news Archives - James Saunders

On the beach in Suffolk

September 24, 2018 / 0 comments

Summer update part three: I had a lovely time working as a tutor on the CAPPA course at Snape Maltings directed by Larry Goves. Although Tim and I dropped in only right at the end when the composers were busy finishing off pieces, it was fantastic to work with them where we could. Tim and…

Nadar Summer Academy

September 24, 2018 / 0 comments

Second update from the summer: I was at the Nadar Summer Academy in Sint Niklaas to work with the students on a new piece commissioned by Transit Festival and Matrix New Music for Nadar. The academy is an amazing week of intensive work with the students, who are aged between 14-21. We stayed in a…

on tour in Norway

September 24, 2018 / 0 comments

We’re just gearing up for a Parkinson Saunders tour of Norway with Michael Duch at the end of October. We’ll be playing in Bergen (30/10), Trondheim (31/10), Inderøy (1/11), Oslo (2/11) and Tønsberg (3/11). The programme will be a mix of Parkinson Saunders duos, solos by Michael, and trios for all of us. We’ll probably do…

new piece for wind orchestra

June 8, 2018 / 0 comments

I’m heading out to Heidenheim on 1 July for the first performance of a piece written for the youth wind orchestra from the Musikschule Heidenheim. This was a commission from Netzwerk Neue Musik through the 2017 ad libitum prize and is one of four pieces being played by groups from the school. I’ve been watching…

Recent scores available to download

May 1, 2018 / 2 comments

I’ve just added a load of pieces from the last couple of years to the scores page, including the pieces for Tectonics and Donaueschingen. These are free to download, and if you want to perform any of them just let me know.

Group Behaviours talk at Sound and Participation

May 1, 2018 / 0 comments

In February I took part in the Sound and Participation seminar in Gent, organised by Q-O2, Ictus, and hosted at Kask & Conservatorium School of Arts Gent, supported by the Interfaces project (Creative Europe). I’ve been giving variations of this talk over the past few months, and the video of the Gent version is below…

October 23, 2017 / 0 comments

Here’s the video of the Ictus Ensemble concert at Donaueschingen Musiktage from Saturday, which included my piece know that your actions reflect within the group. The programme also includes pieces by Francesca Verunelli, Hanna Eimermacher and Martin Schüttler. The recording is from the third performance as some of the concerts were repeated multiple times to enable…

Table layouts

July 28, 2017 / 0 comments

I’ve been working on the setup for my Donaueschingen piece with Tom Pauwels from Ictus Ensemble this week. The piece is for eight instrumentalists, each with a table of auxiliary instruments and an iPad playing back samples through a local speaker. We’re working on the logistics, so Tom has mocked up this plan. I really…

New piece for Arditti Quartet and Ensemble Modern

July 27, 2017 / 0 comments

I’m about to start working on a new piece for Arditti Quartet and Ensemble Modern commissioned by Wien Modern for 2018. The festival theme is security, and the piece is going to explore social relationships between two unequal groups as a mechanism for generating the music. I am seriously excited about this project, especially as…

sometimes we do what you say, but occasionally we don’t

July 21, 2017 / 0 comments

Here are two videos of the latest piece in my things to do series, sometimes we do what you say, but occasionally we don’t. The piece uses the normal cueing system but the cues are given by audience members who step up to microphones to direct the ensemble. The first performance was by Grand Orchestre de Muzzix…

Donaueschingen piece nearly complete

June 26, 2017 / 0 comments

I’ve nearly sorted out my piece for Ictus for this year’s Donaueschinger Musiktage after a few months of failing to make decisions. That is, of course, the fun part though. The piece continues the use of samples and words as cues that I began in like you and like you, and my recent orchestra piece alternate between…

marking up parts

May 20, 2017 / 0 comments

The instrumental parts for my orchestra piece arrived in the post this week, having been sent back after Tectonics by the BBC Music Library. As I tell all my students, look at what the players write on your parts as it will tell you a lot about what they need to know. Mostly, in this…

alternate between attention and ease

May 3, 2017 / 1 comment

We had a great rehearsal yesterday with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov. It was a long trip (Parkinson 398 miles, Saunders 374 miles) and an early start, but great to get the piece sorted with the orchestra, who were lovely to work with and very patient. I was really pleased with how…

all voices are heard

April 28, 2017 / 0 comments

Here’s a video of all voices are heard being played by Material and OUT-TAKE Ensemble in Bath at the Ludo2017 conference last week. We chose to do it with words and objects for the first time, and it’s a format that I really like. The words were chosen by random and grouped into arbitrary sets for…

a piece for orchestra and Parkinson Saunders

February 12, 2017 / 0 comments

My new orchestra piece for Tectonics is done. It’s called alternate between attention and ease and will be performed by me and Tim Parkinson with Ilan Volkov and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in this year’s festival on 7 May. There will be speaking, sound effects, noises and lots of major and minor chords.

no videos

January 30, 2017 / 0 comments

All the Vimeo videos of my work are currently unavailable as we are just reworking our institutional subscription at Bath Spa. They should be back soon I hope.

do the best you can

January 8, 2017 / 0 comments

I’ve been thinking more about games over the past week as I’m working through Mary Flanagan’s Critical Play, and trying to finish my orchestra piece. The thing which draws me to games as a basis for music (apart from the fact they are fun) is the sense of purpose they present. The last couple of posts…

end condition

December 30, 2016 / 0 comments

Since beginning to tag my pieces, I’ve been looking at which of them might qualify as games. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s very few: only three. Although I’ve been investigating games a lot over the past year, I’ve not really translated some of the core requirements for the pieces to fit any of the common definitions. I…

series, groups, tags?

December 30, 2016 / 0 comments

I like to categorise and organise things. I like groups of related items, and looking at the features that they have in common and those that distinguish them. For me, this is a useful creative strategy. When applying it to pieces, it helps me think about what I’ve already done, and what a small change…

finding word associations

December 22, 2016 / 0 comments

I’m trying to find a satisfying set of words and sounds to use as cues for my orchestra piece at the moment. Each cue needs to be the name of something that makes or describes a sound, and then I also need a sample for each sound. For the past month I’ve been thinking through…

no mapping in Glissando

December 21, 2016 / 2 comments

Polish journal Glissando has just printed a translation of the short text no mapping that I wrote for MusikTexte this year. It’s part of an issue exploring conceptualism and appears alongside Jennifer Walshe’s text on New Discipline and Matthew Shlomowitz’s on automata from the original volume, as well as texts by Volker Straebel and Harry Lehmann.

values and motivation

December 18, 2016 / 0 comments

I’ve been reading Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum’s Values at Play as I’m exploring the ways in which theory developed through game studies might be applied to music. At the moment my interest is in how games can provide motivation for players as this is not always explicit in music. Of course there is a kind of…

surfaces in Buffalo

December 15, 2016 / 0 comments

Colin Tucker has posted some documentation of the realisation of surfaces that he organised in May, as part of his null point series in Buffalo’s Echo Art Fair. It was performed at the Buffalo Gear and Axle Plant, with all the sounds being drawn from the floor of this decaying industrial space. The performers were Bob Fullex, Ethan Hayden,…

constant interchange of the most various kinds

November 6, 2016 / 0 comments

The piece I wrote for CoMA’s Partsong Book was performed in the summer at the CoMA Summer School by participants in the course. The piece is for a small ensemble of at least three players, each of whom has six sound sources: a field recording played back through headphones laid on the table, a spoken…

Open Scores Lab

September 29, 2016 / 3 comments

The new research group I’ve initiated at Bath Spa University meets for the first time on Wednesday 7 October. Open Scores Lab brings together creative practitioners and researchers in a range of disciplines including composition, improvisation, visual art, performance art, graphic design, and creative computing. We’ll be looking at approaches to score making and giving…

New piece for Donaueschingen 2017

August 30, 2016 / 1 comment

I’m just beginning to work on a new piece for Ictus Ensemble, commissioned by Donaueschingen for performance at the 2017 festival. I’m at the early stages at the moment, but it will involve group decision making in a medium size ensemble of about 10 players, using a combination of instruments and other materials. Lots to do.

Experimental music since 1970

August 26, 2016 / 1 comment

I’ve just finished Jennie Gottschalk’s Experimental Music since 1970, recently published by Bloomsbury. It’s a really useful book, with a ton of information about many practitioners, a lot of whom I know, and many I’ve not come across. It’s difficult to take in the wealth of detail at first reading as there is so much music…

840 on tour

August 26, 2016 / 0 comments

Alex Nikiporenko and Nick Peters’ 840 series will be on tour in September, playing in Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol. Joined by violinist Ruben Zilberstein, the programme includes the piece I wrote for the London performance, in which one thing depends on another. The programme also includes pieces by Alex, Nick, Jennifer Walshe, Laurie Tompkins, Michael Baldwin, Vitalija Glovackyte,…

new piece for CoMA

August 1, 2016 / 0 comments

I’ve just finished a new piece commissioned by James Weeks and CoMA for the CoMA Partsong Book. It’s the first time I’ve made a piece directly for CoMA, and am looking forward to hearing how it goes this year. It’s a group behaviour piece, and the title – constant interchange of the most various kinds – is drawn…

lots to do, slowly

July 30, 2016 / 0 comments

Daniil Pilchen and Alexey Zaitsev performed lots and lot for us to do at Sound Museum, St Petersburg on 24 July in what is one of the most extreme versions of the things to do pieces so far. Their very measured performance takes a totally different approach to the more frantic and pressured performances that have taken…

Darmstadt Aural Documents

July 22, 2016 / 0 comments

IMD and NEOS have just released the fourth edition of their Darmstadt Aural Documents series. Volume 4 focuses on music for piano performed at the Ferienkurse from the 1950s to the present, and includes my piece #070702 performed by Nic Hodges. The piece is for piano with ebows, and I slightly misjudged the need for…

new orchestra piece

June 18, 2016 / 1 comment

I’m working on a new piece for BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the moment for next year’s Tectonics festival in Glasgow, curated by Ilan Volkov. It will be played at the festival in May, and I’m currently thinking about ways to organise large groups of people. Most of the pieces I’ve made over the past…

Parkinson Saunders in the studio

May 22, 2016 / 0 comments

Well we survived our live radio experience on Drivetime Underground yesterday and had a lovely time with Neil and Joseph the engineer. It’s quite a tight space in the Resonance FM studio, and it’s the first time in a while we’ve crammed everything onto one table, but it just about fit. Quite a lot ended…

Parkinson Saunders on Resonance FM

May 17, 2016 / 0 comments

This Saturday Tim and I are guests on Neil Luck’s Drivetime Underground show on Resonance FM. We’ll be playing some of Tim’s songs, and answering questions. I think. The lineup for the whole series is great, and I’m just about to listen to episodes one and two, which included Lore Lixenberg, Adam de la Cour, and…

no mapping

May 7, 2016 / 0 comments

MusikTexte have just published my short statement on mapping in their latest issue. It is part of a group of texts requested by Jennifer Walshe that deal with physical, theatrical and visual elements in recent music. My text is a response to some recent work which maps data to pitch and duration (mostly), or visual…

Basel Parkinson Saunders

May 5, 2016 / 0 comments

Tim and I are playing in Basel on Saturday 14 May at Christoph Schiller’s atelier concert series. Very excited to be doing Tim’s Opus 1 from Time with People again, as well as the pieces John White and Matteo Fargion wrote for use a couple of years ago. Alongside these pieces we’re doing Louis d’Heudieres’ excellent…

reassigned #1 performed at ddmmyy

April 25, 2016 / 2 comments

Last week my new piece reassigned #1 was performed at the first ddmmyy series event in London, 210416|JS#r1|Ltpor/bot|TPsfm|JW/ajftggb|JSripcm2016|JFcm2 (and that seems to have messed up WordPress formatting). I was extremely disappointed not to be able to make it but logistics my end made it impossible. The performance sounds great though, and everyone did a very good job,…

they are always different, they are always the same

April 17, 2016 / 0 comments

On Friday my new piece they are always different, they are always the same was performed in Bagnolet, Paris, by children from Ecole Paul-Langevin directed by Thierry Madiot. The piece was commissioned by Lutherie Urbaine and Conservatoire de Musique Erik Satie as part of their ongoing work with local schools. It’s an amazing initiative: they work with…

interview in Tempo

April 7, 2016 / 0 comments

Tempo have just published the extended remix of the interview I did with Dominic Lash recently. The original interview took place at Dom’s house in Bristol in May 2015 and was published on the another timbre website to coincide with the release of the recording of assigned #15. We picked up where we left off a…

people making sounds in California

April 7, 2016 / 0 comments

Charlie Sdraulig has just sent me the video of his duo with Weston Olencki, people making sounds, performing lots and lots for us to do a couple of times in February. The performances were at CCRMA at Stanford and Center for New Music in San Francisco. This is the second time the piece has been performed,…

documenting #[unassigned]

March 26, 2016 / 0 comments

I made a post over Christmas that begins to think think through the #[unassigned] project that I worked on from 2000-2009. I wanted to go back over my notebooks, sketches, scores and recordings to piece together how I made the different versions. So I started with #051000, which is the first proper version of #[unassigned] and…

interview for ddmmyy

March 16, 2016 / 0 comments

Jack Sheen interviewed me on Monday in advance of the ddmmyy performance of a new piece, reassigned #1, in his series on 21 April. I was a little groggy with a cold, but it doesn’t [sniffs] come across in the text [splutters]. You can read the interview here

we gradually have more things to do and fewer things to say

March 14, 2016 / 0 comments

Here is the final piece from Decontamination 6 at RNCM last week. Distractfold are joined by The House of Bedlam and RNCM Electric Experimental Ensemble for the first performance of we gradually have more things to do and fewer things to say. As Larry Goves noted, it’s a bit like bingo. Thanks to Larry and Mauricio…

all voices are heard (with pitches)

March 14, 2016 / 0 comments

This is the video of the first performance of all voices are heard using pitches. I’ve copied the video of the original performance with word lists as a comparison. There are some striking differences in the way that the phrases coalesce.

in which one thing depends on another again

March 14, 2016 / 0 comments

And here’s the performance by Rocío Bolaños and Linda Jankowska from Distractfold at Decontamination 6 at the RNCM on 8 March. More information in this post.

in which one thing depends on another

March 14, 2016 / 0 comments

Here’s the video of Nicholas Peters and Ruben Zilberstein performing my new piece in which one thing depends on another for the first time at 840 in London last week. I’ve written about this and Distractfold’s version a couple of days later in this post.

word sound

February 17, 2016 / 0 comments

Raphael Smarzoch has just made a programme for SWR2 Now Music on verbal notation to which I contributed. It includes lots of scores – interesting to hear them read out loud – and excerpts from realisations. I’m one of the commentators, along with Joseph Kudirka, Nomi Epstein, Pauline Oliveros and Ross Parfitt, and there’s a…

some new pieces you can go and listen to

February 12, 2016 / 0 comments

I’ve got a few performances coming up over the next few weeks, including some new pieces. Last week Weston Olencki and Charlie Sdraulig’s new duo people making sounds played lots and lots for us to do a couple of times in California. In March in which one thing depends on another is being played by Ruben Zilberstein and Alex…

overlay (with transience) available for download

December 17, 2015 / 0 comments

Luke Nickel has spent the past couple of months making a realisation of my piece overlay (with transience). The piece asks the performer to make a specified number of sounds throughout a 15-minute duration. The performer makes many additional recordings over a period of months, each time attempting to match what was played the first time, but without…

assigned #9 performed in Helsinki

December 17, 2015 / 0 comments

Here’s a video of UMUU performing assigned #9 in Helsinki last week (on my birthday!). This is one of the older versions of #[unassigned] I’ve made available for re-performance in my assigned series. Originally this was made for ensemble recherche and performed at their 20th birthday celebrations in Freiburg in 2005. The performance last week uses my original dictaphones, which are…

portrait in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

November 20, 2015 / 0 comments

Stefan Drees has written a short portrait article about my recent work in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. The article includes views on work by me, Luke Bedford and Stephen Daverson as part of the issue’s focus on music in the UK. I’m pleased to see it focuses on my recent investigation of group behaviours, and…

slightly preposterous titles

November 14, 2015 / 0 comments

I’ve just made a couple of new pieces in my series things to do and the semi-descriptive titles I’ve been using recently are, perhaps, getting a little cumbersome. The two new pieces are titled we cannot say the things we are allowed to do and we gradually have more things to do and fewer things to say. They…

like you and like you at Cut and Splice

October 3, 2015 / 0 comments

Now it’s been broadcast on Hear and Now, I am sharing the video of the performance of my new piece like you and like you from last week’s Cut and Splice festival at Cafe Oto. The festival was curated by Joanna Bailie and co-produced by Sound and Music and BBC Radio 3 (and there’s a great…

another new cd

September 4, 2015 / 0 comments

Ryoko Akama has just released a new cd, senu hima, on melange edition containing a new piece I wrote for her alongside work by Sarah Hughes, Jürg Frey and Antoine Beuger. My piece, overlay (with transience), is specifically for a recorded realisation. It asks the performer to make a specified number of sounds throughout a 15-minute duration. The performer…

some new pieces at Cut and Splice

August 14, 2015 / 0 comments

I’ve finally finished a new piece for Plus Minus for this year’s Cut and Splice at Cafe Oto. It’s a trio for Mark Knoop, Vicky Wright and Alice Purton with sampling keyboards and many objects. The piece – like you and like you – explores imitation and decision making in a slightly different way to some of…

KNM Berlin know what to do

August 8, 2015 / 0 comments

KNM Berlin are playing a new piece in my series things to do in Cottbus next month. The rather wordily titled we do what you say and say what to do is similar to last year’s you say what to do, but the players also give each other instructions in addition to those supplied by the assistants. I’m…

a new cd

July 2, 2015 / 0 comments

My new CD on Another Timbre arrived in the post today. I have lots of them and if you would like to buy one then perhaps click the link below, or do exactly the same thing at the Another Timbre website. Now there’s a decision for you.

all voices are heard (but not necessarily seen)

June 26, 2015 / 0 comments

One of my new pieces, all voices are heard, was performed at Goldsmiths in London on 6 June as part of the Music and/as Process event. I was very pleased to be joined by Richard Glover, John Lely, Luke Nickel, Tim Parkinson, Mira Benjamin and Scott McLaughlin, although we didn’t quite manage to point the camera…

Evan Parker interview

June 14, 2015 / 0 comments

Finally, here is the Evan Parker interview from the Ashgate book. I was really pleased he agreed to be involved as seeing him play for the first time was one of those moments where things change. He was doing a workshop in Huddersfield and it’s fair to say I was not expecting the torrent of circular…

Bryn Harrison interview

June 7, 2015 / 0 comments

It’s perhaps good timing that I saw Bryn yesterday in London at the Music and/as Process conference at Goldsmiths where he was the keynote speaker. He gave a great talk on wayfaring and music, followed by some wonderful playing by Mark Knoop of his extended piano piece Vessels. So it seems apt to upload the interview…

Interview for Another Timbre

June 6, 2015 / 0 comments

Dominic Lash interviewed me a couple of weeks ago for the Another Timbre website in advance of the release of the CD I made with Apartment House in April. It’s a new assigned piece, and Dom and I discussed how it was made and its relationship with what I am doing at the moment. The CD…

Manfred Werder interview

May 31, 2015 / 0 comments

The interview with Manfred followed our first meeting in London during one of my regular trips down from Huddersfield while my wife was doing a postgrad at the RCM. Manfred was there for six months on a residency, and Tim and I met up with him in a bar in Whitechapel to discuss his work….

you say what to do in Barcelona

May 29, 2015 / 0 comments

Mark Knoop and Serge Vuille performed you say what to do at Festival Mixtur in Barcelona last month. There are some lovely photos by Aga Miley on the website. Looks like everyone was having fun.

Bernhard Günter interview

May 25, 2015 / 0 comments

There are a few more interviews still to add, and here’s the email discussion with electroacoustic composer Bernhard Günter. At the time of the interview Bernhard’s work was moving more toward improivisation, so the interview covered both this aspect of his work and the quiet electronic music for which he was perhaps better known at…

Christopher Fox interview

May 17, 2015 / 0 comments

It was perhaps quite odd to interview Christopher, as he was both a colleague and my PhD supervisor. We’d talked informally about each other’s work, so I wanted to create a record of these exchanges as part of the interview project. Some ten years later Chrsitopher still manages to display an extraordinary range in his…

Parkinson Saunders sing some songs

May 13, 2015 / 0 comments

Tim has uploaded the recordings we made of some of his songs last year in Bath. This is the first set, songs 2011, that we have performed a few times, and there’s also a second set of five, songs 2012, that we’ve just recorded. Not sure we’ll try those live just yet, although we do get to…

Phill Niblock interview

May 10, 2015 / 0 comments

This is the interview I did with Phill in 2007. I rang him from Huddersfield using the biggest piece of conference call technology I’ve seen – completely preposterous corporate boardroom style. As with all the interviews, I wanted to know more about how Phill worked, and in his case in particular I was curious about…

playlist

May 8, 2015 / 0 comments

I decided to start this list on 17 October 2014 while driving home after hearing Rie Nakajima play at Cafe Kino in Bristol. Originally I was building it on a separate site but have decided to move it here as it makes more sense. For some time I’d been formulating a view that there has been…

different water environments

May 4, 2015 / 0 comments

I’ve been collaborating with chemical engineers Mirella Di Lorenzo and Jon Chouler from University of Bath for the past few months as part of a project supported by South West Crucible that brings together scientists and composers. Their work is with microbial fuel Cells (MFCs), devices that generate electricity from any sort of domestic, industrial or…

Rhodri Davies interview

May 3, 2015 / 0 comments

I’ve uploaded the interview with Rhodri Davies as the next one in the series – over half of them are available now. Rhodri and I met in Huddersfield in the 1990s when he was doing his MA, and I was lucky enough to witness the Gibbon Trio with Hervie Syan and Dave Summers which I…

Alvin Lucier interview

April 26, 2015 / 0 comments

Here is the interview I did with Alvin Lucier in 2007 at Dartington. He was over for a short residency, with the students playing and installing some of his pieces. We managed to find a very quiet corner of the cafe to chat, before heading over to hear his I Remember, a wonderful piece for voices…

Tim Parkinson interview

April 19, 2015 / 0 comments

A couple of days ago I was watching Tim’s Time with People again. It’s an astonishing combination of mess (literally, given the detritus strewn across the stage) and organisation, revealing the character of the performers in a range of different tableaux. We performed Opus 1 last year at Kings Place, and the sense of personal openness that…

ultimate notebook solution

April 12, 2015 / 0 comments

It’s been nearly four years since I bought a Whitebook notebook, and I’ve finally filled it up. Of course, I haven’t really as it’s a modular folder containing four separate notebooks, so I just need to replace one, but those original books are now full. In the meantime I’ve also found a really good paper/digital…

Jennifer Walshe interview

April 12, 2015 / 1 comment

This week I’ve uploaded the interview with Jenny Walshe. It’s one of the earlier interviews in the series, dating from 2004, just after she completed her Barbie opera. We discussed the provenance of sounds in her work, especially the way contexts are stripped away by reframing them. Although this continuous search for sonic materials is…

Antoine Beuger interview

April 5, 2015 / 1 comment

This week I’ve added the interview I did with Antoine Beuger in early 2004. I’d met him a couple of years earlier for the first time in Witten and was beginning to familiarise myself with the Wandelweiser group’s work at that point. We’ve corresponded and met occasionally since, and Antoine remains a significant influence for…

new #[unassigned]

March 29, 2015 / 0 comments

I’m working on the first new piece to stem from my previous #[unassigned] project since 2009. Simon Reynell asked me to make a long version for a future another timbre release, working with Apartment House. We’ll be recording in Huddersfield in the middle of April in a session which will also include pieces by Joseph Kudirka which…

Laurence Crane interview

March 29, 2015 / 0 comments

Here is the interview with Laurence Crane that we recorded in June 2007. Laurence preferred to do a spoken interview, and after struggling to find a time to meet we ended up talking on the phone. The interview came at a point where he was starting to work with ‘timbral’ material and we discuss that…

Philip Jeck interview

March 23, 2015 / 0 comments

The second interview from the Ashgate series is now available to read online. This one is with Philip Jeck and was one of the few telephone interviews I did. I tried to capture Philip’s manner of speaking in the transcription as it seemed to reveal something of his thought processes. For me, that’s an important…

get my scores

March 19, 2015 / 0 comments

After a few recent conversations, I’ve decided to make my scores available for free download. I’ve made a page with all the links and will gradually add pieces over the next few weeks. They are released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license, so the scores can’t be changed (except of course where this is required by…

creaking and talking in Oxford

March 15, 2015 / 0 comments

I’ve just had two weekends in Oxford at unrelated events within about 20 metres of each other. On 6-7 March I was an invited speaker at the Authorship in Music RMA Study Day hosted by the Faculty of Music and Wadham College. I spoke about game compositions, focusing on work by John Zorn, Christian Wolff, and…

Interviews available online

March 15, 2015 / 1 comment

I’m gradually making available online the 14 interviews I conducted a few years ago that were originally published in the Ashgate book. I’m beginning with Christian Wolff, and will be uploading one each week for the next few months. Ashgate are very kindly allowing me to reprint the interviews in this way, and are offering…

with paper at WASH project

February 26, 2015 / 0 comments

with paper was realised at WASH project in Buffalo, NY by Colin Tucker through his curatorial project Null Point with members of the local community. WASH is a local arts project that combines a laundrette with participatory arts activities and an access point for community services and cultural opportunities. There’s more information on the project…

Experimental Music Yearbook

January 28, 2015 / 0 comments

The score of my piece what you must do, rather than must not do (2012) has been included in the 2014 Experimental Music Yearbook. Founded in 2009 by Casey Anderson and John P. Hastings, The Experimental Music Yearbook is a repository for composers, performers, and the public to glean the methods and styles of various artists working…

location composite #7

December 31, 2014 / 0 comments

Here are a couple of photos of the performance and audience scores from location composite #7: Standlake which I made for Bruno Gaustalla, Eric Clarke and Sarah Verny Caird. I’ll edit these into the final score soon.

so many territories

November 20, 2014 / 0 comments

I’ve uploaded the recording of the first performance of so many territories by Plus Minus at City University in April. The piece draws on some of the techniques used by the Oulipo to create permutations of elements, specifically mutually orthogonal latin squares. Territories are areas ‘in which one has responsibility with regard to a particular type of…

you and me

October 8, 2014 / 1 comment

Here’s a short film of the performance I did with Manuel Zurria at the Italian Cultural Institute in London last week. The idea was for Manuel to play pieces with each of the composers, and a solo by Sciarrino. In addition to playing my piece lots and lots for us to do, he played pieces by…

London Odda Oslo Huddersfield

September 12, 2014 / 0 comments

I’ve got a few performances coming up in the next month or so. Firstly, I’ll be playing with Manuel Zurria at the Italian Cultural Institute in London on 2 October as part of a project where he has asked composers to write him pieces in which they also play. We’ll be giving the first performance of…

somewhere in a field in Devon

July 12, 2014 / 0 comments

I’m meeting up with Paul Whitty next week in a field in Devon to make some pieces. Paul has been developing an ongoing series of pieces in a field near Netherexe, working with other musicians. We’ve been trying to get down there for about a year, and have finally managed to find a possible time…

five minutes with

April 5, 2014 / 0 comments

There’s a short interview with me at the City University Music Department blog made in advance of the concert there this Tuesday. It gives a bit of background to some of the pieces we’ll be playing. The concert will include five pieces by me, with three first performances. Alongside the excellent Plus Minus Ensemble, I’ll…

#[unassigned] reassigned (possibly)

March 23, 2014 / 0 comments

Since scanning all the available versions of #[unassigned] that I could find in my room, and converting all the files I had on my laptop, I now have a virtually complete archive of the piece (screenshot as evidence). I’ve been thinking through what to do with it, and am considering making the piece available once…

location composites site

March 14, 2014 / 0 comments

I’ve just made a new micro-site for the location composites project, which I’m beginning to expand. Following last week’s performance of location composite #6: Waterloo Station at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in London, I’ve been thinking more widely about the way in which the composites might work. I’m planning a few more versions at the moment,…

ONE HUNDRED DEVICES in New Zealand

March 6, 2014 / 0 comments

175 East are performing the piece I made in 2012 for lots of sustaining sounds, AT LEAST ONE HUNDRED DEVICES BEING TURNED ON AND OFF, on Sunday 9 March at Q Theatre in Auckland. The piece involves a group of people working through a series of devices, which might include radios, drill, fans and other…

upcoming performances

February 24, 2014 / 0 comments

I’ve got a few performances on the horizon over the next couple of months, beginning with Will Montgomery’s POLYproject>5 event at Centre for Creative Collaboration in London, which is a performance of location composite #6: Waterloo Station, London using text descriptions provided by poets Amy Cutler, Andrew Spragg and Chris McCabe. On 8 March, Luke Nickel…

Bristol New Music

February 24, 2014 / 0 comments

When I was looking round university music departments while going through the application process, I remember turning up in Huddersfield on a cold January lunchtime in 1991 for the normal pre-audition talk. David Lennox, who gave the talk, noted at one point while discussing the contemporary music festival, that the previous year, in the room…

BORE

February 22, 2014 / 0 comments

Some of my scores are now available to buy as part of a limited edition produced by BORE (Sarah Hughes and David Stent). It’s the second edition they’ve made, after last year’s issue #1, comprising unpublished scores by James Tenney. Issue #2 features pieces by me and Tim Parkinson. Alongside some of Tim’s songs, which…

Parkinson Saunders at Kings Place

February 19, 2014 / 0 comments

Tim and I are doing a Parkinson Saunders 10th anniversary special at Kings Place on Sunday 11 May as part of their Out Hear series. We’re playing some old favourites I expect, along with some new pieces by some lovely composers we like. More on that soon. We did our first concerts in Huddersfield and London in…

so many territories

February 8, 2014 / 1 comment

I’ve just finished a new piece for Plus Minus, which they’ll be performing in London on 8 April in a portrait concert at City University. It’s called so many territories and is a modular piece which for now is scored for clarinet, cello, piano and accordion. As you can see from the photo of the four…

new location composite score

January 19, 2014 / 0 comments

The score for location composite #4: The reading Room, Carrick-on-Shannon is now on the location composite page. There were 24 descriptions submitted by visitors to the Hunter’s Moon Festival from 25-26 October 2013, with some very intriguing texts. As this was a short installation of the piece, the score is complete and won’t be updated as with…

new piece for SPOR festival

January 15, 2014 / 0 comments

I’m making a new piece for the SPOR festival in Aarhus for May. It’s going to be played by Mark Knoop and Serge Vuille and is one of the four pieces which makes up the group things to do. This is the set that includes a piece I wrote in 2012 for Dedalus ensemble called what you…

interspersed with string quartets and organic food

December 3, 2013 / 1 comment

I’ve just returned from the Rainy Days festival in Luxembourg where the Arditti Quartet gave the first performance of the piece commissioned for them by the festival. The piece was played in a wonderful event which ran from 12-7pm in the Salle de Musique in the astonishing Philharmonie, comprising five sets from the quartet. The…

Follow

Follow James Saunders