Andi Spicer - Composer

Sad News Of The Death of Nadia Warner

2009-04-01T17:49:00.005+01:00

I've just learnt of the sad death my beautiful friend, the artist Nadia Warner. She died in December after a long illness. I've known Nadia from my time as a student in Birmingham in the 1970s and she was a special person with an inner as well as an outer beauty. There was something different about Nadia, an inner light and a way of looking at the world that was very unusual compared to anyone else I knew. The last time I saw her she was all packed to travel round the world and find a new place to live in either Australia or Hawaii. She settled in California for a number of years, furthering her talent as a painter and photographer. But illness brought her back to the UK. Here her painting Veiled Sunset:

New Version of 'Baobab' for Harpsichord premiered in Lille

2009-03-02T16:58:00.010Z

A new harpsichord version of my percussion piece Baobab was premiered in Lille, France by the Polish harpsichordist Kasia -Tomczak-Feltrin in late 2008. I only just heard that it had been played as the invitation to attend didn't get to me. Baobab uses African-inspired polyrhythms that shift across each other, making it difficult to play. I believe there will be another performance sometime in the near future, perhaps in London. I'm working on more pieces for harpsichord using electronics and prepared objects as well as eBows to create a continous sustain on the strings.

Spicer's 'Hydrogen' For Flute & Electronics Performed At Malmo's Music Academy By Aimee de Gruchy-Lambert

2009-02-18T15:38:00.007Z

The talented flutist Aimee de Gruchy-Lambert performed my composition 'Hydrogen' for flute and electronics at Sweden's Musikhogskolan i Malmo in late December. The piece employs multiphonics and extended technique for flute and is inspired by bebop and contemporary jazz solos. The piece is fast and twisting and has an electronic soundscape created using MAX-MSP and Reason software. There is a recording of the performance.

The Brake Drum Assembly To Play Andi Spicer's Percussion Piece 'Baobab' At Henry Wood Hall In London

2009-02-17T16:57:00.013Z

The London-based percussion quartet Brake Drum Assembly are to perform my Baobab piece on Saturday 28th February at the Henry Wood Hall in London. Sadly, I won't be attending as I have to go to Birmingham that weekend. This is the fifth time this composition has been played and I'm very pleased it's had such a good track record. Baobab is hard to play as it involves polyrhythms inspired by mbira music from southern Africa. Also interesting is that Oli Mayne, who was the BDA's vibes player is now resident in Budapest, so I imagine that a new member will be playing the vibraphone.

Here's the details:

TELEPHONE +44 (0)20 7403 0118
FAX +44 (0)20 7378 8294
EMAIL bookings@hwh.co.uk
POST HENRY WOOD HALL LTD
TRINITY CHURCH SQUARE
LONDON - SE1 4HU

http://www.hwh.co.uk/

If you want to know more about my music - here's my official web site: http://www.andispicercomposer.moonfruit.com/

Julien Feltrin & Michel Sicinski To Premiere Andi Spicer's 'Haut Voltage' in Calais, France

2007-01-11T14:08:00.000Z

Ensemble Alchemia with Julien Feltrin on Midi Woodwind Controller, Recorders and Michel Sicinski on clarinets are to premiere my composition 'Haut Voltage' for Midi woodwind controller, clarinet and laptop electronics on Wednesday 17th January, 2007 in the French coastal city of Calais. This is an interesting piece that uses electronics and improvisation from the two players. Julien is a fine musician who I've worked with in the past with 'Euclid Alone'. This is the first time I've worked with the talented Polish clarinetist Michel Sicinski.

Here is the programme:

Mercredi 17 Janvier, 20h30 Salle Didier Lockwood, 43, rue du 11 Novembre / Calais, France. This is near the Ecole Nationale de Musique de Calais.

Haut Voltage (première) Andi Spicer ( 1959) MIDI Woodwind Controller, Clarinette et électronique
New-York Contrepoint (1985) Steve Reich ( 1936) Clarinette et CD
Prisma (première) Michal Talma-Sutt (1969) Contrebasse Paetzold et électronique
Meditation (1993) Quentin S.D. Grant (1962)
Jackdaw (1995) Wayne Seagel (1953) Clarinette basse et électronique
Integer Valor (1993) Giorgio Magnanensi (1960) Flûtes à bec, live electronic et CD
Breath of Nature (2006) Ryszard Osada (1972) Contrebasse Paetzold, clarinette basse et électronique"

Here some recent performances:

Click Language - Brighton Festival - Sussex Arts Club - July 2005
Baobab - Brighton Festival - Sussex Arts Club - July 2005
Baobab - Bartok, London - Dec 2005
Euclid Alone - Brighton Festival - May 2006
Bird - Brighton Festival - May 2006
Click Language - Brighton Festival - May 2006
Baobab - Brighton Festival - May 2006
Anglo Boer War Mv I-III - The Warehouse - All Ears Festival, London - Sept 2006
Polonnaruwa - The Warehouse - All Ears Festival, London - Sept 2006
Baobab - Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival - Nov 2006
Haut Voltage - Salle Didier Lockwood, Calais, France - Jan 2007

Links:

Review in French:
http://www.coteo.com/opalenews/index.php?search=&index=&lg=1&id_bouton=6&fiche=14087&page=

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andi_Spicer
http://www.julienfeltrin.blogspot.com/

Arno Schmidt's The Egghead Republic

2006-11-22T14:16:00.000Z

Returned after many years to a favourite writer of mine, Arno Schmidt. I first read his 'Egghead Republic' in my youth and am enjoying it very much after all these years. Its subtle humour and complex imagery make it a 20th Century milestone. He's still a much underrated writer and almost unknown outside of German-speaking countries, despite fine translations of many of his works.

Saw Performance by Gyorgy Kurtag in London

2006-11-20T09:22:00.000Z

Spent a beautiful evening at London's Wigmore Hall watching a performance by Gyorgy Kurtag and his wife Marta. A very private affair with the two playing duets from his Jatekok cycle of games for piano. Before this, Japanese violinist Hiromi Kikuchi treated us to a dazzling display for the UK premiere of Hipartita, a piece for solo violin.
Kurtag has such a sense of space and proportion in his music.

A Visit To See Film Maker Peter Gold In Upper Austria, And A Night At The Opera

2006-06-26T10:38:00.000+01:00

Spent a few days in upper Austria with my old friend and film-maker Peter Gold. He has a converted farmhouse near the Czech border. We solidified our project on Anglo Boer War, a multimedia work for the All Ears Contemporary Music Festival in London in late September.
Went to see a reconstructed chamber opera called 'Torso', by Czech composers Vit Zouhar and Tomas Hanzlik, using a libretto from 1728 by David Kopecky. It was perfomed in the grounds of the castle Primmersdorf and is a reconstruction of period Baroque music and opera drama. The music was really delicate and lovingly shaped by the two modern composers. I enjoyed the ' Opera Buffa' style and ornate costumes, as well as the extreme mannerisms of the singers.

LINKS:
www.damian.aktualne.cz
http://cinematography.at/

Read Goethe's 'Sorrows Of Young Werther'

2006-06-20T14:20:00.000+01:00

Really enjoyed reading Goethe's 'Sorrows Of Young Werther'. It's easy to see why it was so influential in its time with its passion and tragic inevitability of the death through love of its hero Werther. While it's an easy introduction to the high German Classicism of Goethe, the novel brilliantly displays the main tenets of the Empfindsamkeit or sensibility and Sturm und Drang movement in central European art during the seventienth and eighteenth centuries.
I felt sympathy for Werther as a moth caught in the flame, a real character trapped by his own sensitivity.

LINKS:
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/goethe.htm
http://www.poetrymagic.co.uk/poets/goethe.html

Composer Gyorgy Ligeti Dies In Vienna

2006-06-13T10:36:00.000+01:00

Heard this morning that the Austrian-Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti had died in Vienna yesterday. This is really sad - a wonderful light has gone out in the world. He was a great inspiration to me as a rule breaker and one of the reasons why I took up composing. My teacher Martin Watt studied composition with Ligeti in London. One of my most memorable evenings when I was young was to see the London premiere of the opera 'Le Grand Macabre'. As a child, I remember his music for Kubrick's '2001, A Space Odyssey'. We will miss you. Played his Requiem on CD last night in respect.

Here an obituary from his publisher Schott Music:

On Monday morning, the Austrian-Hungarian composer György Ligeti died in Vienna at the age of 83 after suffering from a serious illness. With him, we have lost one of the greatest composers of the 20th century.
György Ligeti was an adventurer in form and expression and a great visionary of contemporary music. His richly varied output takes a special position in its musical quality and uncompromising individuality. Ligeti moved far away from aesthetic trends and methods all his life. He was characterized by fresh and unorthodox ideas, any form of dogmatism was foreign to his nature, his entire oeuvre is marked by radical turning points.
Admired and hugely influential in the profession, the sensual accessibility of his music has won the hearts of audiences everywhere. Atmosphères, the orchestral work he created in 1961, made Ligeti instantly well-known.
In this piece, he worked almost completely without traditional melodic, harmonic and rhythmic parameters and concentrated on sounds with constantly changing textures. ‘Micropolyphony’, he once described, ‘means such a dense tissue that the individual parts become inaudible and only the resulting intermingling harmonies are effective as a form'. For him, however, techniques were never an end in themselves. Ligeti did not keep long to iridescent tonal surfaces, but always looked for new paths.
His father and brother both died in concentration camps; he himself managed to escape the labour service of the Hungarian army in 1941 and had to flee to Austria after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Deeply affected by these events, he developed a strong dislike of any dictatorship and any form of intellectual restriction: 'I am an enemy of ideologies in the arts. Totalitarian regimes do not like dissonances.' Biochemistry, chaos research, fractal geometry – Ligeti, who initially intended to study physics, found inspiration in the natural world for new compositional principles. During his long years as a teacher of international repute, he encouraged the independence, originality and uncompromising self-criticism of his pupils: 'There is only one tradition. Our music either stands up to it or not.'
After his intensive work at the Studio für elektronische Musik of the WDR in Cologne in the 1950s and the development of micropolyphony in the 1960s, his personal style became simpler and more transparent in the 1970s. And as if wanting to withdraw from the predominating musical tendencies, he began to use tonal sounds again. Ligeti said: 'I no longer listen to rules on what is to be regarded as modern and what as old-fashioned.'
His only full-length stage work Le Grand Macabre was inspired by the theatre of the absurd and is teeming with operetta-like wit and black humour. The composer wanted to communicate more directly with audiences: 'Stage action and music should be dangerous and bizarre, absolutely exaggerated, absolutely crazy.'
In the 1980s and 1990s, Ligeti expanded his musical horizons again, incorporating structural principles of African drumming music into his works: the fanatic of the intricate developed new complex polyrhythmic techniques.
They form the basis of the 3 collections of his Études pour piano which are considered to be the most important piano music of the end of the 20th century. György Ligeti travelled a long road: from Romanian folk music and the tonal language of his fellow countryman Béla Bartók to his own cosmos of sounds. The mentor of a whole generation of composers, he wanted to 'fuse the fear of death with laughter'.

Links:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/profiles/ligeti.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5072858.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-2222419.html
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/newsMainTemplate.asp?storyID=2571&newssectionID=1

Visit To Local Archway Theatre To See 'Strangers On A Train"

2006-06-12T12:29:00.000+01:00

Went to the theatre with my lovely wife Elaina to see "Strangers On A Train" at the local Archway Theatre. The quality of the acting was very good and very engaging. We had front row seats in the small theatre which is under the arches of the local railway station. The play is a thriller and a rewrite of the book by Patricia Highsmith, which was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock. I enjoyed both the lead parts. (actors names to be added)

http://www.archwaytheatre.co.uk/archway.htm

Paolo Giudici Asks Andi Spicer To Provide Soundscape For His Canterbury Tales Installation

2006-06-07T15:02:00.000+01:00

Photographer and performance artist Paolo Giudici contacted me today to ask if I was interested in writing a soundscape for a new project he is working on. It's based on a forthcoming walk to Canterbury in England to follow in the footsteps of Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales. Paolo will sample environment sounds from the walk and I will use these as the basis of the soundscape for an installation to be performed in the autumn. Paolo promises some amorous adventures in the same mode as Chaucer!
The work follows a succesful collaboration between Paolo and myself last month at the Royal College of Art in London, where I provided a soundscape for his performance work/installation 'Thesis'. (above: Chaucer; above right Giudici's work Evangelium)

LINKS:
www.usodimare.com

Went To NMC Launch Of New CD By Violinist Darragh Morgan

2006-06-06T16:58:00.000+01:00

Went to the launch of the CD, Opera, by violinist Darragh Morgan at the Opium Restaurant in London's Soho on Saturday night. Darragh Morgan played a world premiere performance of Morgan Haynes' 'Lucky's Speech' and Joe Cutler's (re)GAIA, which is featured on the CD.
Had a nice chat to Joe Cutler and told him about hearing his wonderful violin concerto played by the COMA ensemble in a very cold Shoreditch church earlier in the year. (Joe Cutler - above photo)

Here some blurb on the CD from the excellent recording company NMC:
Talented young duo Darragh Morgan (violin) and Mary Dullea (piano) feature on a disc of new works written especially for them by leading young composers Joe Cutler, Bryn Harrison, Jonathan Powell and Joseph Phibbs. The title work, Morgan Hayes’ Opera, is inspired by Italian director Dario Argento's film of a jinxed production of Verdi’s Macbeth; the disc is completed with Richard Causton’s poetic, British Composer Award-winning Seven States of Rain.

Links:
http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/?page=catalogue/item.html&id=135
http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/?page=home

Watched DVD Of Diva - Still Good After All These Years

2006-05-31T14:46:00.000+01:00

Watched a DVD of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s 1981 film Diva last night. This was a kind present from Chris & Anne Edwards. It still had the same power as before and hasn't really aged. Remember seeing it with David Hay Jones back at Aston Triange film theatre back at University. The music is memorable with an aria from Catalani's La Wally.

LINKS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diva_(film)

Anneke Scott Plays At Magnatune's John & Jan Buckman's House In Covent Garden

2006-05-29T12:35:00.000+01:00

Last night's recital at John & Jan Buckman's house in Covent Garden, London saw Anneke Scott and Kathryn Cok play Beethoven and Mozart, among other early 19th Century virtuosic horn music on period instruments. Anneke plays the natural horn and is frequently principal horn with The English Concert and Freiburg Baroque and has also performed with The Academy of Ancient Music, Concerto Copenhagen, English Baroque Soloists, Europa Galante, The Kings Consort, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Orchestre des Champs Elysees. (photos: John Buckman above, Katheryn Cok above left, Anneke Scott above right)
Anneke and I talked about myself writing a piece for natural horn and electronics with laptop for her to perform. She has played contemporary pieces a few years ago and has played with the London Sinfonietta, the UK's main exponent of contemporary classical music.
Hornist Ian Stott came along to the recital and we chatted to violinist Pavlo Beznosiuk.
John Buckman owns Magnatune, a prominant download record company that specialises in classical music.

Links:
Anneke Scott
http://www.annescott.com
Magnatune
http://www.magnatune.com
Pavlo Beznosiuk
http://www.aam.co.uk
London Sinfonietta
http://www.londonsinfonietta.org.uk/home/home.html

Andi Spicer Writing Work For Midi Wind Controller & Laptop To Be Performed By Julien Feltrin At All Ears Festival In London

2006-05-24T14:50:00.000+01:00

Started writing work for midi wind controller and synthesizer for woodwind specialist Julien Feltrin to be performed at the All Ears Contemporary Music Festival In London in September. The piece will be in three parts and will use the Yamaha WX5 wind controller and VL70-m virtual acoustic tone generator synthesizer. The provisional title is 'The Anthropic Principle' and will also use a Apple G4 laptop running MAX/MSP, Reason and Logic software.
To quote Wikipedia: In cosmology, the anthropic principle in its most basic form states the truism that any valid theory of the universe must be consistent with our existence as carbon-based human beings at this particular time and place in the universe. In other words, "If something must be true for us, as humans, to exist, then it is true simply because we exist." Attempts to apply this principle to develop scientific explanations in cosmology have led to some confusion and much controversy.

Links - All Ears Contemporary Music Festival:
http://at.orpheusweb.co.uk/forum/concrt.htm
Yamaha WX5 Midi wind controller
http://www.saxophones.co.uk/Yamaha%20WX5.htm

Concert Of Percussion Music At Brighton Fringe - Duo To Consider Playing Some of Andi Spicer's Pieces

2006-05-23T10:41:00.000+01:00

Adam Bushell and Tom Norrell played a interesting concert of percusison music by contemporary composers at the Brighton Festival Fringe, including some pieces from local composers. Barry Mills had a world premiere of his 'Walking In the Rain' and other premieres were from Johanna Strachan, Chris Gander. Barry's work typically diplayed his pastoral touch and fine eye for delicate detail in evoking a landscape.
South African composer Michael Blake had his African music-inspired '38A Hill Street Blues' performed. Michael has now moved back to South Africa after spending a number of years in Sussex, England and is quietly establishing quite a reputation for himself both back home and in Europe. Michael kindly organised a concert of my work in Johannesburg at the Bassline in Melville in 2003. The concert then included a work by the talented South African electronic music composer Dimitri Voudouris, who organised the continent's first electronic music festival in 2005.
Among more established composers, the duo played Iannis Xenakis's Rebonds - Movement B was one of the highlights of the concert. Kagel's 'Rrrrrrrr' (movements from) contrasted nicely with the understated Howard Skempton pieces 'Lament' and 'Air Melody'.
Had a chat with Adam and Tom and we talked about myself writing a percussion piece for the duo. Oli Mayne from the Brake Drum Assembly was also among the audience. Nice to share a pint with Barry Mills, his wife and Oli in the Cricketers pub afterwards.

Links:
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~barrymills/
http://www.bardic-music.com/Blake.htm
http://www.michaelblake.newmusicsa.org.za/
http://www.ciweb.com.ar/Kagel/index2.php
http://www.iannis-xenakis.org/english/index.html
http://www.musicnow.co.uk/composers/skempton.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitri_Voudouris

New Music Brighton Concert By Talkestra Plays Harrex, Mills, Finnissey, Graebner

2006-05-19T00:38:00.000+01:00

New Music Brighton put on a concert Thursday evening of contemporary classical works written by local composers in Brighton. Here a picture (left) of Michael Finnissey and Barry Mills who had pieces played by Talkestra , directed by the excellent Steve Dummer (clarinet). Barry's evocative Piano Trio was played as was Patrick Harrex's beautifully-shaped 'Colloquy'. Ed Hughes' Quartet ended the evening. A hard-hitting cello-led piece, Elegy, by Ric Graebner was the highlight for me.

Links:
(http://www.newmusicbrighton.co.uk/)
(http://www.michaelfinnissy.info/)
(http://web.onetel.net.uk/~barrymills/)
(http://www.talkestra.com/)
(http://www.talkestra.com/steved.html)
(http://www.patrickharrex.co.uk/)
(http://www.edwarddudleyhughes.com/)

Paolo Giudici's Thesis Installation With Soundscape by Andi Spicer At London's Royal College of Art

2006-05-18T08:44:00.000+01:00

Paolo Giudici (http://www.usodimare.com/) starts his marathon 8-hour performance at the Royal College of Art today. I've provided the soundscape for the installation. Here some explanation from his programme notes:

Performance (on a weekday, from 9 am to 5 pm, eight hours with short interruptions and a lunch break) in a soundscape: ANDI SPICER, The Bridge of Perati, 2006 for manipulated voice (Paolo Giudici) and electronics. With six CD players, sound system, two desks, two chairs, desk lamp, one writing mat, two letter trays, one paper bin, A4 paper, one fountain pen, one framed photograph (S.Ten. Nevio Artioli, 1941).

My mother's cousin, Second Lieutenant Nevio Artioli, 253rd Company, 3rd Battalion "Val Chiese", 6th Alpine Regiment, 2nd Alpine Division "Tridentina" fell in Belogorje (Russia) on the 20th December 1942, a few days after his twenty-second birthday. "Raising the alarm he saved his company but was shot by a sniper," it was said. Of the 220,000 soldiers sent by Mussolini to support and share Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union 100,000 never came back from the front or the prison camps. It counts as the most tragic military defeat in Italian history.
In 1952 he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Trieste, where he had begun to study economy before joining the army in September 1940, shortly after Italian intervention in the war.
In 1992 his remains were repatriated and buried in his hometown Tarvisio (Italy). I was as old as him, writing my tedious thesis in logic. I was invited to take part at the official ceremony at the war memorial of Redipuglia, but refused to go. I believed he should have been left near the bight of the Don, where he had rested the past fifty years. I believed no ceremony should indirectly celebrate a war of aggression. A few months later I decided to leave my country for good.
Today I dedicate this performance to Nevio as a form of later and private remembrance. More importantly, going through photos and letters forgotten in the basement, I can see something of my life as a student and soldier reflected in his. Something of his Italy reflected in mine at a turning point in history.

Two desks are facing each other. On one desk there is an audio mixer connected to six CD players and one amplifier with four speakers placed on the flour to mark off the space of the performance. The performer enters the space at 9 am of a working day whistling "Sul ponte di Perati". He switches on the sound system and starts playing a choice of the six CDs in Random Play

He then sits at the other desk, switches on the light, takes a sheet of paper from the left letter tray and starts writing "Il mattino ha l'oro in bocca". This is the Italian translation of the German proverb "Die Morgenstunde hat Gold in Munde" (literally: "The morning hour has gold in its mouth") but has also been used as Italian translation of "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy". The performer continues to replay different CDs and to rewrite the sentence, introducing limited elements of variation. With the passing of the day the sentence appears to gradually consume its own meaning.
Finally, the performer puts the fountain pen back into his pocket, switches off the light, takes the written sheets from the tray and throws them into the bin. He then does the same with the CDs, switches of the sound system and leaves.

Paolo Giudici, THESIS (2006)
A performance in a soundscape by Andi Spicer

is taking place within:

INTERVENTIONS/SPECULATIONS/FUCK-UPS
Installation and Performance work by MA Photography, RCA

Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art, Stevens Building, Jay Mews Entrance
Thursday 18th May 2006, From 9 am to 5 pmI wish to thank Andi Spicer for preparing this ghostly soundscape essential to the performance. He recorded me while singing or reading "Il ponte di Perati" a WWII Alpine Troops song, censored by the fascist regime for its black realism. He then manipulated and mixed the recordings to create several tracks grouped in six CDs. He finally asked me to play the tracks using the random play mode of the players but making decisions on which combination of CDs to play. To quote Werner Meyer-Eppler: "aleatoric processes are such processes which have been fixed in their outline but the details of which are left to chance."

Invited To A Concert Of Natural Horn Music Played By Anneke Scott And Given By John Buckman

2006-05-17T16:58:00.000+01:00

John Buckman, the founder of download music company Magnatune (www.magnatune.com) , invited me today to a concert of natural horn and piano music at his house in Covent Garden. John is wonderfully supportive of his artists on the Magnatune label. The evening concerts are usually very interesting and include many distinguished guests. Anneke Scott is playing the natural horn (www.annekescott.com). As a native of Birmingham (like myself) and a horn player (like myself), we have much in common. I've met her before at John's music evenings, although I've never heard her play.

Artist James de Villiers Gets In Contact

2006-05-17T16:47:00.000+01:00

My good friend James de Villiers (www.111.co.za) got in contact today via email. James and I have worked together quite a lot on shows and installations when I was in living in Johannesburg, South Africa. He's recently had a show at the Godart Gallery in Joburg. Left is Enigma Variation 2.
Below is a review of the exhibition from the Financial Mail:
'The French term Nature Morte is a particularly apt description of De Villiers' still lifes: skulls, rotting fruit - especially pomegranates and pears - and bread, dead fish and chipped bowls are reminiscent of 17th-century Dutch vanity paintings, reminding us that death is the inevitable end for all things. He applies religious symbols to a post-Christian world, while the mostly black backgrounds accentuate the sombre mood. A rare blue sky turns out actually to be a painting within a painting. But don't be put off: he paints well. While the impact en masse may be depressing, individually the pictures are intriguing, even inspiring, and thought-provoking.'

A Man Without Qualities & Michael Nyman

2006-05-17T10:43:00.000+01:00

Reading Robert Musil's Man Without Qualities, now halfway through the second volume (English edition). A strange journey through the subconcious and intellectual dialogue. It peels away the conceit of culture in an unmerciful manner. Listened to Michael Nyman's Drowning by Numbers on my iPod coming into London this morning. Ritual - Musil, Nyman, Vivaldi, espresso coffee.

Links:
(http://www.musilmuseum.at/)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Musil)
(http://www.michaelnyman.com/)

Here a recent picture of me in South Africa, near the Botswana border

2006-05-17T00:31:00.000+01:00

It was a warm night and the insects were buzzing. The gin and tonics helped too. It was nice to get back to Africa and the warmth and wildness. We lived there for seven years and it was hard to come back to the UK. Also left behind many good friends, including the very talented James de Villiers (www.111.co.za) Above a picture of me on safari camp and another with James, in his studio.

Writing reviews on Richard Barrett compositions/CD

2006-05-17T00:16:00.000+01:00

Writing some nice reviews on composer Richard Barrett http://www.ump.co.uk/barrett.htm. Wonderful stuff. His publisher very kindly sent me the scores to help me unravel the music. Dense, beautiful stuff. Recomend a listen. Prefer the smaller ensemble stuff to his large-scale Vanity work for large orchestra.

Paolo Giudici visits the Spicer household to discuss his new installation at the Royal College of Art In London

2006-05-16T23:41:00.000+01:00

Italian artist/photographer Paolo Giudici (http://www.usodimare.com/) came last Sunday to talk about his show at the Royal College of Art in London. I'm writing a soundscape for the performance on Thursday 18th May at the RCA. This a multi-media performance for photography/performance and soundscape. It will last 8 hours. Photos to follow. The installation is based around the death of his relative on the Eastern Front in WWII, who was a member of the Alpini Julia regiment. It's an antiwar piece that uses Paolo's voice to evoke the past by singing an Italian war song, Sul Ponte di Perati - here the link to the lyrics: (http://ingeb.org/songs/uncorodi.html).

The soundscape uses electronically manipulated voice and electronics using MAX/MSP, (http://www.cycling74.com/products/maxmsp) Reason, Audacity software and Zoom Studio 1201 multi-effects, Apple G3 laptop and Fostex multitracker 380s. This will be played through 6 DVD players in live performance at the RCA with aleatoric interjection from 5 of the DVD players using a shuffle setting.

Paolo's work Venexia is above left and right is Zodiacus

Julien Feltrin & Brake Drum Assembly - In Action At Brighton Festival

2006-05-16T20:05:00.000+01:00

This is the second year that I've had pieces played at the Brighton festival fringe in the UK. Two new pieces were premiered - 'Euclid Alone' for Paetzold Great Bass Recorder, Tenor Recorder and Electronics, French Horn and Percussion ensemble; and 'Bird' for solo vibraphone and electronics. Bird was perfomed by the excellent percussionist Oli Mayne.

'Click Language' and 'Baobab', both for percussion quartet were also played by the Brake Drum Assembly (www.brakedrumassembly.co.uk).
If you're interested in downloading my pieces as MP3s - click here www.ampcast.com/AndiSpicer

My work 'Euclid Alone' is essentially a vehicle for extended technique on the Paetzold Great Bass recorder, (http://www.vonhuene.com/paetzold_square.cfm) although it does have a section for tenor recorder. The Paetzold is usually used in early music, but is well suited to contemporary music due to its ability to generate a large number of multiphonics. These sounds are augmented with live electronics, controlled by Julien Feltrin during performance. African and world influences also permeate the composition.
Euclid Alone takes its title from the poem 'Euclid alone has looked on Beauty Bare' (http://www.the-athenaeum.org/poetry/detail.php?id=80) by the American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. (http://www.sonnets.org/millay.htm) The piece has a strong emphasis on surface detail and sound as music, but is also strongly geometric in proportion. The poem stresses the pure beauty of geometry and proportion particularly in abstraction.

Julien Feltin is currently a professor at the Royal College of Music in London (http://www.rcm.ac.uk/prof.asp?display=professors&link=702) and has studied both at the Sorbonne in Paris, and the Conservatorium Van Amsterdam (under Walter van Hauwe); as a contemporary recorder musician, he has performed with the Endymion ensemble in London, and the Asko and Schoenberg ensembles in Amsterdam, and he has been a prize-winner in the Gaudeamus competition (Amsterdam), Krakow Contemporary Music Competition, and the Haverhill Sinfonia Competition. His talents are in constant demand throughout Europe.

Oli Mayne is currently the age of a long playing record and has been involved in music for longer than he cares to remember. Past glories include playing bass and vibraphone in a pop band which was 'big in Germany', and appearances at the Royal Albert Hall and the South Bank in London. His current activities encompass contemporary music, free improvisation, big bands, singer-songwriters and experimental pop outfits.