Performed by CHROMA Ensemble and musicians from the Royal Academy of Music

Lucy Driver - Flute
Stuart King - Clarinets
Max Ruisi - Cello
Kat Tinker - Piano
Esther Beyer - Harp
Jonathan Phillips - Vibraphone

St Mark's Church, Marylebone, London
7th April 2021

Kairos II was inspired by the Book of Hours, a devotional Christian book that was used by people for private prayer from the Middle Ages through to the Renaissance. I was fascinated by this idea of individual spiritual practice becoming more and more important through history, and how today we think of personal rituals as being perhaps the most important part of spirituality, both within and outside of religion: most meditation and mindfulness is an individual activity, for example. Beginning with a reference to Christianity's Byzantine heritage, the piece explores the experience of focusing attention on the present moment in a prayerful state. “Kairos” in Ancient Greek refers to an opportune or ideal moment. In writing the piece, I was also considering the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo on time as a measure of observed change. The piece uses some slowly evolving processes, such as prolation canons: a musical technique from the Middle Ages where voices imitate one another at different tempos. The plainchant hymn to St. Augustine appears in the first of these. Another historical influence on the piece were neumes, an expressive handwritten form of medieval musical notation that represents melodic gestures, which I incorporated as a stimulus for improvisation.

Kairos II

I was sitting in a room, perhaps like the room you are in as you read this. It was very early on April 13, 2022, and I had been listening to the city I was in, Manhattan, as it woke, and as I woke along with it. Construction had already begun by the time I lifted my head, and I hit record on my phone to capture the combination of irritant and coziness that the muffled sounds of building provided. On the one hand, these were not comforting noises. On the other, they were quite quiet, especially from my tiny, 12-floor hotel room. I thought about how much the annoyance of the sound was tied not just to the time of day, but to how the small sounds could permeate my otherwise remote and private hotel room: how the sounds could be present without being overwhelming. 

And so, having recorded 45 seconds of the sound from where I was seated, at a small desk, I decided to combine the outdoor sound with itself — to, in effect, magnify it. To accomplish this task, I played the initial 45-second recording on my laptop's speakers, and recorded it as it sounded in the hotel room, while a variation on the outdoors naturally (or unnaturally, depending on your perspective) proceeded. Then I did this layering a second time, and then a third. Each time I added sound, the result was not particularly louder, or even all that eventful. There was clanging and droning, but there was still a lot of space present, not silent space but quiet space: the room tone of the city. 

At first I thought I would just upload the fourth track, but instead I made a longer recording that presented the transition from one segment to the next. I treated each of the four recordings with a fade-in, and then I concatenated them, so just before the first recording ended, the second one began, and then the third, and then the fourth. And then I faded out the fourth track, so the full piece didn't end suddenly. It's quite remarkable how little happens in the finished piece, how the sound combined with a variant on itself multiple times is not that much more dense, not that much more full, than was the original. It speaks to both the relative quietude of morning Manhattan, and to the way the ear processes aberrations and unwanted occurrences. This is “Construction Kit.”

Construction Kit

Welcome to Artistic Futures, a monthly podcast designed for anyone contemplating a career in the wonderful world of Opera. You will meet a range of artists who will share their passion and tell you more about their artistic journeys. It will also be full of useful tips and advice for the next generation of performers and creators. In this episode, Opera North Youth Chorus Master and organist Nicholas Shaw recounts how he started his career as a church musician before finding renewed inspiration working with young people and immersing himself in the world of opera. He shares precious advice for young performers too. 

Musical excerpt: ‘In Carmine Doloris’ from the opera Jephte by Giacomo Carissimi (1605-1674), reworked by James Batty.

Artistic Futures with Choral Conductor Nicholas Shaw

Premiered at the Cheltenham Festival 2015

Program Note:

Lullaby was written in 2015 as part of the Cheltenham Festival's Composers Academy and was given it's premier performance by the Genesis 16 Choir.  
 
When writing this piece I found inspiration from 'images' of sleep, the most crucial being that of a mother putting her child to rest. The words of the poem and music both begin with maternal warmth in mind. The voices hum and intone to beguile and soothe, a peaceful and enticing atmosphere pervades. This tenderness quickly turns to anguish; a resistance is felt. The music at times reaches points of ecstasy but concludes with a sense of enlightenment and peace.  

The most simplistic reading of the poem would be as if its from a parent's perspective, however themes of death and anxiety are also present. Underlying it all is the contemplation of humanity's fragile balance with nature.

Lullaby | For Choir

64 Colors is a musical catalogue inspired and based on 64 chosen three-note harmonies in expressive intonation (sometimes referred to as Pythagorean intonation and melodic intonation) extensively used throughout the 20th Century by string players such as Pau Casals, Jascha Heifetz and Yehudi Menuhin. The total number of possible trichords excluding inversions and transpositions in 53-tone equal temperament (a Pythagorean division of the octave) is 442, and this piece selects those which contain at least one just interval (in extended just intonation) within each trichord, which makes the harmonies sound strangely familiar. These 64 chords are then inverted twice as the structural frame of the piece, consisting in three chorales. 64 Colors pays homage and owes inspiration to Berg's Violin Concerto (premiered and dedicated to Krasner, who played in 'expressive' intonation), and re-arranges the well-known 'Es ist Genug' chorale, which Berg arranged from a Bach chorale (BWV60), which Bach arranged from an anonymous set of church compositions from the 17th Century. 

Live recording by the Euler Quartet, 31st Jan 2016, LA Artshare
(Image from Tarkovsky's film Nostalghia)

64 Colors for string quartet

This piece was broadcast in a BBC Radio 3 Live Lunchtime Concert for International Women's Day on 8th March 2018, following a nationwide call for scores, and was performed by Francisco Sanchez Diaz (soprano saxophone), Adam Hall (cello) and Monika Palsauskaite (piano) at the BBC Maida Vale Studios, London.

Delicate granite rock, crumbling apart in my hands (BBC Radio 3 Live Lunchtime Concert)

for and recorded by Gleb Kanasevich, Bronx NYC

'no words' is a reflection on different forms of police violence and navigating spaces as a queer person of color. The score incorporates visual and poetic elements to inform choices of pedals, patches, and/or other types of electronics as well as local & structural interpretation.

no words | gleb kanasevich

Me and 4 Ponys is about drawings by children. I love drawings by children because they are completely unconcerned with consequence or correction. The first mark on paper is always part of the final piece. Each line is fearlessly drawn. Form, scale, and subject change constantly throughout the creative process, at the whim and intuition of the artist. The results are always endearing and grotesque in equal measure. Me and 4 Ponys wasn’t made in this way - I rewrote and scrapped a lot of music while writing it. But it musicalises aspects of children’s drawings - hard, wax-crayon-like textures, and big, unannounced gestures like handprints or blobs of paint. There’s a jig-like pulse that persists throughout the piece, which is why the title refers to ponies.

Me and 4 Ponys was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society for Music in the Round Festival. World premiere performances were given by Ensemble 360 at St Emmanuel Church, Barnsley, and the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, November 30th and December 1st 2018.

Mvmt 1 - 00:00
Mvmt 2 - 3:41
Mvmt 3 - 7:27

Me And 4 Ponys for Piano Quintet (2018)

Live recording of the world premiere performance at City, University of London on 25.02.20.

John Croft
Sextet (2020)

Explore Ensemble:

Taylor MacLennan, flutes
Alex Roberts, clarinets
Emmanuelle Fleurot, piano
David Lopez, violin
Morag Robertson, viola
Cecilia Bignall, cello

John Croft: Sextet

A 100-second recording of the sound of the Big Bang, created by University of Washington physicist John Cramer. For more detail, see http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/04/04/listening-to-the-big-bang-in-high-fidelity-audio/.

BigBangSound100

The London-based vocalist, violinist and pianist’s piece is written for “that very special time of day that’s neither nighttime or daytime: that strange liminal, luminous place where the birds are singing and we’re on the precipice of something new”, she says. 

“The piece reflects all of the changes that we navigate with people close to us. There’s a tension between two keys, but there’s also a gentle pulsing all the way through which doesn’t change, and I suppose that’s the thing that you hold on to, a kind of rudder in these weird seas! I really hope that anybody listening to it will find beauty and consolation in it.” 

Walking Home is a series of sound journeys specially created during lockdown to be listened to on headphones whilst walking, for BBC Arts and Arts Council England’s Culture in Quarantine programme. 

Composed by Alice Zawadzki
Voice, violins, piano by Alice Zawadzki
Electric guitar and effects by Alex Roth
Bass Moog by Alex Killpartrick
Recorded, engineered and mixed by Alex Killpartrick
Mastered by Calum Malcolm
Produced by Alice Zawadzki with additional production by Alex Killpartrick

Alice Zawadzki: My Boy of the Birds

James Batty is a composer, pianist and harpsichordist based in London. He is currently an LSO Soundhub Associate.

Even before he first discovered the piano at the age of eight, James was fascinated by sound and music, and has been improvising, composing and performing ever since. He studied composition and piano at Chetham's School of Music, and it was there that he began to develop his unique musical language, which won him a place in the final of the BBC Young Composer competition. James went on to hone his technique at Trinity College, Cambridge, the Gnesin Academy in Moscow and the Royal Academy of Music. He has written for a wide range of musicians and ensembles, including Zoë Martlew, Mark Simpson, Huw Watkins, Cheng Yu (with Psappha) the BBC Singers, Carice Singers, Noxwode, CHROMA Ensemble, E-MEX Ensemble, Opera North Youth Chorus, National Youth Jazz Orchestra and Riot Ensemble. His music has been performed in Belgium, Italy, Poland, Russia and Sweden as well as around the UK. James’s work has appeared at the Spitalfields, Cheltenham, Norfolk & Norwich and Davos Festivals, as well as on BBC Radio 3, SWR2 and Rai Radio 3. His recent ballet collaboration with choreographer Cameron McMillan was performed by a dance company from the Central School of Ballet in 2023.

James is fascinated by deep history and its relevance our lives and challenges in the 21st century, and his work reflects this. His music also explores a passionate interest in language and the human voice, and in sound-worlds beyond standard Western tonality.

His songwriting work has been synced on BBC 2 and as a film composer, James has written the scores for several short films and documentaries, one of which was screened at BAFTA. His collaboration with filmmaker Shanshan Chen, The Outsiders, was presented at the Shanghai Biennale.

In 2016, James released his debut solo project, Sanctuary (Overtones and Deviations), an album in which he combined traditional piano compositions with electronic soundscapes, retuned pianos and other acoustic instruments. The music is introspective and emotive, and the album reflects his fascination with microtonality and just intonation. Sanctuary (Overtones and Deviations) has been critically acclaimed and aired on radio across Europe and in the US. Following on from this, James  collaborated with Grammy-winning producer Haydn Bendall to record his first solo piano album, Until I Set Him Free. The album is a collection of emotionally-charged compositions for which James devised a brand new spectral piano tuning, and is available now on Blue Spiral Records.

James is currently working towards a PhD in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, supervised by David Gorton. He completed his Master’s studies there with distinction in 2021, during which he was taught by Gary Carpenter and Rubens Askenar. He held the Sterndale Bennett Scholarship, and was generously supported by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, Stapley Trust, Sidney Perry Foundation, English Speaking Union and Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust. Recent competition successes include being commended for the Priaulx Rainier Prize and highly commended by Michael Zev Gordon for the Alan Bush Prize.

Kairos II

James Batty

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