Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe.
unterholz (‘undergrowth’) is an innovative audiovisual performance by German artist, composer and cellist Marcus Kaiser featuring members of the Free Range Orchestra. Based on an immersive projection of a camera moving slowly forwards through jungle undergrowth, the piece overlays audio and video from past performances. This becomes a visual analogy for the exploratory, organic growth of a semi-improvised piece as it is performed repeatedly in different places, with different people and different durations, accumulating meaning and identity with each iteration. Unterholz has been performed 23 times since its premiere in 2006, in Austria, Dusseldorf, Munich, Berlin, Ljubjana, and Tianjin (China) among other places. Discover more.
Sophie Stone's syntheses, initially composed for organ(s) and commissioned for the Amsterdam Wandelweiser Festival in 2022, has been especially adapted for the Free Range Orchestra who will premiere a new version of the piece for ensemble. syntheses captures Stone’s unique approach to notation which reflects both freedom and constraint of musical parameters. Players find and create their own paths through the notation to create a quiet unfolding soundscape.
This performance has been made possible by UCA Surrey galleries and the here.here concert series. This event is part of Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities, taking place 7–16 November 2024. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. For further information please see beinghumanfestival.org.
Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell & Hannah White) will be performing their piece ‘Kinetic Resonance’ on a new instrument called the Orbit they designed and made in collaboration with local luthier Kai Tönjes. Inspired by the work of Walter Smetak and an instrument called a torre (tower) made by his students in the Brazilian band Uakti, the Orbit is a ten-sided instrument played by two musicians. The body is spun by one performer while the other holds a bow to ten rotating strings, creating trance-inducing drones and ethereal harmonics. Blanc Sceol are an artist duo who work in the expanded field of listening, sound, and performance.
Learn about the instrument: www.blancsceol.co.uk/Orbit-the-instrument
The opening set features the violinist and producer Agathe Max.
‘With an elegant command of melody and a strident use of rhythm, Max … bridges the gaps between minimalism, post-classicism, the avant garde, krautrock, and plain old-fashioned pop’ (Boomkat)
Free Women return to Free Range with 'A Women’s History of Happenings’, an exploration of what happens to Happenings when we pay attention to feminist history. Taking inspiration from the work of Yoko Ono and the Feminist Improvising Group, Free Women bring their own Happening to Free Range, referencing 20th Century works through a 21st Century lens.
Free Women are seven experienced performers interested in creating eclectic, thought-provoking & humorous experiences which examine the world through the female gaze: Anna Braithwaite, Heledd Francis-Wright, Kristin Fredricksson, Kat Peddie, Nadia Tewfik-Bailey and Maureen Wolloshin.
Vivienne Sometimes is a one-woman show about Vivien Haigh Eliot, the first wife of poet T. S. Eliot. Drawing on her short stories, letters and diaries, the show powerfully presents Vivienne’s struggles with creativity, mental health and the machinery of Eliot’s literary success.
Vivienne Sometimes was written by artist and writer, Donna Fitzgerald. The part of Vivienne is played by writer, director and actress, Rosanna Lowe. The music is performed, arranged and composed by Sam Bailey.
‘Donna Fitzgerald’s meditation on Vivienne’s life ... was illuminating, and troubling in a way that stays with me’
‘absolutely captivating … [Rosanna Lowe] is a force of nature!’
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)