This is a recurring event: View all events in the series “Summer Sounds”
Swiftly gaining a reputation as one of the UK's most exciting new ensembles for music of the 20th and 21st centuries, Explore Ensemble presents a programme including three new works by City composers, as part of our 2021 online City Summer Sounds festival and postgraduate research conference.
The programme is completed by City alumnus Georgia Rodgers' York Minster, an exploration of place and acoustics, and the first live performance of James Weeks' shimmering ensemble work Summer.
This is a welcome return visit to City by the ensemble, following a 2020 concert of new work, which was recorded for broadcast by BBC Radio 3, and a sold-out 2019 performance of Morton Feldman's other-worldly final work, Piano Violin Viola Cello.
This event will be broadcast live and available to view via the YouTube stream below, or by clicking here.
Programme:
- James Weeks, Summer (2018/20) WP
- Gilberto Agostinho, follow the well-worn path in the grass (2021)
- Elizabeth Black, Explore This (2021)
- Georgia Rodgers, York Minster (2018)
- Alice Jeffreys, finding a thread (2021)
Described as one of the UK's "top new music bands" (Kate Molleson), Explore Ensemble is a London-based chamber music group which performs, commissions, and promotes new music. Built around a core sextet and working often with electronics, Explore Ensemble's reputation for outstanding performances and inventive curation stems from its advocacy of some of the most original composers of today, combined with its revival of musical gems from the recent past.
Since its founding in 2012 at the Royal College of Music by composers Nicholas Moroz and Arne Gieshoff, Explore Ensemble is often featured on BBC Radio 3's New Music Show and at festivals and venues such as hcmf//, Kings Place in London, Kammer Klang / Cafe OTO, Cambridge Music Festival, City University of London, the Greenwich Loudspeaker Orchestra Series, the Royal Northern College of Music, the University of Leeds, and the University of Oxford / EXPO Oxford.
The ensemble also works with guest soloists, for example, soprano Juliet Fraser, with whom the ensemble gave the UK premiere of Rebecca Saunders' O Yes & I, and clarinetist Benjamin Mellefont, who gave the UK premiere of Kaija Saariaho's Figura.
May 2021 will see Explore Ensemble’s debut CD release with two portrait albums of Oliver Leith and James Weeks' music on the label Another Timbre. Other future plans include features at EXPO Oxford, BBC Radio 3's New Music Show, and a European tour in Autumn 2021 to Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK.
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