Tag Archives: #EarBox

#EarBox: lunchtime concert at Studio 3 Gallery this Friday

The University Chamber Choir is busy preparing for its annual concert in the Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral on Friday 3 March, and as a curtain-raiser the choir will perform in the sonorous acoustic of Studio 3 Gallery this Friday lunchtime, 24 February.

Continuing the #EarBox series exploring the dialogue between  music and visual art, this Friday’s event will see the choir perform amidst the gallery’s latest exhibition, Soft Formalities. An exploration of line, form and colour in painting, tapestry and ceramics, the gallery will host an equally exploratory programme of choral music, ranging from the stark, haunting beauty of Tavener’s setting of William Blake’s The Lamb to an almost-minimalist dream awakening by Alec Roth; there’s also a tour de force Lithuanian folk-song for double choir by Vaclovas Augustinas, madrigals by Lassus, richly colourful pieces by Peter Warlock and Alexander Campkin, and more.

The concert is free to attend and starts at 1.10pm in the gallery in the Jarman Building; if you can’t make it in person, the concert will be live-streamed here.

Join the Chamber Choir either live or online, as it presents a concert exploring dreams, sleep, desire, dance and lullabies in the echoing space of Studio 3 Gallery this Friday. More details here.

An in-depth exploration of just four notes next week

Minerva Voices is currently rehearsing four notes. No more, no less. Just four notes.

This chromatically-related pitch-collection forms the basis of Alvin Lucier’s remarkable, other-worldly Unamuno, with the Choir is preparing to sing in the sonorous acoustic of Studio 3 Gallery next Wednesday, in the next in the #EarBox series. You’d think that the ear would become bored quite quickly with only four notes on which to focus; far from it. The notes are presented in a sequence of twenty-four variations, providing twenty-four alternative glimpses, almost, of a particular sonic phenomenon, strangely beautiful in its repetitive simplicity. With each sequence lasting for as long as a natural breath, it feels as though a stately procession of glass planets is slowly turning about you.

At some points, you feel as though you are in the midst of a Kubrickian film soundtrack, or the opening to the Alien movie; films often exploit Bartok, Ligeti and the like for their sense of otherness, imparted by dissonance. But the dissonances in Unamuno aren’t fierce or unsettling; rather, they unfold gently, almost reverently, beguiling the ear through over six minutes of intensely concentrated music.

Alvin Lucier

Alvin Lucier

The event next Wednesday in Studio 3 Gallery is a short, twenty-minute performance, the heart of which is this strange, hauntingly beautiful meditation on chromaticism, in which the singers will be spaced around the gallery, immersing the audience in the middle of the sound. The programme will also include music from Norway, and a medieval Kyrie.

Find out more online here; the performance is on Wednesday 18 May at 1.10pm, and admission is free. Come and be transported to another world…