"Combined presence" technical rehearsal

Yesterday my dance-music group had it´s 3 hour technical rehearsal at The Place (www.theplace.org.uk/). It went very well to say the least and we are all very excited for our premiere tomorrow. Before that tech-rehearsal we were abit on edge, since we felt we had not been able to rehearse enough, due to some administration difficulties and our performer´s hectic schedule. But it worked out because these are very talented people.

Composer: Helgi R. Ingvarsson
Choreographer: Andrew Bennett
Dancers: Toni Wooff, Monique Davidsson
Musicians: Caoimhe de Paor (Recorders), Chiel Busscher (electronics) &
Yolanda Bruno (violin).


Last week, under some pressure, Andrew Bennett, came up with the title: "Combined Presence" It works quite well since that´s the way we worked. Rather than him setting his dance to my music or vice versa we combined our creations, of course influencing each other and making a few compromises at crusial points in the structure for the piece to speak as a whole. The musicians are also very present and visible on the stage and there´s even a moment when a musician´s and dancer´s presence converge. So, overall a good title.

Here you can read more about the event itself:
http://www.theplace.org.uk/12442/whats-on/music-collaborations.html

Our instrumentation is 5 recorders for 1 player, violin and electronics and the music is based on 2 main elements: Live performance and pre-recorded playbacks. Both instruments are plugged into a laptop, controlled by the 3rd person. That 3rd person then manipulates their LIVE sound by adding various effects like reverb, delays, distortion and more.

Then we have the 4th person (in this case: me) who has a second laptop for triggering the pre-recorded playbacks/loops. So, it´s somewhat of a quartet.

Here are some photos from the process:

Voiceworks 2012 : Titles

Our voiceworks piece has been titled "Ground: a dialogue study".

In what ways is it possible to present a dialogue?

We have the dialogue between two persons, a dialogue between a voice and an instrument (in this case, the trombone), consonants with vowels, duet with duet, melody with melody, different speeds in speech and more...

To elaborate on the title I´ll copy-paste here a conversation (or dialogue if you will) between myself and our poet, Irum Fazal, on the 26th of January on our facebook group page.

Helgi: Maybe its to soon for this, but I just had to share this idea for a title for our piece: "Meeting place" or "no man's land" or both: "Meeting place; no man's land". I took it from one of Irums texts. We could play around with this idea and make it better if you come up with something later on. I just thought i'd throw it out there.

Irum: Thank you for suggesting this Helgi, it has made me think about titles and what they do, picking out those words has made me see they were the most important part of that text, and they weirdly encapsulate much of what we have been discussing -- I think from them 'ground' compacts further while also opening out. Whereas usually I avoid titles until the end and treat them as mini conclusions because I can feel constrained.

It ties in with what else we have been saying about voice from deep inside, obviously place, earth tribal, and the structure of building up/ disintegrating, crumbling down. And its movement, as one half of a pair, there's an immediate springing effect: I've previously performed Simone Weil's 'Gravity and Grace', and it makes me think of Samuel Beckett's interest in the world being understood in terms of 'Figures' that emerge from 'Grounds'...it cements while creating channels for what we've done so far.

this entry and others can also be view at my group´s blog : http://blogs.voiceworks.org.uk/1112/grouptwo/

Best wishes
-Helgi

Oh the luxury of being busy

Yes the pressure is on. Only 10 days till 1st performance of my and Bennett´s dance/music collaboration piece. We are a group of 7 and the lineup is as follows:

Composer: Helgi R. Ingvarsson
Choreographer: Andrew Bennett
Violin: Yolanda Bruno
Recorders: Caoimhe De Paor
Dancers: Mon Davidsson & Toni Wooff (if that is her real name)

March 29th and 30th at the Place, dance theater, London WC1H 9AT. Both performances begin at 7pm and free entrance.

Birtwistle's opera consept

I ran into this text about Birtwistle's opera "Gawain" and found it very interesting. I'm pasting it here so I don't forget to read it again.

Birtwistle's method of working is also reflected in the events of the first Act of his opera Gawain. Up to the point where the Green Knight is kneeling in front of Gawain awaiting the axe blow that will cut off his head, the action has proceeded mainly in chronological order. With Gawain holding the axe aloft, the stage is suddenly blacked out and, within a minute, the action has been rewound to the point preceding the Green Knight's entry to the Court of Arthur. Events are played through again, though compressed and with various small alterations, through the beheading and into the subsequent events. The events on stage are not randomly ordered, but the one event is portrayed from more than one perspective.

For the opera The Mask of Orpheus, this entailed two sets of singer/actors performing contradictory versions of the one event from the Orpheus myths. This non-linear portrayal of events on stage gives the listener a means of approach to the abstract compositions, with the same musical ideas being repeated but with extensive variation. The result is music that is often very episodic in structure. A clear example occurs in Silbury Air in which a readily identifiable musical motif – a blow from the tom-toms followed by scurrying figures from the strings and woodwind – is elaborated in a number of different ways as the piece progresses.

-Taken from wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Birtwistle

New discoveries and focus music

Alot of Baltic influence going on these days.

Thanks to my friend Staffan Wieslander, swedish musician, I´ve discovered a new interesting composer. Kaija Saariaho is her name, born 1952 in Finland.



Also I´m listening abit to Erik Bergman for my voiceworks project at Guildhall school. Born 1911 in Finland. Hi opus 85, Dreams for choir.

Arvo Part´s symphony 4, 2nd movement is my new "focus" music. When I have a hard time focusing on my writing, Arvo comes to the rescue. My last 2 focus pieces were Fratres, for cello and piano, also by Arvo, when writing my duet for viola and piano "Become". And when I was writing "Burned Alive" for 2 pianos it was Rachmaninof who saved me with his piano trios 1 and 2 and suit no.2 for 2 pianos.

Arvo Part´s 4th, 2nd movement:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8961544/02%20Symphony%20no.4%20_Los%20Angeles_%20%282008%29_%20Affannoso.mp3