Bass clarinet (un)plugged… Concert with music by Bång, Hope, Hedås, Edgerton and Sandgren

Flutist and experimental bassist Cat Hope and clarinetist Robert Ek, who both specialise in contemporary music, will spend a few days at IAC working on a new piece for bass clarinet and electronics. They will end this short residency with a concert performing music for bass clarinet and electronics by Malin Bång, Cat Hope, Kim Hedås, Michael Edgerton and Joakim Sandgren.

Programme

Cat Hope – Signals Directorate (2014)

For bass clarinet and audio playback, 7,08′

The Signals Directorate is an arm of the Australian Government that provides foreign signals intelligence, known as Sigint, to the Australian Defence Force and Australian Government to support military and strategic decision-making. Their motto is – “Reveal their secrets: protect our own”. They are known for their ‘listening in’ on mobile phone conversations, most famously revealed by Edward Snowden’s documents relating to Australia’s relationship with Malaysia. The score takes images and colours from the graphs generated by the organisation that represent tracking of data and uses an excerpt of one of the composers past bass noise performances as the electronic part for the live performance to track.

Malin Bång – Split Rudder  (2016)

For amplified bass clarinet and electronics, 9,30′

Split Rudder explores the sounds of the bass clarinet from the inside. A microphone inserted in the foot joint captures a rich timbral world and highlights a range of contrasting actions, from a spectrum of intimate air timbres to harsh growls in the lowest bass register. The development of the musical material and the course of events have been influenced by the focused and dramatic storytelling of the ballad “Briggen Blue Bird of Hull” by Swedish composer and troubadour Evert Taube.

Michael Edgerton – 3. Sonata: Bérnard Instability (2018)

For bass clarinet, 16,45′

This piece is influenced by the Bénard instability, a puzzle of stability that occurs far from equilibrium. Regarded as a classic case of self-organization, Henri Bénard discovered that heating a thin layer of fluid may result in strangely ordered forms. When a liquid is uniformly heated from below, a constant circuit is set into motion moving from bottom to top. When the temperature difference between the bottom and top layers reaches a critical value, the hot liquid rises while the cooler liquid descends. Recent research has shown that not only large-scale hexagonal structures result, but also small-scale irregularities.

Kim Hedås – Stills  (2020)

For bass clarinet, electronics in four channels and visuals, 9′

Moving images, moments where the flow stops. The music in “Stills” originates from rhythmical transformations and harmonic shatterings, combined in various patterns to make a series of different tempi audible by stretching and distorting the time. “Stills” is performed by Swedish clarinetist Robert Ek, and exist in different formats: as a concert piece with the bass clarinet, the electronics and the visuals in a spatialized multichannel setup, and also as a filmed version in stereo. “Stills” is part of a series of chamber music works, based on changing time patterns. Other works in the series are “Trice” for piano, double bass and percussion, “Rounds” for solo flute, “Lineages” for organ and electronics, “Mimionimas” for string quartet and “Signs” for solo bassoon. This ongoing composition project with music for acoustic instruments, sometimes solo or in smaller ensembles, often combined with electronics, was initiated in 2015 and continues with new works.

Joakim Sandgren – Objets saisis 6,43′

Joakim Sandgren was born 1965 in Stockholm. He studied composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm from 1991 to 1998. 2000 he completed the computer assisted composition course at Ircam. 2003 he presented his Master 2 at the Paris 8 University under Horacio Vaggione. His compositions has been performed by Ensemble Itinéraire, Ensemble 2e2m, Court circuit, Taller Sonoro, Soyoz 21, Archaeus, Champ d’Action, In Extremis, Tokyo Gen’On Project, Modern Music Ensemble (Sydney), Curious Chamber Players, Mimitabu, NEO, Ars Nova, Gageego!, MA, Sveriges Radio Symfoniorkester and in festivals as Darmstadt International Summer Courses, Warsaw Autumn, ISCM, Les Musiques, SoundofStockholm, GAS and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Since 1998 Sandgren compose in his house developed composition environment in LISP. 2008 he started a suite of fifteen pieces for different formations and multi-track electronics.

BIOGRAPHIES

Robert Ek has, as a clarinetist, specialised in contemporary music as a chamber musician and soloist. With great curiosity and dedication, he works together with composers to develop the repertoire for his instrument. He has recorded around 20 records and premiered a large number of works as soloist and chamber musician. Robert has performed and collaborated with musicians, composers and conductors from different parts of the world. He likes to work in the border country between arts and has worked closely not only with composers but also with writers, choreographers and filmmakers. In recent years, his work on developing the repertoire has focused on live electronics and developing the clarinet as an augmented instrument. Robert is also a PhD candidate at LTU since 2019. At the core of this doctoral project lies the iterative process where new electro-acoustic instrumental systems are designed and then used and tested in collaborative processes and in artistic practice.

Cat Hope is a composer, performer, songwriter, improvisor and researcher. She is a flautist, experimental bassist and director of Decibel: a group focused on Australian repertoire, the nexus of electronic and acoustic instruments and animated score realisations, which led to her being awarded the Inaugural APRA|AMC Award for Excellence in Experimental Music in 2011 and then again in 2014. Her music is dramatic, socially engaged and innovative. She often collaborates with performers across Australia, France, Germany, Japan and the USA. In addition to her creative work, Cat supports the arts via service in education and on a variety of boards and panels. An advocate for Australian music and gender diversity, she is also the co-author of Digital Art – An Introduction to New Media (Bloomsbury) and numerous publications supporting inclusion and diversity in the arts. She was head of Music at Monash University 2017 – 2020.

Read more about Cat Hope on her website – cathope.com

Kim Hedås is a composer, PhD, and professor in composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm (Kungliga Musikhögskolan, Stockholm). Her music has been commissioned and performed by a large number of orchestras, ensembles, and soloists, in Sweden and internationally. Electroacoustic works and site-specific music installations are also included in her list of works, with a special interest in how time and space can be transformed and experienced. Among her recent projects are a series of solo works for acoustic instruments, often combined with electronics to explore boundaries with extended timbres and spatialized sound in multichannel loudspeaker systems.

Find more info and list of works at Kim Hedås’ website – kimhedas.se