Artistic Director, Michael Begg, disassembles the individual tracks for this highlight track from the Arise From The Twilight sessions. Two stirs in the alchemical cauldron and this beauty emerges.

October, extended studio remix

Arctic Night (Live InSpace 05 - Nov - 21)

In September 2021, Black Glass performed throughout the evening of the launch of a new performing and gallery space at Edinburgh's Queen's Hall.
Electronic sets were interspersed with promenades through the audience and four channel field recording works. The closing section, Faith, captures the group fully locked into each other in this most poised improvisation.

Be Mine In Patience (Faith Section live)

Five minute excerpt of The Alchemists by Black Glass Ensemble
The work was premiered at The Queen's Hall Edinburgh on February 13th 2020 and was broadcast the same evening on BBC Radio 3 Unclassified.

Michael Begg: scores, data, keys, electronic erosions, shells, e-bow autoharp
Ben Ponton: field recordings, electronic forensics, pebbles, lap steel guitar
Aisling O’Dea: violin
Julia Lungu: violin
Clea Friend: cello, voice
Neil Cuthbertson: trumpet
Jen Cuthbertson: French horn
Douglas Caskie: tuned and bespoke percussion

The Alchemists. BBC R3 edit

May 10th 2020 was the date when the Black Glass Ensemble was scheduled to perform with special guest Colin Potter at The Queen's Hall, Edinburgh.

The ongoing lockdown arising from the Covid-19 pandemic has put all future plans on hold but we wanted to mark the moment nonetheless.

B minor is a musical key associated with patience, and solitude.

All players, along with Colin Potter, have therefore recorded, in isolation, small fragments - notes on the B minor triad - which have been arranged into a brief musical embrace by Black Glass's musical director, Michael Begg.

We offer this in the spirit of patience and fortitude and wish you all the very best in this singular moment.

Stay strong. Stay safe.

Michael Begg - modified weather engine / arrangement
Ben Ponton - 'sferics' / bottleneck / Monotron bagpipe
Colin Potter - processed 12 string guitar
Clea Friend - cello
Aisling O'Dea - violin
Julia Lungu - violin
Jen Cuthbertson - French horn
Neil Cuthbertson - trumpet
Douglas Caskie - vibraphone

B Minor :: patience

Prior to the 20th century, and the emergent dominance of equal temperament, the association of emotions with particular musical keys was common practice. 

The Black Glass Ensemble recently revisited this historical alignment of sound and emotion to offer a brief ‘embrace’ in B Minor - the key associated with patience. 

The initial embrace, featuring the 8 musicians of the Black Glass Ensemble and guest Colin Potter, with whom they had been due to perform prior to the Covid19 lockdown, was well received. Consequently, Black Glass sought to widen the reach of their embrace to other musicians to make a more comprehensive piece of work.

The response was unprecedented. 104 musicians returned 247 individual musical tracks to be mixed into this present arrangement.

The full 38’ 50” minute work, “Be Mine in Patience: an Embrace in B minor” is made freely available in the sole hope that this extended embrace may help in some small way to nurture strength, fortitude and comfort.

Black Glass Ensemble and Friends
Be Mine in Patience: an Embrace in B minor
Arranged and produced by Michael Begg

Cover Image by Ben Ponton, used by permission of Sue Cannon

The Black Glass Ensemble:
Michael Begg
Douglas Caskie
Jen Cuthbertson
Neil Cuthbertson
Clea Friend
Julia Lungu
Aisling O'Dea
Ben Ponton

Contributors:
Tommy Aashildrød
The Alaska None
David Allison
Christopher Alvarado
Mkl Anderson
Carsten Aniksdal
Artificial Memory Trace
Matt Atkins
Nigel Ayers
Simon Balestrazzi
Stephen Bishop
Sergey Bulychev
Matt Burnett
Dave Burraston
Ed Carter
Kim Cascone
Don Clemenza
cl0v3n
Chris Connelly
Dane Law
Thomas Dimuzio
Pablo Diserens
Anthony Donovan
John Duncan
Kate Ellis
Steve Fors
Clive Graham
Scot Jenerik
Jean Johnson
Dan Joseph
Evan Henderson
Robert Henke
May Haliburton
Mark Hand
Jim Haynes
Liz Helman
Jack Hertz
Kathy Hinde
Marc Hurtado
France Jobin
Andreas Karperyd
Katpis Tapes
Fergus Kelly
Julia Kent
Jon Lee
Edvard Graham Lewis
Andrew Liles
Malcolm Lindsay
Marco Lucchi
Patrick Tubin McGinley
Grey Malkin
Robert Mazrim
Radboud Mens
Emmanuel Mieville
Abul Mogard
James Murray
Philippe Neau
Adi Newton
B J Nilsen
Mike Nolan
nula,cc
Aisling O’Dea
Orphax
Mike Orr
Chris Osborne
Daniel O’Sullivan
Ivy O’Sullivan
p_fish_mani
Filippo Panichi
Lee Paterson
PBK
Ben Ponton
Colin Potter
Nicola Quiriconi
Audrey Redpath
Ivan Ristić
Carla Santana
Paul sawford
Janek Schaefer
Second Harmonic Generation
Simon Šerc
Tim Shaw
Chandra Shukla
Clodagh Simonds
Steven R. Smith
Jos Smolders
sp3ct3rs
Julia Spooner
Mayor Stubbs
Bill Thompson
VIVIB
Frans de Waard
Warm Digits
Simon Whetham
Gary Wilkinson
Pete Woodhead
James Wyness
Zach Zinn

Be Mine in Patience: an Embrace in B minor

The Black Glass Ensemble reveals new music for the anthropocene in the margins of classical and experimental music. Combining the cream of Scotland’s chamber players with longstanding pioneers of the UK’s avant-garde electronic underground, the result of these liminal explorations is an emotionally resonant new music that challenges the senses, confounds expectations and breaks open new sonic ground.

Black Glass was formed in 2018 by New Music Scotland award winner, and Queen’s Hall associate artist in residence, Michael Begg. The ensemble has been developed with support from Creative Scotland, HMUK and the Hope Scott Trust.

Central to Black Glass’s vision is solastalgia, the term combining solace and pain, coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2005 to articulate the sense of existential distress caused by living through environmental change. In it’s innovative use of technology, and palette of bespoke software instruments, the ensemble creatively imbues their work with the mechanisms through which the knowledge of environmental decline comes to us; sonified data streams, satellite and weather monitoring systems; low frequency atmospheric receivers; field recordings; resonance audiograms, and more.

The Black Glass Ensemble are: Michael Begg (scores, samples, data feeds, erosions); Ben Ponton (receivers, recordings, forensics); Clea Friend (cello); Aisling O’Dea (violin); Julia Lungu (violin); Neil Cuthbertson (trumpet); Jen Cuthbertson (French horn); Douglas Caskie (tuned and bespoke percussion).

NOTES
Michael Begg won the NMS Award in 2018 for his work, TITAN, a Cryptic commission for Sonica; Mexico’s CCD Radio named him “one of the most important experimental composers of our time”
Ben Ponton is a founding member of Newcastle’s :zoviet*france: who the Ambient Music Guide refer to as “the ultimate cult electronic band”
Aisling O’Dea is the principal violinist with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Clea Friend is one of Scotland’s foremost cellists, and performs regularly with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Royal National Orchestra of Scotland
~
Banner photograph by Mike Wilkinson
Profile Collage by 'the engineer'

Black Glass Ensemble

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