NOTE: this performance will take place at the Colyer-Fergusson Hall, Gulbenkian Arts Centre, University of Kent on Sunday 13th October 2024 at 8.00pm. Free entry, booking required. Contact Gulbenkian box office for booking.
Stevie Wishart is an internationally established composer, violinist and hurdy-gurdy player whose current work focuses on ecology and the environment. She started her career playing with leading free jazz players in London, Berlin and New York as well as establishing the award-winning early music ensemble Sinfonye. Since then she has made music for concerts, galleries, theatre and dance with commissions from the BBC Proms, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Ensemble Variances. Her music has been used by choreographers from Pina Bausch to Wayne McGregor.
The undoubted master of the hurdy-gurdy in the UK is Stevie Wishart, who plays both traditional early music and contemporary experimental music. She says the hurdy-gurdy is like "an acoustic synth" (The Quietus)
Free Range has commissioned Stevie to write a piece for and with the Free Range Orchestra. Through collaborating with the group and individual players, Stevie will create music that combines her ecological concerns with an understanding of musical communities.
Free entry. Book your free ticket through the Gulbenkian Arts Centre box office. https://thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/stevie-wishart/
Workshop Collective is an octet formed by saxophonist Matt Miles to provide a platform for collaboration and experimentation. Some of the region's best jazz performer-composers meet regularly to workshop each other's pieces and develop personal approaches to writing for a chamber jazz orchestra.
The Leon String Quartet play repertoire, write their own music and collaborate with a wide range of artists. Previously at Free Range they have played Shostakovich, collaborated with adventurous folk group Arlet and played the polytemporal music of experimental rock composer and guitarist Joe Inkpen.
Members of these two groups combine to perform two new collaborative pieces commissioned by Free Range especially for this performance.
Award-winning ‘broken folk’ experimentalists, the Lunatraktors strip Anglo-Celtic traditional songs to their bare bones of vocal harmony and percussive dance, expanding them into weird, playful spaces with eclectic acoustic beats, accordion, whistles and deep drones. Ancient and contemporary, mournful and joyously deranged, Lunatraktors are ‘simply different’ (RTÉ Lyric FM). MOJO Top Ten Folk Albums 2019 & 2021
As part of this evening’s show, we present Kat Lewis’, Statement of Asylum: Remix. Originally projected onto the side of the Turner Contemporary in Margate, this is a projected collective poem made from anonymous words spoken by asylum seekers. Preview.
Free Range (in collaboration with the here.here concert series at University of the Creative Arts, and the Gulbenkian Arts Centre) presents a conversation, a concert and an experiment.
We have invited string players to form a new ensemble to play semi-improvised music by German composer Eva-Maria Houben and early music maverick, Roddy Skeaping. Both composers will work with the players, many of whom will be encountering improvisation for the first time. The audience and players will be invited to speak about this process before and after the performance. This is the profound and playful sound of highly experienced classical string players taking their first steps into a new world.
Please note this event is free but you do require a ticket. Tickets available here: thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/free-range-string-orchestra/
Institutions of the Flesh is a music-theatre performance exploring relationships between the human voice, our bodies and the social structures in which we live. It's about how each and every breath we take connects us to the institutions of love, labour, devotion and dissent that have shaped human history.
Developed by the extraordinary singer/composer, Alwynne Pritchard and the Grammy-nominated Alpaca Ensemble, this piece uses texts by William Blake and Heine Müller. The performance will be recorded by the BBC.
Alwynne Pritchard Composition, sound design, text, voice
Else Bø Piano
Marianne Baudouin Lie Cello
Thorolf Thuestad Sound design and live electronics
Heiner Müller and William Blake Additional texts
Margrethe Kvaran, Helena Nakstad, Agnes Severin, Ragne and Dulcie Pugh Pre-recorded children’s voices
For over a decade Blueblut have continued to be one of most intriguing and unusual trios with their pick-and-mix sound world that grabs and gobbles up the best of everything it encounters. Here the intensity of rock and the space and openness of electronica meets the razor-sharp precision and wild improvisation of jazz. Prolific collaborator and drummer Mark Holub is joined by Pamelia Stickney, one of the most in-demand theremin players. The third and final member is guitarist and instrument-inventor, Chris Janka. They create music that is fun, free and at times fierce, direct from the Viennese underground. Swirling funfair-like melodies and ideas will fly past and around you, at incredible speed - hold on tight!
Drummer Mark Holub and pianist Sam Bailey have played together in various guises over the years (Jack Hues & the Quartet, Spock) but this will be the first time as a duo. ‘Bailey’s fondness for splicing busy
clusters of notes into rhythmic spaces that seem too tight for them often drove the group to a cliffhanging intensity’ (The Guardian)
You may remember the violinist and composer Preetha Narayanan from the duo Balladeste who gave a memorable performance with the poet Kelvin Corcoran at Free Range in 2023. Now she presents her own compositions, blending contemporary classical music with Indian classical and folk music: contemplative, soulful melodies interwoven with lush harmonies. For this intimate evening, she brings Palestinian Oud maestro Saied Silbak and multi-instrumentalist Zac Gvi to present new arrangements of pieces from her EPs Rebirth and Bleeding Heart with live choreography by dancers Nandita Shankardass and Mithun Gill.
Adam Coney is a guitarist, producer and DIY music organiser, founder of Trestle Records and the remarkable series of One Day Band releases. Adam will be performing music from his beautiful recent album, Ashwin & Above. 'The LP takes us on a journey from quiet contemplation to maximal abandon via compositional poise, intense delivery and astute sound design' (Kyle McCallum, Contra Pop / Extra Normal)
Unrealtime is an audio visual software interface designed for improvisers. Developed by a team of musicians over ten years led by improviser and composer Panos Ghikas, Unrealtime is partly an aesthetic approach to improvising, partly a provocative musical partner and partly a digital prosthetic, extending existing instrumental capabilities.For this performance, the Unrealtime players will collaborate with members of the Free Range Orchestra, including poet Kat Peddie, as well as inviting the audience to play.
During lockdown Mercury-nominated drummer and composer Mark Holub (Led Bib) explored new ways of combining composing and improvising, based around the musical personalities of specific players from Vienna where he lives. Drums, cello, violin, bass clarinet and saxophone play lines with a wonky energy akin to Led Bib but with a new exploratory openness in the improvising. Joining Anthropods on their UK tour is another 5-piece improvising powerhouse led by baritone saxophonist Cath Roberts. Sloth Racket shares a punky, groove-based approach to free improvisation using notation to create high-energy music with contrast, detail and texture.
Have you become a bit of an expert at avoiding thinking about the future of our planet? This innovative collaboration between Free Range and Extinction Rebellion approaches the topic of climate anxiety through music, words and collaborative creativity. Last year’s XR/FR event ended in a joyous collective action as everyone in the space worked together to build a model of an ideal society. With a similar spirit of playfulness, this event aims to tap the creativity and community in the room to develop the resilience and radical joy that will sustain us.
Sophie Sirota is a viola player and electronic musician. With a background in classical music and film soundtracks Sophie has embraced real time audio processing in her recent compositions and is currently involved in the Coastal Electronauts synth open mic.