Kicking things off for July, this month our talented Guest Editor Sam Mackay shares his top 4 event picks from the Sampler!

31st July 2018

Nonclassical // curated by Tom Richards

At its best, Tom’s music is as fascinating as the raw, handmade hardware he uses to create it. Sharp, caustic, clearly-defined – and never held back by the sterility of some (more polished) electronic methods. The gig is to launch a new record, which I look forward to losing myself in.

14th July 2018

LSO Soundhub showcase

This is a great chance to get a sense of where the UK’s emerging composers are at, aesthetically speaking. Of course it’s only a partial sense, but some top instrumentalists are involved so we can expect luminous performances. There’s music by Yvonne Eccles, Robin Haigh, Lillie Harris, and Nick Morrish Rarity.

 28-29th July 2018

Romanti-Crash

This looks really wild and clever. A “deconstruction of the ‘quintessential’ big day, interweaving ideas about the evolving nature of matrimony with sound, performance, discussion and creativity.” The great Martin Creed is involved, and one of the people behind Supernormal – a festival I’ve long been curious about – is part of the team behind it.

4th September 2018

Of Leonardo Da Vinci

A compelling concept, and anything involving both David Toop and Elaine Mitchener has to be worth sustained attention. For me, Toop’s writing of the last thirty or so years – in books like Ocean of Sound, in The Wire, and loads of other places – has been crucial: highly informed but also irreverent, poetic, yet rarely indulgent. He takes literary risks to capture the sense of his subjects’ work, and very often pulls it off. Earlier this year I saw Elaine’s monumental Sweet Tooth, devised – like this new production – with choreographer Dam Van Huynh. It was a typically virtuosic, emotionally fearless performance from her, articulating the historical trauma of slavery. The subject matter looks very different here, but equally powerful.