Category: news

2024 Q1: treading the boards

The first quarter of this year will be spent bringing two new works into this world: Dora by Bernhard Lang, and The whole Truth about Lies with Nico and the Navigators.

I’ll be joining the Neue Vocalsolisten as the ensemble for Dora. The eight of us function together as a Greek chorus of sorts, intertwining intricately with the other characters of the opera. Rehearsals start soon at Staatsoper Stuttgart, and I’m curious how our function will reflect in the staging. We are in almost every other scene, there is quite a lot to do! (In the meantime, I am trying my best to cram the mixed-meter score and all the German text into my brain.)

After that, I’ll be diving again into the wonderful, zany universe that is Nico and the Navigators. (Hooray!) We will be making a new piece for the closing night of the Schwetzingen Festival. Nico sent us an evocative prompt, and I already have references and possibilities swimming in my head… As usual, the group of players is fantastic, and I’m looking forward to all the mischief we will create together.

Dora will play at Staatsoper Stuttgart through March and April, and The whole Truth about Lies will be at Schwetzinger Festpiele on May 25.

2023 Q4: making things

This has been a summer of laying down groundwork for future projects: recording pieces with Schola Heidelberg, developing long-term work in London with multi-disciplinary artist Melanie Wilson, and starting my Love Letters series. They have been intimate projects, either alone or with a few close collaborators. Coming up is a change of pace though: the last quarter of the year will be occupied with larger staged pieces and works involving bigger groups of people.

Starting late August, I’ll be joining Novoflot as we spend a month developing a site-specific music and theater work OpernCall to be performed at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. There will be projections onto the building’s facade, performances in different rooms, sounds heard by audience members only through headphones…etc. I’m looking forward to seeing what kinds of mischief we can pull off in the glass-paneled space.

After that, Quatuor Bozzini, Ensemble Dedalus, and I will reunite in Montreal for some more performances of the lovely and lush Grounds of Memory by Jürg Frey. (I am so, so happy about this, I cannot wait to see everyone again!)

To end the year, I’ll be with Nico and the Navigators again as we re-work the giant, joy-filled Lost in Loops (made originally with the Konzerthausorchester for Konzerthaus Berlin) into Sweet Surrogates, something more fitting for Radialsystem. It will be the same amount of energy, just compressed into a smaller space. More joy per square meter!

As a cherry on top of all this wonderfulness, the cantata Ensemble Proton Bern and I premiered and recorded, In Glow of Like Seclusion by Samuel Andreyev, will be out on the composer’s portrait disc from Métier Records soon.

Guest | Megan Ihnen’s Studio Class Masterclass

I was lucky enough to be a guest on my friend Megan Ihnen’s Studio Class podcast, as part of her Masterclass series! Megan is a multi-talented new music vocalist, teacher, and consultant, and we talked about practicing, approaching pieces, imagining sounds, trying to be good human beings to, etc. It was lovely to hang out with Megan and share our experiences as contemporary music singers.

You can listen to the podcast here or via a podcast platform of your choice, or watch the episode here from Megan’s youtube channel:

BBC Radio 3 broadcast

Tune in here for a special live broadcast from the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on BBC Radio 3’s Hear and Now program. The performance took place on November 26, 2016 starting at 10pm in Bates Mill. Many thanks to hcmf// for inviting me, to the team of Hear and Now for the smooth experience, and to Michael Finnissy, who wrote the beautiful Song 1 and Song 16. The broadcast will be available for listening until December 26, 2016.

Programme includes:

Bunita Marcus Music For Japan (UK premiere)
Naomi Pinnock Music for Europe (world premiere)
Ensemble Adapter

Christian Mason In a world of invisible waves: a butterfly (UK premiere)
Richard Uttley (piano)

Olga Neuwirth Incidendo/fluido
Richard Uttley (prepared piano & electronics)

Michael Finnissy Song 1; Song 16
Peyee Chen

Free improvisation by Percy Pursglove (trumpet) and Thomas Stronen (drums)