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| 0 | LONDON: Cafe Oto |
|---|---|
| P | Thursday 14th June, 2012 |
| N | 8:00pm |
An evening of infinitely variable harmonic and melodic recombination with Duane Pitre presenting a sextet performance of Feel Free with players drawn from London's vibrant free improvisation community and fellow composer/performers James Blackshaw, Oliver Barrett and Jesse Sparhawk. The evening will open with a set from These Feathers Have Plumes who forges resonating strings and glass and into a soundscape of exacting stillness.
DUANE PITRE
Duane Pitre is an American avant-garde composer, performer, and sound artist. His work often focuses on the tensions between electronic sound and acoustic instrumentation, chaos and discipline, as well as site-specificity and performativity. The composer frequently utilises alternate tuning schemes that focus on microtonality, enabling him to explore unaccustomed harmonic intervallic relationships. He has created works for various instrumentation configurations such as string orchestra, his own bowed harmonic-guitar ensemble, string/wind ensembles, and more.
“With a title like 'Feel Free' you could be forgiven for expecting some kind of raging Avant-jazz thrash-up, but in fact nothing could be further from the truth. This five-part work is actually quite a gentle meditation, full of resonance and space … gently hypnotic. Feel Free is a beautiful, dithyrambic delight.” - Was Ist Das?
Pitre will be presenting a sextet performance of Feel Free - a new work just released on Important Records. For this piece, an open yet orderly system intended to produce potentially infinite variations of self-generating rhythm and melody was carefully created, allowing the sextet musicians to approach these factors in a freer manner. This ‘musical system,’ combined with the fixed elements of the composition, in turn, spawned a rich foundation of harmony & rhythm that sounds & feels exotic and new.
The title, Feel Free, derives in part from one of the composition’s instructions to its performers. It suggests that they should feel free to interact with (or ignore) one another, as well as with the random, real-time, computer generated patterns of guitar harmonics (the pillar of the work); therefore making intuitive yet rule-based decisions, in that moment of the piece, instead of relying on standard notation to dictate their every move. This approach creates a performance that is unique upon each occasion that it is performed; it is free from its own restraints.
Pitre set out to compose a piece as a musical lattice-work that was rich with layers and interweaving rhythmic patterns, superimposing themselves upon each another in ways that would at times synchronize with and without intention. It is a system rooted in chaos that finds alignment in a myriad of ways.
The ensemble for this London performance will be:
Duane Pitre - computer (guitar & electronics)
Jennifer Allum - violin
Oliver Barrett - cello
James Blackshaw - hammered dulcimer
Jesse Sparhawk - harp
Guillaume Viltard - double bass
"... the music proceeds without conflict into a three-dimensional fractal framework of curved contours and bright, pulsating nodes. Remaining poised and infinitely deep throughout, it's gorgeous stuff." - The Wire
THESE FEATHERS HAVE PLUMES
Andie Brown is a musician from London who began playing music as a bass guitarist, working with experimental band Cindytalk in her late teens. An interest in sound and experimentation led Andie to begin working as These Feathers Have Plumes in 2007, creating sonic landscapes using traditional and non-traditional instrumentation (primarily double bass and glass), found-sound and field recordings.
