Hi everyone,

On Tuesday 2nd dec, London Sinfonietta had the first part to their 40th Birthday Anniversay at the Queen Elizebeth Hall, Southbank. With performances by Harrison Birtwistle, Christian Mason, Lorry Grove and John Adams as well as a live DJ performance by Mira Calix after the concert and an animation installation in collaboration with Kingston University Animation students in the QEH foyer.

Will Crook of the Culture Collective also painted the 40th Birthday Logo onto the wall in the foyer at QEH, and the animation students created a wall for messages which the audience were able to write and draw their thoughts...

Amah Asomani, Street Genius has taken many beautiful photographs of the rehearsals for the concert on Tuesday. Here are just a few of the photos, showing the London Sinfonietta musicians rehearsing Cortege by Harrison Birtwistle.

The photographs by Amah of the rehearsal, together with archive photographs of the London Sinfonietta's musicians and composers over the 40 years from the ensembles opening in 1968, are being projected as part of the London Sinfonietta's 40th Birthday event on 13th dec.

Some members of the Culture Collective and Street Genius also performed with Harmonicas and percussion in a new composition by Christian Mason, In the Midst of the Sonorous Island, commisioned especially for the London Sinfonietta's 40th Birthday concert.

Here we are in the rehearsals earlier in the day, 36 musicians and non-musicians took part and performed from the audience in the piece.

More blogs to come . . .

Creative Session

Hi everyone,



This week, we rehearsed the pieces we are working on, setting the material and beginning to define the structure of the pieces. Memory, Throw, Bursts, Dirge, Outerspace, Klang, Swarm, Crescendo and Tutti are the pieces we are playing in our 10 min performance and 4 min live BBC broadcast.

We are playing 4 themes in C, Bb and Eb throughout the piece that thread each movement together with the different instruments playing.

We are also looking at different ways of using percussion instruments, hitting the gong with and in a bowl of water to effect the sound vibrations when playing ti. Playing the casio keyboard with different sound levels within the piece, and playing the piano, on the keys, as well as on the strings below the keyboard, and using the foot pedals at different times for different effects in the sound.

Will and Katie are experimenting with the visuals, playing with different ways of exploring moving images and the live dance movements with the live camera and projection on the wall. Using beams of light and colour gels as part of creating live and moving images that change and transform as the dance moves in and out of the camera screen.

Next week we are working with Mira Calix and the London Sinfonietta players whom are joining us in our composition piece for the 13th dec.

Text / Video / Website

Hi everyone,

Tickets are on sale now by text message!

Text LNDSNF + your name to 82023 and your reply text is your ticket!

Take a look at our promotional video, edited by Rachel and Katie, for the London Sinfonietta's 40th Birthday event!

   

And have a look at the website, designed by Will, for more details about the event at

www.lndsnf-40.com

See you on 13th dec!
More creative blog pages to come :)

Programme for 13th dec

Hi everyone,

With three rooms to move between, the yellow room, the foyer, and the blue room there is a really exciting programme of compositions and world premiere pieces for the audience and radio listeners to enjoy! Here is the programme for the 13th dec London Sinfonietta's 40th Birthday...

Yellow room

LS Culture Collective and Street Genius (world premiere) 9pm
Mira Calix - after 12pm

Blue room 9.30pm

Dai Fujikura Eternal Escape for solo cello
Vinko Globokar Res/As/Ex/Inspirer for trombone

The foyer Live on Radio BBC 3 10pm

LS Culture Collective and Street Genius
Mira Calix new work for solo cello and electronics (world premiere)
John Woolrich fragment for solo saxophone
Dai Fujikura Eternal Escape foe solo cello
Anna Meredith new work for trombone and electronics
Jordan Hunt Lambic Stutter for flute, saxophone, trombone, cello and keyboard (world premiere of new version)
Will Gregory Interference for solo saxophone and electronics
John Cage Radio music for 1 - 8 performers, each at 1 radio performed by LS, Culture Collective and Street Genius

The performances are happening at set times at the event, however the audience are free to move between the three rooms throughout the evening. There is limited access in certain rooms and we strongly recommend arriving early for the best experience of the event,

We look forward to seeing you there!

Creative Session

Hi everyone,

We had a great third rehearsal with the Culture Collective and Street Genius. This week we were rehearsing in St Andrew's Church and we were joined by photographer Tracy Fahy, a fine artist, reportage photographer and photographic facilitator, who is mentoring Amah in photography for the event. Check out Tracey's work on her website at www.traceyfahy.com

The photos on this blog are by Amah Asomani, Street Genius.

We worked this week developing improvisations from the words we found when listening to the music with Mira Calix, also adding in actions to the music that can refelct the nature of the music.





We played with percussion instruments, a gong that Antoine has from China, and a mini keyboard from Rachel. Timo plays his guitar with a bow for some pieces, and we also played with using the bow with the gong.

Some of the improvisations extended into longer pieces and some improvisations were really short, each varying in dynamics and feeling to the piece.

Will experimented with live visual effects with the camera and projector that worked well with moving dance and light in front of the screen.



We also made a 1 min promotional video this week for the 40th Birthday coming soon.

Have a look at our website too for more info on the event, go to www.ldnsnf-40.com
Keep watching . . .

Creative Session with Mira Calix

Hi all,

For our second creative session we worked with electronic artist Mira Calix. Mira is a live performer, DJ and composer for electronic music, specialising in intimate vocals with jittering beats and experimental eletronic textures. She is signed to Warp records and created three albums with them, One on One, Skimskitter and Eyes Set Against The Sun. Mira has her own band, Alexander's Annexe with pianist Sarah Nicholls and sound designer David Sheppard, she has collaborated with the London Sinfonietta and recently been commissioned by Opera North.


We are really happy to be collaborating and working with Mira in our work with the London Sinfonietta and look forward to our future creative meetings with her soon. You can hear her music on her myspace page www.myspace.com/you_could_feel_the_sky

Also check out her website at www.miracalix.com

As a starting point for the creative session Antoine prepared a score for us to explore as a means to structure our improvisations. The score had a layout of 20 bars in which each player has a different instruction to follow of the same symbols. + is to play, - is to be silent, and = is to continue your previous instruction.



We looked at the dynamics and shape of the structure and decided to emphsise dynamic qualities with +, and continuous sustained qualities with = to see if the sounds and movements were affected withing the structure.
We also experimented having some one leading the improvisation as we had been exploring last week. This worked well with the dance leading as it gave a focal point for everyone to play from, we felt that this was a good way to bring the group and different art forms together when we are improvising.




In this session we also brought with us a 15 sec clip of a piece of music that inspires us and we enjoy. We played our clips and then said a few things about why we had chosen these pieces. Our initial idea for bringing these clips was into the piece as bursts of appropriated music.

With discussions with Mira we had some really exciting thoughts about the words and phrase that came out of why we had chosen the pieces.

The words are:

Hope

British racing Green

Suspension

Circus

Skyline Violet

Celebration

Serendipity Chaos

Journey

Bursts

Unexpected

Midnight Blue

Out of these words we felt that they had an overall theme of joy, happiness and celebration which went really well with our event for the London Sinfonietta's 40th Birthday. We are going to explore these ideas in our next creative session coming soon...

Creative Session

Hi everyone,

Here are the ideas from our first creative session together creating our 10 min piece for the London Sinfonietta's 40th Birthday!

We started the day with a few warm up exercises led by Jordan and then got straight into the group improvisations. Jordan was playing violin, Antoine was playing the piano, Timo was on his laptop, Katie was dancing and Amah was taking photographs.

The improvisations we were exploring were on different ideas about passing on dynamic phrasing to players in the group, this meant that as we improvising we have to be aware of each other to know who and when the phrases are being passed to you, and also to respond to each other as it happens.

The second improv was about having one player as a soloist and the other players responding to their ideas by acting as a supporting sound and movement for their piece. This improv worked well as we felt that each of us were really looking at each other and focused on the individual taking the solo as well as listening to each other as a supporting group.

The next improvisations were based on Lines and Circles and Dots. This was really exciting as they all varied in their dynamics and tempo with each variation and it was good for us to explore every instrument and dance movements, as they found different qualities in the improvisations.

We liked the idea that Amah the photographer for the piece, was part of the improvisations as well as documenting the process and taking her own photographs for the event.

Photos by Amah from this session comming soon..

See the next blog for our progress with these ideas...