Nonclassical is partnering with the NottFAR (Nottingham Forum for Artistic Research) to present a new edition of NottNOISE, a showcase of new experimental music and creative sound practices from the Midlands.
We’ll be presenting a series of specially-recorded performances, with a new selection released every Friday, encompassing contemporary classical music, electronica, noise, and sound art. The programme will feature performances from AJA, Stephen Crowe, Cobalt Duo, Dushume, Dirty Electronics, Jack Kenworthy, Pascal Meyer, Simon Paterson, and Xenia Pestova Bennett, among others.
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New videos
Galvanize Ensemble The Metalization of a Dream
James Opstad Shimmer
East Midlands CoMA Ensemble What Zoom Can Do
Full series
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
AJA
As one of the artists highlighted as part of the BBC Radio 4 documentary “New Weird Britain”, noise artist AJA stages some of the most captivating and confrontational performances in the electronic music underground, inviting a reciprocative catharsis between her and the audience. The sonic density in her work combines power electronics and techno, as deep drones are ripped apart by arrhythmic percussion; all the while her stage presence, a mess of fluorescent colours and exposed emotions, creates an overwhelming experience.
Collaborating with designer LU LA LOOP, AJA composed a soundscore for Berlin Alternative Fashion Week as her first major foray into music. Her work within the LGBTQ+ community, both through running workshops in sound art and as an advocate of promoting and increasing the presence of women in electronic music, has seen her work carry throughout Europe, India and Brazil. She has brought this expertise into her more recent activities, working with Ableton to facilitate workshops and is the founder and director of Queer Noise Club, an experimental performance and club night in Nottingham.
She later scored Joey Holder’s Ophiux and Adcredo, for which she won the PRS Foundation’s Oram Awards, which recognises pioneering and experimental female artists. Following a contribution to Opal Tapes’ compilation Harvest Of A Quiet Eye and collaborating with Perc for “Spit” on the album Bitter Music, AJA released her self-titled debut album in 2018. AJA was greeted with critical acclaim, praised by The Quietus: “Her mastery of the drama is uniquely compelling…akin to the most cursed moments of Throbbing Gristle’s output.”
Amanda Johnson
Amanda Johnson is a composer and violinist based in Sheffield on the edge of the Peak District National Park. She has a MA in performance from Huddersfield University and is currently a Finzi Scholar. Her work explores the themes of migration, travel and freedom, combining environmental recordings with instruments and voices.
www.amandajohnsoncomposer.co.uk
Cobalt piano duo
Cobalt Duo are pianists Kate Halsall and Fumiko Miyachi. Since their debut at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (2014), the duo have performed many new works including by Michael Wolters, Richard Stenton, Emily Abdy, Hugo Bell, Naomi Pinnock, Philip Cashian, Colin Riley, Andrew Poppy, Katharine Norman, Helen Papaioannou, Egidija Medeksaite, Ruta Vitkauskaite, Ryoko Akama, Joel Bell, Leo Chadburn, Richard Glover, Duncan McLeod, Andrew Morgan, Emma Ruth Richards, Matthew Rowan, Dominic Murcott, and Anton Lukoszevieze. They have recorded a number of works for Kate’s Miniaturised Concertos album, released on Metier. Fumiko’s works Cobalt and Silver, were released on her debut album Transitional Metal, with Divine – Art Recordings, which the duo also toured in 2018.
David Jackman
David Jackman is a British musician and visual artist with over 130 separate releases to his name. He is an elusive but significant figure in UK and international underground music with his extensive catalogue of intense drone works, mostly as the principle - and often sole - member of Organum. Jackman's earliest known musical activity was as a member of Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra between 1969 and 1972.
Duncan MacLeod
Composer Duncan MacLeod’s practice utilises both acoustic and electronic forces. His output encompasses concert music, cross-arts collaboration, computer music and electro-acoustic composition. His work has been commissioned, commercially recorded, and broadcast internationally by various ensembles and soloists. These include the Arditti Quartet, Jane Chapman, Galvanize Ensemble, Juice vocal ensemble, London Sinfonietta, Musarc, Ensemble Okeanos, Orkest de Volharding, Piano Circus and Quatuor Diotima. His work has been performed at various festivals such as Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Spitalfields Festival, Gaudeamus music week (NL), Sonorities, and Bang on a Can Marathon (NY) and at prominent venues namely The Muziekgebouw (NL), Walt Disney Centre (USA), Southbank Centre, Kings Place and Café OTO. Upcoming commissions include works for clarinettist Sarah Watts as well as a large-scale multichannel electro-acoustic work drawing upon the acoustic ecology of London’s markets in response to Orlando Gibbon’s The Cries of London. Duncan is Assistant professor of music composition at the University of Nottingham and co-creates of Nottingham Forum for Artistic Research (NottFAR) and the concert series NottNOISE.
Dushume
Dr Amit D Patel, aka Dushume, is an experimental noise artist/musician from Leicester who is influenced by Asian underground music and DJ culture. His work focuses on performing and improvising with purpose built do-it-yourself instruments, and recording these instruments incorporating looping, re-mixing and re-editing techniques. Lack and loss of control are central to his work. He has just completed a PhD, “Studio Bench: the DIY nomad and Noise Selector” (2019), at the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.
Dirty Electronics
John Richards (aka Dirty Electronics) is a composer and musician who works in the electroacoustic spectrum, and has received recognition for his experimentations with improvisation and home-made instruments. A versatile sort, he has previously collaborated with Gabriel Prokofiev, in the collective Nerve8, and has both played with Napalm Death band members and performed at IRCAM. A champion of the D.I.Y. and lo-fi, Richards shuns high-end equipment, in favour of what he calls “dirty electronics”. Richards has released an album on Nonclassical with the pianist GeNIA, in which these practices are combined with her piano expertise.
Elizabeth Kelly
Elizabeth Kelly is an American-British composer based in Nottingham, UK. Her music embraces a broad range of influences running the gamut from ‘majestic Wagnerian lines aggressively punctuated’ (Boston Musical Intelligencer) to ‘rasping jazzy exploration’ (The Guardian). Her compositions have been performed throughout North America and Europe. She is an Associate Professor in Music Composition at the University of Nottingham where she co-curates the Nottingham Forum for Artistic Research (NottFAR) and NottNOISE new music series.
Frank Abbott
Frank Abbott is an artist, filmmaker, and performer. He combines an interest in projection work with performed interventions. He uses obsolete equipment, current technology, comedy formats, and social ritual to produce provocations modelled on everyday activities.Frank also organises and promotes artist collaborations, including Film Free and Easy and Primary Group
Galvanize Ensemble
An ensemble of musicians who work with composers, artists, film and text to create installations, cross disciplinary performances & exhibitions. Run by pianist Kate Halsall, the group is an improvisation ensemble and cross-media art project based in Newcastle Upon Tyne and London, UK.
Helen Papaioannou
Helen Papaioannou is a composer/performer based in Sheffield. She composes for acoustic instruments and electronics, and has a fascination with the dynamics of group interaction. Her solo project Kar Pouzi intertwines baritone saxophone and electronics, often drawing out intensity from persistent cycles and repeated sounds. Helen’s compositions have been performed by various musicians and ensembles including Ensemble neoN, Workers Union Ensemble, Galvanize Ensemble, Renzo Spiteri/Michael Speers, and Nieuw Ensemble. She improvises with a range of collaborators, is a member of the duo Garlic Hug and has played as one third of the bands Beauty Pageant and HOKKETT.
https://www.helenpapaioannou.com
Jack Kenworthy
Jack Kenworthy is composer and music producer based in Nottingham. Jack is active as a songwriter, producer and performer, primarily with his project, Colouring. As a composer, Jack has collaborated with film and TV shows including Netflix, Sky Atlantic, ITV and E4. 2021 sees the release of Jack’s debut album with Colouring as well as commissions for upcoming Netflix films and Andrew Morgan film, Samantha Rose.
James Opstad
James Opstad is a double bass player and composer. Since graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in 2011, he has lived a diverse musical life, increasingly dedicating himself to experimental music. He performs with duck-rabbit and Apartment House and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Birmingham.
Michael Wolters
Michael Wolters was born in 1971 in Mönchengladbach and grew up in Niederkrüchten, a small German village on the Dutch border. His works have been performed at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the ISCM World Music Days in Manchester (with Isobel Bowler), Spitalfields Festival (with Isobel Bowler), the Barbican Centre, Birmingham Symphony Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Tate Liverpool and various other concert halls, festivals, supermarkets, art galleries, shoe shops, theatres, banks, opera houses, in cafes, on beaches, in cinemas, on the radio, on TV; in the UK, Germany, lots of other European places, in Russia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada.
Michael works in close relationship with the German theatre artist Marcus Droß and is also a founding member of the artists’ collective New Guide to Opera. Since 2009 he has been Deputy Head of Composition at Birmingham Conservatoire.
wolters.co.uk
Murray Royston-Ward
Murray Royston-Ward's work addresses improvisation’s core materiality by interrogating agential relationships between humans and objects/materials through creative activity. He uses audio technology, material resonance, and feedback in improvisatory relationships with materials, to extend notions of ‘doing’ music through, building instruments for improvisation and exploring the entanglement of human and material in practice.
Murray has worked with national and international arts organisations on workshops and projects that successfully expand improvised music practices into the visual and participatory. He has also exhibited visual arts, sonic installation, and large scale audio-visual performance events. In 2015 Murray received a Gasworks International Fellowship awarding an 8 week residency at BRITTO Arts Trust in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Pascal Meyer
Pascal Meyer is a pianist with multiple interests and activities. A member of the ensemble Lucilin since fifteen years, he has the chance to work with a large range of composers and creators and to interpret music that covers the whole spectrum of contemporary creation. Throughout the years he has acquired a whole repertoire of styles and expression modes, far away from classical education.
As a soloist, chamber musicians or when integrating ensembles, he performs a bit everywhere in Europe: Philharmonie Luxembourg, Muziekgebouw and Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, De Doelen, TivoliVredenburg, Wiener Konzerthaus, Opéra Comique de Paris, Bouffes du Nord, La Scala Paris, Bulgaria Music Hall, Kursaal San Sebastian. But also in Russia (Hermitage Theatre), in Japan (Tsuda Hall, Aster Plaza Hall), in China (Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, Shandong Grand Theatre, Xi'an Concert Hall, Ha'erbin Grand Theatre, Tianjin Grand Theatre) as well as in Singapore, in Argentina, in Canada and in New Zealand. He has played in festivals such as Holland Festival (Amsterdam), Gaudeamus Muziekweek (Utrecht), ADE (Amsterdam), November Music (Eindhoven), Rainy Days (Luxembourg), Archipel (Geneva), Musica (Strasbourg), Ars Musica (Brussels), Voix Nouvelles (Royaumont), Festival d'Aix (Aix-en-Provence), Musikhost (Odense), Ruhrtriennale (Duisburg), Ensems Festival (Valencia), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (Huddersfield), Inner Sound Festival (Bucharest), Dam Festival (Pristina), Concordia Festival (Sofia), Ciclo de conciertos de música contemporánea (Buenos Aires).
His recordings with pianist Xenia Pestova include the complete works for two pianos by John Cage on three CD's as well as an award winning recording (Diapason d'Or) of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Mantra on the Naxos label. He has been a member of various groups: the Alea trio, with whom he plays the classics: Beethoven, Brahms, Dvořák, Martinů, Shostakovich..., the Looptail sextet, which is entirely dedicated to contemporary creation, and Project 128, an electro band in which he creates crossover music through the use of synthesizers and other musical sequencers. Last but not least, he arranges and composes together with the two percussionists of the Joint Venture Percussion Duo, in a trio called Machine à trois, playing music somewhere between jazz, pop and world.
Primary Music Group
Primary Music Group is a fluid assembly of performers based in and around Nottingham who have come together at Primary, Nottingham to explore crossover themes between music, noise and visual arts. They have performed compositions from the Scratch Orchestra and works associated with groups of musicians and non-musicians playing in consort. They also compose and perform new work by group members. Performances include: Wysing Polyphonic, Nottingham Contemporary and the Commoners Fair, Primary. They comprise writers, visual artists, filmmakers, composers, musicians, teachers and performers.
Performers include: Rebecca Lee, Frank Abbott, Mark Dennis, Caroline Trutz, Nathaniel Mann, Niki Russell, Alison Lloyd, Lila Matsumoto, Matthew Walton, Alice Gale-Feeny, Nick Wayne Burrows, Bruce Asbestos.
Rebecca Lee
Rebecca Lee is a musician composer who moves between public off-site or project-based work, traditional arts venues and DIY music spaces, producing recent commissions, performances and releases for the National Trust, Nottingham Contemporary, Radar, SARU and most recently large-scale performance SHERDS with artist Nastassja Simensky and an ensemble including Kelly Jayne Jones and Sophie Cooper. Rebecca also facilitates young people to work with sound, performs as Bredbeddle, makes improvised music with Marie Thompson and is part of Primary Music group.
Simon Paterson
Simon studied music at Nottingham after which he toured Europe with a funky jazz-fusion band in the heyday of Acid Jazz. Having played at major venues and festivals, he has recorded and performed alongside an impressive roster of renowned jazz musicians. One of the region's most in demand bassists, in 2020 he has performed with the likes of Tony Kofi, Dennis Rollins, Mellow Baku, Marcus Joseph, Joel Purnell, Stewart McDonald, Nathan Bray and more.
Stephen Crowe
Stephen Crowe is a composer of experimental music. He has written nine operas and directed them in Nottingham, London, Edinburgh, Dublin and Berlin. His music is often based on literary texts by authors such as Sappho, James Joyce and DH Lawrence. His work has been performed internationally; notable London performances have been at Cafe Oto, The Courtauld Institute, The National Portrait Gallery and Tate Britain. He is a multi-instrumentalist and sings in a hardcore Barbra Streisand covers duo called StreisBAND.
“Inspired lunacy” Ed Fringe “Pretentious nonsense” The Scotsman
www.instagram.com/sardinebutty
Xenia Pestova Bennett
Xenia Pestova Bennett is an innovative performer and educator. Described as “a powerhouse of contemporary keyboard repertoire” (Tempo), “stunning” (Wales Arts Review), “ravishing” (Pizzicato) and “remarkably sensuous” (New Zealand Herald) in the international press, she has earned a reputation as a leading interpreter of uncompromising repertoire alongside masterpieces from the past.
Xenia’s commitment and dedication to promoting music by living composers led her to commission dozens of new works and collaborate with major innovators in contemporary music. Her widely acclaimed recordings of core piano duo works of the Twentieth Century by John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen are available on four CDs for Naxos Records. Her evocative solo debut of premiere recordings for the Innova label titled “Shadow Piano” was described as a “terrific album of dark, probing music” by the Chicago Reader. Xenia's own compositions are available on Diatribe Records and TakuRoku. Her full-length album "Atomic Legacies" features Ligeti Quartet and the Magnetic Resonator Piano, while her digital EP "Atonal Electronic Chamber Music for Cats" explores vintage synthesizers.
We caught up with the featured artists from NottNOISE to learn about their practice, influences and lockdown habits.