Output details

On the Road to Olympus. Electronic music for choreography. Commissioned by Hackney Council as a pre-Olympic public event, Stoke Newington Town Hall, London, 11-12th July 2012. CD recording only. URL and hard copy evidence date of dissemination

On the Road to Olympus is a 20 minute electronic work for dance commissioned in 2011 by Hackney Council as a pre-Olympic public event, and was staged and performed in Stoke Newington Town Hall, August 2012. The performers were a combination of twenty-six local students and ten professional dancers, choreographed by Tony Adigun. The brief was to create a large, multi-channel electronic work “creating a unique, pre Olympic experience by introducing a new and exciting sound world to the performers and residents in the Hackney area and beyond.” The genre I chose was a ‘spectral composition’ emphasizing timbre as the prime ingredient in the work’s structure. The pre-compositional structure was derived from Olympic field maps, which also provided a grid for the ranges and intensities of the sonic material. The source material involved various concrete objects such as the scraping of a metal cleat on a starting block, a swarm of birds, the voice of an Olympic runner, and the click of an empty starting gun. Each were recorded then manipulated by digital means and transformed so as to be unrecognizable. The significance of the resulting work was a unique time capsule of small sounds found and recorded around the 2012 Olympic site and transformed into a large, multichannel composition. It was a revelation for the participants to be part of this unique creative process and a novel contribution to the Olympic atmosphere. The combination of spectral music and dance opened an exciting new sound world to many of the participants as well as the audience. The work received its premiere the opening week of the 2012 Olympics, running for 3 nights. It has since been performed the National Sports Centre, Sheffield, and has also been performed at Ohio State University, 2013, as part of the annual Contemporary Music Festival, Columbus, Ohio (USA).