'Where Parallel Lines Meet' was commissioned by BBC Arts as part of the 'New Creatives' scheme.

Fifteen people are interviewed on the topic of uncertainty and how it relates to their lives. Their thoughts, feelings and experiences are weaved together with music and field recordings to create a collage-like, sound- documentary that explores the nature of uncertainty and how it affects our thinking, both on a practical, everyday level and in a broader, philosophical sense. Despite the uniqueness of perspectives offered for discussion here - gender identity, mixed ethnicity, spirituality, politics, mental health and more – there are common themes that seem to resonate and recur throughout the interviews that hint at something universal, despite the difference of our lived realities. In curating these stories, the aim is to reclaim uncertainty from its usual negative associations and reframe it as a force for creativity, growth and beauty.

Where Parallel Lines Meet

Manchester, December 2021.

Performed by Manchester Collective:
Beibei Wang - Percussion
Rakhi Singh - Violin
Julian Azkoul - Violin
Ruth Gibson - Viola
Stephanie Tress - Cello
Joe Reiser - Electronics

Score Follower: https://youtu.be/ufGRThgUtIQ

https://bennobuto.com/serenity-20

SERENITY 2.0

for clarinet, bassoon and electronics (2021).

video: https://youtu.be/7q98wT4rCgE
about the piece: https://bennobuto.com/lapse

Performed by Sonix Duo (Johanna Leung and Curtis Man). Premiered in St Ann's Church, Manchester in December 2021.

Artwork: Barnett Newman - Be I (1970)

LAPSE

for percussion and fixed media.

I. Chroma
II. Value
III. Hue

performed by Joanne Chiang.
premiered in Duke's Hall, Royal Academy of Music in May 2022.

artwork: Sol LeWitt - Composite Series, Plate #01 (1971)

Video: https://youtu.be/knODmkcNeqU?si=qTI2aO6x1ZOQl39B

Three Studies

for flute, yangqin and electronics.

video: https://youtu.be/PaXKxq61fs4

performed by Dan Shao and Mantawoman (Reylon Yount).
premiered at San Mei Gallery, London in May 2022.
commissioned by Tangram.

about the piece: https://bennobuto.com/i-carry-your-heart

i carry your heart

for six players and electronics (2023). 

commissioned by Sinfonia Smith Square and premiered in Anghiari, Italy in July 2023.

flute: Ellie Blamires
clarinet: Raymond Brien
bassoon: Hollie Redshaw
violin: Naomi Warburton
viola: Wanshu Qiu
cello: Miki Piszczorowicz

I was thinking about euphoria in pop music, that simple, single-minded ecstatic feeling you get from so many love songs. I found some vocal samples I liked and slowed them down and looped them, imagining each one as a kind of sculpture, gently rotating round and round in a neutral, dream-like space. Still euphoric, but frozen like TV static, repeating obsessively like prayer ritual.

1. I STILL FEEL
2. YOU'RE ALL I NEED
3. DON'T RUN FROM ALL THE THINGS YOU FEAR
4. THINKIN' ABOUT YOU, I'M THINKIN' ABOUT YOU
5. WE AIN'T GOT NO PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS, YEAH. I LET 'EM GO
6. TELL ME I'M YOURS
7. AH, JUST DON'T WALK AWAY
8. I DON'T WANNA LOVE YOU BUT I CAN'T SAY NO
9. I WANNA BE WITH YOU
10. YOU TOLD ME YOU WOULD NEVER, EVER FADE AWAY

https://bennobuto.com/break-up-mantras

Break-Up Mantras

for piano, electronics & video.

'Tell me again' is a piece that asks a simple question over and over again. Each time the music moves towards some kind of answer, the narrative gets side-tracked and we arrive back at the opening question. Eight hand bells sit above the piano, each corresponding to a different voice, from Eckhart Tolle and Thich Nhat Hanh to Youtubers and Metaverse engineers. Like switches, the bells trigger the voices to appear in random sequences, like switching channels on a TV. Throughout the piece, the performer becomes a kind of manic, multitasking machine, and it’s up to them whether they can pull themselves away from the noise to find a moment of stillness.

Commissioned by UK New Artists and premiered at Leicester City Takeover Festival in February 2022.

Video: https://youtu.be/MZDdOMxt6AE?si=f3-lPI9thSLYn9iV

Tell me again

for 18 voices

BBC Singers & Sophie Jeannin, performed in Bristol on 25 August 2024 as part of the BBC Proms.

For the 100th anniversary of the Greenwich Time Signal ('the pips') on BBC Radio.

“While we breathe, we open time like a path in the grass. We open time as a boat’s stem slits the crest of the present.” - Annie Dillard

BLIP

for six players, electronics & video (2023)

video: https://youtu.be/4h4dmdcHO2I

Commissioned by Stomping Ground and performed in London in September 2023.

Kate Ryder - Toy Piano 1
Ben Nobuto - Violin
Maya-Leigh Rosenwasser - Glockenspiel
David Nunn - Keyboard
Clara Daly Donnellan - Melodica, Toy Piano 2
Pia Rose Scattergood - Toy Piano 3, Singing Bowl

https://bennobuto.com/love-games

LOVE GAMES

for alto saxophone, bass clarinet & piano (2023)

Lucy Havelock - Saxophone
Hannah Shilvock - Bass Clarinet
Ben Nobuto - Piano

JOY REPLICA

St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, 6 April 2024.

for choir, organ, violin and sampler.

National Youth Chamber Choir and members of Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with Sofi Jeannin. For London Handel Festival.

https://bennobuto.com/face-anthem

FACE ANTHEM

for orchestra, chorus and electronics.

performed by bbc symphony orchestra & chorus, bbc singers and elim chan. 

19 july 2024, royal albert hall (for the first night of the bbc proms).

video: https://youtu.be/hELmcWBs9R0?si=n3lHGCFsb0TJKRY9

Hallelujah Sim.

Kings Place, 7 December 2024.

Performed by Colin Currie Quartet (Colin Currie, Owen Gunnell, Adrian Spillett and Sam Walton).

https://bennobuto.com/daily-affirmation

Daily Affirmation

song #1

troubleshoot (vb.): "to trace and correct faults in a mechanical or electronic system."

violin 1: Harry Castle
violin 2: Naomi Warburton
piano: Toby Hession

Troubleshooting

clearing

... for small ensemble & electronics

flute: pia rose scattergood
recorder: apostolis koutsogiannis
sax: rowan hawitt
synthesizer: tai kirby
piano: ben nobuto

photo by ig: @astrotom

'i am lying in a warm ocean.' - maggie nelson, 'the argonauts'

Music To Help You (Lose) Focus

…for string quartet + sampler. Score: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOGWvw02dv4

Performed by the Ligeti Quartet in Cambridge, 7/6/19

CLICKBAIT is about the internet. It’s about information overload (i.e. too many things happening too quickly) and the effects of digital media on the ways we think. It’s about attention span, the feeling of constantly shifting your gaze from one object to another in an environment of rapid disorientation, and the delicate, fleeting moments of calm introspection that exist in the liminal spaces. It’s about whether four musicians are able, despite continually being distracted, to focus on one thing.

artwork: barbara lee #8 by ryder ripps

CLICKBAIT

...for large ensemble and electronics. Score: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HejA2cX75Wk

performed in cambridge on 11 may 2019.

flute: james ferrier
clarinet: sam greening
trumpet: cara bronwen james (recorded by rory gordon)
viola: alexander gunasekera
e. guitar: matthew fox
celeste: joanna cheng
piano: ben nobuto
drums: leo bridger

no shape and every shape is a study of cycles and acceleration. Like biological cycles in nature (circadian rhythms, lunar cycles etc.), each player in this piece functions as an independent cycle, producing a single chord or gesture at a specific rate. As the piece progresses and the tempo accelerates, each cycle gradually contracts and moves towards a point of mass convergence, like planets aligning. This form was partly inspired by a concept of modulation and movement in traditional Japanese arts known as Jo-ha-kyū, which essentially means that all actions or efforts should begin slowly, speed up, and then end swiftly. The Noh playwright Zeami viewed this as a universal concept applying to the patterns of movement in all things.

no shape and every shape

Cambridge, 7 June 2019. Ligeti Quartet.

Score: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qKE9kBPAXo

https://bennobuto.com/playtime

playtime

...for piano + tape.

performed in cambridge on 11/5/19.

music vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2eY8MXYWCM

score: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFyKLqS11hI

chris knowles' 2017 performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er83Icj4RYk

-----------------------------

prog note: 

Christopher Knowles (b.1959) first gained recognition in the 1970s when avant-garde theatre director Robert Wilson received an audio tape of Knowles reciting his poem, ‘Emily Likes the TV.’ Fascinated by Knowles’ unique use of language, which consisted of continuous, repeated variations on simple phrases in what seemed to be highly organised sequences, Wilson cast Knowles in a number of his productions, including Einstein on the Beach. ‘It was a piece coded much like music. Like a cantata or fugue it worked with conjugations of thoughts repeated in variations.’ 

This piece is based on the audio from a 2017 performance of ‘Emily Likes the TV.’ Knowles’ words and rhythms are transcribed and discrete musical blocks are mapped onto their corresponding linguistic parts to create a musical language that mirrors the patterns and structures of the poem. While transcribing his voice, I was struck not just by the musicality of his phrasing, but also by how closely it resembles the collage-like, ‘chop and screw’ techniques of DJs and producers working in sample-based electronic music. It seems to resonate deeply with how language works in the digital era, where syntax is rendered infinitely malleable by cut-and-paste tools, auto-correct functions and predictive text. It’s language conceived as building blocks, like Lego, to be playfully constructed, deconstructed, shuffled and manipulated at will; an infinite variation of sequences generated from a single line of text: 'Emily likes the TV, because she watches the TV, because she likes it.'

Emily Likes the TV

for piano and electronics. Performed at Nonclassical Battle of the Bands in January 2020.

Music video: https://youtu.be/YADbSUtuzgM?si=N0D-2RTuqYqj-NZ_
Live performance: https://youtu.be/OrhVJIiicoU?si=Eg3fVY8wgSZGPlF4

https://bennobuto.com/lucid

nobuto

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