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On 19 June 2017, OUT-TAKE ensemble played our second concert at the Talking Heads in Southampton. Alongside works by James Saunders, Louis D’Heudieres and Harry Matthews, the concert featured a reprise of mine and Máté Szigeti’s performance of ‘Construction in Metal’ at Bath Spa University in April, and ‘Nara’ – a new piece for hexaphonic electric guitar written for me by Oliver Sellwood. In Nara, each string of the guitar is routed to a separate amplifier, allowing the composer to apply different effects to each note in a chord (you can read more about this piece here).

A few weeks ago I went up to London to record a performance of Olly’s piece. I’ve just received a link to the video, and I’m really impressed with how well it turned out so thought I’d share it here (best listened to with headphones):

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDtdlRtCN8U&w=560&h=315]

I’ve also finally got around to uploading the performance of Construction in Metal from Bath, which you can watch here:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTeQ1fz682g&w=560&h=315]

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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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