Éliane Radigue 7 by Eleonore Huisse. Copyrights reserved.
Rescheduled from 15th Oct 2022. An extended concert in two halves – 2pm to approximately 3pm, followed by a 90 minute interval, then approximately 4:30pm to 5:30pm.
Pieces from Occam Ocean
Éliane Radigue (born 1932) is regarded as one of the most innovative and influential composers working today. Up until 2000, she was known for work produced electronically. Since that time, she has composed mostly for acoustic instruments, and from 2011, she has composed exclusively in collaboration with individual performers, working with the musician’s personal technique and relationship to their instrument, using solely oral and aural means of transmission rather than written scores. The resulting body of work is the series Occam Ocean, some 80 solos and chamber pieces, written for some of the leading exponents of experimental music.
For this extended concert at Arnolfini, violinist Angharad Davies, harpist Rhodri Davies, and double bassist Dominic Lash will present works composed for them by Radigue, in various combinations. The concert will include the premier of Occam River XVIII for harp and double bass.
“What I ask of the musicians is highly demanding. Rather than the virtuosity of speed, it concerns the virtuosity of absolute control of the instrument, an extreme, subtle and delicate kind of virtuosity. … Regardless of what is being used, the essential goal is to produce and bring out the partials, the overtones, the harmonics and sub harmonics, these vibrations in the air, not only those of the string or the breath, but the intangible contents of sound. An instrument vibrating beyond the fundamental(s) generates an extraordinary richness that turns into fascination.”
Éliane Radigue, circa 1970s by Yves Arman
In the 1950s, Radigue studied Musique Concrète techniques at the Studio d’Essai, under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. After ten years devoted to raising her children, she went on to work with Pierre Henry, as his assistant at the Studio APSOME (1967-68). Drawn to the American minimalists and new synthesizer technologies, she was in residence at the New York University School of Arts (1970-71), the University of Iowa and the California Institute of the Arts (1973) and later Mills College (1998). She developed a lifelong connection to Tibetan Buddhism in the 1970s. A documentary about her work, Échos, by Eléanore Huisse and François J. Bonnet, was released in 2021.
Performer Biography
Angharad Davies is a Welsh violinist based in London working with free-improvisation, compositions and performance.
Her approach to sound involves attentive listening and exploring beyond the sonic confines of her instrument, her classical training and performance expectation.
Much of her work involves collaboration. She has long standing duos with Tisha Mukarji, Dominic Lash and Lina Lapelyte and plays with Common Objects, Cranc and Skogen. She has been involved in projects with Tarek Atui, Tony Conrad, Richard Dawson, Gwenno, Roberta Jean, Jack McNamara, Rie Nakajima, Tim Parkinson, Éliane Radigue, Georgia Ruth and J.G.Thirlwell.
Most of her records are released on Another Timbre but she also has releases on Absinth Records, Confrontrecords, Emanem, Potlatch and winds measure recordings. Her first orchestral piece was commissioned by LCMF in 2019.
Rhodri Davies is immersed in the worlds of improvisation, musical experimentation, composition and contemporary classical performance. He plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water, ice, dry ice and fire harp installations and has released six solo albums. His regular groups include: HEN OGLEDD, Cranc, Common Objects and a duo with John Butcher. He has worked with the following artists: David Sylvian, Jenny Hval, Derek Bailey, Sofia Jernberg, Lina Lapelyte, Pat Thomas, Simon H Fell and Will Gaines.
For the last ten years Davies has been closely associated with Éliane Radigue performing seventeen of her pieces – she composed OCCAM I for Davies in 2011, the first in the ongoing series. New pieces for solo harp have also been composed for him by: Christian Wolff, Carole Finer, Philip Corner, Phill Niblock, Ben Patterson, Alison Knowles, Mieko Shiomi and Yasunao Tone.
In 2012 he was the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists Award, he was a Chapter Associate Artist (2016-19) and in 2017 he received a Creative Wales Award. He is a co-organiser of the NAWR concert series in Swansea.
Dominic Lash is an improviser and composer. A partial list of musicians he has worked with includes Antoine Beuger, Tony Conrad, Angharad Davies, Jürg Frey, Elizabeth Harnik, James Ilgenfritz, Charlotte Keeffe, Paul Lytton, Joe Morris, Evan Parker, Éliane Radigue, Mark Sanders, Roger Turner, Fay Victor, and Philipp Wachsmann.
Huge thanks to our friends at The Bristol Hotel for their support with this event.
