Over the past few months I've been working with a group of 9 musicians who participated in a series of workshops I led between October to December 2013 at LSO St Luke’s. Two new pieces - Fractured Moulds, Scattered Signals and Metal Clay - experiment with ideas that we explored during these sessions.
Fractured Moulds, Scattered Signals uses strategies which shift and re-orientate the group dynamic through different means of group coordination, without a conductor. The players weave between stomping patterns and webs of game-like cueing systems, mediated by a score which asks the players to change the way they communicate with each other, mixing instructional games along with improvised sections and conventionally notated passages.
I wrote Metal Clay for percussionists Renzo Spiteri and Michael Speers, and I've really enjoyed working closely with them over the past few weeks to develop this piece. Metal Clay is made up of several short sections, which each outline either a pattern, a cueing system or a task; these sections set out the rules by which the performers interact, but allows them to 'feed in' whatever sounds they want into the system. Several ideas in this piece originate from children’s clapping games or other game-like interactions. The percussionists depend on each other to sustain rhythmic coordination, yet they also provoke each other in playful exchanges.
Fractured Moulds, Scattered Signals and Metal Clay will be performed on 28 June 2014 at LSO St Luke's, London. The ensemble includes Renzo Spiteri, Michael Speers, Marcus Somerville, Alonso Garrigues Muñoz, Katerina Perdikomati, Mārtiņš Baumanis, Della Angelina, Mela Boev & Laurel S. Pardue.