Cues

I recently contributed a new piece of work titled Cues for Jessie Marino’s Weekend EP Project. Here is how Marino describes the label:

“The Weekend EP Project gives artists 72 hours to complete an EP. It’s an excuse to solidify work that you’ve been tinkering with, or a way to try to extend your artistic tendrils or a way to be another person for a weekend or just a deadline (which we all desperately need)!”

In 2016 I made a pair of pieces called Affective … hopes of being moved to feel … Ripples. In Affective, an ensemble of performers wear earbuds that play an audio recording/guide that they listen to while mingling before the concert and during intermissions, and performing a program of music. The audio they hear is a collection of sounds that correspond to four basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, and disgust) and affect the performer-listeners, potentially modulating the emotional tenor of the music-event space. 

After the premiere performance of Affective, one of the performers made the observation that they were more able to give way to their emotions and split their attention between the audio recording and the staged performances when they were an audience member rather than a performer. Since then, I’ve variously contemplated the idea of making something that audience members could listen to during a music event that would subtly unsettle any audience/performer divide, sanctities of “musical work”, and enhance the sense of hearing and act of listening. Cues is my first attempt at such an aim.

 

 

Over 25-28 December I conceived and produced Cues, a concert-length EP designed to be listened to by an audience member alongside and during a programme of other pieces of music at a music event. For 90 minutes, the audience member wears an earbud and hears a collection of different sounds and instructions amidst large intervals of silence. In the same way that my piece BUZZED for solo horn, or Beavan Flanagan’s No sweeter sound than my own name for solo voice, uses sound instead of noteheads (or visual imagery in general) as a signifier of performance actions, the audio in Cues is sometimes-score. The audience member moves between two modes of engagement with the audio in Cues. When they hear the word “listen” they simply hear the sounds alongside whatever else is taking place during the music event. When they hear the word “imitate” the sounds that follow take on choreographic significance; tapping sounds correspond to tapping gestures on the back of the wrist, high pitches frequencies lead one to close their eyes, and waves of noise prompt the listener to cover their ears.

These aspects of Cues and how the piece is designed are inspired by a range of influences:

• a wristband called a Re-Vibe that vibrates every 5, 7, or 10 minutes as a way of refocusing attention;
• an almost entirely misunderstood conversation I had with Lucy Railton about the idea of audiences and performers existing “in communion”;
• Louis d’Heudieres’ Laughter Studies series: the two modes in Cues, “listen” and “imitate”, are derived from Louis’ “describe” and “imitate” modes in Laughter Studies 2;
• and Marc Codina’s Audience Relief series, which playfully engages the audience member as a listener-performer.

Interested in trying Cues?
Listen to track 1 off the album and follow along with the transcript for complete information on how to play, listen to, and perform Cues: https://weekendepproject.bandcamp.com/album/cues

Please leave feedback as a comment/review on the Bandcamp page.

Upcoming Performances

I. — 3 March 2018

I have been workshopping a new composition titled Intermission Music. The piece is a trio being made for and with Callum Coomber, Kathy Hart, and Rosalind Ridout, members of SHOAL and students at the Royal Northern College of Music.

Intermission Music takes place submerged beneath concert experience. Embedded audience members overlay near-silent waves of sound onto dictaphone recordings of the programme, emerging in the interval as moments of localized, embodied playback that temporarily unsettle the social surface. The ripples dissipate, a moment is already being forgotten, though undercurrents are produced; an undertow of musical memory gently tugs and submerges conversations, interactions, and, ultimately, the concert experience into more physically and musically performative depths.

We present the premiere performance of Intermission Music alongside performances by Kupla and Ryan Patrick Maguire, and a piece by Michael Pisaro on 3 March as part of Michael Brailey’s fifth VIRTUALLYREALITY “Submergence / Emergence” at Partisan in Manchester.

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/virtuallyreality-presents-submergence-emergence-tickets-42459396197

II. — 9 March 2018

Cues will be performed at the University of Hull on 9 March as part of CLAC #2, a new music and performance art series organized by Brice Catherin. Cues will be presented alongside a free improvisation set led by Colin Frank and performances by Mark Slater and Simon Desbruslais of pieces by Mark Slater, Morton Feldman, Jonathan Harvey, John Lely, Sebastian Forbes, and Colin Frank.

Event details: https://culturenet.co.uk/events/clac-2-new-music-performance-art-series