Extract from the World Premiere at Wigmore Hall, London on 8 March 2022

Elaine Mitchener vocalist
Sarah Saviet cuffed violin 1 / music box
Mira Benjamin cuffed violin 2 / music box
Heather Roche harmonica 1 
Siwan Rhys harmonica 2  / music box 
Bridget Carey music box 1
Tamaki Sugimoto music box 2

Tuxedo: Between Carnival And Lent [EXTRACT]

Ekmeles live world premiere recording at the crypt of the Church of the Intercession, New York City on Friday 27 May 2022. 
Editing and mastering: Murat Çolak 

Commissioned by Ekmeles, the piece reimagines the songs, cries, lamentations, incantations, and sighs of M. NourbeSe Philip’s book-length poem Zong!, which is itself a reworking of the 1783 legal transcript of the Gregson vs. Gilbert case that details the drowning of 130 enslaved Africans, having been thrown overboard the British slave ship, Zong, en route to Jamaica.

Voices initially emerge from a meditative chorus of harmonicas, an instrument associated with Afro-diasporic sorrow, uttering fragmented text, and chanting biblical passages that conjure images of bones, tendons, and flesh, whilst classic(al) tunes referencing water interweave the textures from tiny wind-up music boxes.

I am deeply grateful to M. NourbeSe Philip for granting the permission to set their iconic, and groundbreaking text for this commission.

this is but an oration of loss

Live performance recording by Anne Denholm.  

Tuxedo: Diving Bell 2. (2021) is the fifth piece in a series of works after Jean-Michel Basquiat’s artwork Tuxedo, a collection of 16 smaller white-on-black silkscreen pieces originally made on paper. It comprises a matrix of hand-drawn words, symbols, and images including the phrase “Diving Bell 2.” concealed within a complex web of meaning. Similar to Basquiat, I embed codes throughout the work, namely through incorporating extracts from classical European, and Afro diasporic folk songs as descriptors, often related to water; a symbol referenced indirectly throughout the Basquiat. I have carried the notion of traversing water into my own Tuxedo series, specifically regarding the Transatlantic Slave Trade. However, Tuxedo: Diving Bell 2. also considers the depths of the seas, and especially enslaved African divers, who salvaged shipwrecks for silver, gold and other goods for their slave owners; reaching deep waters inside cavernous, precarious, diving bell devices. 

The harp is strummed, and prepared with various objects mostly associated with hair, particularly Afro hair, in extension to Basquiat’s iconic crown motif; combining the African with an instrument that has become keenly associated with the Western classical idiom. A series of dreadlock cuffs restrict the harp’s strings, transforming its sound into something unexpected. Before the premiere of Tuxedo: Plaid x Plaid, where violin strings are bound together in a similar fashion, I explained to Aaron Grad: “I find it fascinating how we have all these traditional associations with an instrument, but that this tiny piece of malleable metal for Afro hair can take the instrument to a completely new level and change and distort it.”

Tuxedo: Diving Bell 2

A live recording extract from one of the premiere performances with European Union Youth Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda, at Grafenegg Festival in August 2022. 

Nexus: a complicated series of connections between different things.

This piece was commissioned by EBU to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. More specifically, to encapsulate the symbolic notion of ‘Beethoven’s Mirror’; a living composer reflecting and responding to the historical one.

Beethoven and his music is often connected to and associated with the Napoleonic politics of his day. Yet, there were other concurrent seismic political events in motion that were central to Europe. The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves to the United States, which took effect in 1808, the same year in which Beethoven’s iconic Symphony No. 5 was completed and premiered, seems to be particularly poignant.

Nexus interweaves African Diasporic Shouts and Songs: Adam in the Garden; Brown Girl in the Ring; Deep River; Down in the River to Pray; Drive Ol’ Joe; I’ll Be So Glad; Raise a Ruckus; and Wade in the Water, within harmonic, motivic, and gestural characteristics of the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 as an act of highlighting complex historical links that still affect us today.

Nexus [EXTRACT]

The fourth in a series of pieces inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Tuxedo" artwork for Oboe and Piano. This extract is from the live recording of the UK premiere by Nicholas Daniel and Beatrice Nicholas at Wigmore Hall, London in April 2022.

Tuxedo:(Copper); Ivory Mask [EXTRACT]

Live recording of the US Premiere with Wavefield Ensemble on Saturday 25 March 2023 at Cary Hall, DiMenna Center, New York.

"Even sweetness can scratch the throat, so stir the sugar well."  – Ocean Vuong 

This piece is a companion of sorts to shouting forever into the receiver (2022), which was commissioned by SWR/Donaueschinger Musiktage for Ensemble Modern and Vimbayi Kaziboni. Its title is also taken from Ocean Vuong’s writings, but whilst “shouting forever” considers the repeating feedback system of the Plantation Machine, in this instance, I was reminded of one of the substances that initially fuelled it: sugar.

Even sweetness can scratch the throat

Commissioned by the Australian National Academy of Music for Marmen Quartet, who perform here. First performed, as part of ANAM Quartetthaus, Melbourne in May 2023.

Don’t laugh. Just tell me the story / again, / of the sparrows who flew from falling Rome, / their blazed wings. / How ruin nested inside each thimbled throat / & made it sing
                                                      — Ocean Vuong

How ruin nested inside each thimbled throat / & made it sing [EXTRACT]

Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama takes its title from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s iconic 1982–3 artwork Tuxedo, a collection of 16 diagrammatic block pieces that come together to form a figure adorned with Basquiat’s trademark three-point crown symbol. It highlights recurring notions of majesty in his output, as does the tuxedo itself, which is a garment associated with luxury and elegance.

A multitude of Basquiat’s thematic preoccupations are displayed in the intricate hand-drawn and -written iconographic detail, encompassing a variety of histories. Indeed, his reference to Vasco da Gama (written as ‘Vasco de Gama’), the first European to voyage to Asia by sea, offers a commentary on exploration and the seeds of globalisation and multiculturalism: two important themes in the context of the year 2020.

The music moves between bright and buoyant moments of high energy and expansive stillness, underpinned by the incorporated harmonicas, which also function as a nod to the blues. Basquiat often drew attention to historical and contemporary matters of the African Diaspora. In a similar fashion, I have included a transcription of ‘Wade in the Water’, a traditional African-American spiritual, for music box.

Commissioned by BBC Radio 3. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_three

First performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo at
the Royal Albert Hall, London, on Friday 28 August 2020 as part of the BBC Proms.

Tuxedo Vasco 'de' Gama [Extract]

Hannah Kendall

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