Elsewhere (2021) by Thomas Butler. Performed by Attica! and Ensemble Thing.

Elsewhere

Struction (how I attempted to get the thoughts in my head into your head using only five instruments, five instrumentalists, metronome sound and MIDI) is a 25-minute work for amplified small ensemble (2 e-flat clarinets, violin, viola and cello) and tape.

The work is an account of a composer's creative process. Through hearing the composer's pre-recorded voice issuing increasingly demanding instructions to the musicians on stage, Struction explores the often difficult process by which objects conceived in the imagination are brought to fruition. 

This live performance was given by Red Note Ensemble in April 2011. 

Struction

Nightmusic by Thomas Butler performed by Kay Stephen (solo violin)

Nightmusic

Coordinates for Cello by Thomas Butler, performed by Emily De Simone.

Coordinates for Cello

This is the third and final movement from Elbow Room, a piece which explores the psychogeography of cities—how we affect the city and how the city affects us. Through instrumental performance, location recordings and video, the piece tells the story of the mid-twentieth century plan to demolish the city of Glasgow and replace it with a futuristic concrete utopia. 

Video excerpts can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/107025298

Elbow Room was the culmination of an 18 month residency with Red Note as part of Sound and Music's Embedded scheme.

Elbow Room (3rd Mvt)

These short pieces are reflections on three poems by Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888–1970) written whilst the poet fought in the trenches of the Italian front during the First World War. Each piece reflects on the imagery, mood, and autobiography of these remarkable but fragmentary poems. The title, borrowed from Ungaretti’s second collection, stands, in the poet’s words, for the “exultation that the moment gives, as it happens, because it is fleeting; the moment that only love can wrench from time”.

I. Half Asleep: I am witnessing the violation of the night*

II. Nostalgia: Over Paris there thickens / a sombre colour / of grief

III. The Rivers: These are my rivers / numbered in the Isonzo… my life appears / a corolla / of darkness

(*These extracts from the poems are translated by Heather Scott.)

Performed by Nana Sotirova.

The Joy of Shipwrecks

A short sketch for Aeolian Survey, a collaboration with visual artist Hannah Imlach.

Aeolian Survey Sketch

Karlsruhe Survey is a series of short electronic compositions that map key sites of power generation within the city. A mixture of field recordings and synthesis, each composition considers a single piece of energy infrastructure, ether real or imagined. Realized on residency at ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe in 2017.

Thomas Butler

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