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On 6 March, OUT-TAKE Ensemble, the new contemporary music ensemble I co-organise and play in made its debut in a concert at the Talking Heads in Southampton (we’re very grateful to them for hosting us). We performed music by Laurence Crane, Christian Wolff (whose piece OUT-TAKE inspired the name of our group) and Howard Skempton, and new pieces by Máté Szigeti, Camilla Aldridge and Christian Drew. We were absolutely delighted to have Laurence Crane come and coach us on his pieces ‘John White in Berlin’ and ‘Four Miniatures’ during the afternoon, and honoured to have such a distinguished guest at our inaugural concert.

The turnout on the night was absolutely fantastic-over 50 people-and it seemed like everyone had a good time. We’re excited to look ahead to future concerts. Our next performance will be a joint concert with composers from Bath Spa University at the 2017 Ludomusicology conference on 21 April, and we then hope to put on another concert in Southampton some time in the summer.

I very much enjoyed taking part in the University of Southampton’s ‘Loop Project’ concert at the Turner Sims Concert Hall on 5 February. I played electric guitar in the ensemble for Benjamin Oliver’s new version of his ‘Loop Concerto’, with soloists Ivo Neame, Jasper Høiby and John Scott. The concert also included works by Andrew Fisher, Gavin Bryars and W.A. Mozart.

You can listen to a recording of Ben’s concerto here.

It was really great to hear my new piece ‘Power Trio’, for electric piano, electric guitar and drum kit, performed in a workshop on 6 July by musicians visiting the university from Brussels. The workshop was part of the annual composers’ ‘Get Together’, and the players were Primož Sukič, Carlo Prampolini and Rubén Orio. The piece I wrote explores the timbres of heavy metal guitar idioms and extreme juxtapositions of musical textures. I then continued my celebrations of all things loud and heavy by going to see stoner doom legends Sleep play in Kentish Town that evening, rounding off a great day!

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My next concert will be a performance of Construction in Metal with Mark Knoop at Hundred Years Gallery in Hoxton on 23 April. The concert is part of the Weisslich series, and I’m very much looking forward to bringing this piece to London.

See weisslich.com for more info.

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On 3 March I took part in a fantastic concert at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton. The evening featured electroacoustic and amplified music by various different composers, including several great pieces from my some of my colleagues at the university. These were performed across two rooms within the gallery, which proved to be an excellent space (a shame they are moving off campus soon!). We had a really great turnout and I think most of the audience enjoyed the music.

My contribution to the night was performing two solo electric guitar pieces-Morton Feldman’s The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar (1966) and Christian Wolff’s Another Possibility (2004), and a performance of my Tapping Piece, for four electric guitars, to close the concert. This piece involves an unusual method of playing the guitars, striking the bodies of the instruments with drumsticks to produce a droning effect, and varying the harmonies produced by using volume pedals. The piece seemed to go down well, and I’m grateful to Joe Manghan, Harry Matthews and Máté Szigeti for helping to perform the piece (a task requiring both mental and physical stamina).

Here is a short taster clip of the piece that I produced to promote the concert (I hope to make a full recording soon!):

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