere in 1956. The work went through a few changes, originally written as a Fantasia concertante, with no cadenza, Villa Lobos later added a cadenza and changed the name to concerto. Maria Teresa Carreno was a Venezuelan born pianist and composer who trained in the USA and Paris. Edward MacDowell was one of her pupils for a time and both he and Amy Beach dedicated works to Carreno. 

Before the concert proper, there is a chance for young performers to shine. Members of Bath Festival Orchestra have been working with students from East London's Bobby Moore Academy for outreach activities, working to create the first orchestra in the school's history as well as giving a joint monthly lunchtime concert series at St Mary Le Strand Church. On 16 June, the school students will perform Villa Lobos' Bachianas Brasilias No. 2 ‘The Little Train of the Caipira’ arranged by Bobby Moore Academy’s Musician-in-Residence, Harry Baker.

Full details from the orchestra's website.

A Schubertiade with Dame Imogen Cooper, birdsong from Tamara Stefanovich, Vijay Iyer improvising - the London Piano Festival 2022

Imogen Cooper (Photo: Sussie Ahlburg)

Katya Apekisheva and Charles Owen's London Piano Festival is coming back for its seventh edition at Kings Place this Autumn (6-9 October 2022). Where did the time go, I chatted to Katya and Charles back in 2016 for the first festival [see my interview]. This year features the usual combination of fine pianism, distinguished guests, imaginative programming and piano teamwork.

The festival opens with Tamara Stefanovich interweaving the birdsong-inspired pieces of Messiaen and Rameau, and ending with Messaien’s Cantéyodjayâ. Then Dame Imogen Cooper is joined by Katya Apekisheva, Charles Owen and Dominic Degavino, pianists who have all benefitted from her skill and unique insights through masterclasses and teaching sessions over the years, for an evening of piano duets. The four pianists will take to the stage in different pairings to perform Schubert’s piano duets whilst recreating the atmosphere of an intimate social gathering.

On the Saturday, Katya Apekisheva and Noriko Ogawa explore contrasting 20th-century preludes, by Shostakovich and by Debussy, then pianist and composer Vijay Iyer will perform a solo improvised set. The festival ends with Liszt, concert pianist and lecturer Paul Roberts presents a lecture-recital with Charles Owen celebrating Liszt’s passionate response to the poetry of Francesco Petrarca 

Full details from the festival website.

Dark Matter and Bach: The Undiscovered Universe from the OAE and Dr Harry Cliff

The Undiscovered Universe - Bach, Byrd, Telemann and 'Dark Matter'; Bethany Horak-Hallett, Guy Cutting, William Gaunt, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Dr Harry Cliff, Steven Devine; Kings Place
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 11 July 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Particle physics, Dark Matter and the Large Hadron Collider alongside wonderfully engaging Bach and more

The Undiscovered Universe, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's latest edition of Bach, The Universe and Everything was due to premiere at Kings Place in December 2020, first postponed to May 2021, the concert finally happened on Sunday 11 July 2021. Steven Devine directed the OAE in Bach's cantata Ich steh mit einem Fuss im Grabe, BWV 156 with soloist Bethany Horak-Hallett, Guy Cutting and William Gaunt plus music by Byrd and Telemann and a talk by Dr Harry Cliff, a particle physicist from the University of Cambridge

We began with Steven Devine's delightful account of Bach's chorale prelude, Machs mit mir, Gott nach deiner Gut, followed by an unconducted performance of William Byrd's anthem Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles, a setting of text from Psalm 117 first published in his 1611 Psalms, Songs and Sonnets, which opened things up with vivid brightness, yet there was delicacy too and a sense of the eight voices forming a real vocal ensemble with a sense of individual lines and voices.

Next, Dominika Feher (one of the OAE's violinists) read an intriguing extract from David Whyte's 2014 book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, a lovely poetic discussion about the meaning(s) of the word 'shadow'.

Bach's cantata Ich steh mit einem Fuss im Grabe was his fourth and last cantata for the Third Sunday after Epiphany, written in Leipzig in 1729.

Satisfyingly concentrated: Harry Christophers & The Sixteen's The Call of Rome at Kings Place

Harry Christophers, The Sixteen - Kings Place (Photo Monika S Jakubowska/Kings Place)

The Call of Rome - plainchant, Josquin, Anerio, Victoria, Allegri; The Sixteen, Harry Christophers; Kings Place
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 1 July 2021 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
This year's Choral Pilgrimage reaches Kings Place with very satisfying programme of music by composers working in Rome

Harry Christophers and The Sixteen's 2021 Choral Pilgrimage features a programme entitled The Call of Rome with music by four composers who worked in Rome, particularly with the Papal Choir, Josquin Desprez (1450/55-1521), Tomas Luis de Victoria (1548-1611), Felice Anerio (1560-1614) and Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652), and I caught up with them at Kings Place on Thursday 1 July 2021. The choir is presenting two versions of the programme, for the Summer concerts in June and July there is one lasting an hour whilst during the Autumn they will be performing a longer version.

Both programmes explore music written for the Papal Choir or music in the Papal Choir's library. We heard three of the Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Saturday by Victoria who worked in Rome for 20 years but was not a member of the Papal Choir, though an early version of the music is held by the Papal Choir's Library. Josquin was a member of the choir for five years, and we heard his motets Gaude virgo mater Christ and Illibata Dei virgo. Felice Anerio trained as a choir boy at St Peter's Basilica under Palestrina, before going on to take Palestrina's place as composer to the Papal Choir after Palestrina died. We heard his motet Regina caeli laetare a8. 

Harry Christophers, The Sixteen - Kings Place (Photo Monika S Jakubowska/Kings Place)

The final composer was Gregorio Allegri, who worked with the Papal Choir for 23 years and whose Miserere was a great feature of the Holy Week celebrations. Except, as the extensive programme notes explained, what made the Miserere exceptional was not so much Allegri's music as the ornamentation, the abellimenti, that the singers brought to it. So we heard the version of the Miserere created by Harry Christophers and Ben Byram-Wigfield which, in each ornamented verse, moves from the earliest known manuscript right through to the 20th century version with the top C which is in fact a mistake in transcription! To bring things up to date for this tour, Christophers had commissioned Roxanna Panufnik, Gabriel Jackson and Bob Chilcott to write their own ornamentations. We heard the version by Bob Chilcott who, it turns out, was a boy treble at Kings College, Cambridge where he did indeed sing that top C.