Output details

18 Guitars

Originally commissioned by the Nottingham Guitar Festival, 18 Guitars has received several performances around the world in a version for solo guitar and multi-track recording by the Canadian guitarist Tim Brady. This output is the world premiere of the full live version selected for performance in the 2009 Multiplier Series, curated by Graham Fitkin at Kings Place, London by a guitar ensemble featuring Tim Brady along with UK-based guitarists including London Sinfonietta’s Steve Smith, and jazz guitarists Joel Bell, Arthur Dick and Dave Preston.

The research relates to the minimalist and post-minimalist tradition of writing for multiples of the same instrument, and in particular the question of the relationship between the dramatic brutalist use of massed electric guitars and the more coolly objective aesthetic of minimalism. In several of Steve Reich’s early works, multiples of the same instrument (including electric guitars in New York Counterpoint), are used predominantly to create complex interlocking patterns within a uniform, objective texture. A more brutalist expressivity is found in the massive blocks of sound created in multiple guitar works by, for example, Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham (in the latter case, with up to 100 guitars).

18 Guitars investigates the possibilities further through the alternation of complex polyphony with a homophonous, driving wall of sound. The process involved multi-tracking live audio of various guitar textures (in order for example to ascertain the maximum number for use in homophonous textures, beyond which additional voices would be redundant), as well as adjustments to timbre, voicing and texture made in rehearsal. An additional aspect of the research involved an exploration of the way in which guitarists from different musical backgrounds (an inevitable aspect of working with large numbers of electric guitarists) approach the interpretation of fixed notation and being part of a large ensemble.