About this Event
Eternal July presents music by Neil Luck (*1982) with a new commission, and American composers Catherine Lamb (*1982) and Alvin Lucier (1931-2021).
Programme:
Neil Luck – “Pilgrims” (new commission, 2024)
Alvin Lucier – “Lullaby” (1980) for voice
Alvin Lucier – “Sizzles” (1997) for organ and percussion
Catherine Lamb – “Bass guitar piece for Adam Overton” (2008) for 3 electric bass guitars
Performers:
Neil Luck, Kirke Gross, Cameron Dodds, Sam Rice, James Creed, Sasha Elina.
Neil Luck’s new commission, titled "Pilgrims", presents an iteration of an ongoing practice of performing with furniture in reverberant spaces. Throughout 2023 Luck developed a practice of using chairs and tables to set floors, stages, and the chairs themselves into states of vibration. With practice he has begun to realise a highly musical technique for performing with these simple materials in large reverberant spaces, sometimes alone, sometimes with voices, or instruments. For the Eternal July, Luck adapted this practice into a new piece for four performers which was tailored specifically to the architecture and acoustics of the St Giles Cripplegate church.
Bass Guitar Piece by Catherine Lamb attunes both the performers and the audience to a deeper form of attentive listening. It articulates the ever-present inner motion of the performing bodies in space (this through the musicians’ heartbeat translated live into their instrument). When stillness and calm arise from within.
Two pieces by Alvin Lucier tickle the space and the ears with their very different volumes and levels of intensity: from whispers and goosebumps in the “Lullaby” to the church organ's roar in the "Sizzles".
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Neil Luck (*1982) is a composer based in the UK. His work often explores the pathos and interaction between live human performance and multimedia, and attempts to frame the act of music making as something curious, or weird, or useful, or spectacular in and of itself. Neil’s work takes a range of forms from music-theatre, to concert works, radio, public projects and recordings. He is the founder and director of the music-theatre ensemble ARCO. He has presented work at BBC Proms, Tate Modern, Venice Biennale, Tokyo Experimental Festival, Barbican, Palais de Tokyo, amongst others. Neil holds a PhD from the University of York, and is currently professor of Experimental Music Performance at the Royal College of Music, London. From 2022-2023 Neil was a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, Germany). In 2024 he will be in residence at Mahler Lewitt studios (Spoleto, Italy), and at Kinosaki Arts Centre (Japan).
Alvin Lucier (1931-2021) was an American composer of experimental music and sound installations focused on exploring acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. Much of his work is influenced by science and explores the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely-tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media. Lucier was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Plymouth, England, and was the 2018 Gala Honoree at ISSUE Project Room for exceptional leadership and commitment to the experimental arts community.
Catherine Lamb (*1982) is a composer exploring the interaction of tone, summations of shapes and shadows, phenomenological expansions, states between outside/inside, empathy, and the long introduction form. Lamb’s approach to tuning and pacing are informed by her studies with microtonal composer James Tenney and experimental filmmaker and Dhrupad musician Mani Kaul at the California Institute of the Arts. In 2016 to 2017, she was an artist-in-residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2018, she was given a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists. In 2020, she was awarded the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Composer’s Prize. She currently resides in Berlin where she contributes to many new-music initiatives including the experimental music label Sacred Realism and the Harmonic Space Orchestra.
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Doors: 7pm
Event: 7:30pm
The Eternal series is supported by The Richard Thomas Foundation. The Eternal July is organised with support of The Hinrichsen Foundation.
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Curated by Sasha Elina, the Eternal series of music events and multi-disciplinary situations is a new London-based project that aims to present and support diverse perspectives, communities, and artistic provocations. It welcomes the audience to join a movement that accommodates both emerging and established artists, bridging the classical and the novel. Music, theatre, dance, moving image, sound art, poetry and their crossovers enter the Eternal series, with no limits or genre restrictions.
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www.linktr.ee/eternalseries
www.sashaelina.com
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
St Giles Cripplegate, Fore Street, London, United Kingdom
GBP 15.00