New Music Players: Dark Formations

Monday 27 September 2010 at 8pm
Hall Two, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9AG
Tickets £9.50 on sale now

'Chamber music for the here and now...' Guardian

Rowland Sutherland flute
Fiona Cross clarinet
Charlotte Webber bass clarinet
Thomas Gould violin
Michael Atkinson cello
Richard Casey piano
Roger Montgomery horn
Tim Palmer percussion
Patrick Bailey conductor

D A R K  F O R M A T I O N S
Supported by the RVW Trust

Adrian Goycoolea Still Live (film 2010 premiere)
accompanied by Ed Hughes Quartet (music 1998)

Lizzie Thynne Surrealist Picnic II (film 2010 premiere)
accompanied by Ed Hughes Sextet (music 1999)

Ed Hughes Chamber Concerto (2010 premiere)

Nick Collins Snap (2010 premiere)

Dan Yuhas Quartet (2007 UK premiere)

David Chandler & Ed Hughes Dark Formations
(audiovisual work with live music 2010 premiere)

What happens when photography meets film and music? Working in collaboration with the New Music Players and composer Ed Hughes, three distinguished film makers and curators present new works on subjects in 20th century photography, to show how archive photography can be rediscovered and newly illuminated in resonances with video, abstract film and music.

In Still Live film maker Adrian Goycoolea works with rephotographed images from turn of the millennium American magazines (fashion magazines mostly but not exclusively) that have been manipulated optically and digitally.

Claude Cahun arrives as an unexpected guest - a game with an egg ensues. Surrealist Picnic II, a new short by Lizzie Thynne, is a quirky take on Lee Miller's photograph, Picnic, Mougins, 1937, an iconic image of surrealists on vacation. Edited by Peter Harte, cinematography by Melissa Byers and featuring Anna Pons Carrera as Claude Cahun.

Dark Formations is an audiovisual collaboration between David Chandler (Director of Photoworks) and University of Sussex composer Ed Hughes. Conceived as one part of a projected larger project, The Shadows of Destruction, this new work reflects on the relentlessly destructive forces of war through new musical compositions by Hughes and rarely seen photographs and film footage from the Imperial War Museum, London, of the intensive bombing campaign waged by the Allies against German cities during the final years of World War II.

The New Music Players instrumentalists are expert interpreters of new music, and several are members of the Royal Opera House Orchestra Covent Garden, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and leading chamber ensembles. NMP works regularly with conductor Patrick Bailey, and has made CDs and DVDs as well as recordings for BBC Radio 3's contemporary music programme Hear and Now.

Ed Hughes is a composer and has been commissioned by numerous organisations and ensembles, including The Opera Group, Brighton Festival and London Sinfonietta; performances have included City of London Festival, Buxton Opera House, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Linbury Theatre, Jerusalem Music Centre, Salamanca Festival and Sydney Festival. He is artistic director of The New Music Players. He lectures in Music at the University of Sussex alongside colleagues from Media and Film (Lizzie Thynne and Adrian Goycoolea) and Music Informatics (Nick Collins). www.edhughes.org.uk

David Chandler is the Director of the Brighton based photographic agency and publisher Photoworks UK.

Nick Collins composes, performs, and researches, mostly in and around electronic music. He co-edited the Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music (2007), and recently wrote an Introduction to Computer Music.

Lizzie Thynne's video work has been shown on Channel Four, in galleries and at festivals worldwide including at the National Film Theatre, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Jerusalem Film Festival, the Irish Film Centre and Festival International de Films de Femmes, Creteil. She completed Playing a Part, a documentary on surrealist photographer Claude Cahun, in 2004, with choreography by Lea Anderson.

Adrian Goycoolea is a filmmaker whose work has been shown at film festivals including Rotterdam International Film Festival, Moscow International Film Festival, at art galleries including Artists' Space, Taller Boriqua, La Panaderia, and in locations as disparate as Anthology Film Archives and MTV.

Dan Yuhas studied piano and composition at the Rubin Academy in Tel Aviv and pursued further studies in London and Paris. His music has been performed by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Chamber Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Israel String Quartet, the Arditti Quartet and many other ensembles and performers in Israel and Europe.

Managed by Liz Webb Management www.lizwebb.org.uk