Spoken word piece about me getting in to vinyl

The Needle In The Groove MP3

Dorothy Cross and Lisa Le Feuvre (Head of Sculpture, Henry Moore Insitute, UK) discuss how artist-curated exhibitions open up new ways of looking and thinking about art. The speakers reflect about how an exhibition like Trove offers new and unexpected approaches to exhibition-making, as well as giving special insights into Cross's  preoccupations as an artist. 
This talk took place on 28 February 2015

In Conversation | Dorothy Cross + Lisa le Feuvre, 2015

Inspired by the holographic theory of modern astrophysics, "Hologram" plays with the dimensions of sound, juxtaposing and distorting them to suggest higher or hidden dimensions. The piece was premiered by the Edinburgh Contemporary Music Ensemble in 2015. 

The recordings of the performance were used as raw material for "Hologram (augmented)", which further perverted their sonic dimensions through a range of processes including reversion, distortion, re-pitching or spacialisation. The piece presented here is the stereo version of the 5.1 surround sound mix.

Hologram (augmented)

Live at the 20th Sligo International Chamber Music Festival
Dermot Dunne (accordion) and the Vogler Quartet
St. Columba's Church, Drumcliffe on May 6th 2019

The Second Quintet was conceived during the ezan (call to prayer) as heard between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia in Sultanahmet Meydanı, Istanbul.

The harmonic system of the piece, which opens and closes with breath (rūḥ), draws on the maqamat of the five daily calls – saba (Fajr), bayātī (Zuhr), rast (Asr), segyah (Maghrib) and hijaz (Isha).

Its rhythmic structure is derived from the relationship between the tonic and dominant notes of each maqam, inspired by the geometry of tawḥīd (unity) as described in ‘The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture’ by Nader Ardalan and Laleh Bakhtiar (1973).

There are deep connections between the work and my first Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet (2010); as such they may be considered consecutive movements in a longer cycle. 

This tracing of the interweave between the Jewish cantorial traditions of chazzanut and the recitations of the muezzin in Islam is grounded in the principle of Waḥdat al-wujūd (Unity of Being) as expressed in the philosophy of Ibn Arabī (1165-1240). 

“Looking into the heart of light, the silence” wrote the poet T.S. Eliot; here, listening into the heart of sound, we find number.

In ‘The Guide for the Perplexed’ (1190), Ibn Arabī’s contemporary Moses Maimonides wrote that “We are like those who, though beholding frequent flashes of lightning, still find themselves in the thickest darkness of the night."

This work proposes that music is an incandescence of time.

Nick Roth - Second Quintet (live extract)

(Košmaras/Nightmare:)

I cannot fathom the disconnect its spaciousness unfolds,
in diamond-like awareness
at the ends of its ripples,
Mud-below.

I would have looked at it as upon the long ponded reeds;
blowing around us, a pink language to draft the sky...
For how Simple it dazzles in our hearts' penumbrae, 
flowering (a pink language).

Left-fist unconsciously clenching for celestial things;
shaking a little too much inside,
feeling brittle-boned and half-starved 
for animality...

Košmaras (April 18, 2017)

Commissioned by the dlr LexIcon and composed for flautist Lina Andonovska, ‘A Loved A Long’ (2017) is a solo setting of 'A Way A Lone A Last' (2015) for recorder trio.

The work is an interpretation of the last six hundred and eight words of James Joyce's 'Finnegans Wake' (Faber & Faber, London, 1939) from Imlamaya to a loved a long the, in so much as the wake can ever really end, its cyclical form a perpetual cyclum aquavocum, forever writing the river Anna Livia out to the Sea to return again, riverrun.

A Loved A Long

Lina Andonovska - amplified bass flute
Matthew Jacobson - drums
Alex Bonney - live processing

A work for amplified bass flute feedback and drums, Bátá (2017) traces the concept of fugue in Roland Barthes’ seminal Image Music Text (Fontana, 1977) through the rhythmic tension between its structural analysis of literary narrative and the Junglist massive circa '95.

Diatribe Stage - Live Recording by Keith Lindsay
Photograph by Olesya Zdorovetska

Bátá @ NMD 2020

"Quarantine Supercut" 

Assembled and produced by Drew Daniel  
Mastered by Jeff Carey

Created in conjunction with The Creative Independent and Kickstarter

“Quarantine Supercut” was built from the submissions of many people who responded to a public call for field recordings of the sounds of life under quarantine. The first week there were forty sounds sent to the Creative Independent, the second week sixty more, the third week another eighty more. On top of that, as word spread about the project even more people began to email me directly with their sounds, and many people sent multiple files; by the deadline, roughly two hundred participants had sent me about three hundred sounds total. There are submissions from across the United States (New York to Kentucky, California to the Carolinas), and from across the planet: there were submissions from Italy, Germany, Mexico, Czech Republic, India, Kenya and many anonymous and untitled submissions of unknown origin.
 
Though I eliminated submissions that were recordings of music, I tried to use as many submissions as I could. I used EQ to try to clean up and focus each sound, but I did not otherwise process or manipulate these sounds. Sometimes, a single sound is heard in isolation. At other times, I decided to cluster and overlay the sounds into distinct areas (at its densest there are twelve separate layers playing simultaneously). The piece is divided into an indoor section and an outdoor section, with subthemes (cooking, pets, childcare, working from home, online learning, wildlife/birds, coughs, public announcements). Sometimes the threat of the coronavirus is front and center; sometimes it’s far in the background. The emotional response to sound is subjective and varies from listener to listener, but I hear many different attitudes towards quarantine within these recordings; domestic calm, annoyance, dread, humor, and the sound of making do.
 
I’m grateful to The Creative Independent for asking me to do this, and to everyone who took part in the project and trusted me with their sounds. While creating the piece, I struggled with the conclusion: how long will this go on? How will it end?  Ultimately, I chose recordings of a passing train, and of neighbors talking to each other across the distance of a balcony. I wanted to remind us of the fragile social links that persist even in the midst of isolation.
 
Assembled at home in Baltimore under quarantine, 2020; mastering by Jeff Carey

TCI IRL: Quarantine Supercut

Episode 18 features conversations with composer and guitarist Benjamin Dwyer on composing, free improvisation and his Beckett-inspired album, 'What is the Word'; and composer, saxophonist and Diatribe Records co-director Nick Roth on the label. Presented by Jonathan Grimes and Evonne Ferguson. 

Show notes and details of music played: cmc.ie/amplify/episode-18

Benjamin Dwyer on composing, free improvisation and Beckett / Nick Roth on Diatribe Records

OM0057 Tr123

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Episode 26 of CMC's podcast on new music from Ireland and Irish composers features a report from Kirkos Ensemble's Biosphere series of outdoor events in September, and audio diaries from Jennifer Walshe, Tonnta vocal ensemble members Robbie Blake and Elizabeth Hilliard, and saxophonist Nick Roth on Jennifer Walshe's recent work 'Ireland: A Dataset'.

Further details and show notes: https://www.cmc.ie/amplify/episode-26

Nick Roth - Second Quintet (live extract)

kaiameye

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