Ether 2011: Win Exclusive Promo of Micachu & The Shapes and London Sinfonietta

As part of Ether 2011, Micachu & The Shapes and Southbank Centre Resident Orchestra London Sinfonietta are teaming up once more for a night of 21st-century experimentalism. To celebrate another of Ether’s ground-breaking collaborations, we have 10 exclusive promo copies of Micachu & The Shapes and London Sinfonietta’s new release Chopped & Screwed to give away.

Discussing the project, Micachu, aka Mica Levi, said: ‘Our own instruments sound a bit percussive, a bit like samples, a bit different. When I write songs on a guitar I find my hands falling into the same bar chords all the time, but if you have something new in front of you there are no rules. No one else has ever played one before so you can approach music differently just make it up as you go along. Doing a project with the London Sinfonietta is an amazing opportunity for us.’

To enter, simply email competitions@southbankcentre.co.uk by 20 March with ‘Chopped & Screwed’ in the subject line. Winners will be chosen at random. Please include your name, address and contact number.

See Micachu & The Shapes and London Sinfonietta playing live at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of Ether 2011 on 5 April. Get tickets here.

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.

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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

Line-up Announced for Ether Festival 2010

‘The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will be live’
– Gil Scott-Heron

Ether, Southbank Centre’s annual music festival of innovation, art, technology and cross-arts experimentation, returns from 16 – 24 April this year with a mix of rock iconoclasts, rap pioneers, audiovisual experimenters and contemporary-classical innovators.

This year’s festival features a very special show from Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Trio based on Reed’s radical and controversial 1975 album Metal Machine Music and a rare Gil Scott-Heron London gig in which he’ll be showcasing material from his brilliant new album I’m New Here (released on XL Recordings), alongside support from 2009 Mercury Prize Winner Speech Debelle. Kicking off Ether is a one-off collaboration between Stereo MCs and The Bays, plus The Herbaliser opening the gig, while on Friday 23 April film director and video artist Chris Cunningham performs a live show of original and remixed music and film, with support from BEAK>, the new project of Portishead’s Geoff Barrow.

Also playing at this year’s festival are one of the greats from the Warp roster, Broadcast, who are joined on the bill by Micachu and The Shapes and young cellist Oliver Coates. Meanwhile, LA art-noise band HEALTH team up with the genre-trashing, visually-spectacular Chrome Hoof for a mouth-watering double-bill, and Will Dutta plays with special guests Plaid, Max de Wardener and John Richards.

Always a platform for showcasing new work, Ether in 2010 features an evening of premieres of music by Mark-Anthony Turnage (UK premiere) and Philip Glass (European premiere) plus Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition, the festival features Varèse 360° – the complete works of musique concrète pioneer and formative influence on Frank Zappa, Edgard Varèse.

There’s more to be announced including a series of talks and discussions so keep look out for further updates here and at:

www.southbankcentre.co.uk/ether