“Rejection bought Andy and I together a few years ago,” says flautist Kathryn Williams, who performs a new collaborative work with performance artist Andy Ingamells at our next nonclassical night on 20 March.
“We both performed in a fringe concert for people turned down by Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival Hub Shorts. I taught the audience a nursery rhyme about Thanksgiving and then played Brian Ferneyhough's Unity Capsule. Andy showed a film – called Packaged Pleasure – while he physically replicated what was happening on screen with bells on his wrists and ankles.”
This was the first time that Kathryn and Andy met and, since then, they have been regular collaborators on a number of brilliantly odd projects that are as visual and theatrical as they are musical.
“The world of experimental music, and the legacy of Fluxus in particular, allows me to engage directly with other things that I like, such as humour, comedy and physicality. I can explore a broad range of sensations that music can offer beyond sound, but with the reduction and focus that experimental music offers,” Andy says. One of their early collaborations was a piece Andy wrote for Kathryn, entitled Long Piece. “It’s 42 metres long and requires her to run alongside it and read the music as fast as possible.”
At nonclassical on 20 March, they’ll be performing a new work created in unusual places, such as bathtubs, reed beds, gyms and leisure centres across the UK and Ireland. “The way that Andy and I work is a combination of rigorous enquiry and silliness in equal measure”, Kathryn says. “It's impossible to know which will be more prominent until the gig happens. Our current artistic project is characterised by the profoundest investigations into the human soul. What you'll see on 20 March is in some way emergent from that.”
Kathryn and Andy will also be performing Larry Goves’ edible score, happy boomf fat, a piece for voices and marshmallows. “It’s an edible score that is eaten during the performance. Larry makes the marshmallows himself and sticks on the royal icing score which is printed in edible ink,” says Kathryn. Andy adds, “The score is made out of marshmallows, and doubles up as an instrument that alters the timbre of our vocal sounds. Eating in public can be a sensitive subject for many people: sometimes it’s joyful and celebratory, like a birthday meal. But other times it can evoke feelings of embarrassment or shame. I think the piece deals with this in a moving and elegant way.”
Kathryn and Andy will be performing these works on 20 March at The Victoria, Dalston as part of a double bill with violinist-composer Aisha Orazbayeva. For more information, and to book tickets, visit our event page.