Ether 2011: Steve Reich’s Drumming with the Colin Currie Group

Ether has established itself as a festival of experimentation and groundbreaking work. This year it features minimalist composer Steve Reich’s 1971 masterpiece, Drumming. Universally hailed as one of the great composers of our time and heralded by bands such as Radiohead and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Steve Reich has transformed the world of contemporary music with his innovative approach to harmony, rhythm and form.

A pioneer in his field, Reich used the technique of phasing in a number of his works. Phasing occurs when two musicians play a single repeated pattern in unison. Player One then changes their tempo slightly while Player Two maintains the original tempo. Eventually they are both several beats out of sync with each other. In Drumming four drummers phase in and out with each other, and are then joined by more musicians in parts two, three and four.

For Ether Festival the acclaimed Colin Currie group will be performing Drumming in its entirety as well as hosting a free pre-concert event where they will be demonstrating and discussing sections of the piece.

 

See the Colin Currie Group play Steve Reich’s Drumming at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on 8 and 9 April 2011 as part of Ether 2011. Get tickets here.

Get the latest news first plus Ether playlists and free downloads.

Twitter.com/etherfestival

Life Cycle

As part of Women of the World Festival we present Life Cycle a set of songs about the traumatic, funny and surreal process of becoming a mother. In this song cycle Toby Litt’s spare, unflinching words combine with Emily Hall’s beautiful, emotionally charged music across 20 songs, that act as chapters in the story of new motherhood.

Emily Hall, composer of Life Cycle, and Olly Coates, one of the performers, talk about how they worked together.

What drew you to each other as collaborators?
OC: Emily has been writing cello parts with me in mind for many years now. It feels special for an amazing composer to be writing not just for an instrument but for a player too; the messages between composer and performer are much deeper than the simple notation on the page, because she knows how I’m likely to react.

John Reid is the pianist for this project because he is the most sensitive and probing pianist around. The way he works with a singer such as Mara Carlyle works on many levels – his playing is beautiful both in its own right and in the subtle patterns of tension and release over long lyrical lines.

Mara Carlyle, without wishing to be banal or to use a cliché, has the voice of an angel. It led Jon Snow to make one of her records a Desert Island Disc. Toby’s words and Emily’s music together constitute a role which they have conceived for Mara to interpret. Her introspective musicality and soft tone has a devastating impact on audiences, in all contexts, muddy festivals or concert halls or clubs- I personally think her voice is at one with Emily Hall’s music, which is folky, childlike, profound, disarming, witty, tragic and also none of these things.

What was the process of making the work?
EH: I have been collaborating with Toby Litt on songs since about 2006 and having both experienced parenthood fairly recently we decided we wanted to write a song cycle about that incredibly changing and emotional transition into motherhood. When Opera North commissioned me and Toby to write some songs for their ‘Words and Music’ series in June 2010, we saw this as our chance to make this project happen. The songs turned out well, so Opera North commissioned us further to extend the song cycle to a 45 minute piece, which is what we’d always intended, and this is the full cycle that is being premiered at the Women of the World festival.

Mara Carlyle, Oliver Coates and John Reid have become an integral part of our song writing and these songs are very much written specifically for Mara Carlyle’s voice and Oliver and John. It is always more than giving these musicians the music and asking them to interpret them, we workshop them together and the songs are shaped to them and by them. We are so fortunate to have Netia Jones on board who is brilliant and completely specialises in staging song cycles.

What do you hope the audience will take from the performance?
OC: I just want people to hear this. I wish it had been one of the events in my Harmonic Series, but it needed the support of Opera North and Southbank Centre to bring it to life. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever done. If anyone wants to know what it’ll be like I guess I can only try and communicate that it is the most brave and simple music which sets heartbreakingly clear and truthful lyrics by Toby. Netia Jones is the only director / film-maker sensitive and musical enough to turn this from a song cycle into a continuous and immersive total experience. It doesn’t last long. The themes to me are loss, hope, love, ambivalence, focused on a woman’s life, but they are also universal and transferable to all our lives: it has the potential to mean a lot to anybody who can come. I know this because of people close to me who have heard it and begged to have recordings to listen to over and over again.

Soundclip: ‘I am alone’, written by Emily Hall and Toby Litt. Commissioned by Opera North. Performed by Mara Carlyle, Oliver Coates and John Reid.

Find out more & book tickets for ‘Life Cycle’ at:
http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/music/gigs-contemporary/tickets/life-cycle-57102

Line-up announced for Ether Festival 2011 & listen to our Ether Spotify playlist

Ether, Southbank Centre’s annual music festival of innovation, art, technology and cross-arts experimentation, returns from 24 March – 28 April for its tenth year this year with a mix of rock iconoclasts and contemporary classical pioneers.

From Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke playing alongside London Sinfonietta and members of The Nazareth Orchestra in 2005 to Chris Cunningham’s mind-and-eye-blowing audio-visual spectacular in 2010, Ether has presented groundbreaking work for a decade now.

As we celebrate its tenth birthday, this year is no different as we bring you one-off collaborations and groundbreaking work including post-punk pioneers Killing Joke, Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey with a live score from the Philharmonia Orchestra and special shows from the likes of Tim Exile, Will Gregory, Pantha du Prince, Wolfgang Voigt and Micachu & the Shapes.

We have a selection of events focussing on contemporary-classical innovator Iannis Xenakis and his architectural approach to composition, plus Rites, a special performance of Stravinsky’s early modernist masterpiece The Rite of Spring, with stunning 3D visuals. Southbank Centre Resident Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, also perform a series of concerts including the work of minimalist composer Louis Andriessen.

Plus workshops with Tim Exile, the Xenakis International Symposium, free gigs and much more.

We’ve put together an Spotify playlist for you to sample some of the upcoming Ether artists. Listen here.

Get the latest news first plus Ether playlists and free downloads.

Twitter.com/etherfestival

SEE FULL ETHER LISTINGS AND BOOK TICKETS AT

SOUTHBANKCENTRE.CO.UK/ETHER

Dan Zanes’ rock music for kids at Southbank Centre

Grammy Award-winning Dan Zanes has made a name for himself in the US with his family-friendly rock music. A huge hit in the UK now too, we’re lucky enough to have Dan Zanes and Friends at Southbank Centre as part of Imagine Children’s Festival during February half-term. We caught up with Dan to ask him our quick questions.

What do you fear the most and why?
Fears come and go so fast that they’re not usually worth writing about.

Which mobile number do you call the most?
My 16 year old daughter.

What – or where – is perfection?
For me perfection has a lot of rough edges. That’s why I like making music with young people, the perfection is in the spirit not the technical ability.

Who is your favourite hero from fiction (book/comic/film/opera) – and why?
Charlie Chaplin’s little tramp. He was constantly surprised, amazed and befuddled by the world around him and he carried himself with complete grace even though he was always knocked down.

What’s your favourite ritual?
Tea in the morning!

Which living person do you most admire (and why)?
Harry Belafonte. He made incredible music and has always had the strongest sense of the artist’s social responsibility.

What other talent or skill would you like to possess?
I’d like to be able to play gospel piano.

Tell us about a special memory you have of Southbank Centre?
There are so many! Jamming with Nick Lowe. Playing with the samba band onstage and in the lobby after the show. Being joined by Philip Glass on a tiny electric organ. Visiting the slow food stalls behind Royal Festival Hall.

If you could programme your ideal Southbank Centre show, which artists (living or dead) would you bring together?
Ashok Kumar and the Marx Brothers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Music by Franco & OK Jazz.

What’s your favourite website?
http://www.danzanes.com, of course! Otherwise I would say http://www.soundsandcolors.com

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
There’s nothing that justifies being mean, rude or unfair to another person.

What is the most played piece of music on your MP3 player or in your CD collection?
The staple singers song Pray On or maybe The Rolling Stones’ Before They Make Me Run.

What’s your favourite song?
That’s hard. Probably the soul song Slipped, Tripped, Fell in Love as sung by Ann Peebles.

What was your favourite song as a kid?
The Rock Island as played by Leadbelly.

Here’s Dan Zanes and Friends with a live performance of Jump Up.

Dan Zanes and Friends are playing live at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall from 24 – 27 February 2011. Get tickets here.