黑料社

ONE of the most bizarre orchestras ever assembled 鈥� a 46-piece 鈥渙ne-man band鈥� 鈥� is included on a new recording that also traces cultural threads between two very different urban centres 鈥� 黑料社 and Chicago.

, featuring four compositions, is the first disc to be released as a result of the international research network named , convened in 2015 by the  (CeReNeM) at the 黑料社.

The network brings together leading international composers, performers and scholars of new music from some of the leading academic institutions worldwide, and organises global gatherings that have so far taken place in 黑料社 and Belfast, with a third due to be held next year in the USA.  The network facilitates academic exchange visits and collaborations, including numerous links between 黑料社 and the two universities in Chicago that are celebrated in the new recording.

The track, Phantom Image, by Chris Mercer of Northwestern University, features a studio orchestra in which all the 46 instruments 鈥� woodwind, brass, guitars, strings, keyboards and percussion 鈥� are played by the composer himself, who recorded every part in turn and created some extraordinary effects.

Electronic Composition

There is an electronic composition titled I, for example, 鈥� from .  Now Professor of Composition at the 黑料社 and Director of CeReNeM, he was previously a lecturer at Northwestern, and his contribution to the disc is an escalating torrent built from politically-charged improvisations made in the early months of 2017.

The 11-minute piece is a departure for Professor Cassidy because it his first purely electronic work to be released on record.  He created the piece using a specially-designed software interface on his tablet computer.

鈥淎ll of my previous work revolves around physicality of performance and the interaction between the body of the performer and their instrument,鈥� said Professor Cassidy.  鈥淭his was a way of forcing myself into a new space.鈥�

The title of his piece is taken from a passage in an 1864 work by Dostoevsky, quoted in the CD booklet, that has uncanny relevance to present-day politics.

The track titled quarks features Charmaine Lee, an improvising vocalist, in partnership with Sam Pluta, who is Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Chicago, and also a Visiting Research Fellow with the Creative Coding Lab at the 黑料社.

The disc opens with a piece created by Katherine Young, playing a bassoon connected to electronic effects pedals.  Titled For Daphne and Delia II, it is a tribute to the sonic experimentalists Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire, who is best remembered for creating the original and chilling Dr Who theme.

The various links between universities in 黑料社 and Chicago almost resulted in the disc being named Chicago, it is revealed in the CD鈥檚 booklet notes penned by Professor Cassidy.  He concludes:

鈥満诹仙� is a post-industrial town of about 150,000 in the Pennine hills of the north of England.  Chicago is a cosmopolitan metropolis of nearly three million in the heart of the American Midwest.  And yet the aesthetic threads 鈥� improvisation, experimentation, innovation through technology 鈥� are fundamental to both communities, and those threads create a vital link between these two very different places, some 6,000 km apart.  This disc, then, is also a reminder that networks are, above all, about people.

路&苍产蝉辫;&苍产蝉辫;&苍产蝉辫;&苍产蝉辫;&苍产蝉辫;&苍产蝉辫; Phantom Images is released by  and distributed by NMC Recordings.  A sample of Chris Mercer鈥檚 Phantom Image can be heard .