Sunday 10 October 2021, 7.30pm
Apartment House perform the first performance of an epic 60 minute work ‘The Great Liberation Through Hearing’ for amplified just-tuned string quartet and computer-transformed vocal sounds from 1995, by American composer David Dunn. It is constructed entirely from a phonetic analysis of the Tibetan transliteration of the Sanskrit names of the peaceful and wrathful deities described in the sacred Buddhist text known in the West as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, correctly translated as The Great Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between. Dark, resonant, liberating and expansive, the work is an extraordinary deep and sonic, meditative journey.
Preceding the work will be a performance of The Text on the Opposite Page by Jackson MacLow, with Elaine Mitchener and Apartment House. MacLow was himself a Buddhist practitioner.
PROGRAMME
Jackson MacLow The Text on the Opposite Page (1965)
David Dunn ‘The Great Liberation Through Hearing’ (1995) (first performance)
Gordon MacKay, Mira Benjamin violins, Bridget Carey viola, Anton Lukoszevieze cello, Elaine Mitchener voice.
David Dunn is a composer and sound artist. He creates text and sound compositions and environmental installations. He is an expert wildlife recordist and a bioacoustic researcher. His music straddles the world of sound and science. ‘Much of my work attempts to convince others of the diversity of auditory worlds that surround us and the surprising nature of the acoustical mediums through which they pass. I am also interested in establishing a context of relevance for this awareness and in inventing affordable tools for its exploration. Underlying all of this is a polemic that argues for the necessity of an aural art form that positions itself both within a discourse between art and science, and where the non-human living world consequently takes center stage.’
Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004), was a poet and composer who also wrote performance pieces, essays, plays, and radio works (mainly produced at Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne). He was also a painter and multimedia performance artist, often with the poet/visual artist, Anne Tardos and sometimes with Pauline Oliveros and many others. Author of 31 books, his work has also been published in more than 90 anthologies and periodicals and read publicly, exhibited, performed, and broadcast all over the World.
The group, created by cellist Anton Lukoszevieze has been captivating audiences for nearly 30 years, with performances of avant-garde and experimental music from all over the World.
The ensemble has been a firm fixture on the British concert scene, with regular performances at Café Oto and as an associate ensemble of the Wigmore Hall.
Apartment House has released over 40 albums, many on the UK label Another Timbre. Current releases include Pauline Oliveros - Sound Pieces, Magnus Granberg - Evening Star, Vesper Bell and Morton Feldman’s epic and mesmerising Violin and String Quartet.
Elaine Mitchener is a veteran of vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde, traversing free improvisation, cross-disciplinary music theatre and contemporary composition with clarity and joy.
Her debut album SOLO THROAT released in May 2024 under Café Oto’s OTOROKU label has been described as “An uncompromisingly imaginative approach to text that does credit to the power of the human voice, as well as the mind that pushes it on to previously unheard paths.” (Jazzwise)
Experimental musicians and improvisers she has worked with include Moor Mother, Joelle Leandre, Hamid Drake, William Parker, Pat Thomas, Black Top, David Toop, Xhosa Cole. Elaine is founder of the collective electroacoustic unit The Rolling Calf. Composers, visual artists and poets she has worked with include: George E Lewis, Jennifer Walshe, Matana Roberts; visual artists The Otolith Group, Christian Marclay, Sonia Boyce; Jay Bernard, Roy Claire Potter, Dante Micheaux; chamber ensembles Apartment House, ICE, Ensemble MAM, Klangforum Wien, Van Huynh Co.
