The South Wests professional concert orchestra

Festival Directors
Simon Ible, Director of Music, University of Plymouth
Eduardo R Miranda, Professor in Computer Music, University of Plymouth

The four day festival of performances, lectures, installations and workshops explores contemporary music and showcases computer music research and new creative developments at University of Plymouth. The programme explores new music inspired by the voices of nature, science, computers and poetry and responds to the history and future of the urban and rural environment.

Composers and writers in attendance include:
Zlatko Baracski
Sally Beamish
Abdullah Chadeh
Edward Cowie
Hywel Davies
Eduardo R Miranda
John Matthias
Nigel Morgan
Richard Douglas Pendant (poet)
Andrew Prior
Kate Westbrook (librettist)
Mike Westbrook

Festival performers include:
Abdullah Chhadeh, qaanun
Carolyn Doorbar, piano
Richard Hand, guitar
Simon Ible, conductor
John Matthias, violin
Mike McInerney, shakuhachi
Darragh Morgan, violin
Andrew Prior, synthesizer & computer programmer
Jennifer Stinton, flute
Ten Tors Orchestra
Marie Vassilou, soprano
Members of UoP’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research

Friday 23 February

6.30pm:
Sound Installation Free event Portland Square, University of Plymouth

Columbia livia Hywel Davies Sound Installation Performance Promoted in Partnership with i-DAT

Columbia livia is part of a two-site installation, Salva me, commissioned by Bath Festivals Trust as part of a Year of the Artist Residency, and shown at the 2001 Bath International Music Festival. Columbia livia was first staged at the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station in London as part of the SPNM's (Society for the Promotion of New Music) 60th anniversary celebrations. The two sites of the original installation (Salva me) were a mortuary chapel and an architectural salvage yard - it is the sound from the mortuary chapel that constitutes Columbia livia.

8.00pm:
Concert, Tickets £8 (Students FREE) Upper Lecture Theatre, Sherwell Centre, University of Plymouth

Old Stones, New Tales Poems recited by Richard Douglas Pendant to new music by Abdullah Chhadeh

The Seafarer (1988), by Sally Beamish Partitas (work in progress), by Edward Cowie Array (1994), by Nigel Morgan

Darragh Morgan (violin) Abdullah Chhadeh (qaanun player)

Saturday 24 February

10.00am:
Lecture Free event Scott Building, Room 105, University of Plymouth On Composing Music with Insect Calls Lecture by Eduardo R Miranda

11.00am:
Lecture Free event Scott Building, Room 105, University of Plymouth
Objects of Curiosity and the Composing Continuum Lecture by Nigel Morgan, Project Composer with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales

12.00noon:
Lecture Free event Scott Building, Room 105, University of Plymouth
Knotgrass Elegy commissioned by BBC Proms (2001) Lecture by Sally Beamish

7.30pm:
Concert, Tickets £10 (Students FREE) St Andrew’s Church, Plymouth
Ten Tors Orchestra Strings Sponsored by Mark & Melisande Fitzsimons
Simon Ible, conductor Premiere of Cortical Songs by John Matthias (Lecturer in Sonic Arts, University of Plymouth) and Nick Ryan

The Day Dawn (1999), by Sally Beamish Triptych for distributed strings (2005), by Eduardo E Miranda Objects of Curiosity I (2005), by Nigel Morgan Descent (2003), by Hywel Davies String Music I (2005), by Hywel Davies

Composers John Matthias and Nick Ryan have been commissioned by the University of Plymouth and Nonclassical Records (Gabriel Prokofiev) to write a new work string orchestra utilising the rhythms inherent in networks of spiking cortical neurons. The neurons are modelled within a biologically informed computer program inspired by recent theories, which model the interactions between hundreds or thousands of connected neurons in the mammalian cortex. These theories indicate that the neurons tend to ‘self organise’ into groups whose stimulus may form the basis of a simple memory. The dynamics of the system is particularly interesting from a musical point of view, as the firing patterns of the neurons can either synchronise or form correlated rhythmic patterns. These have become known in the scientific literature as ‘Cortical Songs’.

10.30pm:
DJs and Live Music Performers, £4 (£3 NUS) on the door only The Hub, 9 Bath Street, Plymouth

Step Ahead

This event will be a melting pot of a mix of music performers (DJs and Live Music Performers) where musical paths towards the NEW will be explored. The main performance stage will feature sonic and visual performances bringing together abstract electronic sounds and stylised beats. Simultaneous performances of different electronic music styles will also take place in the lounge area.

Sunday 25 February

2.00pm:
Workshop Free event Scott Building, Room 105, University of Plymouth

The Extended Shakuhachi Workshop led by Mike McInerney and Zlatko Baracskai

2:00 – 2:30
Demonstration: the possibilities of the extended shakuhachi

2:30 – 4:00
An opportunity for workshop participants to develop and briefly explore their own patch for instrumental extension.

The Japanese Zen instrument, the shakuhachi is one of the world’s instruments which most closely resembles the human voice in the dynamic and timbral range of its sound and in its capacity for subtle inflections of pitch and tone. Using pressure sensitive keys and accelerometers, the extended shakuhachi takes this already natural propensity of the instrument and moves it, through the use of real-time digital sound processing, into unprecedented spaces.

Zlatko Baracskai (www.zlatko.hu) developed the present hardware and software for instrument extensions at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague. He also plays as a turntablist with bands, and hosts radio sho s, in the Netherlands, and Hungary.

Mike McInerney (www.macinerney.com) has toured as a shakuhachi player both nationally and internationally and was a featured artist at the Making New Waves festival in Budapest in 2006 playing both traditional Zen shakuhachi music and working with Zlatko on the extended shakuhachi. He is a researcher at ICCMR and Lecturer in Composition, University of Plymouth

5.00pm:
Concert Free event Scott Building, Room 105, University of Plymouth

The Extended Shakuhachi Performance Mike and Zlatko will give a performance of The Extended Shakuhachi, a concert combining traditional Zen hon kyoku music with their own compositions for the shakuhachi and extensions.

7.30pm:
Opera Tickets £10 (Students FREE)

Upper Lecture Theatre, Sherwell Centre, University of Plymouth NocOpera Presents a new opera for solo soprano voice and piano

Cape Gloss, Mathilda’s Story

Music by Mike Westbrook
Libretto by Kate Westbrook
Marie Vassilou, soprano
Carolyn Doorbar, piano“I stand on the Cape at the end of the world. I am confronted by memories of childhood, of my tattooed lover, the murder of my mother, of my unaccountable father. The sins of the fathers will fall on the next generation. The Furies are approaching.”

Monday 26 February

6.00pm:
Sound Installation Free event Portland Square, University of Plymouth

Columbia livia Hywel Davies Sound Installation Performance Promoted in Partnership with i-DAT

7.30pm:
Concert Tickets £8 (Students FREE) Upper Lecture Theatre, Sherwell Centre, University of Plymouth

Spellchecks

Programme includes the premiere of a new work Spellchecks by
Edward Cowie

Romeo and Juliet (1977), by Ned Rorem Prospero’s Music (1984 - 1985 rev. 1994), by Michael Ball Histoire du Tango (2003), by Astor Piazzolla

Jennifer Stinton, flute
Richard Hand, guitar

Edward Cowie: “William Shakespeare seems to have been very interested in magic, but then, perhaps all Elizabethans were! It’s not very often nowadays that we speak of coming under the spell of something or someone. Yet, in many Shakespeare plays, several of his characters are placed under the influence of a magic spell, the most famous being those cast (ineptly most of the time) by Oberon’s servant Puck.”

Peninsula Arts Contemporary Festival Tickets are available from
Peninsula Arts, University of Plymouth,
6 Portland Villas,
Drake Circus,
Plymouth PL4 8AA
Tel: 01752 238684
Email: pen_arts_enqs@plymouth.ac.uk