[17.06.14] CD Launch: bet giyorgis

Really pleased to be able to announce that a recording of my piece bet giyorgis (for 12 players) is now available to buy/download here. Recorded (in my case) by Amsterdam’s illustrious  Nieuw Ensemble and released by Huddersfield Contemporary Records, the disc, entitled ‘Zeta Potential’ includes a selection of pieces from the first five years of the 'European Composers’ Professional Development Programme’.

Tracks are available for individual download (bet giyorgis is track 3) here and are available for only 99p, which is cheaper than the paper/ink used to print my score! Would be really great to get a few downloads if you’ve got a pound coin to spare…

bet giyorgis turned out to be a really important piece for me in terms of my recent compositional development and interests, so it really is amazingly exciting to be able to have this particular piece preserved on disc in this way. The piece was my first serious attempt to look at ideas of decay and erosion as a compositional/aesthetic strategy and subjects cycles of materials to processes of gradual corruption and deterioration across the near twenty-minute span of the composition. Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (HCMF), who have coordinated the project, have also written a little article about the release on their website, available here.

Really proud and privileged to have been a part of this groundbreaking international project - long may it continue!

Matthew

[15.04.14] New Recording Online


I’ve just uploaded an excerpt from recording of a workshop made by phenomenal young pianist Ben Powell. Here, he was looking at my new/old piano piece bete mika'el (2012), itself part of the  eleven churches of lalibela project that I began as part of my PhD.

The recording itself is not of the highest audio quality (technologically, not performatively!) but I thought it might be interesting as a ‘sneek peek’ ahead of the composition’s for 'formal’ premiere.

If you are interested to know more, you can download a complete score of the composition here (you may wish to know that the excerpt above is taken from towards the end of the composition). The piece itself is built from layers of “archetypal” piano material (labelled in my sketches as melody, counterpoint, chorale, verticality, etc.) which are abruptly collided as part of the composing process. The independently constructed material layers are forced to entwine, encrust and counteract oneanother - melodies interrupt chorales, counterpoint dissolves verticalities - allowing the sonic surface to occupy an unending ambiguous “gray zone,” between the archetypical forms, which itself constantly shifts in hue as strata shift register or are indeed removed altogether.

Watch this space for the details of the first performance! Enjoy!

Matthew

[08.01.14] New Video Online

Really pleased to announce that my good friends over at the house of bedlam have uploaded Tom McKinney’s awesome performance of my piece bet maryam* from last October (New Music North West Festival, Manchester). I was absolutely gutted to have not been able to make this performance in person - and now I’ve seen this video I am even more so! Check it out!

[*the video caption screen says bet Maryam (with a capital). I don’t really know why…]

Tom was the third of (now) four guitarists to have wrestled with this piece. As will be familiar reading for regular visitors, the piece attempts to place the musical material and the physicality of guitar playing into a state of dialogue. Some passages are constructed to be as awkward as possible - bordering on what might be considered the impossible. In contrast, others are designed to ‘lie under the fingers well,’ or at least as well as a composer like me can make them. But the piece wasn’t just an experiment into what might be considered as essentially choreography. I was interested in the sonic characters such materials exhibit. The unidiomatic material, for example, often shuts down the the resonance of the instrument: notes don’t speak or ring clearly, the sound is choked/husky. In the contrasting material, designed in a sense to operate with the guitar as instrument, the resonance returns and, to me at least, the timbres become once again three-dimensional.

I cannot thank Tom enough for the astonishing work that he has put into learning this piece - for a 6 minute concert spot it requires an unbelievable amount of work. But I think his efforts show. A lot. I will seriously be forever in his debt. And if any of you get a chance to hear this guy play live, grab it - he’s amazing!

Enjoy the video!

Matthew

[25.03.14] 'Gleaming' and 'Highly-wrought'

As some of you will already know, last week the ever-illustrious ELISION Ensemble performed by piece ymrehanne krestos (2011-13) as part of the Sydney International Festival in Australia. I thought it might interest some of you to see/hear some of the fallout from my little interhemispheric offering.

The concert was recorded and broadcast by ABC Classic FM (Australia’s Radio 3) and can currently be listened to online by following this link. It’s an amazing programme of music, featuring works by Liza Lim, Richard Barrett, Timothy McCormack and Aaron Cassidy (alongside myself).

[n.B.: There is a slight error the ABC website, listing me as the composer of both ymrehanne and codex xii. Whilst I am flattered by the confusion, I should add that codex xii is actually written by the mighty Richard Barrett.]

The critics reacted favourably to the programme as well (although it’s difficult to appreciate how else they might respond to playing of this calibre!), online reviews from the Sydney Morning Herald and Limelight Magazine are available here and here, of which “gleaming” and “highly-wrought” are my favourite adjectives applied to my own music ;-)

Enjoy!

Matthew

[13.03.14] Upcoming performance in Huddersfield (on Monday)

Apologies for the short notice but I’m delighted to announce that my solo guitar piece bet maryam is being performed in Huddersfield on Monday 17th March by outstanding Chilean guitarist, Diego Castro. My ridiculously challenging short piece for solo guitar will be presented alongside works by Marc Codina, Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Baldwin, Horatiu Radulescu, Aaron Einbond, Scott McLaughlin and Bryn Harrison.

The concert is at 7:30pm in St. Paul’s Hall, Huddersfield and is part of the University of Huddersfield‘s new music concert series. Further details can be found here.

Hope to see some of you there!

Matthew

[11.03.14] PhD Thesis Online

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Some of you may have heard - some of you may not have heard - some of you may now be bored to tears by the “news” - that I was awarded my PhD in composition from the University of Huddersfield at the end of last calendar year. The award was officially conferred on 22.11.13 after the successful completion of my viva voce, examined by Dr Aaron Cassidy (University of Huddersfield) and Prof. James Saunders (Bath Spa University).

The recent arrival of my PhD certificate (pictured above!) has prompted me to say something briefly about the whole experience on here (which I haven’t done before), including the (possibly temporary) posting of my thesis online for download by anybody who might be interested.

My project - entitled the churches of lalibela: erosion and encrustation as transformative musical processes - was financed by a scholarship/grant awarded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and was supervised by Dr. Bryn Harrison and Prof. Liza Lim. The project outlines/demonstrates new technical/aesthetical approaches adopted in my recent compositional practice, concerning re-considering acts of musical transformation in terms of erosion and encrustation. Here, erosion and encrustation are understood as classes of compositional processes defined by operations of erasure/removal and addition/accrual respectively.

I can say with absolute sincerity that undertaking this project has been one of most rewarding and thought-provoking steps my compositional work has taken thus far, largely due to the amazing help and support offered both by my supervisors and the awesome music department at Huddersfield as a whole: a very very exciting place to be. It’s going to take a long time to unpick and chew over all the ideas and issues that has thrown up in the aftermath of this project - and in that respect there is a hell of a lot of new work to be done - but that is a new process that I’m already really excited about and is already well underway!

If anybody is interested in reading more about the work I undertook for this project, my PhD thesis can be downloaded here.

And - on a more personal note - if anybody is thinking about embarking a PhD in composition in the near future, then I strongly advise considering the University of Huddersfield: it certainly was a life-changing experience for me.

Matthew

[11.02.14] Upcoming performance in Sydney, Australia

Whilst it’s great to be posting again after my winter break it’s even better to be able to announce that the awesome ELISION Ensemble will be giving the Australian premiere of my piece for brass and percussion, ymrehanne krestos (2012-13) on Tuesday 18th March 2014 at 8pm (UTC+10).

The concert, entitled And the Scream, Bacon’s Scream, will take place at Carriageworks, Sydney and, in addition to my piece, will feature music by Liza Lim, Timothy McCormack, Aaron Cassidy and Richard Barrett.

If you’re in the right hemisphere, you should go. If only for the other fascinating musical voices alongside my own.

I wrote ymrehanne krestos for ELISION during the winter months of 2012, the piece being premiered at the University of Singapore on 01.02.13, conducted by Tony Makarome. The same players (Tristram Williams, flugelhorn; Ben Marks, alto trombone; Peter Neville, percussion) brought the piece to Huddersfield for its UK premiere on 08.02.13, conducted by Aaron Cassidy and the same team is also taking the piece to Australia this March, this time conducted by Carl Rosman.

The piece is ridiculously problematic on so so many levels. I’m still ‘dealing with it’ myself: it’s probably just about the most ridiculous thing I’ve yet created. The music is hyper-virtuosic to say the least and, at times, pushes against and crosses the threshold of physical possibility on the instruments employed. In addition, the music runs almost entirely non-stop for nearly 13 minutes. Nobody gets a rest. At all. (One of the original players playfully described the piece to me as “like being stuck in a jet engine for 13 minutes.” That’s actually very fair. It is.)

Why? Well, the piece is an example of a way of working with material that I came to develop for myself whilst working on my PhD. I called the process ’re-coupling,’ which involves the unsympathetic collision of various separately composed layers or streams of musical information. In ymrehanne, these layers consisted of various physical dimensions of the instruments employed (valve combination, slide position, articulation, air pressure, air speed) as well as more abstract strata (bar length patterns, patterns of rhythmic compression, arbitrary repetition of bars of material). Add all that together and you get a fairly consistently hectic sonic surface. I’ve written more about the piece (alongside other related examples of my compositions) in a conference paper, which is freely available here.

The reality of all that composer-nonsense is a score that any sensible musician would look at and assume was some kind of sick joke. Thankfully, in the almost unfeasibly virtuosic hands, arms, lips and tongues of the ELISION musicians for whom it was written such a reaction did not occur and for that I will be for ever in awe and in debt.

Reminder: Performance in London tomorrow

Just a reminder that brilliant organist, Tom Bell, will be performing my piece five visions from the book of enoch (2009) at 3pm Tomorrow in Westmister Central Hall. I hope some of you might be able to pop along.

Matthew