Cassandra Miller: For Mira (2012)

Live performance, 8 August 2013 at nyMusikk in Oslo.

Mira Benjamin, violin

Cassandra Miller: For Mira (2012)

music we'd like to hear, 13 july 2005
catherine kontz, john lely, tim parkinson and john stephen - reed organs

john white - c major machine

music we'd like to hear, 13 july 2005
performed by laurence crane, angharad davies, rhodri davies, catherine kontz, john lely, sam mirelman, ross parfitt, tim parkinson, michael parsons, john stephen, markus trunk and john white

cornelius cardew - schooltime compositions

little tikes

Worse than nothing

Sonata for synthesiser

Conducted by Michael Collins
Commissioned & Performed by Orchestra Of The Swan
Recording & Mixing Hannah Liu

Earthly Things

Finale from Rainbow Machine.

Performed Live at Centrala Birmingham.

Just Ham // Rainbow Machine(excerpt)// Live @ Centrala, Birmingham

Concerto for Jazz-Musician & Orchestra. Composed by Alex Paxton.
2.2.2.2 4.2.3.1 2Perc.Tmp.Hp Strings 10.8.6.4.2 

Od Ody Pink'd was written for the Alex Paxton and Royal National Scottish Orchestra and recorded here by the  Alex Paxton & Puple-Tree Tapestry Orchestra  (2019)

Principals
Taylor Maclennan - Flute
Lavinia Redman - Oboe
Alexander Roberts - Clarinet
Izabela Musial - Bassoon
Gwyn Owen - Trumpet
Alex Paxton - Trombone
Lasma Taimina - Violin
Clifton Harrison - Viola
Cecilia Wyld - Cello
Gwen Reed - Bass



https://alexpaxtonmusic.com
https://alexpaxtonmusic.com/Music-for-concerts
https://alexpaxtonmusic.com/TROMBONE-and-Improvisation

Od Ody Pink'd. Concerto for Jazz-Musician & Orchestra.

I like touching people’s hands while they play music. Or I did, before the threat of Covid-19 made it potentially life-threatening rather than merely unusual. For me it’s about making a connection. I wanted to invite an audience to approach musicians and interact with their hands, caressing, stroking, tickling, touching, exploring and manipulating them for themselves. Apartment House seemed like they might just be up for this kind of thing – and to my surprise and delight, they were (although they were keen to emphasise that the piece should not damage the instruments and should encourage gentle touching!). 

I could have written some music myself, but my music’s already quite fragmented, so would anyone notice if it got a bit more cut up? I could have used a classical piece, but didn’t want this performance to be about the canon of Western music. Then I made another connection. I had been petting a small French Bulldog (thinking it was a pug) for months in the communal grass outside my building, not knowing that the dog’s owner was a composer I followed on Twitter: R. A. Moulds AKA Cork Composer (his Twitter handle at the time). Moulds’ music is completely different to mine, and quite unlike anything Apartment House would usually play – so I connected with him IRL and commissioned him to write the music for me. On 1/8/19 I wrote in my sketchbook: “Ask @corkcomposer for a piece, and use that as a basis of a piece to be manipulated, like John Baldessari’s 'Commissioned Paintings' (1969). Tell it as a story, like: I live next door to a composer but we don’t speak. This piece is to bridge the divide. Can you also bridge a divide by touching hands?”

Moulds wrote a piece called 'Up the Lee Road', which I then divided up into short loops. I wrote the story of how Moulds and I met as a way of inviting people to participate in touching the hands of the musicians. It’s a shaggy dog story about music, that also involves a dog. I made video scores for the four players, and the invited audience would read the story over the shoulders of the players (written in black above the music), with instructions to manipulate the hands of the players (written beneath in red). But the film shoot didn’t work out how I imagined. Participants struggled to read both story and instructions, and the players were very tense trying to staying together. The manipulations from the participants ended up being quite aggressive in order to be perceptible, which made it quite a confrontational—almost aggressive—experience: not what I intended. At times it resembled wrestling, whereas I wanted it to be more intimate, like Verity Standen’s 'Hug'. Reflecting on the footage after the workshop, I discovered that the ending of each performance was where the music actually worked, and I decided to use that. I extracted and transcribed my favourite bit from these recordings, then turned it into a looped open score somewhat resembling 'Music for Piano 1' (1952) by John Cage. This gave 10 minutes of music, with me telling the story live onstage as a way to invite members of the audience up on stage. A bit like a lecture performance, but perhaps more like performing programme notes, or performing a text score. It also meant I could keep an eye on the audience members, making sure they weren’t too rough with Apartment House, which was also reassuring for the players.

By the time this video would be presented, touching other people’s hands while they play has gone from a little weird to downright taboo. No one could have predicted that – and maybe this piece will never be performed again, maybe we will only ever be able to hear a sanitised version of it. But in the process of composing this piece, the connections I’ve made may last a lifetime. 

A more detailed version of this article can be found here: https://thesampler.org/news-opinion/composer/apartment-house-petting-zoo/

Listen to R. A. Moulds' (Cork Composer) music on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/r-a-moulds

Petting Zoo

~ i don’t know how to live this down ~

sitting there across the room from me
wondering about what we could be 
you say that you hate drama
and you’re not looking for a lover
but that just ain’t the message i receive 

i’m walking over 
to find you
and take you by the hand
but when i get there
things don’t go
exactly as i planned
yeah there’s another girl who’s got her hands all over you tonight 

~ i don’t know how to live this down ~

i don’t think i’ve seen her face before
you’re looking like you want to know her more
your bodies getting closer
as she movies in for the closer (cloZer)
she looks and our eyes meet across the floor

and now she’s walking over
to find me
and then she grabs my hand
and pulls me closer
this isn’t
at all what i had planned
but as our bodies move together on the floor 
it just feels right 

~ rAp BrEaK ~

seconds ago i was thinking “how’m i gonna live this down?”
now i’m thinking “how was i living life without you around?”
before us is a man i thought was gonna make my life complete 
but now my body’s moving to a new and unfamiliar beat
girl, you flawless
that dude, he’s thoughtless
he was trynna play us both
ain’t that cruel and heartless 
but you opened up my eyes and helped me see the light
and now i know i won’t be going home alone tonight

live this down

Composer & performer based in Birmingham dealing with things that have been thrown away, sustainability, text and sound.

www.george-west.com
www.makeitworkbygeorgewest.co.uk

Sonata for synthesiser

George West