world-line

 

1. Richard Barrett: world-line (2012-2014) [33'05"]
piccolo trumpet/quartertone flugelhorn, percussion, electric lap steel guitar, and electronics
premiere recording

2. Timothy McCormack: subsidence (2012-2016) [31'31"]
electric lap steel guitar (2 players)
premiere recording

3. Liza Lim: Roda – The Living Circle (2017) [10'24"]
solo trumpet
premiere recording

 

Over five major cycles of music composed for ELISION, Negatives (1988-93), Opening of the Mouth (1992-97), Dark Matter (1990-2002), CONSTRUCTION (2003-11) and now world-line (2012-14), Richard Barrett has proven to be singularly unafraid of engaging with the unrepeatable and idiosyncratic qualities of the people who commit to and form the ensemble. Whether it has been the richly extended performance possibilities of Peter Neville, Carl Rosman, Deborah Kayser, Satsuki Odamura, Tristram Williams, Ben Marks, and so many others, or the resources of three octaves of chromatic angklung, juishigen (17-string koto), sitar, and electric lap steel guitar, his is a music indelibly written for these players, their interests and proclivities. Perhaps given the manner in which these five massive accumulated cycles now fold back into themselves, with personal histories and events both prefiguring and refiguring each other, our relationship might be said to be a world-line. The narrative is dense and massive.

A world-line is a special curve in space time. It is multidimensional and the sequence of space-time events comprising the line corresponds to the history of the journeying traveller. Composed for combinations of piccolo trumpet/flugelhorn, percussion, lap steel guitar, and electronics, Richard Barrett’s world-line unifies his fascination for fundamental science as being inseparable from the marvel of human existence, revelling all the while in the composer’s concept of radical instrumental composition. The five pieces forming the cycle are split into different numbers of sections and then recombined into a continuous form with electronic material providing overlaps between regions of otherwise pure instrumental activity.

Richard writes, ‘The music could be thought of as a miniature “universe” whose matter and energy are composed of sound, which expands (from low pitches) and recontracts (towards high pitches) over a duration of around thirty minutes, and which is experienced in relation to the “world-line” traced by the lap steel guitar and the shifting relationships and perspectives between it and the other instruments and sounds’.

Speculating further into this compositional endeavour, Richard makes reference to the strategic metaphor of ‘lensing’, structural principles and models that serve to direct and focus an imaginative process whose nature is physical and spontaneous, propelling and magnifying. For me, the eruptive capacities of the metaphor were brilliantly brought into relief upon my very first confrontation with the materials of lens 1. From the first page of the score, the rapid propulsion through the pitch-line, the acceleration of material flinging itself forward, is made evident in the constant extremes of contraction and expansion of pitch. For the lap steel part, this “fast-forward” mode also becomes amazingly evident in the sophistication of technique that is subjected to the same constant and rapid variation, highlighted in rifts and especially in dust 5 through crab-like movements of two slides held and manipulated by the same hand. The cycle marks an important exploration and development of the lap steel guitar.

Some years ago, in jest, I suggested to Timothy McCormack that he might be a faithless composer. The humour was triggered by the composer’s reflections upon the nature of his compositions, upon their convulsive, transitory nature in which nothing lasted or achieved permanence. These are violent sonic landscapes of rapid and constantly morphing events transformed within the very moment of their occurrence. ELISION had recently commissioned and performed Mirror Stratum (2011) and One Flat Thing Reproduced (2009-2010). With these works fresh in mind I suggested to Tim that the next ELISION adventure could lie in a new work for the electric lap steel guitar. I further suggested, given the stability of the lap steel, mounted upon a tripod of stainless-steel legs, that two players could practically and simultaneously operate and activate the instrument.

And so over several visits to my Manchester home, subsidence started to come into existence. But whereas Tim’s earlier act of composition might be referred to as ‘faithless’ I would now use the word ‘treacherous’! This piece, for the performer at least, has the feeling of ongoing collapse. It’s like being in a building with the floors and walls giving way. As you descend and fall, grabbing out for certainty and security, whatever you reach for also gives way, frays and becomes unreliable, following and surrounding you with a storm of materials all raining their way downwards.

The instrument is subjected to a radically changing scordatura, constantly lowering in pitch. Over the course of thirty-odd minutes the whole mechanism of the instrument begins to groan in protest. The sonic results of identical actions change dramatically over the course of the work. By the end of the piece the magnets of the pickup can suck those severely loosened strings downwards with only the slightest of pressures. Silence becomes a theoretical space, invaded by amp hiss, begging for bridge mechanisms not to creak while strings settle; and the E-bow behaves variously and unpredictably, albeit marvellously, as harmonics are intermittently grabbed while the slackened string physically slaps against the device, relaxes off and then slaps again.
Tim writes, ‘named after the gradual caving in or sinking of an area of land, subsidence enacts a slow concentration of matter and energy, which gives way to a protracted, eventually cataclysmic implosion’. Four hands destabilise and disrupt one another, limiting and delimiting gestures as they compete to inhabit the same space, displace and intrude upon each other and then break free. The variables are remarkable, as is the journey of performance and listening.

Roda – The Living Circle, composed by Liza Lim specifically for the artistry of Tristram Williams, comprises reconceived materials drawn from the trumpet part of an earlier ensemble work Roda – The Spinning World (2016), a commission of Ensemble Modern. The trumpet solo further develops the idea of recursive patterns of the earlier work, intensifying the loops into a complex ‘cats cradle’ of intertwining melodic figures.

The roda is the ‘living circle’ of the group forming the energetic space within which the Afro-Brazilian martial arts practice known as capoeira is played out. The capoeiristas spin and wheel in stylized combat. Capoeira is a martial art disguised as a dance, employing all kinds of feints and aerial moves within a marvellous moving/breathing/singing/drumming circular formation. It is a communal world enjoining serious play and playful improvisation. It is lyrical, celebratory, transcendent and joyous. Liza’s work captures these qualities, as Tristram’s performance renders a graceful ease and spiralling intensity, deceptively accomplished and seemingly oblivious to the technical challenges.

ELISION’s work now focuses ever-increasingly upon pushing physical boundaries in search of certain kinds of visceral expressive experiences, the musical body in extremis being a benchmark of the ensemble’s repertoire. In a digitised world where physical presence is frequently replaced by avatars generating enormously complex effects, ELISION continues to be fascinated by an artisanal and intimately gestural approach to the production of music. We value and emphasise the co-creative processes of dialogue with composers in which musicians have agency in imagining, developing and building new technical and expressive means. The performances of the three ELISION musicians on this disc — Peter Neville, Tristram Williams, and myself — are emblematic of these aspirations, and fully realised in the strongest of partnerships with composers Richard Barrett, Timothy McCormack and Liza Lim. My gratitude is to all involved.

– Daryl Buckley Artistic Director

 

ELISION has established an international reputation as Australia’s premier new music ensemble. The musicians of ELISION have been celebrated for close long-term artistic relationships with composers, their virtuosity in performance, and a deep and insightful commitment brought to bear upon interpreting complex and challenging aesthetics.

ELISION has performed at the National Concert Hall Taipei, Berlin Philharmonie, Saitama Arts Theatre Tokyo, the Pompidou Centre, Sydney Opera House, the Center for 21st Century Music Buffalo, and Vienna Konzerthaus; at festivals such as Wien Modern, Maerzmusik, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Festival Ars Musica Brussels, Züricher TheaterSpektakel, the 50th Warsaw Autumn Festival, Ultima Oslo, TRANSIT Festival Leuven, Spitalfields, the Chekov International Theatre Festival of Moscow, BIFEM, the Shanghai New Music Week, Festival d’Automne à Paris, and the Vértice Festival of Mexico.
The group has toured to 22 countries and its discography comprises over two dozen recordings made at Deutschlandfunk, Radio Bremen and BBC London Studios for release on KAIROS, NEOS, HCR, NMC, and MODE, and reviewed to acclaim in Gramophone, The Wire, New York Times, and BBC Music Magazine.

ELISION has long enjoyed significant artistic partnerships with composers Liza Lim and Richard Barrett and with American composition as evident in the work of Aaron Cassidy, Evan Johnson and Timothy McCormack.

An especially productive and longstanding relationship exists with CeReNeM, University of Huddersfield. ELISION has also worked regularly with the Harvard Group for New Music at Harvard University, and has been supported in the Barrett and McCormack projects through the RMIT Art Gallery.

 

ELISION Ensemble

Daryl Buckley / electric lap steel guitar [1,2]
Peter Neville / percussion [1], electric lap steel guitar [2]
Tristram Williams / piccolo trumpet, trumpet, and quartertone flugelhorn [1,3]

Recording engineer: Jimi Lloyd-Wyatt [2], Alistair McLean [1,2,3]
Editing & Mixing: Richard Barrett [1], Alistair McLean [2,3]
Mastering: Alex Stinson
Producer: Daryl Buckley

Live electronics programming for Richard Barrett’s world-line by Patrick Delges, Centre Henri Pousseur, Liège

world-line recorded at Melba Hall, December 2018
subsidence recorded at Ginger Studios, Richmond and ELISION studio, April and July 2019
Roda – The Living Circle recorded at Prudence Myer studio, March 2019
Mastered at ABC Southbank, Melbourne, June 2019

Richard Barrett world-line is self-published by the composer
Timothy McCormack subsidence is self-published by the composer
Liza Lim Roda – The Living Circle is published by Casa Ricordi, Berlin

subsidence and three movements of world-line – lens, knot and dust – were commissioned by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology as part of the RMIT Art Collection’s Sonic Archive at the instigation of the gallery director, Suzanne Davies. The remaining movements of world-line – rift and rasa – were commissioned by the TRANSIT festival in Leuven, Belgium.
Timothy McCormack’s international travel for recording sessions of subsidence were supported by the Paine Traveling Fellowship of Harvard University. Both the Fromm Music Foundation and the Harvard Group for New Music facilitated concerts that were instrumental in the development of subsidence.

Cover photography: Raphael Buckley
Design: Mike Spikin
Project management: Aaron Cassidy and Sam Gillies, CeReNeM for Huddersfield Contemporary Records (HCR) in collaboration with NMC Recordings