Performances of Materia

Explorations

Purcell Sessions

18:30, Saturday 2 April 2022
Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall (external link)
Southbank Centre
SE1 8XX London
United Kingdom

The joy of playing with sounds and their associations link the night’s three works. Matthew Shlomowitz (external link) creates a suite of miniatures which develop from musicological concepts into studies, blooming further into highly characterised portraits. Multiple tonalities interact with stumbling cross-rhythms and slipped loops, coming together in a finale of variations. Maverick composer Conlon Nancarrow’s Three Canons, written for the pianist Ursula Oppens, is a virtuoso demonstration of compositional control and fluency. Akiko Ushijima (external link)’s music shares this sense of enjoyment in manipulating material. Rhythmic figures interact and develop. Melodies cascade and distort into each other. Her new work combines the live piano with electronic sounds, each layer playing off the other.

Akiko Ushijima Materia 2022*15
Conlon Nancarrow Canon C from Three Canons for Ursula 19886
Matthew Shlomowitz Explorations in polytonality and other musical wonders, Volume 1 202023

Sound and perfume swirl in the evening air

City Summer Sounds

19:00, Wednesday 28 May 2025
Performance Space, City University (external link)
College Building, St John Street
EC1V 0HB London
United Kingdom

Mark Knoop performs works that explore the kaleidoscopic possibilities of the piano timbre. Joanna Bailie (external link)’s marblepark positions the instrument inside the “impossible space” of an electronically altered field recording, while Newton Armstrong (external link)’s making one leaf transparent and then another utilises the piano as an extended resonator and Akiko Ushijima (external link)’s Materia adds synthesized instrumental sounds to the live piano. These recent works are paired with Chopin’s last Ballade and the first five of Debussy’s Preludes: ground-breaking works in the piano’s colouristic repertoire.

Joanna Bailie marblepark 20229
Newton Armstrong making one leaf transparent and then another 201212
Frédéric Chopin Ballade No 4 in F minor opus 52 184312
Akiko Ushijima Materia 202215
Claude Debussy Préludes I-V from Book 1 191016
*
first performance
first performance in The United Kingdom