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 up on the floor though. The mystery feature was an excellent ‘What would Mark Knoop do?’ segment, which we eventually got the hang of. This is definitely a format to run again. The whole show is now available as a podcast at the Drivetime Underground…

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 Bastard Assignments. The highlight so far though has to be their adverts featuring Boycie from Only Fools and Horses wishing Pauline Oliveros a happy birthday and some guy from WWF calling Simon Rattle out with a piece of wood slung over his shoulder. I’m seriously…

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 images to sound (often via stave notation….) in an arbitrary way. Although sonification is a useful tool in the scientific domain – and I’m thinking of some recent work by Meg Schedel in this regard – it is so often presented in a confused way.…

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 Laughter Studies – new recording for us ready next week all being well – and also my piece in which one thing depends on another. After watching other people wander casually out of airports I’m trying the hand luggage only option this time. I bought a new…

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, really understanding the sounds. Luckily it was recorded, and I’ve posted the audio below. Thanks to Jack for organising it and to everyone who played in the performance. The performers were: Violin: Tim Crawford Viola: Tom Widdicombe Cello: Deni Teo Bowed Objects: Chloë Abbott, Peter…

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 the children on pieces that are not specifically written for educational contexts. All the pieces are regular ones written for adult musicians, with no compromise. This is such an exciting approach as the children were treated in exactly the same way, and they respond so…

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 month later at my house, and both interviews now appear together for the first time, with a few tweaks (but no drum machine). It’s 16 pages long, but there are some pictures. As Tempo is a journal the interview is not immediately available to read…

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, and I particularly enjoyed the video of my performance with Manuel Zurria being used as one of the recordings. Perhaps this might become part of the performance practice for subsequent versions? CCRMA Stage, Stanford University, 06.02.16 | people making sounds (Weston Olencki + Charlie Sdraulig)…

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 wrote a little bit about how I made it. It’s mostly from memory and rereading what I wrote in my notes, and I think there are some pages I’ve missed that might be in a box in my garage somewhere. I’ve just continued with two…

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

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 Pauly for organising this and getting everything together.

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.

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.

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.

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 short section where I talk about my things to do series followed by an excerpt from a performance of everybody do this by Material in Bath. Glad to see Word Events was a useful resource here with a lot of the examples reprinted in the book used in the…

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 Nikiporenko for the first time at 840 in Islington (5th), followed a few days later by its second performance by distractfold at RNCM (8th). This will be part of a series organised by Larry Goves in which a few of my pieces are being played, including another new one, we gradually have…

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 reference to any of the previous recordings. The piece actively explores the performer’s memory, and especially the way in which transience–how we forget information over time–shapes the resultant sequence of sounds. The final recording is a trace of this process. This version was recorded by Luke Nickel…

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 just about still functional, so there may even be a trace of the original material there somewhere.

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 he makes some insightful observations about the things to do pieces. I was struck by the introduction to the article which describes the UK new music scene, when viewed from a distance, as “ideology free”. I guess that could be understood in a number of ways but…

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 video sampler of both concerts here). Plus Minus as ever did a fantastic job, and it was lovely to work with Vicky, Mark and Alice on the piece, as well as collecting the very specific instruments required. It’s odd to listen back to it on…

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 makes many additional recordings over a period of months, each time attempting to match what was played the first time, but without reference to any of the previous recordings. The piece actively explores the performer’s memory, and especially the way in which transience–how we forget…

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 my other group behaviour pieces as there’s no verbal communication this time. Players copy actions and sounds made by other ensemble members while initiating their own, but the difference between some of the sounds is not always particularly clear, making them hard to imitate. In…

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 expecting this to create some slightly more factionalised results, but let’s see. The performance will take place as part of KNM Berlin’s residency at the kulturradio Galerienwanderung, and there will be three versions performed, working with the KNM Campus Ensemble as the volunteers. We’re also doing…

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.

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 in the right direction so you’ll have to imagine the rest of Scott (and his performance shirt). The piece explores consensus decision making. The idea is that the players all have the same set of sounds which they must order into a sequence, and then…

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 comes out soon I think, and the interview is here

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.

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 a real shift in new music over the past ten years towards a more communicative and immediate type of work.  It’s hard to define, and in a sense this list does that without needing to explain I hope. The work is engaging for me, provokes a…