photo credit: Robert Day

The World Premiere of Crowd Out went very smoothly on Sunday. It was great to finally have the sixteen composite choirs all together and in place. David Lang the composer had flown in to experience his piece for the first time. He seemed well pleased and the singers seemed to enjoy themselves. The sound was amazing and I was privileged to hear it twice running at full throttle. I enjoyed seeing the visuals Craig and I had worked out together slotting into place, we felt it wasn’t too much and wasn’t too little. A major highlight of the whole process for me was studying the varied styles of the sixteen sub-conductors and the different relationships they had established with their contrasting choirs.

Congratulations are due to principle conductor Simon Halsey and the BCMG team for pulling together such an ambitious piece so smoothly. There are more photographs from Robert Day and links to reviews and previews on the BCMG website.

On Friday the sixteen group leaders gathered at Millennium Point with the conductor to rehearse Crowd Out. Today the blue group and then the green group came to the CBSO Centre to rehearse. On Tuesday the third quarter gather, on Friday the fourth quarter and on Saturday EVERYONE rehearses ready for the World Premiere. Us? We’re just helping people wave their arms around. Continue reading “Crowd Gathering” »

For fans of the muchos we have muchos, muchos on the horizon.

First up: muchos guitars (unless guitars of feminine in which case we have muchas guitars on our hands). On Sunday 7th Frontiers Festival and Capsule combine forces to bring Rhys Chatham‘s A Secret Rose for 100 Guitars to the Town Hall. It should be pretty special for those of us who are fans of minimalist music (I’ve got both hands up here). Now being the rhythm section for a band of 100 guitars must be pretty intimidating but a glance at the publicity reveals two of Stan’s favourites are in harness together: on drums Laurence Hunt (Modified Toy Orchestra AND Pram) and on bass Sebastiano Dessanay (last seen keeping muchos recorders in check in our mini-opera The Voyage) – smokin’.

Second up, on the following day: muchos voices. 1000 strong choir gather (twice) at Millennium point for the WORLD PREMIERE and SECOND EVER performance of David Lang’s Crowd Out.

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group have been talking about this piece for years and now it is finally commissioned, happening and, in a very small way, we have our hands on some of the leavers, having been asked to keep an eye on ‘choreography’.

On Monday the brave Notorious choir in Kings Heath agreed to be guinea pigs for our choreographic ideas. We’ve never done anything very much like this but there seem like some basic principles to be observed:

- remember it’s about the music not the visuals.
- keep it simple.
- don’t do much.
- 1000 people doing anything is going to be strong.
- 1000 people doing anything too regimented is going to look like a Nuremberg Rally, so avoid that.

With the choir’s indulgence we tried the ideas out, we tweaked some, we committed them to paper and handed them over to be distributed to the remaining 49 choirs in the performance.