CDR animation director Ann Xiao ( www.annxiao.com ) and sound designer Tiantian Zhu( www.z-tt.co.uk ) has collaborated for the first time to complete an audio visual film “Between the Lines” about London Kings Cross area. This piece is commissioned by SPNM ( www.spnm.org.uk ), a South bank based New Music organization. The first performance will be given at the opening festival of the new art center King’s Place ( www.kingsplace.co.uk ).

The film has shown the traditional, industrial as well as academical qualities of Kings Cross. Ann has captured all kinds of elements from historical and modern Kings Cross area and mixed the elements into surrealistic scenes in the film. It provokes our memories, emotions, and imagination across time. Tiantian’s sound design brings the audiences into an imaginative environment. The subtle, ambient sound has led the listeners lost in their memories.

To preview this piece, please visit here:
Between the Lines
http://www.vimeo.com/1796768

King’s Cross in sound and on film
Venue: Kings Place, Hall Two
5.15-6pm
5th October, Sunday, 2008

Featuring Steve Reich’s action-packed City Life performed with new film of London by the 18-piece Contemporary Music Group from Trinity College of Music, alongside new pieces about King’s Cross devised for this event by four dynamic young film-makers and composers: Tian Tian Zhu & Ann Xiao and Mark Atkinson & Leslie Deere.

Tickets on sale: £2.50 online, £4.50 offline

Click here for more details.

Click here for a map of the location.

About King’s Place Opening Festival

Running 1-5 October 2008, the Opening Festival at Kings Place offers 100 concerts in five days, with some 30 different ensembles invited to play three or four 45-minute concerts each. These short concerts run in parallel in the two Halls, offering 10 performances each day in each hall (20 concerts in all). The seats for all events at the opening festival are £4.50, or £2.50 if booked online.

Please click HERE to see the OPENING FESTIVAL BROCHURE.

Other Events Schedule:

Kings Place Opening Festival – London

Thursday 2nd of October
2.15-3pm
Toy play – designed for children and the young at heart aged 2+
Isabel Ettanauer toy pianos
Rachel Leach composer

Programme:

John Cage Suite for Toy Piano (1948)

Probably the first classical piece ever written for toy piano is John Cage’s Suite for Toy Piano which he wrote for Merce Cunningham’s dance suite Diversion. The piece was premiered by the composer himself at the legendary Black Mountain College in North Carolina in August 1948. It consists of five short movements and uses only nine consecutive white notes. The charming compostition is a wonderful example of Cage’s humor. He seems to ignore the limited recources of a toy piano and writes extreme dynamics from ppp to sffz which makes the performer to try his best to enable differences even if they turn out to be subtle. (IE)

John Cage (1912-1992) was an American experimental music composer, writer and visual artist. He is most commonly known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, whose three movements are performed without playing a single note. He also wrote “chance music” (by others called aleatoric music) and is well know for his non-standard use of musical instruments, as well as his pioneering exploration of electronic music. He is regarded as one of the most important composers of his era.

Karlheinz Essl Kalimba (2005)

For his first toy piano piece Essl uses a playback CD to enrich the sound world of the toy piano. The sound on the CD again comes from the toy piano itself. I visited Karlheinz at his studio and he recorded my playing of a certain material (the whole piece is based on an eight-tone scale with alternating whole and halftone steps) which was later processed by one of his computer programs. The result is a very unexptedly rich sound. Kalimba was written for Isabel Ettenauer and premiered by her at the Komponistenforum Mittersill on 15 September 2005. (IE)

Karlheinz Essl (b. 1960) is an Austrian composer, improviser and performer. He studied composition with Friedrich Cerha and musicology in Vienna. Besides writing experimental instrumental music, he performs on his own electronic instrument m@ze2, develops software environments for computer-aided composition and creates generative sound and video environments. www.essl.at

Jun Lee Ijs (2008)

world premiere

-Jun Lee: Ijs (2008)

Ijs for toy piano solo was commissioned by the spnm to be performed by Isabel Ettenauer at the Kings Place Opening Festival on 2 October 2008. The composer preferred not to write a programme note as he feels the piece should be presented without words.

Jun Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea. He used to study urban planning and worked for three years as a freelance film music composer and popular music producer. During that time, he became aware of the limitations of creating new sounds within the commercial music industry and decided to move to England to study contemporary classical music at Birmingham Conservatoire. Since 2003, he has been studying with Simon Hall, Richard Leigh Harris and Edwin Roxburgh. His work is mainly in the field of studio-based projects. Some of his work has been released in I-tunes and Napster under the name of “KAYIP” which is ambient dance music. Recent projects have included a new orchestral piece for BBC Scottish Orchestra after wining Aberdeen music prize 2007.

Errollyn Wallen Louis’ Loops (1999)

Louis’ Loops was written for the bendy fingers of Margaret Leng Tan, New York’s Kinky Dinky Diva. When I heard Margaret’s tiny instruments, the timbre reminded me somewhat of the harpsichord. I decided to revist one of my neglected loves – the French Clavecin School – and, in this particular instance, Louis Couperin (1626-1661). Absorbed into Louis’ Loops are snippets of three dance movements by Couperin – Courante, Sarabande en Canon and Canaries. I wanted to write a piece that combined virtuosity and playfulness, hence the nursery rhyme fragments appearing every so often in the piece. The piece is dedicated to my nephew Louis Wallen (EW).

Born in 1958, the music of Errollyn Wallen embraces the sounds and rhythms of the world around us. She has a wide-ranging aesthetic and her music encompasses genres and redefines forms, including those of orchestral, electronic and chamber music, ballet, opera, song and theatre. Her music has been performed in concert halls, nightclubs, cathedrals, warehouses, power stations, pubs, theatres and on radio and television. www.errollynwallen.com

Isabel Ettenauer short biography:

Press reviews call her outstanding, unusual, spectacular and impressing: Isabel Ettenauer is a regular guest at international festivals and concert halls. Highlights of the last seasons were performances at Wigmore Hall (London), the Avignon Festival, the Opéra de Lille (France), the Ravello Festival (Italy), the International Gaudeamus Music Week (The Netherlands), the IGNM Musikfest at the Vienna Konzerthaus, concerts in Athens and Cyprus, as well as a US tour which brought her to New York and Washington. Her London toy piano debut in the BMIC Cutting Edge Series 2002 was selected as pick of the week by several UK newspapers. Inspired by Isabel’s unique performances composers from all over the world have written more than 30 new works especially for her. In June 2006 her CD “the joy of toy” was awarded the Pasticciopreis of the Austrian Public Radio Österreich 1.

Isabel Ettenauer was born in St. Poelten, Lower Austria, in 1972. After studying in Vienna, Switzerland and London she started an exceptional carreer as a pianist and, since 2001, as a toy piano virtuoso. Dedicated to the music of our time she is a champion for living composers.

For more infos visit http://www.isabelettenauer.com

RACHEL LEACH
Composer/ Animateur

Rachel Leach studied composition at GSMD with Simon Bainbridge. She has written pieces, devised and led education projects for many of the UK’s finest ensembles, orchestras and opera companies including LSO, London Sinfonietta, ENO, ETO, Royal Opera House, Philharmonia, RSNO, Opera North, Glyndebourne.

Rachel’s music has been recorded by NMC and published by Faber; she has won several awards and is the resident composer to Three Strange Angels percussion ensemble.

Writing for children and amateurs is a large part of Rachel’s work. Her output includes twelve pieces for the LSO Discovery department and eight community operas, as well as many songs for children and training pieces for young musicians.

Rachel is increasingly in demand as a concert presenter. She is the presenter of the LSO St Lukes lunchtime concert series and regularly presents concerts and pre-concert events for LSO and London Sinfonietta