Late Music Ensemble, conductor James Whittle

Anna Clyne: Just As They Are

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies: Canon in memoriam Igor Stravinsky

John White: Newspaper-Reading Machine

David Power: Bye Bye Spaceboy (world premiere, Late Music commission)

Jennifer Walshe: Zusammen i

Eva-Maria Houben: places to listen (2): spring

Mieko Shiomi: Boundary Music

Julius Eastman: Stay On It (transcribed by Paul Pinto)

6.45pm, pre-concert talk by David Power with James Whittle. 7.30pm, concert.

Following their well-received Terry Riley celebration concert last year, the Late Music Ensemble returns with another eclectic programme combining music, theatre, improvisation and audience participation, this time on a theme of empathy.

Anna Clyne’s new work sets a playful rhythm to a recording of John Cage – ‘I love sounds just as they are’. Remembering David Bowie, LME will premiere Bye Bye Spaceboy, a Late Music commission from David Power. LME also pays tribute to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies with an improvisation on his puzzle canon. In between is a topical – potentially subversive – piece by John White, who turns 80 this year.

Audience participation will be a feature of the second half. Text scores by Jennifer Walshe, Eva-Maria Houben and Mieko Shiomi contemplate the edges of sound/silence and separation/connection. 

The large-scale piece to finish – a signature of LME concerts – is this year by Julius Eastman, an African-American composer, pianist, vocalist and dancer known for his celebrated recording of Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King. Sadly, a recording is all that remains of Eastman’s Stay On It. Using a transcription by Paul Pinto, LME will reconstruct this heartfelt and joyous piece, which opens with an infectious riff and leads to group singing and wild improvisations.

“a tour de force of dazzling rhythms in Louis Andriessen’s Workers Union further proved how crisply LME responded to Whittle’s clear-cut direction”(York Press, 2014)