http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/ Sat, 22 Oct 2011 22:42:53 +0000 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk en http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/Far-Parlour-2009 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/following/edwardjessen.co.uk/Far-Parlour-2009 Sat, 22 Oct 2011 22:42:53 +0000 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/ 2155972 FAR PARLOUR (2009) for five harps duration ca. 6 mins. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155972/0118-Listening-Sikhs.jpg" width="450" height="472" width_o="450" height_o="472" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155972/0118-Listening-Sikhs_o.jpg" data-mid="10782126" border="0" align="left"/> Written for Gabriella Dall'Olio and harpists from Trinity Laban with funding provided by the Festival of Time and Space and the Royal Observatory Greenwich. First performed in the Peter Harrison Planetarium as part of the Harmony of the Spheres event, 19 20 and 21 November, 2009. Score http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/Laughter-Scores-2005 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/following/edwardjessen.co.uk/Laughter-Scores-2005 Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:54:49 +0000 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/ 2155999 ARTIST PROJECT: LAUGHTER SCORES (2005)Cabinet Magazine, Brooklyn NY, Spring 2005, Issue 17. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155999/149-Monkey-Cola.jpg" width="450" height="287" width_o="450" height_o="287" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155999/149-Monkey-Cola_o.jpg" data-mid="10781953" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155999/152-Russian-Esquire.jpg" width="450" height="614" width_o="450" height_o="614" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155999/152-Russian-Esquire_o.jpg" data-mid="10781955" border="0" align="left"/> Competition collaboration with Architects Alex Gino & Jason Griffiths; overall winners of competition with the prize of the commission to build sonic structure. Judges: Thom Main, Wolf Prix, Eric Owen Moss, Arthur Erickson. I began scoring laughter in 1994, when Jason Griffiths and Alex Gino entered an architectural competition to build a Temple of Laughter, and asked me to contribute. (Their design went on to win.) They explained that their small building, basically a shipping container to be transported around the country on the back of a truck, would support a kind of laughter system which would both encourage visitors to laugh by playing them canned laughter and record their laughter responses. The idea was to create a building that would contain an ever-expanding cacophony of laughter. My job was to make distinctions between the different categories of laughter — the giggle, the guffaw, the bellow, etc. — by recording samples from friends, children, TV, etc. and make musical notations of them. It became immediately evident that the process of faithfully transcribing pure sounds of emotion was going to be enormously difficult. Unlike speech — which generally has a decipherable pitch — laughter seemed to be ecstatic, more like the sound of forced air and involuntary pitchless spasms. With each sample of laughter I resolved to take impression of the vowels, the speeds and the curvature in the way that a court artist might quickly sketch a villain during a big murder trial — not the deepest likeness, yet not unrecogniseable either. The impressions are based on a series of closer and closer approximations. A person should be able to look at the impressions and execute the same sounds in an accurate and, with any luck, emotive manner. Score http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/Prime-2010 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/following/edwardjessen.co.uk/Prime-2010 Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:49:40 +0000 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/ 2155985 PRIME (2010) for voice, cello & auxiliary sound duration ca. 2½ mins. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155985/Ishango-Bone-Notches.jpg" width="450" height="334" width_o="450" height_o="334" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155985/Ishango-Bone-Notches_o.jpg" data-mid="10782171" border="0" align="left"/> Sticks with notches carved into bone, ivory or antler have been known for over 35,000 years. The notches are usually considered as tally marks: one notch corresponding to one object. The Ishango Bone — a real star of African archaeology — was found in 1960 by the Belgian geologist Jean de Heinzelin de Braucourt in what was then the Belgian Congo. It was subsequently dated to the Upper Paleolithic (the Late Stone Age), some 20,000 years ago. The bone was found among the remains of a small community that fished, gathered and grew crops around the African area of Ishango, centered near the headwaters of the White Nile River. The owner of the bone is unknown. It possibly belonged to a baboon. Possibly a lion. The bone has been thinned down, scraped, polished and engraved with 168 small notches split over three columns. One of these columns is divided into four groupings of notches: 19 17 13 and 11. (Totaling sixty and representing all the prime numbers between ten and twenty). Many scholars have put forward interpretations of the bone: This is the oldest piece of evidence as to the mathematical knowledge of ancient mankind. This is the earliest example of man grappling with the irregularity of the primes. It is a counting object for the purposes of record-keeping… Perhaps the bone is concerned with a latter-age, Yorkshire composer, dashing and accomplished, who would later total sixty and who, in his own prime, would say after first seeing a picture sent from the Muséum des Sciences naturelles in Bruxelles, “Ha ha! It looks positively obscene.” Prime was written for John Potter and Charlotte Bishop and was first played on the occasion of “Not a Soul but Ourselves: A Roger Marsh Celebration”, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, York on 24 November 2010. Score http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/Mother-Tongue-Tautologies-2010 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/following/edwardjessen.co.uk/Mother-Tongue-Tautologies-2010 Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:47:09 +0000 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/ 2155982 MOTHER TONGUE TAUTOLOGIES (2010)for orchestra duration ca. 5½ mins. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155982/147-Orson-Welles-Eye-I.jpg" width="450" height="489" width_o="450" height_o="489" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155982/147-Orson-Welles-Eye-I_o.jpg" data-mid="10782196" border="0" align="left"/> Commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra as part of UBS Soundscapes: Pioneers. Score http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/Etch-2009 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/following/edwardjessen.co.uk/Etch-2009 Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:42:21 +0000 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/ 2155962 ETCH (2009)for audio and planetarium projections <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155962/0127-Pained-To-Hear.jpg" width="450" height="399" width_o="450" height_o="399" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155962/0127-Pained-To-Hear_o.jpg" data-mid="10782098" border="0" align="left"/> Etch was part of the Four Fictional Glances project, a collaboration with Greenwich’s Public Astronomers. The project stemmed from a commission to respond to the precise imagery and the evocative lectures that form the working life of the Harrison Planetarium.   Early on in the process we realised that our biggest ambition was to tell disconnected stories using the existing imagery of the Planetarium — that is, the real accounts of space, real distances, real planets, the “non fiction” of the heavens. However, we wanted to invent a duplicate of this imagery and to make it behave very separately — an imperfect replica, a substitute cosmos — where a set of alternative laws might take hold. We began making small visual scripts with the idea that it wasn’t so much the objects we would be looking at (planets, systems, nebulae, etc.) but the activities of movement and behaviour in that fictional environment.   These sorts of ‘behaviours’ then became unverifiable questions, “how might it look if one’s head were caught in a perpetual side-to-side pendulum motion, staring across unimaginable distances?” Or “what might it feel like to move forward and backward through billions of light years with the inhale and exhale of our individual breathing?” These scripts then became the visual answers to these speculative questions, placed just so, and spaced in such a way that not the things but the activity around them seemed arranged — and believable.   As a compensation to the vastness of space, the soundworld was to be very small. Each script was composed from only the sounds of toys: chime piano, toy guitar, log drum and children’s recorder. Additionally we sought out an objet trouvé (a found recording, an archive speech, a machine sound, a radio broadcast, etc.) to complement each theme.   Like all things that take on a new life when allocated new neighbours, the imagery of the cosmos has become less infinite as we attached small aural stories to them. In doing so, I think we have succeded in making frieze-like patterns, detailed pieces of innovation that suggest exaggerated celestial gestures as they become small, personal and understandable events. &#9835; ROG_planetarium_etch.mp3 http://files.edwardjessen.co.uk/audio/ROG_planetarium_etch.mp3 Program http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/Minghella-Dialogues-2013 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/following/edwardjessen.co.uk/Minghella-Dialogues-2013 Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:38:44 +0000 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/ 2155952 MINGHELLA DIALOGUES (2013) a dramatic work for two vocal soloists, recorder consort, visual projection and auxiliary audio duration ca. 80 mins. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155952/0116-Interview-Woman.jpg" width="450" height="330" width_o="450" height_o="330" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155952/0116-Interview-Woman_o.jpg" data-mid="10782082" border="0" align="left"/> In development for the Spitalfields Summer Festival 2013 with funding provided by the PRS Foundation. In collaboration with Fifty Nine Productions, Dominic Murcott, John Potter, Anna Maria Friman and Consortium5. Score http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/Chambre-119-2009 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/following/edwardjessen.co.uk/Chambre-119-2009 Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:31:59 +0000 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/ 2155938 CHAMBRE 119 (2009)for performer: amplified voice, piano, toy piano and cd accompaniment. duration ca. 6½ mins. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155938/144-Catherine-Laws.jpg" width="450" height="300" width_o="450" height_o="300" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155938/144-Catherine-Laws_o.jpg" data-mid="10782061" border="0" align="left"/> &#9835; chambre_119.mp3 http://files.edwardjessen.co.uk/audio/chambre_119.mp3 Written for Catherine Laws with funding provided by Arts Council England. First performed as part of the Peninsula Arts Contemporary Piano Series, Upper Lecture Theatre, Sherwell Centre, Plymouth on 18th March 2009. Score Program Publication http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/Intimate-Handling-2009 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/following/edwardjessen.co.uk/Intimate-Handling-2009 Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:31:59 +0000 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/ 2155878 INTIMATE HANDLING (2009)duration: ca. 30 mins. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155878/141-Table-Seance.jpg" width="450" height="331" width_o="450" height_o="331" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155878/141-Table-Seance_o.jpg" data-mid="10782037" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155878/142-Table-Seance.jpg" width="438" height="331" width_o="438" height_o="331" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155878/142-Table-Seance_o.jpg" data-mid="10989929" border="0" align="left"/> A collaborative, and speculative, devised sonic theatre project, based on 19th-century spiritism and domestic séance — with Jane Chapman (harpsichord) and with Michael Oliva (sound manipulation) — resulting in five short films. The project was a bid to render believable sonic situations from which the dramatic, instrumental and electroacoustic aspects are all essential and meaningfully-combined. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155878/143-Intimate-Handling-Poster.jpg" width="400" height="566" width_o="400" height_o="566" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155878/143-Intimate-Handling-Poster_o.jpg" data-mid="10782041" border="0" align="left"/> &#9835; intimate_handling_iamtoo_.mp3 http://files.edwardjessen.co.uk/audio/intimate_handling_iamtoo_.mp3 Score http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/Companion-2008 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/following/edwardjessen.co.uk/Companion-2008 Sun, 16 Oct 2011 12:58:06 +0000 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/ 2155856 COMPANION (2008) for four performers: voice, toy pianos, violin and cello duration ca. 6 mins. <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155856/139-Companion-Image.jpg" width="450" height="413" width_o="450" height_o="413" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155856/139-Companion-Image_o.jpg" data-mid="10782010" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155856/138-Black-Hair-BMIC_1.jpg" width="413" height="413" width_o="413" height_o="413" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155856/138-Black-Hair-BMIC_1_o.jpg" data-mid="10989953" border="0" align="left"/> Commissioned by and written for Black Hair Contemporary Music Ensemble and first performed by them on 9th June 2008 as part of the Late Music Festival, National Centre for Early Music, York. The string ripieno was later added and was first performed, in this version, as part of the British Music Information Centre’s Cutting Edge series on 20th November 2008, The Warehouse, London Score http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/Thype-2006 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/following/edwardjessen.co.uk/Thype-2006 Sun, 16 Oct 2011 12:51:45 +0000 http://www.edwardjessen.co.uk/ 2155847 THYPE (2006)duration: ca. 12 minutes <img src="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155847/135-Sweeping-Nuns.jpg" width="450" height="295" width_o="450" height_o="295" src_o="http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/4/158465/2155847/135-Sweeping-Nuns_o.jpg" data-mid="10781993" border="0" align="left"/> Written for Orkeste de Ereprijs with funding from the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center, from the PRSF/Bliss Trust (UK) and from the Arts Council of the Netherlands. The piece was first performed 2 May 2007 at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, York. - .... -.-- /  -.- .. -. --. / -.. --- -- /  -.-. --- -- . / - .... -.-- /  .-- .. .-.. .-.. / -... . /  -.. --- -. . Score Program