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justforbooks · 4 years

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Krzysztof Penderecki a leading figure in contemporary music.

The Polish composer and conductor Krzysztof Penderecki, who has died aged 86, was an outstanding representative of musical modernism’s success in the 1960s. From the early 70s he became equally emblematic of the subsequent failure of so many of that modernism’s principal pioneers to sustain a lifelong career without abandoning their original principles.

In Penderecki’s case, that appeared to mean the substitution of his early trademark emphasis on sound itself, the innovative textures of his choral and orchestral music replacing themes and tonality as the basis for musical construction, with a more lyrical and Romantic style that seemed more like a continuation of 19th-century compositional concerns than a radical reappraisal of received materials.

The composer’s earlier manner reached its apogee in the St Luke Passion for two vocal soloists, reciter, three mixed choruses, children’s choir and orchestra; its world premiere took place in March 1966 in Münster Cathedral.

As the German critic Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt put it: “A large ecclesiastical choral work, composed by a representative of the new music in socialist Poland, performed for the first time in a centre of West German Catholicism, in the former bishop’s seat of the daring anti-Nazi Graf von Galen [a prominent critic of the Third Reich when bishop of Münster during the 40s]: this gives occasion to a variety of thoughts.” Many performances worldwide of the Passion took place over the next few years.

Penderecki’s later approach is perhaps best exemplified by the First Violin Concerto, written in 1977 for Isaac Stern; by the Polish Requiem for four soloists, chorus and orchestra (1984, revised in 1993), many sections of which are dedicated to individuals or mass martyrs from Polish history; or by the Credo for five vocal soloists, chorus, children’s choir and orchestra (1998), in which Bach and Polish sources are encountered in a broadly 19th-century harmonic idiom.

Penderecki was born in Dębica, in south-eastern Poland, the youngest of three children of Zofia (nee Wittgenstein) and Tadeusz Penderecki. His father was a lawyer, and an amateur violinist and pianist. Armenian ancestry came from a grandmother, who took the young Penderecki to an Armenian church in Krakow; this aspect of the composer’s heritage was highlighted in 2015 with the premiere of a new choral work, Psalm No 3, commemorating the Armenian Genocide of 1915, at Carnegie Hall, New York.

Composition studies with Artur Malawski and Stanislaw Wiechowicz at the State Higher School of Music (now known as the Academy) in Kraków (1954-58) led to his being appointed a teacher of composition there himself. This was only five years after the death of Stalin; and, despite the advent of the Warsaw autumn international festival of contemporary music in 1956, communist rule in Poland discouraged modernist tendencies.

Penderecki himself was then still writing music essentially neoclassical in style, and in 1958 it must have looked as though the young composer was set for a safe but dull career of merely local significance.

In the following year, however, came a rise both to sudden maturity and to fame surely as swift as that experienced by any composer at any period. Penderecki had, anonymously, as its terms required, submitted three works to a competition organised by the Union of Polish Composers.

When his name turned out to be on the scores winning all the top three prizes, the works involved – Strophes, Emanations and Psalms of David – all immediately became well-known in European avant-garde circles, and commissioners of new works quickly beat a path to his door.

The reasons for Penderecki’s increasing popularity during this time clearly lay in the fact that his reliance on sound itself, rather than on melody or harmony as such – an approach that came to be called “sonorism” – was allied to a highly expressive manner that quickly resonated with listeners beyond the avant garde, promising to create a new public for contemporary music.

The works that Penderecki now began to write – deploying sound masses including unusual instrumental and vocal techniques, and combining conventional and more graphic methods of notation – extended this coupling of experimental sound-world and immediacy of expression to develop a texture-based language of assertive individuality.

In the St Luke Passion, the use of chant, recitative and chorales, not to mention the BACH motif (using German note-names, B flat-A-C-B natural) and occasional major triads, helped to make it famous as an instinctively dramatic reworking of a genre familiar from the baroque period. The work was also very timely since, despite emerging from communist Poland, it expressed a spirit of post-second world war reconciliation. Penderecki’s Passion became regarded as a kind of avant-garde counterpart to Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, premiered only four years before it.

An expressive approach to new materials and means such as Penderecki’s found contemporary parallels in the outputs not only of other Polish composers such as Henryk Górecki and, to some extent, Witold Lutosławski, but also in those of Iannis Xenakis and György Ligeti. Part of the broader agenda here was a concern to find a way forward that addressed the problems of musical structure and comprehensibility raised by the so-called total serialism of such composers as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and that yet retained a radical attitude to musical materials.

West Germany, in particular, opened its doors to Penderecki in the 60s: the publisher Hermann Moeck and Heinrich Strobel – a radio producer who also ran the Donaueschingen Music Days – were soon prominent champions. It was not long before Penderecki was showered with awards, both in that country and elsewhere.

One of the first of these, a Unesco prize, went to his most famous early composition before the St Luke Passion, his Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1960). Written for 52 strings and originally known as 8’37” (the work’s length), Threnody is classic early Penderecki: its vividly unconventional writing for massed strings, including quarter-tones, tremolos and multiple glissandi, allied – after the composer changed the title – to highly emotive and political subject matter.

This combination would serve him well both at this period and later. Indeed, just as the highly expressive, sometimes programmatically charged, approach of other early works such as Polymorphia for 48 strings (1961), with its thunderously concluding C-major chord, or the Dies Irae for three vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra (1967), which commemorates the dead of Auschwitz, was subsequently carried over into the more conventional sound-world of Penderecki’s output from the 70s onwards, so the potentially incompatible range of musical materials to be found in some of his 60s compositions can sometimes be detected in his output too.

The Polish Requiem and Credo offer two contrasting approaches here: the former incorporating 60s sonoristic effects, the latter more consistently conventional in idiom.

More rigorously modernist commentators soon criticised Penderecki’s scores of the 60s for cheap eclecticism, producing “effects-without-causes” music.

Subsequently, his move into what was often called “neo-Romanticism” supplied them with fresh ammunition, as the view of Penderecki as a “sheep in wolf’s clothing” appeared vindicated. Now that most of the more obviously avant-garde surface aspects of his music had largely disappeared, thematic and tonal underpinning could show through, unencumbered by any remaining equivocations about expressing musical and extra-musical ideas as approachably as possible to a public for whom most contemporary music remains anathema.

Yet those early works, which at the time struck so many as so arresting in their dramatic challenge to convention, now seem – for some listeners at least – shallow, simplistic, or even opportunistic. Penderecki’s subsequent manner, meanwhile, retained the endless chromatic melodic sequences and tritones of the earlier manner in the context of a thematic tonality that could now prove simply banal.

A notable example is the Second Symphony, subtitled the Christmas Symphony (1980), with its quotation of the carol Silent Night: this seems inadequate to the task of handling the religious and political meanings with which it is often charged. Some would argue that the composer had long since proved to be a spent force.

Penderecki’s later, as well as his earlier music, retained some champions, however; both before and after the imposition of martial law in Poland in December 1981, the composer’s works were adopted as a representation of the struggle between church and state. This did not stop Penderecki from maintaining links with the Polish political establishment in the years immediately after 1981, something that his compatriots Lutosławski and Górecki – the latter also directly linked, like Penderecki, with the Solidarity movement – refused to do.

Works such as the Te Deum for four vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra (1980) – dedicated to Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Kraków, who became Pope John Paul II in October 1978 – and the Polish Requiem – both of which quote old Polish hymns – should be understood in this light.

Other signs of Penderecki’s acceptance included the number of leading international soloists who premiered works by the composer, among them Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom the Second Cello Concerto (1982) was written, and Anne-Sophie Mutter, for whom both the Second Violin Concerto, subtitled Metamorphosen (1995), and the capriccio for solo violin solo, entitled La Follia, premiered in 2013, were composed.

Four operas – beginning with a suitably lurid Devils of Loudun (1969), based on a book by Aldous Huxley – received prominent performances, if not very many productions in the UK. Parts of this work, as well as his String Quartet and Kanon For Orchestra and Tape, were used on the soundtrack to the film The Exorcist (1973); and Penderecki’s music featured in films including Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990), Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006) and Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island (2010).

The most recent of the composer’s eight symphonies – subtitled Lieder der Vergänglichkeit (Songs of Transience), for three vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra, a 50-minute choral symphony in 12 movements setting 19th- and early 20th-century German poets – was completed in 2005 and revised in 2008.

Penderecki also worked frequently, and internationally, as a conductor – including, notably, of the music of Dmitri Shostakovich as well as his own. He was rector of the Krakow Academy (1972-87), and taught at Yale University (1973-78).

He is survived by his second wife, Elżbieta Solecka, whom he married in 1965, and by their son and daughter; and by a daughter from his first marriage.

• Krzysztof Penderecki, composer and conductor, born 23 November 1933; died 29 March 2020

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mfmagazine · 5 years

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Seeing Blind

Article by Shawn Forno

Armed with a four-pound Panasonic, I squeezed around a table at Mr. Spot’s Chai House in Ballard, to rub shoulders with the easy going members of Seeing Blind-- Jessika, Melissa, Markus, and Luke (from shortest to tallest). They waxed on everything from Mr. Mittens (ask Luke), to what this burgeoning band thinks of its fans, its sound, and the local scene. With a female front man, a cello, and a two accomplished sound engineers in the lineup, a listener could find themselves lost in the vibrance and diversity of each song. Here’s what they had to say for anyone still in the dark about this band from the Sound, poised to make a splash. I have to do it…Seeing Blind…what’s up with the name? Jessika: Well, we had a whole board of names, but Seeing Blind caught my attention because it sounded cool, and it was short and easier to say, but then it made me think of music. When you play music it’s kind of like seeing blind, cuz you can’t see your music, you’re just playing it, you know. Melissa: Exactly. Like seeing blind is like listening to music. But there’s another reason that I just wanna bring up because I’m like that, but--another reason is because I think the world in general is kind of seeing blind; we’re not really seeing what’s going on. We’re all just living in this kind of haze. The kids on there (their logo) are the 50’s style kind of kids and that’s why that image was chosen, because I think that things that we’re seeing as important or whatever, are not. I think a general awakening needs to happen. Does that bleed into some of the songs you write? Melissa: Absolutely. Not every song, but there’s a lot of songs. There’s this song called “Beautiful Country” that talks about the country and just how there’s so much potential here and that we don’t see it and we’re doing all sorts of things to damage the good and the things that we already have. Among your influences you list-- Buckley, Hendrix, Ani DiFranco, Tool, Yo-yo Ma, and Rusted Root. How do you feel this broad spectrum affects your sound? Melissa: We’re all influenced by Jeff Buckley a little bit, so that’s one we all kind of share. I think we’d all agree that Jimi Hendrix is pretty darn cool, but, the Tool influence, that’s me, I dunno about everybody else. I love tool--Tool, System of the Down--I love that kind of music, it’s hard, but it’s melodic…it means something (chuckles). Good lyrics, I mean, I’m the vocalist so that’s what I listen for. Does the song writing always start with you? Melissa: Usually it starts with my guitar, then I bring it to these guys and they do their magic and we work it out and they say I like that or let’s do something here, or let’s have a break down (Jessika chuckles) or a bass solo (looks at Markus and laughs). Markus, I’m curious as to how you got started with the band? Markus: Yeah, I’m the baby of the band. I used to be the engineer up at London Bridge and one day this Motley Crue comes walking in and I stuck around a bit and realized they didn’t have a bass player. I really liked the sound right away--it has a bluesy feel, very soulful. Listening to a lot of music as an engineer, I could tell right away that the vocals were hot, there’s a talented cellist which is unique, and the drums blew me away too. I knew I had to join the band right away. They made me get naked though(all laughs). Jessika: We had the initiation. Melissa: If you call “getting naked” taking of your underwear. Jessika, do you play anything besides the cello in the band? Jessika: Well, one time (laughs) on “Fall Back” the producer wanted a piano in there, and so we came up with this piano part, but I’m not very good at the piano; I can play sheet music, but I can’t write a part, so she (Melissa) came up with the whole part, but I played the right hand and she played the left hand at the same time, and that’s how we recorded it. Melissa: Cuz neither one of us knew had to coordinate both hands (laughs) Jessika: Good enough to sound like a real piano player. But in the band, I just play the cello. I thought about maybe playing the bassoon, cuz I know how to play the bassoon. I thought that’d be cool to bust out the bassoon on a couple songs, but they’re hard to find to even rent, so… Markus: You know Luke plays a mean skin flute. (all laughs) Do you ever get pissed when people spell “cello” with an “h?” Jessika: I think that’s so funny, or they don’t know what a “cellist” is, like, ‘you’re a cello player.’ I use an electric cello, it’s kind of like art work--it’s see through and it’s crazy--so some people don’t even know what it is, and I’m surprised every time. I’m like, ‘whoa.’ Melissa: On top of that too, sometimes when people have listened to our music, just some comments in general, people don’t know the sound--because of the way she plays it. She doesn’t play it low like a cello, she’s going lead, you know, so they either thinks it’s a violin or a fiddle guitar (laughs). But it’s fun for us to be like “guitar fiddle?” What kind of a show do you guys bring to the stage? Melissa: Sometimes we joke around on stage, or if we’re playing a harder song we’ll bump into each other on stage or whatever--I usually leave her (Jessika) alone, she’s all in her cello bubble. There’s always high energy though, even when we’re playing mellow songs. We give it our all in the live shows. Luke: I think we’re definitely a live band. Michael Overa said of you guys “A band, any band should never be this hard to explain. Or maybe more should be.” How do you respond to that, and the endless attempt these days to fit a unique sound like yours into a specific genre? Markus: It’s always tough, you know. The first question anyone always asks you is, ‘oh who do you sound like?’ and nobody likes to throw themselves into a specific type of genre and peg yourself as ‘this’ and we are definitely not that band. We come hard, we come soft, we come loud, we come crazy, we come…you know, whatever. We have so many influences, that it is what it is. The only way that you ever really know is just to come experience it and decide for yourself what you think it sounds like. But in a nutshell it is just like Britney Spears (laughs). Melissa: If you had to peg it (laughs). But that’s really more of Luke’s influence really. Luke: I just like her legs. Jessika: Someone once asked, ‘what do they sound like?’ Then somebody said, ‘a mix between Dave Mathews Band and Evanescence,’ and someone else was like, ‘ how does that even happen?’ If you had to do a Conan O’Brien “if they married” skit of your sound, who would it be? I mean what the hell kind of band are you? Markus: (laughs) It would definitely be at least a three-way. Jessika: I’d have to say, if Tila Tequila and Dave Mathews Band had a musical baby it’d be us. Melissa: Only if Carter Buford went first and last. (laughs) Markus: I’d have to say if Korn and Britney Spears had a baby (laughs). Jessika: Yo-yo Ma and Soundgarden (laughs). Melissa: That would never happen. Yo-yo Ma’s standards are way too high to hook up with Soundgarden Jessika: This is what makes it kind of hard for us. Like every time we get a show at a new place they put us with girl fronted bands of any kind of genre. It’s always random. It could be heavy metal, it could be folk girls singing in a choir. Then once we play a show at the venue they’re like, ‘whoa, maybe we should put em with something else.’ (laughs) And then we got put with punk and like hard rock-- Melissa: Which is cool. Jessika: Yeah, and that worked. We played at this place that was like PUNK, like moshpits, called the Stashpot, and they loved us. But then there’s fifty year old women that love us and little kids who are like 11 who love us, too. It’s just so random. As a local band, what are your plans for shows in the city and the surrounding area? Melissa: I’d like to plan a college fall tour, encompassing Washington definitely, bring it home to where the heart is you know, Oregon and California, maybe even Idaho too. Luke: Our focus was really to build a fan base for a little bit too, just to get some notoriety. We wanted to make sure that if we tour we have fans to back it up or to bring with us. Melissa: We’ve got fans all over the state now which is great. The only thing I can really say is that there is really awesome music in Seattle, and there are great bands that are on indie labels here, but there are also awesome bands that are not and I would suggest to readers to maybe take out a magazine or the Stranger and do the globe thing, the “where am I gonna put my finger” and just go out, just check out some bands because there are some really awesome ones and I know because I’ve played with em. The scene is really good. It’s found itself. I’m so excited now because there’s so much great stuff happening. Luke: I agree, there are a lot of bands, like us with such diverse influences, and that’s the beauty of the Seattle scene; there’s so much influence that it all combines into single bands that are just really creative and interesting, and I love the music scene out here.

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mastcomm · 4 years

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7 Classical Music Concerts to See in N.Y.C. This Weekend

Our guide to the city’s best classical music and opera happening this weekend and in the week ahead.

‘AGRIPPINA’ at the Metropolitan Opera (Feb. 6, 7:30 p.m.; through March 7). Handel’s early Venetian opera arrives at the Met in a production by David McVicar, and with an all-star cast. Joyce DiDonato takes the title role, with Kate Lindsey as Nerone, Iestyn Davies as Ottone, Matthew Rose as Claudio, Duncan Rock as Pallante and Brenda Rae as Poppea. Harry Bicket conducts. 212-362-6000, metopera.org

AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA at Carnegie Hall (Jan. 31, 8 p.m.). How many orchestras would come up with a Beethoven tribute concert without any works by Beethoven in it? Not many, but the American Symphony revels in being different. Leon Botstein conducts Spohr’s “Historical Symphony,” Reger’s “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Beethoven,” Liszt’s “Fantasy on Motifs From Beethoven’s Ruins of Athens” and Ustvolskaya’s Piano Concerto. Lucas Debargue is the soloist. And if you want some actual Beethoven, Botstein and his orchestra can walk you through the Symphony No. 5 at Symphony Space on Sunday at 4 p.m. 212-247-7800, carnegiehall.org

DORIC STRING QUARTET at Weill Recital Hall (Feb. 6, 7:30 p.m.). The Doric is one of the most accomplished young string quartets around, which is saying something at a time when we’re inundated with them. Alex Redington, Jonathan Stone, Hélène Clément and John Myerscough play works by two composers they have recorded to considerable acclaim — Haydn and Schubert — and give the United States premiere of Brett Dean’s String Quartet No. 3, “Hidden Agendas.” 212-247-7800, carnegiehall.org

SUSAN GRAHAM at Alice Tully Hall (Feb. 4, 7:30 p.m.). With Malcolm Martineau at the keyboard, Graham weaves songs by Grieg, Strauss, Fauré, Mahler and many more composers through the eight songs of Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und -leben.” Be sure to hear that even if you somehow manage to find a ticket to the other big vocal recital, on Friday evening at Zankel Hall, in which Peter Mattei sings Schubert’s “Winterreise.” 212-721-6500, lincolncenter.org

[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]

NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC at David Geffen Hall (Feb. 5-6, 7:30 p.m.; through Feb. 11). All power to the Philharmonic for its Project 19, a multiyear effort to commission new works from 19 women composers, in honor of the passage of the 19th Amendment. The first fruit is Nina C. Young’s “Tread Softly,” appearing here along with Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Mozart’s “Great” Mass. Carter Brey is the cello soloist, and the vocalists in the Mozart include Miah Persson and Nicholas Phan. 212-875-5656, nyphil.org

ORCHESTRA OF ST. LUKE’S at Carnegie Hall (Feb. 6, 8 p.m.). Baroque music from this orchestra and its principal conductor, Bernard Labadie, who deliver two works by Handel and four by Vivaldi, including two settings of the “Salve Regina.” They are joined by the violinist Daniel Hope and the contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux. 212-247-7800, carnegiehall.org

CAROLINE SHAW at Miller Theater (Feb. 6, 8 p.m.). Shaw’s music is plenty familiar now, so we might see this composer portrait as a celebration of her recent success. There’s a nod to the past with performances by the Attacca Quartet of three string quartets, “Punctum,” “Entr’acte” and “Blueprint,” two of which are featured on a widely heralded recording on New Amsterdam/Nonesuch. And there’s a nod to the future: In addition to joining So Percussion for her song cycle “Narrow Sea,” Shaw performs songs created with that quartet for a future recording project, “Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part.” 212-854-7799, millertheatre.com

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londontheatre · 7 years

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As a huge admirer of the music of Howard Goodall and having seen several previous productions I was very much looking forward to another opportunity to see this evocative musical adaptation of Melvyn Bragg’s 1969 powerful first novel in the trilogy of the Tallentire family. The Hired Man starts at the turn of the 19th century, painting the harsh and difficult times when men & women would travel around seeking ever diminishing work as agricultural labourers simply to earn barely enough to live. It charts the immense changes brought about by the demise of farm work as young men swapped a life of fresh air and open fields for the ‘Blackrock’ of coal mines under the sea. Many men rarely saw any day light at all during winter months and the work and conditions were filthy and very dangerous. World War One added further horrors upon the already struggling poor and we see how the union movement began seeking to protect and improve the lives of working men and women. Women held families together eking out meagre wages with little company from husbands. And so the scene is set for stress and strife for the Tallentire family.

We meet John Tallentire at Cockermouth hiring fair in Cumbria in 1898. He is desperate to find a home for his newly pregnant wife and himself and ‘takes a coin’ from Crossbridge farmer, Pennington. Tallentire is sensitively played by Ifan Gwilym-Jones, completely capturing a working man’s pride in his job which though admiral, has the negative consequence of making him old before his time. This newly-wed couple become middle-aged in attitude in just a few months. Into this scenario comes restless maverick Pennington’s son Jackson, played by Luke Kelly, who every woman in the village is enraptured by including John’s wife Emily. Determined as she is to resist his charms she is gradually worn down by the monotony of life and against her better judgement she eventually gives in.

Rebecca Gilliland plays Emily perfectly. First full of joy and excitement in building a new life with her husband, then full of embarrassment and regret for not being strong enough to resist the advances of Jackson, and in Act II and 15 years older, strong-willed enough to insist on working at the mill and fiercely protective of her family. Gilliland and Gwilym-Jones are well matched and vocally both rise to the vocal demands of Goodall’s beautiful score.

Gwilym-Jones is particularly vocally impressive in his first act realisation of betrayal in ‘What A Fool I’ve Been’. Gilliland was born to sing this score and her beautiful voice soars, haunting and compelling throughout, particularly in her act one song of realisation of cause and consequence ‘If I Could’. Their duets ‘Now For The First Time’ at the beginning of their married life and the very beautiful ‘No Choir Of Angels’ at the end, are truly affecting and poignant.

Other strong performances are from Jonathan Carlton, charismatic and vocally strong as John’s brother Seth Tallentire; Jack McNeill as John and Emily’s headstrong young teenage son Harry Tallentire who goes to war against his mother’s wishes; and Christopher Lyne who plays Pennington and several other older characters over the span of some 2 decades!. Matthew Chase, Laurel Dougall and Lori Mclare give notable and strong performances in the ensemble, standing out for all the right reasons.

One of the most wonderful things about Goodall’s musical writing is the sense of history and community he evokes. His music is earthy, rich and vibrant, drawn from traditional English folk music and tradition and feels deeply ‘connected ‘and strong both in melody and rhythm. From the outset, it creates an immediate sense of community and determination as we hear the opening song in the distance, which then builds until the community is at full throttle in front of us. Goodall’s’ score is at its most lush in the ensemble numbers where he encapsulates all shades of human emotion from determination and despair to rage and joy. Whether at the hiring fair, hunting or drinking in Act 1 or at the gutsy union meeting, in the trenches or down a mine trembling in fear, his music powerfully conveys the requisite emotion.

The ensemble singing is wonderful throughout so it is, therefore, a matter of regret that some solo and duet singing is unfortunately hampered by a lack of projection. Some singers are drowned by the fine small 3-piece ensemble playing at the side of the space under the stairs – Richard Bates as Musical Director and on piano, Sophia Goode on violin, and Dominic Veall on cello. There is also a lot of dialogue above underscore and it was honestly very difficult to hear much of what was said as well as some of what was sung. If there is no amplification I wonder whether the band could have been placed at the back of the stage rather than on the same level as the cast? Something to ponder on for the future as it seems to be a niggly issue for many of the wonderful productions here at the Union Theatre.

Brendan Matthew’s direction and Charlotte Tooth’s choreography of the horrors of the war in the trenches and also down in the coal mines in Act 2 were particularly moving and very sensitively and well done indeed. However, it is genuinely puzzling that absolutely no one wears shoes throughout the entire show, especially as it spans nearly two decades and covers farming, mining and war. It simply looks peculiar and was particularly strange when Seth returns on crutches from war with a prosthetic leg with a boot on, yet is still bare footed on his undamaged leg! It would be understandable to perhaps start with no shoes, but as they all work, earn money and become less poor, surely the first thing anyone would buy is footwear of some sort?! It was unnecessarily distracting.

It also has to be asked why everyone is wearing exactly the same clothes 15 years on! A change of blouse, shirt, skirt, waistcoats surely would have been possible? It’s also very confusing when characters who have supposedly died, appear in the next scene as a different character but still wearing the clothes of their dead character! It was noticeable that the oldest and most experienced cast member did make an effort to change his costume and look! Niggles about sound, feet and costumes aside it was overall a wonderful evening!

This is a vibrant and committed production of The Hired Man. A wonderful British musical by two great writers, directed with very much love and performed by a talented young cast. Definitely worth a visit to Sasha Regan’s wonderful Union Theatre!

Review by Catherine Françoise

Based on the novel by Melvyn Bragg, THE HIRED MAN centres around the lives of a simple country family facing the turn of the century and the darker times that lay before them. When love, misguided affairs and war come into play, this makes for a stunning and romantic score filled with unforgettable melodies from one of Britain’s most popular musical theatre composers Howard Goodall.

Following the success of last year’s Howard Goodall season, the Union Theatre are thrilled to be bringing this beautiful tale of love and loss to life.

CAST John Tallentire – Ifan Gwilym-Jones Emily Tallentire – Rebecca Gilliland Jackson Pennington – Luke Kelly May – Kara Taylor Alberts Harry – Jack McNeill Sally Wrangham – Megan Armstrong Isaac Tallentire – Sam Peggs Seth Tallentire – Jonathan Carlton Pennington – Christopher Lyne

Ensemble: Matthew Chase, Laurel Dougall, Aaron Davey, Rebecca Withers, Nick Britain and Lori Mclare

CREATIVES Producer – Sasha Regan Director – Brendan Matthew Choreographer – Charlotte Tooth Musical Director/Orchestrations – Richard Bates Production Designer – Justin Williams Assistant Designer – Jonny Rust Stage Manager – Martin Brady Lighting Designer – Stuart Glover Fight Director/Dialect Coach – Conor Neaves Casting Director – Adam Braham

PERFORMANCES 19th July – 12th August 2017 http://ift.tt/X5izhB

http://ift.tt/2gZFQbm LondonTheatre1.com

#IFTTT #LondonTheatre1.com

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nxrecords-blog · 7 years

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NX Mixtape 2017

Presenting the NX Records Mixtape 2017, our fifth annual mixtape giving you a taste of 30+ brand new tracks from the best that Goldsmiths has to offer, creatively weaved together by La Leif. Over an hour of free, downloadable, new music.

Goldsmiths alum La Leif is an incredible composer and producer, plays in the duo ORKA as well as the Nomadic Female DJ Troupe and co-runs a collective for female and non-binary music producers/sound enthusiasts called Omnii. She was the perfect choice to mix together this year’s amazing selection of new music and she hasn’t let us down with our most exciting mix yet.

TRACKLIST

Tracks featured: 1. Luxes- Birds 2. Remi- Grief 3. Gillie Ione- Clouds Today 4. Mar- Who 5. Genevieve Dawson- Running 6. Charles Vaughan- Green Leaves 7. Francesca Ter-Burg- Into the Woods 8. Gaspar Narby- Drawing Lines 9. Tony Njoku- Once Again 10. Fille- Queens 11. Funeral for Bird- Over Now 12. YANNA A- My Love (runs from me) 13. Journeyperson- In the Business Lounge 14. Jay Hammond- Silky White Skin 15. Rosie Everett- 60 16. Calluna- The Drop 17. NX Panther- Oh Industry 18. Insect in Plexiglas- Agressive Adoration 19. Worm Hears- Only Wanted 20. Penny Churchill- ATA 21. Gus White- Ballroom 22. bRAt- Ur Heart 23. John García Rueda- City Trails 24. Sian Miriam- Paid 25. D Parks- The Pain We Feel 26. Hol- Best Dad 27. Ordinary Noise- Pale Blue Dot (You Are Here) 28. VUDA- Bateman 29. Keúk- Water 30. CYANA- Constant MRI (feat Sam Wilkinson) 31. Amy Hollinrake- Fade Into This 32. Catherine Okada- Fix This up 33. Megan Tuck- Let Me Apologise

Artists in detail

LUXES Luxes is a London based music duo, formed by current Goldsmiths BMus Popular Music students Marco Spaggiari and Penny Churchill. Both engineers, producers and musicians, they start to collaborate on various studio based projects in November 2016. Their main aim is to explore sound in a very textural visual sense and like to create ambient sonic worlds.

REMI

19-year-old singer/songwriter from Bexleyheath currently studying his first year of popular music at Goldsmiths. Soul/R&B/Gospel-inflected music.

GILLIE IONE

Gillie Ione is a producer/ singer-songwriter, centering around an experimental pop sound, with an undercurrent of folk influenced narrative. Originally from rural South Wales.

MAR

GENEVIEVE DAWSON

Genevieve Dawson is a singer-songwriter originally from Edinburgh and now based in South-east London. At the heart of her songs is an arresting honesty, a directness and warmth that has caught the attention of London’s alt-folk scene.

CHARLES VAUGHAN

producer, musician, performer, DJ, programmer and technician and current Goldsmiths Music Computing student. Charles has been producing music for 6 years now, first being signed at 16 introducing EDM, and now moving on to more intricate electronic music, hip hop and also ambient and experimental music.

FRANCESCA TER-BERG

Francesca Ter-Berg is a cellist, composer and sound recordest based in London. She is one of the leading Klezmer cellists of her generation and has studied with internationally renowned teachers including Ahmed Mukhtar, Tcha Limberger, Dr. Alan Bern and Dr Jyotsna Srikanth. She has collaborated with many of the UK’s top artists including acclaimed folk singer Sam Lee, The Unthanks, Talvin Singh, Portico and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Francesca has recently completed her Masters Degree in Popular Music at Goldsmiths where she started developing her interests in film composition, phonography and electroacoustic composition, resulting in her developing a live performance approach that encompasses some of these elements with playing the cello.

TONY NJOKU

Tony is a British-Nigerian electronic music producer and singer-songwriter from London. His self-penned and produced songs have been described as ‘strikingly evocative soundscapes, managing to make even the shortest pop songs sound like epic adventures.’

FILLE

Fille (‘girl’ in French) is a third-year Goldsmiths pop music student originally from Northern Ireland, a project started when she lived in Marseille - becoming influenced by French electronic music there, producing her own tracks after mainly playing classical music before. She likes to merge her classical background with electro and pop influences and also composes music for film.

FUNERAL FOR BIRD

An 18 year old singer/songwriter. It’s indie folk, but with elements of electronic and and rock, and more ecclectic influences from soul, ambient music and hip hop.

YANNA A

DARK/ALTERNATIVE, 20 yr old songwriter/musician based in North London. Currently studying at Goldsmiths and influenced by artists like Pj Harvey, Tori Amos and Hole.

JAY HAMMOND

Singer, musician and visual artist using foley and manipulating sounds of found objects alongside creative vocal techniques. ROSIE EVERETT

Starting as an acoustic singer / songwriter Rosie Everett’s soulful voice has always been at the forefront of the mix. Even as her sound has developed we can still expect to be captivated by her melancholic melody lines and deeply emotional lyrics. Now creating mesmerising dark pop, Rosie’s voice demands your attention by pulling onyour heartstrings and singing into your ear with a catchy and beautiful sound. Her Debut E.P. ‘A Change of Perspective’ is now available on Spotify and iTunes

NX PANTHER

NX Panther is the pseudonym of singer, songwriter, rapper and visual artist Alia Pathan. Fusing hip-hop/grime with world samples and home-made beats about cinema, dead technology, legacies and sightings of a mythical panther.

INSECT IN PLEXIGLAS

I am a 19 year old songwriter from Belfast currently living in South East London, I like making songs in my bedroom using old keyboards and cassette tapes.

WORM HEARS

A Three piece queer punk/noise pop band based in South East London, influenced by bands like Beat Happening, Pixies and Weezer. Writing songs about a lot of different things but often they are at least partly influenced by experiences of growing up as a transgender person.

PENNY CHURCHILL

A conceptual Producer, Artist, Sound creator (Musician?). Explores and uses songwriting as a medium, platform to reflect and create the internal thoughts of the ‘glass thinker’/human as a vessel. Their purpose is to create sonic worlds which bring to life the storyline narratives which their lyrics carry. Penny creates surreal moments within the music as a way of reflecting how thoughts, ideas and processing may sound in a musical context connecting the music and the body together in performance. Music as an extension and amplifier of the limbs, reflecting sonically the thoughts encountered by a human being.

GUS WHITE

Growing up in a small village in wiltshire, Gus began his career as a choir boy. He studied sonic arts at Queens University in Belfast and is influenced by Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake.

bRAt

“Classically trained musician writing pop music”

John García Rueda

Colombian producer, improviser and tiple performer exploring cultural heritage from contemporaneity. He has composed music and designed sound for film documentaries, dance works and multimedia installations.

SIAN MIRIAM

From the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales, a combination of darkly comic and openly emotional stories are brought to life through song and spoken word in both Welsh and English. The focus is on honest and brave direct storytelling developed through insecurity. Unaccompanied singing is integral to this work. However a string quartet enhances the various textures, dissonances and clashes in the stories - but the empty space of just one voice tells bold truths.

D PARKS

Until now, D has been sweet, humble, trusting, passionate, patient and kind. Now that she has finally grown up, been through shit, opened her eyes, D is now officially vexed. In her music, she reveals some home truths, empowers, and stir up some emotions, using her creativity as the tool.

HOL

Hol is the project of Luke Jackson, working within the creative community of South East London. His songs explore stories of confusing, lonely romance with explicit sexuality and blunt introspection.

ORDINARY NOISE

Colchester indie 4 piece, as heard on BBC 2, BBC 6, and BBC Introducing Essex and Suffolk.

VUDA

VUDA is a singer, songwriter and producer based in East London. She fuses electronic synth sounds with trip-hop inspired beats to create haunting and ethereal pieces of work. She has been likened to Banks, FKA TWIGS and Lana Del Rey and her visuals and her live shows are just as haunting and mysterious as her music. VUDA has also been writing for other artists over the last few years and has written four short films to accompany her solo debut EP VOLUME I to be screened this Summer. She will be releasing VOLUME II this Autumn.

KEÚK

British born Kyle Fairhurst AKA Keúk is the pseudonym of 21 year old Goldsmiths student in London. These are experimental projects inspired by the juxtaposition of electronics and nature. Before studying Creative Writing, Keúk has been writing and producing their own tracks since the age of 14. Even though ‘Water’ was recorded on a phone, it has recently received airplay on BBC Radio Introducing in 4 different locations. Keúk is in the middle of recording their debut EP named ‘Vessels’.

CYANA

This is CYANA’s first piece exploring sound design and is inspired by her epilepsy and the disorientation pre and during having a seizure. The sounds are from the machines in hospital used after having a seizure (EEG machine) and the harmonies and form play with the confusion and dream state the brain goes into to recover after the ordeal of a seizure.

AMY HOLLINRAKE

Vocalist and songwriter.

Session vocalist.

City University BMus.

Goldsmiths University MMus (current).

Debut EP ‘fade into this’ 2016.

CATHERINE OKADA

Catherine Okada, an independent artist, supported James Blake for numerous dates in 2011 in London and Japan, as well as collaborating with Airhead on “Callow”, featured on his debut album “For Years”. Expect to hear scatterings of nostalgia and strong hooks married with contemporary, alternative songwriting, often with dark lyrical undertones and powerful imagery. Having recently self-released her debut EP “Hourglass” in 2016, she has more releases lined up in the year ahead.

MEGAN TUCK

Megan Tuck is a singer-songwriter based in London, who’s powerful vocals are accompanied by her band and electronics which are also inspired by her EDM background. She also records and produces her own alternative pop tracks, while her band sets have more of a rocky vibe. Inspired by a vast amount of genres and people, her influences range from Beyonce and Lady Gaga to FKA Twigs and Bon Iver.

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