As of yesterday, autumn is officially here, so it’s time to take stock of some of the more interesting concerts looming on the horizon. Most imminently, Japan’s most dazzling audiovisual electronic pioneer Ryoji Ikeda is making a rare visit to the UK. His Barbican concert on Sunday night (which i’ll be reviewing), featuring datamatics [ver. 2.0] and a live performance of his recently-released Music for Percussion, (available via Ikeda’s own Codex Edition label) is sold out, but for those in the vicinity of Plymouth Ikeda will be presenting a live set of his 2013 album Supercodex at the Plymouth Guildhall on Friday night as part of The Atlantic Project. Tickets are still available – and very cheap – so it’s a great opportunity to experience Ikeda’s uniquely beautiful blending of sound and data. Aside from Ikeda, The Atlantic Project (which runs from 28 September to 1 October) promises a shedload of intriguing events including an evening of sound and film with Café Concrete, and the ‘Immersive Orchestra’, a performance at Plymouth Hoe in which swimmers ‘conduct’ an orchestra of 100 guitarists. To prove i didn’t just make that up, and to find out everything else that’s going on, visit The Atlantic Project website.
New music ensemble An Assembly are going out on the road for a small-scale autumn tour, performing three works, two of them ensemble commissions: Louis D’Heudieres‘ Laughter Studies 6b – the title of which seems apt, since the mere description of it, involving four vocalists “describing and imitating their own private soundtracks of synthesised tunes and field recordings, transmitted to them via earphones” had me chuckling just thinking about it, Charlie Usher‘s An assembly – a 45-minute epic made up of 14-second miniatures – and a new work by Rowland Hill responding to a 1959 review of Stravinsky’s Agon. They’ll be performing these pieces at Manchester’s Anthony Burgess Centre on 1 October, at City University in London the next day (this concert is free) and finally in Birmingham’s Centrala Café on 4 October. Full details can be found on An Assembly’s website. Read more
