The Dialogues

The Dialogues: Anna Þorvaldsdóttir

Posted on April 27, 2019 • 11:49 by 5:4 in Interviews, The Dialogues | 4 Comments

i’m excited to present a new instalment in my series The Dialogues. On this occasion, i’m in conversation with Icelandic composer Anna Þorvaldsdóttir, whose music has become increasingly well-known in recent years. In the UK, her work has started to appear with more frequency on concert programmes, and there’s a chance to hear her most recent orchestral work, METACOSMOS, at the Proms over the summer (and a CD including the piece will be coming out around the same time). While her reputation is growing, detailed explorations and studies of her work are pretty scarce, so our Dialogue will, i hope, substantially increase understanding of Anna’s musical outlook, intentions and methods.

We met at her home at the end of November last year, and i want to express my appreciation to Anna, her husband Hrafn, and to their beautiful cat Mosi (who sharp-eared listeners will briefly hear at one point) for their generous time and hospitality. i’m also very grateful to Sam Wilcock at Music Sales for festooning me with assorted scores and recordings to help with my research and preparation for the Dialogue. For more information about Anna’s music, check out her website, she also has a YouTube channel featuring a number of pieces, and there’s plenty available on Spotify.

As in all the Dialogues, i’ve included numerous excerpts of Anna’s music throughout to illustrate and elaborate upon the various topics of our discussion. A list of these excerpts, and the times when they occur, can be found below, together with links to buy the music. The Dialogue can be downloaded from the below link or streamed via Mixcloud. Read more

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The Dialogues: Lee Fraser

Posted on December 21, 2018 • 09:34 by 5:4 in The Dialogues | Leave a comment

i’m really happy to be able to present the next instalment in my series The Dialogues. This time i’m in conversation with UK composer Lee Fraser, whose music has been consistently blowing my mind for the last few years. The first album of his music, Dark Camber, was my best album of 2014, and his latest, Cor Unvers, released earlier this year, is just as impressive. Despite this, Fraser currently remains a relatively unknown figure, and my hope is that our Dialogue will go some way to shed more light on his music – which, both in terms of how it’s created and what it does, is seriously unlike the majority of electronic music regularly heard in most concert halls – and increase appreciation and understanding of his work. At time of writing, Fraser’s output is relatively small (a mere 10 compositions), but the imagination and power of these pieces reinforce my long-standing belief that it’s the composers who compose comparatively little – as opposed to churning out vast quantities on an endless production line – who invariably create by far the most compelling and potent music.

We got together at his home at the start of October, and i want to thank both Lee and his partner Caterina for their hospitality, and for allowing so much time for our discussion. i’m especially grateful to Lee for being prepared to talk at such length about his work; i hitherto knew almost nothing about his approach to composition, and it was fascinating to learn so much more about his musical outlook and methods. And if this Dialogue whets your appetite, his activities can be followed on his website, and to obtain one of the few remaining copies of each of his albums, Dark Camber is available via Bandcamp while Cor Unvers can be had from Discogs (best if you’re within the UK/Europe) and Ge-stell or Careful Catalog (outside Europe).

As usual, i’ve inserted numerous excerpts throughout our conversation to elucidate some of the points being discussed; a full list of these can be found below, together with the time in the audio when they occur. The Dialogue can be downloaded from the link below or streamed via Mixcloud. Read more

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The Dialogues: Helena Tulve

Posted on June 30, 2018 • 10:32 by 5:4 in The Dialogues | Leave a comment

i’m thrilled to to present a new addition to my series The Dialogues, which, on this occasion, finds me in conversation with the Estonian composer Helena Tulve, whose work i’ve admired for many years. Although widely-known across Europe, Tulve’s music – like most Estonian music (with one obvious exception) – is very rarely heard in UK concert halls. Considering how radical and unconventional her music is this is unfortunate, though there’s some mitigation to be found in the two albums of her music released by ECM, Lijnen (2008) and Arboles Lloran Por Lluvia (2014) (an earlier album, Sula, released by Estonian Radio in 2005, is extremely hard to find but well worth the effort). Discussion about Tulve’s work is similarly neglected, and as far as i’ve been able to ascertain, this Dialogue may be the first really in-depth interview with Tulve to have been published anywhere, in which case i’m glad to have been able to shed some light on her music and the compositional thinking behind it.

As usual, i’ve interpolated numerous excerpts from Tulve’s music throughout the Dialogue to expand upon and illustrate some of the points being made in our conversation. A complete list of these excerpts can be found below with the time in the audio when they occur, together with links to buy the music – though it should be noted that many of them are taken from live recordings and are not presently available. Please also note the small number of footnotes i’ve added below which address a couple of ambiguities and errors (on my part) that cropped up in the discussion.

i want to thank Helena for being so generous with her time and so forthcoming in our conversation. It’s my sincere hope that this Dialogue will go some way to the whetting of appetites and a deeper understanding of her music and compositional outlook, and that as a consequence we might hear a lot more of her work, both live and on recordings, in future. In my view, she’s one of the most outstanding composers working today. For those wanting to explore Tulve’s work further, there are some links at the end. i also want to thank Mari Arnover for providing the photo used on the artwork.

Finally, having noted the general absence of her music in UK concert halls, there’s a rare chance to hear one of Tulve’s most overwhelming works, her 2007 orchestral piece Extinction des choses vues, at a BBC Symphony Orchestra concert at Maida Vale next Wednesday. It’s an opportunity absolutely not to be missed – though for those who can’t be there, the concert is being recorded for broadcast at a later date.
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The Dialogues: Monty Adkins

Posted on April 18, 2017 • 09:22 by 5:4 in Interviews, The Dialogues | 2 Comments

It’s a real pleasure to present a new instalment in my occasional series The Dialogues. This episode is in conversation with composer Monty Adkins, whose music i’ve written about many times on 5:4 and hold in very high regard. Our discussion explores a wide range of topics, including the fundamental aspects of Adkins’ compositional aesthetic, the history and development of his practice, the influence of visual art throughout his output alongside musical influences, considerations of beauty, narrative vs. abstract approaches to composition, the relationship between and implications pertaining to ‘authentic’ and artificial sonic environments, types of listening, perceptions of time, notions of the sacred, the imposition (and benefits) of compositional restrictions, the organisation/structuring of non-teleological music, combining electronics with live instruments, and Adkins’ relationship with the listener. In the course of our conversation, several articles and papers written or co-authored by Adkins are referred to; all are freely available to download, and links to all of them can be found below.

As before, i’ve included numerous excerpts of Adkins’ work throughout the Dialogue in order to illustrate or clarify what we’re talking about; a complete list of the excerpts is below along with the times in the audio when they occur, and there are links to buy/stream the albums from which they come. As usual the Dialogue is available to download or you can stream it via MixCloud. Despite the considerable length of our conversation, both Adkins and i felt afterwards that there was much more to talk about, so there may well be a second part at some point in the future.

i want to thank Monty for generously giving me so much of his time, and for being prepared to talk so openly (and for so long!) about his life and work. The trajectory his music has taken over the last twenty years is markedly different from many involved in electronic music, and i hope both newcomers and long-standing fans of his work will find our discussion as fascinating and illuminating as i did. Read more

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The Dialogues: John Wall

Posted on October 18, 2015 • 15:22 by 5:4 in Interviews, The Dialogues | 1 Comment

i’m delighted to be able to present the latest instalment in my occasional series The Dialogues. In this episode, i’m in conversation with the composer and performer John Wall, whose work i’ve very deeply admired for many years. Wall and i got together over the summer, and our conversation took place within his studio, affording him the opportunity to illustrate our discussion with numerous audio excerpts, many of which are included in the edited recording. In addition to exploring the techniques and development of Wall’s 22-year career in electronic music—during which time he has gradually evolved from working with chunks of sampled acoustic sound into a world constructed from tiny electronic slivers—we explore a variety of associated topics, including sampling, compositional decision-making, collaborations and many other related issues.

In addition to those played by Wall himself, i’ve included in the Dialogue a liberal selection of pertinent excerpts from throughout his output to clarify and elaborate upon some of the points made. A complete list of these excerpts can be found below along with their timings in the audio. The Dialogue can be downloaded from the link below or streamed via MixCloud. All of the music discussed can be obtained via Wall’s Bandcamp site; his collaborations with Alex Rodgers are also available from the Entr’acte label.

Finally, i must say a huge thank-you to John Wall and his partner Kay for their time and hospitality, and also to Allon Kaye at Entr’acte for his assistance. Wall’s amazing music deserves to be known about, heard and appreciated by a significantly wider audience, and it’s my sincere hope that this Dialogue can be a helpful and tantalising starting point for the unitiated, and provide some interesting insights to those already familiar with his work. Read more

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The Dialogues: Gareth Davis

Posted on January 18, 2015 • 00:01 by 5:4 in Interviews, The Dialogues | 2 Comments

For the next couple of weeks, i’m going to spend some time revisiting some of the most interesting new works heard at HCMF 2014. As a prelude to that, i’m very pleased to announce a new occasional series on 5:4 called The Dialogues, featuring myself in conversation with assorted musical luminaries. This first episode is with the clarinettist Gareth Davis, who was in Huddersfield giving the world première of the contrabass clarinet version of Elliott Sharp’s audio-visual work Sylva Sylvarum. Our dialogue begins with an in-depth exploration of that piece in conjunction with its sibling work Foliage, which Davis performed at last year’s Bristol New Music festival. We also discuss at length Davis’ career, including his musical origins, the choice and implications—both aesthetic and practical—of bass and contrabass clarinet as his instruments of choice, the role and nature of virtuosity, improvisation vs. notated music, as well as the multitude of diverse collaborations he has been part of over the years, focusing on those with Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek), Frances-Marie Uitti, Steven R. Smith and Martin Stig Andersen. Works by other composers are surveyed along the way, including examples by Johannes Schöllhorn and Peter Ablinger.

i’ve peppered our dialogue with an assortment of extracts from the pieces being discussed; a full list is below with their timings as wel as links to buy the music. Along with that pepper, there’s also some salt, for which i must apologise: one of us (undoubtedly me) failed to switch off our mobile phone, so there are some not-very-loud-but-noticeable bursts of data noise at a few points during the recording.

Gareth Davis is a fascinating musician, his approach to performing—particularly with such unwieldy instruments—is unlike anyone else i’ve come across, and i’m immensely grateful to him for spending so much time with me to discuss his work. His website, with substantial information about him and his activities (plus a not insignificant page about coffee) is klangtint.com, and Discogs has a pretty complete summation of his recorded output. Some of his more recent albums have featured on the 5:4 Best of the Year lists—Memory Space in 2014, Gramercy and Terra Incognita in 2012—and to anyone unfamiliar with his output i really cannot recommend it highly enough (links to buy are included below). It is always surprisingly strange and deeply beautiful. Read more

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