Sunday 8 June 2025, 7.30pm
London's Explore Ensemble presents recent collaborations with three composers — Lawrence Dunn, Okkyung Lee, and Sasha Scott — plus the first in a series of portrait films by video artist Rebecca Salvadori that document its relationships with composers.
Opening the night, Sasha Scott's electrifying new work for cello and electronics has been created in close collaboration with Explore's cellist, Deni Teo. For the first time in London, Explore bring excerpts from Signals, Okkyung Lee's towering work for ensemble and electronics, fresh from a European tour last autumn. The second set offers a focus on composer Lawrence Dunn, whose music often skirts the eccentric, sardonic, nostalgic, and surreal. Rebecca Salvadori's 2022 film 'Suite' creates a vivid imagistic portrait of the composer during his collaboration with the ensemble at Snape Maltings, and his quirky melody-laden 'Set of four (for five) finish the evening.
PROGRAMME:
- Rebecca Salvadori - Composers Chronicle
- Lawrence Dunn - Set of Four (for five)
- Sasha Scott - New Work (world premiere)
- Okkyung Lee - Signals (excerpts)
Described as one of the UK’s ‘top new music bands’ (Kate Molleson, BBC Radio 3), Explore Ensemble is a group in London that performs, commissions, and promotes new music throughout the UK and internationally. Based around a core sextet that often incorporates electronics and video, Explore Ensemble's reputation for outstanding performances and inventive curation stems from its advocacy of some of the most original composers of today, combined with its revival of landmark works from the recent past, and its debut recordings of new music. In 2021 Explore Ensemble was awarded the internationally prestigious Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Ensemble Prize. Since its founding in 2012 at the Royal College of Music by composers Nicholas Moroz and Arne Gieshoff, Explore Ensemble has featured at festivals and venues throughout the UK and beyond, including Centro Pecci Prato (IT), hcmf// (UK), LCMF (UK), Aldeburgh Festival (UK), No Bounds (UK), Transit (BE), November Music (NL), Schleswig-Holstein (DE), ZKM Karlsruhe (DE), Schlossmediale (CH), and at home in London: Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, Cafe OTO, and Spitalfields Festival.
Explore Ensemble has released several critically-acclaimed records, most recently, Beatrice Dillon’s Seven Reorganisations on her new label HI. Described as ‘A gift for listeners’ by the New York Times, the ensemble’s 2023 album — Perfect Offering — showcases music by Cassandra Miller, Lisa Illean, Rebecca Saunders, and Lawrence Dunn. The ensemble’s portrait of Catherine Lamb’s music with Exaudi and Lotte Betts-Dean on Another Timbre — parallaxis forma — was described by Bandcamp’s Peter Magarsak as an ‘extraordinary collection‘. Other releases include two portrait albums of Oliver Leith and James Weeks’ music on Another Timbre: Me Hollywood and Summer, which featured on Bandcamp’s Best of Contemporary Classical list.
Okkyung Lee is a cellist, composer, and improviser who moves freely between of artistic disciples and contingencies. Since moving to New York in 2000 she has worked in disparate contexts as a solo artist and collaborator with creators in a wide range of disciplines. A native of South Korea, Lee has taken a broad array of inspirations—including noise, improvisation, jazz, western classical, and the traditional and popular music of her homeland—and used them to forge a highly distinctive approach. Her curiosity and a determined sense of exploration guide the work she has made in disparate contexts.
Even though she is probably known best for her improvisational work utilizing visceral extended techniques for more than a decade, from 2010 Lee started developing many site specific works, responding to its architecture, audience, or objects surrounding her, producing an immersive experience. Most recently she presented Hutton Sori composed for cello and computer generated sounds at Der Sommer in Stuttgart Festival, and Grey Shooting Stars (for Yun Dong-Ju) for cello and pre-recorded sound materials at Bludenzer Tage Zeitgemächer Musik in Austria which involved breaking the fourth wall between the performer and the audience thus challenging the built in hierarchy in traditional concert setting. At Villa Medici for her presentation, Okkyung will continue explore the space in the similar manner while continue breaking away from the conventional cello performance.
She has appeared on more than 30 albums, including a diverse variety of recordings as a leader, whether the acclaimed solo improvisation effort Ghil, produced by Norwegian sound artist Lasse Marhaug for Ideologic Organ/Editions Mego, or composition-driven collections like Noisy Love Songs (for George Dyer), released by Tzadik. In 2018 she released Cheol-Kkot-Sae (Steel.Flower.Bird), an ambitious piece drawing upon free improvisation and traditional Korean music that was commissioned for the 2016 Donaueschingen Festival by SWR2, where she collaborated with western improvisers Marhaug, John Butcher, Ches Smith, and John Edwards along with Pansori vocalist Song-Hee Kwon and traditional percussionist Jae-Hyo Chang. She also leads an intricately nuanced Yeo-Neun Quartet featuring harpist Maeve Gilchrist, pianist Jacob Sacks, and bassist Eivind Opsvik that explores the lyrical side of her writing.
Over the last two decades Okkyung has collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Arca, David Behrman, Chris Corsano, Mark Fell, Douglas Gordon, Jenny Hval, Vijay Iyer, Christian Marclay, Bill Orcutt, Marina Rosenfeld, and John Zorn among others. In recent years she’s performed in equally varied contexts, whether embarking on an extended tour with the legendary experimental rock band Swans or collaborating with visual artist Haroon Mizra.
As a curator Lee has programmed concert series at the Stone in New York, the Music Unlimited Festival in Wels, Austria, and at the Jazz House (recently renamed Alice) in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2015 she was selected as a Doris Duke Performing Artist in 2015, and she has been awarded residencies at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy in 2015 and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany in 2017. She has been commissioned to compose music and assemble projects for Time Spans Festival in New York, Amsterdam’s Maze Ensemble, Borealis Festival in Bergen, Norway, Nam June Paik Art Center, Korea and Pub Crawl I & II for the London Sinfonietta as part of a Christian Marclay exhibition at White Cube Gallery.
She received a dual bachelor’s degree in Contemporary Writing & Production and Film Scoring from Berklee College of Music in 1998 and a master’s degree in Contemporary Improvisation from New England Conservatory of Music in 2000.
Lawrence Dunn is a composer, pianist and percussionist born in Walthamstow, London. He trained at Trinity College of Music and later at Cambridge, and at Huddersfield with Bryn Harrison. In 2018 he was shortlisted for the Gaudeamus Award. His music has been performed by Apartment House, Ensemble Modern, Quatuor Bozzini, Plus-Minus, Slagwerk Den Haag, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, L’Instant Donné, Philip Thomas and Juliet Fraser. Music has been released on Listenpony and Huddersfield Contemporary Records. Forthcoming projects include new works for Exaudi, Proton Bern and Ensemble Mosaik. He is based in Manchester.
Sasha Scott is a composer, producer and violinist born and based in London. In 2019, she was the senior winner of ‘BBC Young Composer of the Year’ for her electro-acoustic work Humans May Not Apply. Since then, she has collaborated / been commissioned by Aurora Orchestra, Sean Shibe, Beijing Music Festival, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Her Ensemble, BBC Concert Orchestra. Upcoming projects include new works for London Symphony Orchestra, 12 Ensemble, Aldeburgh Festival, Lise Vandersmissen and Deni Teo (Explore Ensemble). Her music has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 & 6, NTS Radio, and has been performed in venues across the UK, Europe and Asia. Sasha is currently on the RPS Composers programme 2024-2025, and was previously on the 'LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme 2023-2024' & 'Britten Pears Young Artist programme 2022-23'. Sasha graduated from the Royal College of Music in 2024, with first class honours in Bachelor of Music (Hons). She studied composition with Mark Anthony-Turnage and violin with Yuri Zhislin.
As a producer/performer, Sasha performed Inertia on solo live electronics with the London Symphony Orchestra at Hackney Empire 2024, and has also been a support act for Robert Ames at the Purcell Room (Southbank Centre) 2021, Ben Corrigan and Robert Ames at the Pickle Factory 2022, and MINIHI at the Waiting Room 2023. Her debut EP Spiral was released on 24/02/23, and was broadcast on BBC Radio 6 & NTS Radio. Her second EP Angel was released on 22/11/24 and both EP’s were featured in Tom Boogizm’s 2023 & 2024 Guest Charts for Boomkat. Sasha remixed Ben Corrigan and Robert Ames' track Chrome Ocean which was released on Modern Recordings, and recently scored a 30 second film for Burberry's Outerwear Campaign 2024. As a violinist, Sasha regularly plays in Chineke! Orchestra and the London Contemporary Orchestra. Recent credits include being a session violinist on The Smile's albums Walls Of Eyes and Cutouts, and has also been a session violinist on film and television scores such as Chevalier, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Who Killed Jill Dando? She has played in venues across the UK & Europe, as well as BBC Proms, BBC Radio 6 Festival, F175 Live, and the Burberry SS23 fashion show.
London-based video artist with a long experience of filming environments following a non-hierarchical/chronological layering and sequencing of audio to footage. Her film work, including ambiguous short documentaries, artists’ portraits, music videos and AV sets, is both highly personal and wilfully elusive. Throughout the years, Salvadori has accumulated an extensive video archive from which she creates assemblages. This acts as the basis for filmic portraits of moments, people and environments. Her work has been shown at venues and festivals including Videodrome Paris (FR), III Point Festival Miami (US), Club to Club (IT), Macro Museum of Contemporary Art (IT), Barbican Art Center (UK), Festival of Film and Animation Olomouc (CZ), Festival IMAGES (CH), Crosstalk Video Art Festival (HU), David Lynch’s Silencio (FR), SCHNUCK Glaspalais (NL), Sophiensaele Theatre (DE).
