Partitions & Resonances present a listening series of compositions by Wandelweiser and related composers/artists/sound artists at Audio Foundation. Curated by composer-performer Johnny Chang, the series aims to re-focus the action of listening in the context of the performance space and will take place on the last Saturday of each month.
27.03
James Weeks: still here (2020)
Hermione Johnson, piano
Johnny Chang, violin
still here: being still, being here; still being here.
James Weeks’ 45 minute piece for violin and piano, written during lockdown for his wife Sophie Appleton and himself, explores both presence and the continuity of presence: gathering the threads of time passing and past into a calm rootedness of being.
still here was premiered as an online concert for MUSICON (Durham, UK) on 2nd December 2020.
JAMES WEEKS
James Weeks is a composer and conductor specialising in new music, based in the UK. His music is performed and broadcast worldwide and four portrait discs of his work have been released to date: Mala punica/Walled Garden (Winter&Winter, 2017), Signs of Occupation (Métier 2016), mural (confront 2015) and TIDE (Métier 2013). He has written for many leading ensembles and soloists including Plus-Minus, Quatuor Bozzini, London Sinfonietta, New London Chamber Choir, Phoenix Piano Trio, EXAUDI, Ekmeles, Mira Benjamin, Alison Balsom, Apartment House and Anton Lukoszevieze.
His work is typically focused on music for soloists or small ensembles, exploring pared-down, 'primary' musical syntaxes and systems, with particular interests in modality, microtonality, modularity and indeterminacy. Major works include Schilderkonst (mixed ensemble, 2003-4), TIDE (ensemble and electronics, 2007-10), the South London Harmonies series (various ensembles, 2008-11), Mala punica/Walled Garden (8 voices and ensemble, 2008-9/2015), The Freedom of the Earth (chorus and instruments, 2011), Three Trios (piano trio and tapes, 2010-11), Radical Road (voices with stones, 2014) and Primo Libro (6 voices, 2012-16).
Current projects (Autumn 2017) include an hour-long solo violin piece, windfell, for Mira Benjamin, works for the London-based ensemble Apartment House and Quatuor Bozzini, a choral installation for experimental vocal collective Musarc, and an ongoing series of pieces for CoMA (Contemporary Music for All), with whom he has been closely associated since 2014. He is also editing the CoMA Partsong Book, a volume of new experimental music for small vocal groups, to be published in 2018.
In 2002 he founded EXAUDI (www.exaudi.org.uk) with soprano Juliet Fraser, now regarded as one of the world’s leading vocal ensembles for new music. As well as maintaining a busy international touring and recording schedule with EXAUDI, he is in great demand as a guest conductor, working regularly with instrumental ensembles and orchestras such as Royal Northern Sinfonia, BBCSSO, London Sinfonietta, musikFabrik, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and L’Instant Donné. He has also worked extensively with amateur musicians, both at CoMA and in early music fora and summer schools around the UK.
Previously Associate Head of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, he took up the post of Associate Professor of Composition at Durham in October 2017.
www.jamesweeks.org
HERMIONE JOHNSON
Hermione Johnson is a pianist from Auckland, New Zealand. Her work centers largely on extended and prepared piano techniques, focusing on the timbral qualities of the instrument, and drawing out a range of voices with contrasting patterns and phrases in different registers. Her prime focus is free improvisation, and with this she has been a significant force in the New Zealand experimental music scene. She performs regularly in Wellington, Dunedin and Auckland with local musicians including Riki Gooch, Ro Rushton-Greene and Jeff Henderson. She has featured in Dunedin’s Lines of Flight Festival, Wellington’s Pyramid Power Festival, played the NoWhere Festival in Auckland, the Nownow in Sydney, and the SoundOut in Canberra. Internationally she has played with Andre Vida, Tony Buck, Peter Brotzmann, and Yoshida Tatsuya.
As a musician she works across several genres – playing piano for ballet classes and pipe organ for the Methodist church, synthesizer solos as Ogadon and in the duo Drorgan with drummer Ben Holmes. She also plays candlelight piano for Ron Gallopoli. She has featured in et al's 'For the Common Good' improvising a score by Samuel Holloway, created music for Zahra Killeen-Chance's 'The Fallen Mystery' and her organ and piano work has featured in films such as Gabriel White's 'Around the Margins', Damian Golfinopoulos's 'Circle of Willis', and James Ashcroft's 'Coming Home in the Dark'.
Hermione holds a Masters in Composition and an Honours Degree in Piano and Pipe Organ from Victoria University of Wellington.
https://sounz.org.nz/contributors/1802
JOHNNY CHANG
Composer-performer Johnny Chang engages in extended explorations surrounding the relationships of sound/listening and the in-between areas of improvisation, composition and performance.
Johnny has been a part of the Wandelweiser composers collective since 2012 and in 2018, initiated a new framework for the presentation of creative research and performances, Partitions & Resonances, aimed at encouraging new and ongoing collaborations between the varied disciplines of composition, musicology, historical research and performance. He currently collaborates with: Antoine Beuger, Samuel Dunscombe, Catherine Lamb, Klaus Lang, Mike Majkowski, Phill Niblock, Derek Shirley, Germaine Sijstermans, Taku Sugimoto, Eric Wong.
As composer and performer, his articulated performances have been featured in: Staatsoper/ OperaLab//DAAD Mikromusik/MaerzMusik (Berlin), Donaueschingen Musiktage, DNK Days/Sonic Acts Festival/Muziekgebouw (Amsterdam), Gaudeamus (Utrecht), Insub.Festival/cave12 (Geneva), Cafe OTO (London), Moment Musicaux (Aarau), Dampfzentrale (Bern), Q-O2 workspace (Brussels), Wandelweiser Klangraum (Düsseldorf), Klang im Turm (Munich), Minimal Jukebox (Los Angeles Philharmonic), Pardon To Tu (Warsaw), Umlaut Festival (Berlin & Paris), Audio Foundation (NZ) to various music series/venues in Berlin such as Staatsoper unter den Linden, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, KINDL Centre for contemporary art, ausland, Labor Sonor, Sophiensaele, KM28.
https://www.wandelweiser.de/johnny-chang.html
