Output details

CD recording of 'Wired': works for harpsichord and electronics

This CD documents the development of a new performance practice for a specific player, and is a catalyst for a body of evolving work, e.g. WIRED 2 with dance and WIRED 3 with live drawing. Wired was created for a traditional 18th-century baroque harpsichord with resonances, both historically and sonically, rather than the ubiquitous 20th-century revival harpsichord.

My originality lies in the variety of approaches to contemporary styles and techniques, combining acoustic miniature works with complex notation (Redgate and Hayden) with works utilising low-tech devices e.g. signal processors (Whitty), interaction with live electronics, triggering sophisticated sound files created using Max MSP (Vaughan, Dibley, Uduman), to Newland's more experimentalist approach, producing sound with the strings alone.

Collaboration enabled me to influence the composers’ approach. Such immersion was particularly relevant for the Vaughan, which alternates highly-notated music with improvisation, which in turn is processed electronically, as sound files are triggered according to what I play (as co-composer).thus merging two identities. Newland explores harpsichord sonorities through the use of elbows - enabling notes to be sustained, against which notes are detuned, and strings plucked from inside, completely bypassing the keyboard. This entire utilisation of the instrument is also exploited by Whitty in 'seven pages I' using only the rapidly repeated sound of the mechanism. For both these works experimentation on the instrument itself was necessary, and new playing techniques devised. Scores evolved as musical ideas/durations/structures became clearer through responding to live electronics (Dibley). New signs and symbols of the harpsichord's inner workings were created for Newland's diagrammatic score.

The ethos of the disc - 'ancient keyboard hardware meets state-of-the-art electronica' (Gramophone) makes this body of work relevant and thought provoking. As well as broadcasts on programmes such as Radio 3's Late Junction, the CD has been featured in two programmes for Concertzender, Netherlands.