Commissioned by London Contemporary Music Festival.

Recorded live at London Contemporary Music Festival at Hackney Church by the BBC. Broadcast on BBC New Music Show December 2024.

bass and voice - Gwen Reed
guitar - Tara Cunningham
drumkit - Theo Guttenplan
piano - Edward Henderson

emerging forms (for large open ensemble)
composed by James Layton (2023)
____________________________________________

Alexander Sandved (viola)
Andreas Morgan Grimstad (viola)
Ane Elise Lassen (double bass)
Eivind Holmboe Leifsen (saxophone)
Elvira Göransson (cello)
Erlend Olderskog Albertsen (double bass)
Ferdinand Schwarz (trumpet)
James Layton (viola)
Laura Madaliso Beer Kumwenda (viola)
Marco Slaviero (guitar)
Maren Sofie Nyland Johansen (accordion)
Michał Hałoń (cello)
Mitra Fagerli Rahman (viola)
Noel Rubli (accordion)
Sophie Kauer (cello)
Tomas Laukvik Nannestad (guitar)


___________________________________________
_

artwork: László Moholy-Nagy - Photogram (1928-9)

emerging forms (for large open ensemble) [2023] [extract]

2024 Work 63

•._.••´¯``•.¸¸.•` ⓑ `•.¸¸.•´´¯`••._.•

For Fred Sandback

accordion
and small cameo from alex and iron board

waiting for my leaves to fall

Life on wide mode.

[Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/gribsss). 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/gribs/episodes/gribs-7th-january-2025

Gribs 070125

James writes - "I heard a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 4 in E-Flat Major, Op.7 ... I was taken with the heart wrenching opening few bars of the second movement, Largo con gran espressione, which has stuck with me to this day."

The piece extracts fragments from the first few bars of music from the Beethoven and are re-written in new ways to create eighteen new fragments. Three of these fragments are recorded live into megaphones which are then looped to form an homogenous backwash. It is then left up to the performer to improvise in-the-moment with the other 15 fragments, which can be played in any order and repeated as many times as desired.



James Williamson, Fragments to Loop (live)

beautiful performance by the wonderful pianist Richard Casey recorded by Steve Plews (prima-facie)

nagahama fragments (2012) 

(twenty fragments for piano)

a piano fragment written each day during a summer spent in Hiroshima, Japan. August 6th is the day in 1945 when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at 8:15am. “Little Boy” is the name given to the bomb by the servicemen aboard the Enola Gay.

Aug. 1st	0’:00”	mangetsu (full moon)
Aug 2nd	1’:08”
Aug 3rd	3’:45”
Aug 4th	5’:04”
Aug 5th	6’:11”
Aug 6th 	6’:48”	little boy
Aug 7th	8’:38”
Aug 8th	9’:03”
Aug 14th	10’:30”
Aug 15th	11’:56”
Aug 17th	12’:18”
Aug 18th	13’:17”
Aug 19th	13’:44”	umi (seto nai kai) – the inland sea
Aug 20th	14’:54”
Aug 21st	15’:00”
Aug 22nd 15’:20”
Aug 23rd 16’:21”
Aug 24th	16’:56”
Aug 25th	17’:58”
Aug 26th	18’24”

Sextet and Solo (2025)

James M. Creed

Related tracks