Performances between 2015 and 2016

The Incandescent Reality of the Earth’s Womb

Infancy, History & the Avant-Garde

12:30, Saturday 24 January 2015
Omnibus Clapham (external link)
1 Clapham Common Northside
SW4 0QW London
United Kingdom

Curated by Steve Potter (composer-performer) and Kélina Gotman (Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies, King’s College London), the festival brings together musicians, performance poets, choreographers, and cultural theorists for a musically, textually, theatrically and intellectually rich day-and-a-half of events.

The works presented think through and embody extreme sensation, cries, screams, disregard for the bounds of ‘good taste’; excess, chaos, risk; and the flip-side: discipline, control, security. Toys, props; imitation, counter-imitation, mimesis; play, games; the politics of the family, the antinomy of heteronormativity and capitalism’s drive towards temporary relationships, ever-changing personalities, adaptability and rootlessness; work, value, sleep and sleep deprivation; altered states of consciousness; cuteness; lullabies.

Carl Rosman (external link), clarinet/voice and Mark Knoop, piano/keyboard. Full festival listing here (external link).

For John Cage

City University

19:00, Tuesday 10 February 2015
Performance Space, City University (external link)
College Building, St John Street
EC1V 0HB London
United Kingdom

Characteristic works from two of the most individual and influential composers of the twentieth century. Webern’s concise precision is echoed and expanded 72 years later by the daring fluid architecture of Feldman (external link)’s duo.

Aisha Orazbayeva, violin and Mark Knoop, piano.

Extensions

Goldsmiths

19:00, Saturday 21 February 2015
Deptford Town Hall (external link)
288-300 New Cross Road
SE14 6AF London
United Kingdom

As part of the Contemporary Music Research Unit’s conference: Compositional Aesthetics and the Political, Aisha Orazbayeva and Mark Knoop perform Spahlinger’s monumental duo. Also featuring the premiere of a new work by Caroline Lucas for piano and video.

Beasts and Beauties

Kämmer Klang

20:30, Tuesday 3 March 2015
Cafe OTO (external link)
18-22 Ashwin St, Dalston
E8 3DL London
United Kingdom

Works by Beat Furrer (external link) and Georgia Rodgers feature in this edition of Kämmer Klang (external link) before a solo tuba improvisation set.

Performers: Juliet Fraser (external link), Mark Knoop and Oren Marshall.

CINESONICA

City University

19:00, Tuesday 17 March 2015
Performance Space, City University (external link)
College Building, St John Street
EC1V 0HB London
United Kingdom

A concert exploring the relationships between sound, simulation and moving images, with a particular focus on embodied movement. Also includes works by Joseph Hyde, Simon Katan and Miguel Mera.

Piano / No Piano

Elke and Arno Morenz Collection

19:30, Thursday 19 March 2015
Elke and Arno Morenz Collection (external link)
Sybelstraße 62
10629 Berlin-Charlottenburg
Germany

A recital by Loré Lixenberg and Mark Knoop with the participation of the Lettrist performer Broutin curated by Frédéric Acquaviva (external link).

Codex Purpureus

20:00, Sunday 29 March 2015
Cafe OTO (external link)
18-22 Ashwin St, Dalston
E8 3DL London
United Kingdom

An evening of Salvatore Sciarrino (external link)’s string and piano trios, the London premiere of Bryn Harrison (external link)’s monumental violin and piano piece and a new violin duo by Alex Hills.

With Aisha Orazbayeva and Eloisa Fleur Thom violins, Jennifer Ames viola, Anton Lukoszevieze cello, and Mark Knoop piano.

WeSpoke: Multitasking

Festival Mixtur

16:00, Sunday 26 April 2015
A Fabra I Coats (external link)
Carrer Sant Adrià, 20
08030 Barcelona
Spain

WeSpoke (external link): Mark Knoop and Serge Vuille perform at 2015 Festival Mixtur.

Music and/as Process

CMRU @ Goldsmiths

18:00, Saturday 6 June 2015
Deptford Town Hall (external link)
288-300 New Cross Road
SE14 6AF London
United Kingdom

Bryn Harrison (external link) presents the Keynote Lecture of the Music and/as Process Third Annual Conference preceding a performance by Mark Knoop.

From across the Atlantic

Plus Minus

City Summer Sounds

19:00, Tuesday 9 June 2015
Performance Space, City University (external link)
College Building, St John Street
EC1V 0HB London
United Kingdom

Plus Minus presents an event exploring a range of experimental practices — from the theatrical to the microtonal — from four distinctive North American composers.

New Romantics

music we’d like to hear

19:30, Friday 3 July 2015
St Mary at Hill (external link)
Lovat Lane
EC3R 8EE London
United Kingdom

Much-loved series music we’d like to hear (external link) returns in 2015 with a concert of works for piano trio featuring Aisha Orazbayeva violin, Alice Purton cello and Mark Knoop piano.

Plus Minus

Ultima

17:00, Friday 11 September 2015
Den Norske Opera & Ballett (external link)
Kirsten Flagstads Plass 1
0150 Oslo
Norway

Plus-Minus (external link) presents a concert of two genre-stretching pieces especially written for the group. Matthew Shlomowitz (external link)’s Lecture About Bad Music (2015), drawing on scholarship from a range of fields and employing musical demonstrations and recreations of psychological experiments, asks us to consider if a piece of music can be inherently bad, or whether such judgements are purely subjective. Alexander Schubert (external link)’s Sensate Focus (2014) on the other hand, is concerned with the interplay between sound and image, and adds light as a fifth performer to a quartet of musicians. Using strobing effects, Schubert explores issues of sampling and sensorial experience in both the audio and visual domains, and our ability to form continuities from discrete objects.

Fields/Machines

Cut and Splice

20:00, Friday 25 September 2015
Cafe OTO (external link)
18-22 Ashwin St, Dalston
E8 3DL London
United Kingdom

This year’s Cut and Splice Festival at Cafe Oto, co-produced by Sound and Music, and BBC Radio 3, links the work of the pioneers of the sonic avant-garde to the trail-blazers of today and explores the relationships between music machines and the environment. Moving from the centre to the edges of music-making practices, from the last century to our own, the programme seeks to explore these dual radii of influence, that somehow overlap, create interference patterns and forming a fuzzy and yet compelling continuum on which the programmed works lie.

Space/Translation/Device

20:00, Saturday 26 September 2015
Cafe OTO (external link)
18-22 Ashwin St, Dalston
E8 3DL London
United Kingdom

Lecture about Bad Music

music@1pm

13:00, Monday 2 November 2015
Turner Sims (external link)
Salisbury Road
SO17 1BJ Southampton
United Kingdom

Plus Minus perform a lunchtime concert at Southampton University before a workshop with student composers.

Words & Music 3

Durham Musicon

19:30, Sunday 8 November 2015
Durham University (external link)
Durham
United Kingdom

The final concert in the Musicon November festival features Mark Knoop performing a selection from Peter Ablinger (external link)’s ongoing cycle Voices and Piano. A simultaneous performance of solos from John Cage (external link)’s time series follows with Knoop, members of the Ives Ensemble and Damian Robson.

Endless Shrimp

Kammer Klang

20:00, Tuesday 1 December 2015
Cafe OTO (external link)
18-22 Ashwin St, Dalston
E8 3DL London
United Kingdom

We Spoke presents work by Jessie Marino (external link) for two performers with objects, video and assorted instruments. The evening also features cellist Oliver Coates and video artist Lawrence Lek.

Five Ways to Kill Time

Plus Minus Ensemble

LCMF

19:00, Sunday 13 December 2015
Ambika P3 (external link)
University of Westminster
35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS London
United Kingdom

Time is stretched, bent and finally dissolved in Five Ways To Kill Time. Also featuring performances by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Tim Etchells / Aisha Orazbayeva, Ellen Fullman and Stephen O’Malle.

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

Plus Minus Ensemble

LCMF

19:00, Wednesday 16 December 2015
Ambika P3 (external link)
University of Westminster
35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS London
United Kingdom

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home takes its name from a poem by Craig Raine that sought to re-see the world through bold acts of defamiliarisation. This night celebrates the Martianist turn in music, with an exploration of composers who have made the familiar fresh. Also works by Tino Sehgal, Helmut Lachenmann, Christian Kesten, Andrew Hamilton, Dieter Schnebel, Hanna Hartman (external link) and Islam Chipsy & EEK.

Requiem for Reality

LCMF

19:00, Thursday 17 December 2015
Ambika P3 (external link)
University of Westminster
35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS London
United Kingdom

Mark Knoop performs two solos as part of this examination of Post-Internet Art, sometimes labelled the New Aesthetic. Whatever the name, there’s no doubt that the internet has scrambled the way we think, see and listen. Yet if art has placed this new paradigm at its heart, we are only now beginning to distil what it means for musical composition. Also performances by Felicita, James Ferraro , Nick Goodwin, Neele Hülcker and Jennifer Walshe.