Performances between 2022 and 2023

Ghost Trance Music

Plus Minus Ensemble

19:00, Thursday 17 February 2022
Reid Concert Hall
Edinburgh College of Art
EH8 9AG Edinburgh
United Kingdom

Ghost Trance Music

Plus Minus Ensemble

20:00, Friday 18 February 2022
Cafe OTO (external link)
18-22 Ashwin St, Dalston
E8 3DL London
United Kingdom

Explorations

Purcell Sessions

18:30, Saturday 2 April 2022
Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall (external link)
Southbank Centre
SE1 8XX London
United Kingdom

The joy of playing with sounds and their associations link the night’s three works. Matthew Shlomowitz (external link) creates a suite of miniatures which develop from musicological concepts into studies, blooming further into highly characterised portraits. Multiple tonalities interact with stumbling cross-rhythms and slipped loops, coming together in a finale of variations. Maverick composer Conlon Nancarrow’s Three Canons, written for the pianist Ursula Oppens, is a virtuoso demonstration of compositional control and fluency. Akiko Ushijima (external link)’s music shares this sense of enjoyment in manipulating material. Rhythmic figures interact and develop. Melodies cascade and distort into each other. Her new work combines the live piano with electronic sounds, each layer playing off the other.

48 Variations

Sampler Series

20:00, Wednesday 6 April 2022
L’Auditori: Oriol Martorell (external link)
Lepant 150
08013 Barcelona
Spain

John McGuire is one of the outstanding figures of post-70s music, influenced by his years working in the Westdeutscher Rundfunk electronic music studio in Cologne and by the pioneering experimentalism of the US music scene. His music draws together American experimentalism, total serialism and the world of Karlheinz Stockhausen (external link) to create the fascinating and unmistakable blend that many refer to as “post-minimalism”.

48 Variations for two pianos is a work commissioned by Herbert Henck, constructed on a series of patterns, building up the rhythm over time in a multi-layered structure. A complex, but intimate, universe of sound drawn from a harmonious sound source, immersing the listener in an ecstasy of perceptual uncertainty.

Roderick Chadwick and Mark Knoop, pianos.

Plans for Future Operas

Münchener Biennale

18:00, Friday 13 May 2022
10:00, Sunday 15 May 2022
HochX (external link)
Entenbachstraße 37
81541 München
Germany

The Norwegian composer and author Øyvind Torvund creates plans for future operas and it seems extremely unrealistic that they will ever be completed. It is a presentation of numerous fragments of ideas, which all spite the laws of physics and acoustics. The soprano Juliet Fraser (external link) and pianist Mark Knoop are on the stage. They sing and play the Plans for future operas and simultaneously find themselves confronted with an abundance of projected drawings, which Torvund uses to indicate possible visualizations of future operas. Here he is examining communication phenomena, in particular those that are spatially and temporally askew. How do you converse when you aren’t in the same dimension? What kind of friendships are these that develop and are strengthened beyond the general and special relativity theories? With Torvund this is an open field where, among other things, animals and sculptures sing romantic melodies.

From Bohemia

Yorkshire Wolds Music Festival

19:30, Saturday 28 May 2022
St Andrew’s Church
Bainton
YO25 9NL
United Kingdom

Chamber music with Liz Rossi, violin, Rosamund Hawkins, viola, and Christina Waldock (external link), cello.

Explorations

Yorkshire Wolds Music Festival

13:15, Sunday 29 May 2022
St Andrew’s Church
Bainton
YO25 9NL
United Kingdom

Chamber music with Rae W Todd, clarinet, and Christina Waldock (external link), cello.

Spectral Malsconcities

Plus Minus Ensemble

music we’d like to hear

19:30, Friday 24 June 2022
St Mary at Hill (external link)
Lovat Lane
EC3R 8EE London
United Kingdom

Difficulties putting it into practice

Plus Minus Ensemble

Reid School of Music

19:00, Thursday 7 July 2022
West Court
Edinburgh College of Art, Main Building
Laurinson Place EH3 9DF Edinburgh
United Kingdom

Mark Knoop and Serge Vuille present inter-disciplinary performance works.

Insula

Plus Minus Ensemble

Arte no Tempo

21:30, Saturday 8 October 2022
Teatro Aveirense
Aveiro
Portugal

Future Music #4

Distractfold

RNCM

19:30, Tuesday 25 October 2022
RNCM Theatre (external link)
124 Oxford Rd
M13 9RD Manchester
United Kingdom

Mark Knoop leads Distractfold and musicians from the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in the premiére of Sam Salem (external link)’s new work. Also featuring new works by Bofan Ma and Megan Steinberg with performers from Drake Music.

Spectral Malsconcities

Plus Minus Ensemble

Reid School of Music

13:00, Tuesday 6 December 2022
West Court
Edinburgh College of Art, Main Building
Laurinson Place EH3 9DF Edinburgh
United Kingdom

Difficulties putting it into practice

Plus Minus Ensemble

20:00, Saturday 10 December 2022
ARTist’s (external link)
Schützgasse 16
8020 Graz
Austria