0:00 – I.
5:00 – II.

Thomas Feng, piano

I met Eve in 2017 at a festival in Vermont, where she was a faculty composer. We became fast friends, and have collaborated frequently and fruitfully over the years since. I have always adored the meeting in Eve’s music of elegant structural concepts and processes (be they serial, post-minimal, or otherwise) with a heartfelt lyricism; I find her music witty, playful, ecstatic, nostalgic – sometimes all at once.

Unearthly Booty coalesced from multiple strands of inspiration. One summer, Eve took me walking through the woods of Vermont, and we came across a patch of ghostly white flowers, which we later learned were called “ghost pipes”. They are plants, but don’t have chlorophyll and can’t photosynthesize, feeding parasitically instead on fungi. During the pandemic, Eve dove deeply into the work of Emily Dickinson, and found a letter in which Dickinson described picking a bunch of ghost pipes as a child – an ‘unearthly booty’.

Eve and I also both share an affection for the music and personage of Milton Babbitt, with whom she studied as an undergraduate at Princeton. She once told me that my embrace of Babbitt struck her as like I was “eating him”, and thought to write me a piano piece in which Babbitt’s music would be decomposed and metabolized. As a result, Unearthly Booty is a two-movement fantasy on a brief cello piece Babbitt wrote for her in 1978 ("Eppesithalamium").

The first movement traces and retraces the rhythmic and melodic contours of Babbitt’s original piece, as if building it up bit by bit, in increasingly elaborate repetitions, before disassembling it once again. Moments of elegance leaven the pointillistic texture, evoking Babbitt’s own sly (musical and personal) charm.

This swift, chatty banter gives way to singing and dancing in the second movement. Eve takes the initial material increasingly afield: a chorale, a moto perpetuo, a reverie – and finally a cryptic wink.

Eve Beglarian – Unearthly Booty

world premiere recording, Moab Music Festival, 7 Sept 2024
more information: https://evbvd.com/blog/pub/inundated-by-night/


Inundated By Night

(2024-2025)
for mezzo-soprano, violin, clarinet, piano, and tape

(first) live performance given by H.T., Laura Hussey, Kathryn Titcomb, and Anna Reiley
05.02.2025 at St. Michael's Church Highgate

italianish music

Performed by Open Union on the 27th of September 2024 at Centrala, Space

Performed by Open Union
Modular Synth: Peter Bell
Electric Guitar: Patrick Ellis

Live sound by Joseph Ockford
Audio taken from 'Open Union: Live at Centrala, Birmingham' filmed by Alexander Henshaw

-----

Bio:

Christine Cornwell is a performer/composer and producer based in Rotterdam with strong links to free improvisation, collective practice, and strives to initiate projects for artists from different disciplines to work together. In her work, she works closely with performers and audience, recently at Screen Dive/Gaudeamus in Utrecht, workshops with Hackers&Designers + Questions Collective in Amsterdam, and a new series Sounding Here at Rotterdam's Batavierhuis. 

Christine has a Masters in Classical Composition from Codarts University of the Arts, and a Bachelor in Music Performance (violin) from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. She currently mentors students at Codarts University of the Arts and is employed as a Creative Producer there.

More info on Christine here: https://christinecornwell.info

Christine Cornwell - invisible poetry, instructions for singing to ghosts (2024)

How do you love?

How do you love? (Pet Shop Boys Remix)

Scrap (from VESTIGES) for mixed ensemble, live workshop performance

Tune:
Preston Yeo, violin (leader)
Emily Stephens, oboe
Nikolai Iaushev, clarinet

Drones:
Charlie Howells, viola
Bella Lorenzo-Giguere, cello
Marianne Schofield, double bass

III: Scrap (VESTIGES)

Splinter Reeds

This piece, based on several field recordings has been requested, by the Cercle des Amitiés Créoles de la Creuse. The theme was Banks and Shores. It has been designed to be listened with headphones during an exhibition.

Phenomena is Mind 2

Lullaby (The Cure) - String Quartet

Trivial Pursuits

Breaking The Ground

Open Union is an experimental music duo made up of composer-performers Peter Bell (modular synthesiser) and Patrick Ellis (electric guitar) based between Birmingham and London.

Described by the treasured composer Howard Skempton as being, ‘sometimes subtle and unstable; sometimes rich and dense’, the duo aims to build up strong collaborative relationships to create new verbal and text based works. Their current collaborators are Christine Cornwell, Wilson Leywantono, May Chi and Paolo Griffin, with a new piece by Seán Clancy currently in the works.  

The duo have performed across the UK at events such as Ealing Extranormal, AMOK, Don't Mind Control, Birmingham Modular Organisation and CODA Festival. In 2025, they supported Passepartout Duo at Centrala Space, Birmingham as part of their UK Tour, and in 2023, undertook a mini tour of The Netherlands as part of the Sounding Here concert series, where they performed at Splendor in Amsterdam and Batavierhuis in Rotterdam.

Cover photo by James McIlwrath, November 2022

Christine Cornwell - invisible poetry, instructions for singing to ghosts (2024)

Open Union

Related tracks