DAAD grant award!

On the 2nd of December I heard that my research proposal to the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) had been successful, thus enabling me to carry out three months research in Germany in 2012 on the electronic instruments used by the Stockhausen Ensemble between 1964 and 1979.

Death's Cabaret - sound projection

On 29th November I did the sound projection for Death's Cabaret.
Written by Martin Riley
Composed by Stephen Deazley, Music at the Brewhouse
Performed by Matthew Sharp and the Sacconi Quartet
Produced by Sharp Productions in collaboration with Music at the Brewhouse

This was performed at The Caves in Edinburgh to a packed house who absolutely loved the show.

Spiral Performance

Grind Sight Open Eye booked me to perform Stockhausen's Spiral in the Labyrinth in Edinburgh on the 1st of October 2011, sharing a bill with Lambs Gamble/Usurper/Grant Smith + Graham Stewart/Sean Williams.

This is the section of the score which I played. (Image courtesy of Stockhausen Verlag, Kürten, Germany).

I changed my setup for this performance and have incorporated a vocoder as well as a new portable Roberts R871 world-band radio which has much better reception over 12 different shortwave bands than the old Telefunken Bajazzo TS-201 that I was using before, and is much easier to tune than the Realistic DX-300 that used for the Soundings festival performance.

Testing Testing performance

My piece Testing, Testing was to be performed in Coventry on the 23rd 24th or 25th of September 2011 but due to an alarming lack of information by the organisers - the actual performance date was not confirmed until the day before!!!), it was impossible to plan travel from Scotland so a number of us were compelled to cancel our various performances and papers.

What a shame!

Visit to WDR Studios Köln

After the Stockhausen Courses I managed to arrange a visit to the WDR Studios in Köln along with Juan Verdaguer and Ignacio xxxx as a guest of retired engineer Volker Müller.

The studio equipment was rescued by Herr Müller after the WDR closed the studio and wanted to throw it away!!!! Since most equipment was designed so brilliantly and at enormous expense, most of it still works perfectly despite being over 50 years old.

Stockhausen Courses 2011

6th to 16th August 2011 saw my second visit to the Stockhausen Courses in Kürten, and this time I took my synths and all the equipment necessary for a performance of Spiral. I was lucky enough to attend a whole seminar course given by Michael Vetter and Natascha Nikeprelevic on Pole, and Spiral. Michael Vetter performed these pieces dozens of times at the 1970 Worlds' Fair in Osaka and subsequently and has recorded an integral version of Spiral for the Stockhausen Verlag.

A highlight of the courses was getting to work on both Pole, and Spiral with Frauke Aulbert, although sessions were a little daunting to start with since I had to use my voice (which I seldom use in a musical context) instead of my synth.

Here we are working on Pole, using Michael and Natascha's notes projected on the wall behind us.


The other main course that I attended was the Intuitive Music Course run by Intuitive Music Weimar. This inspired me to set up an Intuitive Music group in Edinburgh on my return.

Interview with Rolf Gehlhaar

On the 15th of June 2011 I had the great privilege of interviewing Rolf Gehlhaar - composer (and Stockhausen's assistant from 1967-1970). Rolf gave me so much information and made such a great contribution to my research on the performance practices surrounding electronic instruments in Stockhausen's Mikrophonie I that I will be processing it for months!

Here's a screenshot from a short video I took in which Rolf demonstrates some of the filter and fader techniques used in Mikrophonie I on a mock-up of the original machines that I built as part of my PhD research.

Thanks Rolf!

http://gehlhaar.org/