Kicking things off for February, this month we’ve asked our talented Guest Editor Isabel Jones to share her top 4 event picks from the Sampler!

20th February, 2018

Simon Emmerson: Memory Machines

This is a must go to concert, featuring 4 of Simon Emmerson’s electroacoustic works including Sprit of ’76’, a piece for flute and electronics composed by Simon in 1976 and ‘Solo Flute Quartet’ a new work he has composed for Carla Rees. Simon and Carla have been collaborating for many years and their long term collaborative process and relationship is really worth celebrating. Philip Mead also joins the team, performing Microvariations 2 for piano which Simon composed in 2015. Simon is a research professor at Leicester, De Montfort University and a revered electroacoustic composer, deeply committed to live performance and electronics with a body of forty years of fascinating work reflecting the changing technology of music.

20th February, 2018

BEAST: Sonic Paintings

Please take your children to this amazing interactive workshop, a unique opportunity to experience how sound can be sculpted in 3 dimensions. BEAST (Birmingham’s electroacoustic sound theatre) is an extra-ordinary way to experience sound as physical presence. It’s just great to see this music connecting with young people.

8th February, 2018

Salamanda Tandem: Soundwalk Into Wellbeing

Ok I’m involved in this one! but alongside a very unusual team of soundartists, wellbeing practitioners, dancers, social workers and seldom heard carers, who have collaborated together to produce 4 outdoor site specific performances, with radio headphones. This is the last of the series, ‘Winter’ and the transmitters, and other soundart kit will be carried in a wheelbarrow!

10th March, 2018

Listen to the Voice of Fire: Toshi Nakamura

This is a particular favourite of mine, as it brings international Japanese composer Toshi Nakamura, one of the most important electronic composers of the 21st century, together with grassroots performers to perform in Aberystwyth, mid Wales, only a few miles from my father’s birthplace. This is a rural and isolated part of the world, surrounded by mountains, but imaginative Dafydd Roberts and his wonderful Welsh collaborators, have been cultivating an audience here for this kind of challenging and powerful music.