for guitar, bass clarinet and any two bowed string instruments, with weeds (2021)

commissioned and performed by Prague Quiet Music Collective:

Ian Mikyska (guitar and weeds), Irvin Venyš (bass clarinet and weeds), Milan Kárník Jakeš (violin and weeds), Luan Gonçalves (double bass and weeds)

First performed at Prague Quiet Music Festival, Museum of Music, Prague, 18 December 2021

Live recording of premiere

*****

Weeds: unwanted plants, plants in the wrong place:

unwanted, small, straggling, spindly, rough, common, not useful, without elegant form, texture or colour, lacking in definition, unclear, lacking in strength;

in the wrong place, unboundaried, messy, in the cracks, spilling-out, unplanned, unfixed, in-between, uncultivated;

weedweaver is a music of weeds. In the dishonourable ontology of the weed it asserts beauty: fragile, entangled, various, lively.

weedweaver

EXAUDI

Emma Tring, Cressida Sharp (soprano)
Lucy Goddard (mezzo)
Tom Williams (countertenor)
David de Winter, Stephen Jeffes (tenor)
Michael Hickman (baritone)
Simon Whiteley(bass)

James Weeks (conductor)

World premiere, live performance
Milton Court Concert Hall, London
16 May 2022

At the heart of this piece is a poem, a celebration of being. I composed it in the three languages that have most shaped my experience: English (my mother tongue), German, and French. The piece mirrors the poem’s form: a “Prelude: mirages” then the five sections of “Cicada June”, each followed by one of the single phrases that constitute “Geheimlicht” (an invented word meaning secret light that might more broadly imply something kept in hiding). The languages often interweave, but by the last section, English and German have separated into parallel collections of brief “Incantations”. The text is integral to the music’s sound palette; recurrent rhythmic patterns, pitch repetitions, and generally slow-moving harmony all serve to open space for listening into the variegated timbral world of the words’ phonetic interplay.

Unlike the other pieces I have written over the past several decades, this work had no commission, deadline, or intended recipient; it was just a labor of love. I am therefore all the more deeply grateful to James Weeks and the singers of EXAUDI for bringing it to life.

Josh Levine: Cicada June | Geheimlicht (2016-18)

for orchestra (2019)

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov (orchestra)

extract of world premiere, Tectonics Glasgow, City Halls, Glasgow, 1 May 2022

recorded by BBC Radio 3; used with permission

www.bbc.co.uk/radio3

********

Weligwic (Anglo-Saxon, ‘place of willows’) is a sibling of my string quartet Leafleoht (‘Leaf-light’, 2018), and is similarly concerned with images of light and foliage, and our indwelling in the natural world (a theme woven through the mythology of willows since ancient times). The two pieces share many materials and follow a similar three-section structure, but whereas Leafleoht is concerned with daylight and brightness, Weligwic takes place in a half-light and is overcast and subdued in atmosphere. The first section consists of a series of extremely soft, fleeting aural glimpses; in the long central section, the Grove, the continuous, variegated string texture (a matrix through which each player wanders independently) acts as a field of sounds underlying other, intermittent layers; the third section sees a repeated brightening of the atmosphere, as on a cloudy day when the sun nearly breaks through.

Weligwic (extract)

Texts by Susan Howe (Debths, 2017)

EXAUDI vocal ensemble — James Weeks, cond.

Cressida Sharp, Juliet Fraser (soprano)
Lucy Goddard (mezzo)
David de Winter, Stephen Jeffes (tenor)
Simon Whiteley (bass)

photo: B.Champeaux

Periscope (2022) | EXAUDI vocal ensemble

LIVE RECORDING

EXAUDI
Emma Tring (soprano)
Lucy Goddard (mezzo)
Tom Williams (countertenor)
David de Winter (tenor)
Ben McKee, Simon Whiteley (bass)

James Weeks (conductor)

UK premiere
St Paul's Hall, Huddersfield
hcmf//
19 November 2022

recording engineer: Nicholas Moroz

Naomi Pinnock - Landscape (2022)

LIVE RECORDING

EXAUDI
Emma Tring (soprano)
Lucy Goddard (mezzo)
Tom Williams (countertenor)
David de Winter (tenor)
Ben McKee, Simon Whiteley (bass)

James Weeks (conductor)

UK premiere
St Paul's Hall, Huddersfield
hcmf//
19 November 2022

recording engineer: Nicholas Moroz

I need to howl! Too much lockdown is trying. Now that we approach the end (is it really the end?) relief and grief and accumulated sorrow and cheerful excitement block my throat and there seems to be no other way to unblock it: I howl.

Also: the planet is burning and no alarm is ringing. Monkeys are howling in disappearing jungles and bears on disappearing icebergs, too far to be heard. I shall howl for them. Also: the pandemic has seen a rise of economic inequalities, new tides of racist movements, migrants dying at sea. I dare not howl for those in need, but I do howl with them.

I howl with klaxons and air raid sirens, with engines and ambulances, with whistling bombs and all the explosions I can think of. I howl with the sound of cities, because their mechanical purring has forgotten how to be animal: wild, tender, caring. Every noise I invoke on the voice becomes the voice - and I would like to think that all cities, sung by human voices, can become human again.

Mikel Urquiza

Mikel Urquiza - HOWL (2022)

LIVE RECORDING

EXAUDI
Emma Tring (soprano)
Lucy Goddard (mezzo)
Tom Williams (countertenor)
David de Winter (tenor)
Ben McKee, Simon Whiteley (bass)

James Weeks (conductor)

UK premiere
St Paul's Hall, Huddersfield
hcmf//
19 November 2022

recording engineer: Nicholas Moroz

Marea Flusso Deriva (Tide Flow Drift) is the opening madrigal of Il Libro dei Margini (The Book of Boundaries), a cycle, still in progress, dedicated to the different states of consciousness experienced during sleep: loss of consciousness, perceptions, dreams, the awakening, the quality of time and also the particular vocal behaviours, language and sounds of this particular situation. I wrote and edited the texts myself referring to everyday life, using reminiscences from Georgi Gospodinov and the Italian poet Alessandra Conte as well as transcriptions of personal dreams. 

Marea flusso deriva depicts the moment when we close our eyes and fall asleep. Echoes of the images and voices heard during the day overlap chaotically in our mind. Gradually, the disordered rhythm of these images and sounds gives way to the biological and cyclical rhythm of calm night breathing. Time dilates and we enter the dimension of night time, full of fictitious presences, remnants, mysterious epiphanies, giving rise to the enigmatic theatre of a dream.

Here, a vague threatening presence takes the form of a bull chasing us into an endless underground city where we try to escape. At the same time, a sentence condemns us to death and the city in which we are escaping turns into our own bowels. Once successfully escaped to the surface, we suddenly find ourselves on the shore of a calm sea where we are entranced by the song of a mysterious woman.

Lorenzo Pagliei - Marea flusso deriva (2022)

May song (2022)
six voices and prerecorded audio
Performed by Exaudi, at Exposure 2023, Milton Court, 22 May 23

Cressida Sharp, sop.
Jessica Gillingwater, mez-sop.
Tom Williams, counterten.
David de Winter, ten.
Michael Hickman, bari.
Simon Whiteley, bass

James Weeks, cond.

Text by Goethe (1771), trans. Lisa Jeschke & Lucy Beynon (in Jeschke, Anthology of Poems by Drunk Women, Materials, 2018 http://material-s.blogspot.com/2020/10/lisa-jeschke-anthology-of-poems-by.html.)

How beautiful shines 
To me, the nature! 
How the sun glows! 
How the mead smiles!

Blossoms penetrate 
From each branch 
And a thousand voices 
Out of the shrubbery

And joy, and joy 
From each breast. 
O earth, o sun,
O joy o lust!

O love, o love!
As golden, as beautiful 
As the morning clouds 
On those heights

You bless gloriously 
The fresh field
The blossoms’ steam 
The bountiful world.

O girl, girl
How I love you! 
Your eyes gaze! 
How you love me!

This is the way the lark loves 
Song and air
And morning flowers
The smell of heaven

How much I love you, 
My blood warmed
By you, for me, a youth, 
And joy and courage

For new songs
And dances
May you be happy eternally 
As long as you love me.

Prerecorded sounds include two field recordings of a wind turbine in Bernau bei Berlin, recorded by Peter Cusack, 2021.

Art: Unknown photographer, WT-Energiesystems Albertshof wind turbines, Bernau bei Berlin, c. 2020

Thanks to James Weeks and Exaudi, and to Paolo Carlotto and Nick Moroz for audio engineering assistance.

May song

Five celebrity voice models render an extended vocal, with unison and canonic effects

Study for celebrity voices

live recording of the premiere, EXPOSURE2015, The Warehouse, London, October 2015

Alastair Putt: The Nature of Things

Live from LSO St Luke's, recorded for BBC Radio 3's Open Ear.

weedweaver

James Weeks Composer